12 November 2012
• Chapter I - Burial Grounds
I can be a dreamer in the dark. I don't need flame to make a spark.
~ Dreams In The Dark by @overskill
• Somewhere in the Sahara Desert. North Africa •
- James:
The car has been driving for what feels like an eternity. The dusty desert track stretches far off into the night, out of the range of the big 4x4's headlamps. I've dozed off into uneasy sleep more times than I can recall, and I begin to question our driver's sense of direction. In the dim light cast by the moon I throw a sleepy glance to my right at my fellow passenger.
Her red curls bounce slightly every time we pass over a bump in the track, which is often, her hair framing a taught, freckled face. She stares straight ahead, although I can see sleep pulling at her eyelids, her hands clasped over a large cinnamon-brown handbag . Her black suit is still dusty from when we boarded the vehicle what feels like decades ago, small flecks of sand scattered across the straight black fabric. Her shoes are completely out of place: large, sandy, black and grey boots, obviously chosen for desert travel.
She seems to have sensed me looking at her, because she turns to look at me. Shock flashes across her face, but it's quickly replaced by her usual calm. She tilts her head and smiles curtly, before going back to her statue-like position.
I sleepily turn my head and lean it against my jacket acting as a makeshift pillow against my scratched, glass window. I let my gaze settle on the dark, monotonous landscape rushing past me, allowing my thoughts to wander. What did she say her name was? We barely spoke at all at the start of the journey, and since we started our route she hasn't said her word. It was Julie... Julie Sastorius? It was something like that, something in Latin. She said she was here for a convention... No, wait, it was a dig... Did she say she was an archeologist?
I shift in my seat so I'm looking at her stern profile once again.
'Hey did you-'
I'm cut off by a yell from the driver's seat in front of me. I snap my head around just in time to see a flash of something on the road in front of the car before it performs a wild serve to avoid the shape.
My instant reaction, as the world is thrown into a turmoil is to lash out, searching for something, anything, to hold on to. The door seems to be the only thing I reach, and I latch onto it for dear life. The car lurches and dips, my head filled crashes and screams as everything around me becomes utterly chaotic.
I feel my head collide with something hard, a searing pain rushing down my skull and neck. Then blackness.
~~~
I wake sluggishly to the sound of the nocturnal desert. Only the wind and wheezing and creaking of the car break the cold, vast silence that envelopes me. Everything inside the car seems to have been tilted sideways, which I assume means I'm laying down and that the car flipped over. I cant turn my head because of a big suitcase lodged behind me, which means I have no option but to move forward, out of the vehicle. I try to open my door. After a few heaves against it and a lot of creaking, the misshapen thing groans open, but breaking of its hinges and crashing to the ground in the process, the noise seeming impossibly loud in this calm. What could we have hit that warped the car in such a way?
The cold air hits me like a wave of ice and I gasp. It's so dark without the headlamps that I fumble in my trousers for my pocket torch. Eventually I find it and flick it on, shining it on the area just outside. We appear to have driven down a dune into some kind of trench, because the sand ahead of me slants upwards. I sweep my torch up and can make out the track we just vacated a few metres away.
I try to crawl out of the car, and although I find that I'm not trapped, my body aches from the accident and lying in such an awkward position. Once I manage to slither onto the cold sand, I sit up and lean against the side of the 4x4 for a moment, trying to catch my breath. All of a sudden I remember the other passengers. I get to my feet and observe the car.
Wreckage is more appropriate now. I can't see what it's slammed into, because it's at the bottom of the trench the car drove into. The impact caused a landslide: the car now submerged in the desert all the way up to the windscreen, along with whatever we had the unlucky fate to veer off into, because I assume that hitting a dune of sand would fold a car, especially not one this big, like this one has been crushed.
I limp around it to the other side, where my companion, Julie, was sitting. My heart begins to pump adrenalin as I fear what I will find.
Her door isn't as damaged as mine, and looks like it will open. I hold the torch between my teeth and shine it on the handle of the car door, carefully avoiding illuminating the window so as not to see what's inside, in a feeble attempt I delay the inevitable. I grasp the handle, and pull. It gives way with more ease than I expect, which throws me off balance, the door swinging wide. As I stumble back, the light of my torch goes wild, but not before revealing a body spilling out of the 4x4, accompanied by a sickening thud.
I stand completely still, and can do nothing except remove my torch from my mouth and hold it in my left hand, pointing it at the ground. It doesn't feel right to call out to her in this dead silence, so I slowly inch towards her.
My stomach clenching with anticipation, I shine my torch onto her.
She's dead.
Her head is twisted at a macabre angel, her neck obviously broken. Her hazel eyes open, her face a pasty mask of shock. Her arms hang limply over her midriff, like a rag doll.
Nausea wells up in my throat and I turn away. I quickly walk down to the buried front of the car, and begin to work madly at clearing the sand away from the driver's window, all the time praying to God that he survived the crash. But when I finish my frantic wiping and my torch beam penetrates the dark of the vehicle, I'm greeted by the sight of another slumped body, this time his face hidden by shadow. The co-pilot's seat is empty, and when I scrabble back around to the other side of the car, I see that he seems to have fled the scene.
Panic swells in my throat and my thoughts begin to spin. I'm alone in the desert, with a crashed car, my two companions dead and no idea where to go. Wait- the track! I could follow it... But how far is it until it reaches civilisation? I could die on the way there from starvation or more likely, thirst.
I let my gaze slide over the scene of the accident, because I just don't know what to do. My heart gives a leap as I see something sticking out of the sand.
I dash over to it and resume my digging. Eventually I can uncover a fair part of the object, and I realise with a lost what it is.
The right side of a large, rectangular, block protrudes from the sand. It appears to be dark, polished stone, however, on closer inspection it reveals itself to be black metal. I clear away more sand, unloading it off the thing with my entire arm in great sweeps.
When it's finally clear I stand back and survey my work. I could only uncover about two thirds of the thing, since the car appears to have barged into one of the corners, but I can still see the remains of cracked paint from where a sign used to be. It's hard to make out what it says, but as I move closer I realise that the picture and words were carved into the metal as well as painted, possibly to add depth to the image.
I sweep my torch over the block. Although I've cleared most of the sand, the lack of paint and light and erosion keep me at bay from deciphering the entire sign. I can only make out the main slogan in big, zany letters.
Welcome to Opussia, The Wordsmith's Babylon!
~ Spirits Of Babylon - I ~ • Opuss № I