And when he awoke, he was all but completely dried up, pressed down on by the desert sun. He looked down on his hands and saw that they were covered in blood, caked on like the red had begun to become a part of him.
He remembered nothing. The world, especially the world of the middle of this desert, was a place he’d never been before. Slowly regaining what was left of his strength, he gathered himself, grabbing his hat and his canteen with his dry, red hands. He placed the canteen to his cracked lips, but nothing came out - empty.
“Water,” he said out loud, his voice cracking open as if it was giving birth to the word for the first time. Not knowing which way was the best way, he began walking towards something, and hopefully towards anything.
The sun was undaunted by his dwindling condition. It stayed pressed against him as he moseyed onward, past brush and cacti, strange lizards he didn’t know the name of. As he walked he looked again at his hands and the blood that covered them. His arms were also covered in blood. He pressed his hands to his face to find what he expected - covered in blood as well.
As he continued to walk onward, he tried to remember what he couldn’t remember, though anyone who has tried this knows that it can prove to be a damn near impossible task. He thought about the blood and where it might have come from, but when he did he began to shake, weak from everything but nothing more than the thought that he might have killed someone. And where some person may have been able to say, “I’m a man of honor, I’d never kill a person,” this man awoke to find he did not know who he was, and was faced with the worry that perhaps he was the kind of person to kill.
Just as soon as the sun began to hide behind the hills, the man found refuge when he arrived into a town. “Water,” he said again, addressing the bar straight ahead of him. One beat up leg after another he stayed the course through the double doors and into the bar, where he approached the bar, saying once again “water”. The concerned face of the bartender, the last sight he saw before everything went to black.
©2020 by Brice Maiurro. All rights reserved.