X1.2 - THE DESERT

  Lost

  "Where am I?" asked the boy.

  His eyes were so dry they could hardly open. His voice raspy, and his throat unable to swallow from thirst. The sun shone on his face, blinding him. He tilted his head and noticed an endless expanse of dunes. He paused. He began to ugh hysterically, then scream, then moan.

  "Of course. When I need water most," he shook his head, "I end up here. In a desert."

  He began to gag from the nausea, but this time, nothing came out. He hadn't eaten in days. He wanted to just y there and give up, but the sun forced him to sit as it burned his face.

  He remembered the dragon and the unbelievably powerful punch he somehow managed to manifest to defeat the invincible beast. That unlikely victory was enough to motivate him to drag himself out of the heat and into the entrance of a canyon. Fnked by tall pilrs of smooth, reddish rocks, he found a bit of shade to rest under. He took his clothes off to inspect his body. The breeze felt good as it cooled him off, but the sand that it carried stung the boy like thousands of needles. His exhausted frustration grew as he frantically twisted and filed, clumsily trying to kick off his now-entangled pants, which stubbornly clung to his feet.

  "All that trouble—all that damn trouble for WHAT? To get to a desert? I think that bitch was really trying to kill me after all."

  The golden tattoos were now so faint that they were barely legible. He scanned his skin but only managed to decipher two. The first had a key, a smiling face, an equal sign and the letters ‘THX.’ The second tattoo instead was a thumbs-up, topped with a fme, followed by a compass inside of a heart. Exhausted, thirsty, hungry, and covered in bruises, his curiosity gave way to a deeper, more urgent need to address his basic survival. He put his clothes back on and dragged his feet forward, deeper inside the canyon, staying under the shade as much as possible. He noticed two moons over his head, one rge red one, and one smaller white one.

  "Definitely not Earth—again,” he said, slouching.

  He began to wonder whether he had taken the wrong Exit. Perhaps, the pink-haired stranger was really trying to help him, and her pn would have worked, had he followed it without deviation like she explicitly commanded.

  "I can't do anything right."

  He reached the other side of the canyon, and his heart sank, defeated; another endless expanse of orange dunes, as far as the eyes could see.

  "Right—” he said, resigned, beginning to come to terms with the fact that he might die there.

  There was no way he could cross that hot and hostile environment, especially as tired, hungry and thirsty as he was. He could barely stand. His knees shaking, he dragged his feet again until he managed to crouch under a rge, protruding boulder. The young man id down and soon passed out on the hard surface.

  Loose pages floated into his face, waking him up after several hours must have passed. He lifted his head as pain shot through his stiff neck. His eyes noticed many more sheets of paper, rolling around in the canyon as they were carried away by the wind. Surprised, the boy grabbed one to make sure that his mind wasn’t pying tricks on him; he looked around but saw no sign of life, nor any book in sight. He tried to read it but could not understand anything, given that it was written in a foreign alphabet.

  “Later…” he murmured, colpsing again, stuffing the mysterious page in his pocket.

  The sun bzed in the bright, blue sky, framed by towering rock walls that soared on both sides. The twin moons had disappeared, leaving the barren canyon in stark, sunlit stillness. Then, a rhythmic sound grew louder and louder, pulling the boy out of his deep slumber. His dry tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth as he rubbed his weary eyes, trying to clear his blurred vision, with no luck. Despite his disorientation, his sharp hearing caught every beat of the approaching sound. His face lit up as his eyebrows lifted, a faint smile tugging at his lips. Marching feet?

  "People! Water—food..." he mumbled.

  He dragged himself out of the hole, colpsing onto the ground with a dull thud. His relief soon vanished as his eyes fixed on what emerged from the top of the crevice. It wasn’t a band, nor a parade, nor a company of soldiers—not even close. A grotesque, giant, hairy millipede-like creature, its countless long, spiky legs working in eerie synchrony, scaled the rocks above him. Roa didn’t panic. He didn’t summon a heroic resolve either. He simply had no energy left to do anything at all at that point. Kneeling on the scorching hot, sandy ground, as his knees burned, his arms hung limp at his sides, his mouth open, revealing his tongue, shriveled like a dried prune.

  The only motion he could muster was the slow turn of his head, tracking the monstrous insect as it moved closer. His thoughts, disjointed and nearing the absurd, tched onto a random observation: the creature must have had more than a thousand legs, its length was that of a train.

  The boy mumbled something as his lips attempted to make words.

  “It’s a—millionpede,” he stuttered, giggling.

  Perhaps, it was the sun baking his brain, or the dehydration warping his thoughts, but Roa found himself dwelling on this trivial detail, as though it mattered in the face of such danger. A cracking noise snapped him out of it. Some of the beast’s legs scrambled, but the brittle rocks beneath them crumbled under its weight. Another sharp crack echoed through the canyon as a chunk of the rocky ledge broke. The creature’s segmented body lost its grip, causing a sinuous cascade to tumble down the crevice. Its fall ended with a loud crash, as it dragged the length of the body down into a chaotic pile, enveloped by a giant cloud of dust. Its many legs now stood straight up in the air, paralyzed, twitching on occasion. The young man buried his face in his hands and began to ugh; the kind of ughter that bubbles up when one has reached their limit, and all one can do is surrender to the absurdity of their misfortune.