Driving back along the long straight desert highway, he couldn’t wipe the images from his mind.

It had been 2 nights since he’d seen it.

If he hadn’t left when he did, he surely wouldn’t have made it out at all.

The monotony of the straight lines passing on the road, never bending nor breaking, like some unrelenting, unflinching, never-ending morse code. This, compounded by the lack of any other traffic on the road to distract him, left a lot of space for his mind to wonder, reliving the events of the last 5 days. Relive…imagine…embellish…or catastrophize?

He began to wonder if it had actually happened at all. One thing he knew was that he was alive. Maybe some sleep would help. “No, can’t sleep” he mumbled. Or did he imagine he’d said it out loud? “Doesn’t matter anyway” he thought, taking another guzzle from the bottle he’d tucked inside the drivers side door well. “No one around to hear me anyway”. Silent thoughts, or incantations muttered aloud? It wouldn’t matter with no one around to hear. And if he didn’t make it, it would have all been for naught.

Hallucinations? Delusions? Wild lucid dreams?

Or could it have been the copious amounts of amphetamine & painkillers coursing through his veins that made him question what was real & what was imagined? That, and the damming lack of sleep.

Sleep… “sleep…” like a curse word when uttered aloud.

His legs were twitching. His eyes burning with dryness. His fingers clung on & dug into the steering wheel as if it was his last grip on reality, the anchor keeping him tethered to something he knew was real, couldn't be imagined, because it was there now, under his hand. The tightness of his white knuckle grip let him feel his lifesblood throbbing beat against the hard rubber of the steering wheel. He could almost hear it.

Da-doom, Da-doom, Da-doom

Heading east, speeding along the long straight thin black ribbon of ashfault that darted it’s way through the middle of a continent, the first rays of light were breaking the inky black seal of land & sky. Blinding golden streaks of light were being thrown right down the barrel of the endless straight black tarmac. The dusty dunes that flanked the road began to glow & shift with light & shade. Brilliant highlights glowing golden orange slowly began to consume the deep rich shadows. All shades of reds & oranges danced through the speckled dunes. From the corner of his eye, the shifting shapes the light made on the low dunes took on disturbing image, one morphing into the next, they were running along with the car, chasing him down the highway.

It was too much. With the great glowing orb now just over the horizon, the blinding light was making it impossible to see. The black of the road underneath his speeding tyres was indistinguishable from the red dusty dunes that lay as far as the eye could see in any direction. Eyes so dry it was painful to blink. Lips cracked. Belly raw & hollow. The blinding sun was too much. He had to pull over. Surely he’d put enough distance between himself now & what he’d left behind?

End part one

This is an original work of fiction, imagined & written by myself