Part 3/3 - Lost

Part One

Part Two

She stared for long moments the fear and panic creating a painful burning sensation in the back of her throat. She could see the desert stretching out around her, feel the warm sun on her face, the cold packed earth beneath her feet, smell the dry dust everywhere around her and she dropped to the ground in relief.

A dream she thought nothing more than a dream. She had dreamt the world around her had suddenly blinked out of existence. It had just been a dream, a dream so realistic that it had quite nearly driven her insane.  She clapped her hands over her mouth to stop the laughter that threatened to bubble up at the thought.  She was quite sure if she began to laugh right now that she would never stop.

“A dream” she repeated aloud as if hearing it would make it seem more truthful and yet it did not.  Everything still felt wrong but she was so grateful at being able to feel anything at all that it didn’t matter. 

She stared at the horizon and at that great big beautiful ridge which would lead her into town.  Slowly she walked towards it and as she did she felt the dream slipping away. She could only remember the joy she had felt when she had opened her eyes, not remembering having shut them in the first place, and the terror which had gripped her but the details were fading away.

Now the sun was rising and the world looked even better with the sun just above the ridge which would lead her, while not home, to safety.  She would be fine she would just keep walking, she was bound to reach town before another night fell. She would spend tonight safely locked in her hotel room with the TV and every light on, wrapped up in all the blankets she could find.

She paused for a moment sitting down to rest her feet the thought of the warm and comfortable hotel soothing her mind like a balm.  She took out one of the water bottles from her backpack and drank half of it down before climbing back to her feet and beginning to walk again.  

The ridge looked different somehow, Joelle shook her head, no it was just the after effects of that terrible dream playing tricks on her mind she thought and continued to walk forward the ridge becoming clearer with each step.

The closer she got to the ridge the more convinced she became that something wasn’t quite right and as she walked to the top of a small hill leading ever closer to the edge of the ridge she looked up from her feet to the sky and stopped dead.

Hanging above her head was not one sun but two.  Both blazed their heat down upon her and as she stood staring into the sky she heard a wet squelchy sort of noise from behind her. 

The hair on the back of her neck stood on end and she remembered that warm and wet, somehow alien feeling, she had experienced in her dream. She refused to look behind her and indulge herself in this new paranoia, and yet the two suns hanging in front of her was just as insane to contemplate as considering what in the middle of the desert could have made that wet noise. 

She gave her head a little shake instead and stared at the ridge over which the second sun had just risen. It must be a mirage, or a hallucination she thought. Maybe something had gotten into the water bottles she had been drinking. With determination she set her mind against her imagination and set off towards where she knew the town lay in wait. 

Once she got there she would instead of heading straight for her hotel room head for the nearest Doctors office instead.  They would be able to figure out what had suddenly gone so wrong with all of her senses. They would fix it. 

The ridge she now realized wasn’t that far off anymore and she probably could have made it the night before if she had just kept going. She would have seen the lights from town before long and could have followed them to safety.

Of course she was still going to get there safely. There weren’t two suns she told herself sternly and she certainly hadn’t heard the sound she thought she had, there was nothing here. She had just gotten stuck a little ways outside of town and had to walk back that’s it nothing more.  

Sometime later just as the ridge began to rise up to meet her she heard that same wet sound behind her. This one was followed by another and another wet sound and she began to run towards the ridge, towards the light of the two suns.  Faster and faster she went as the sounds behind her seemed to get louder and closer and somehow more excited.

She was scrambling up the hill leading to the top of the ridge in front of her when she felt the first brush of warm wetness against her ankle and she screamed just as the view beyond the ridge came into sight.

She found her footing and stood on the edge of a great chasm. Where was the town, where were the people, the buildings, anything.  There was nothing just those two suns high up in the sky and the noises behind her.

Panting she shaded her eyes and searched the horizon for some sign of life but there was none. An alien landscape spread out in all directions before her, the noise from behind came again followed by a sensation of that sickening warm wet thing against her leg.  The sound became a happy gurgle and Joelle shuddered.

She took a deep breath and finally turned to look down and back the way she had come.  She finally had an image to put together with that noise and that warm wet feeling. It was worse, much worse than she could ever have imagined.

She had apparently driven much further away from town than she had thought, or perhaps she had walked further. All she knew was that the wrong turn she had taken had been more wrong than she could ever have imagined. 

With a final scream of terror she threw herself from the top of the ridge into what she hoped would truly be nothing.         

Part 2/3 - Lost

Part one

Hours later she woke freezing cold and feeling as if the world was tipping on its axis.  Jumping up she’d fallen back to the ground the stars above her head spinning madly.  Then without warning all of the stars winked out of sight.

Suddenly there was nothing, not even the feeling of the hard pan beneath her nothing other than the inky blackness which seemed to press upon her from all sides. It felt as if she had suddenly gone blind deaf and dumb in an instant.

She groped about with her hands and for a moment she felt something, but pulled back with a cry….it had been slimy and hot, something completely alien to her and somehow dangerous. 

Just as quickly as she’d withdrawn her hand she reached out again, even that strange feeling had been better than this….this nothing…..

Groping wildly she began to flail as panic took over, how could there be nothing, nothing to see, to feel, to hear, to even smell.  She screamed into the darkness realizing even as she screamed that she could not hear herself that the sound was only from inside her own head.

She continued screaming silently for what may have been only minutes but felt like hours before she was able to force herself to stop, realizing that if she didn’t do it soon she would never be able to.

She was breathing hard and yet even straining as hard as she could she could not hear the noise of her own breath, but she could feel it.

She focused on that feeling the only feeling she had left, counting slowly with her eyes closed. She reached one hundred and slowly opened her eyes and yet she still saw nothing. She felt a sudden itch on her nose and realized with a start that she couldn’t reach up and scratch her nose because she had no hands. Did she have a nose?

She felt panic rising again and fought it trying to stay calm and think after all it seemed to be the only option open to her.  Think or go crazy.  Her thoughts swirled madly searching desperately through her life’s knowledge for some point of reference which would help her get out of this mess. 

Her mind suddenly grasped upon an old lesson from Sunday school when they had been taught about purgatory.  She seemed to recall it had been described as being trapped in nothingness.  Was this the afterlife then? Had something killed her without her sensing it and now she was doomed to spend the rest of her life (existence?) as whatever this was?

She floated in the blackness considering the possibility arguing with herself, praying to the god she hadn’t spoken to since those childhood days of Sunday school.  Desperate to stay calm she began singing old songs in her head to distract herself from the growing sense of unease and terror griping her mind. Why hadn’t she stayed with the car!

An image of her body lying in the desert came to her mind unbidden. She saw the sun rising and the vultures circling over head.  She saw small coyotes and other desert creatures inching slowly to where she lay and begin to pick at her body.  She saw a vulture dip its head over her own and rise up with an eyeball, her eyeball, swinging from a long piece of sinew in its beak.

Great waves of disgust and despair coursed across her mind wiping away all other thought and panic once again took over. Before long she was again silently screaming into the void surrounding her.    

Without warning she felt a soft thump against her back and her eyes flew open. She was laying on the hard desert surface the stars above her head.  She jumped up staring around in confusion as the first hint of the sun reached the horizon.

Part 1/3 - Lost

The sun began to rise and Joelle heaved a sigh of relief.  Although far from out of danger with the sun coming up over the horizon her situation suddenly felt much better than it had in the darkness.

After all she wasn’t really lost she’d had a bit of bad luck is all. She had set out from her hotel to meet up with an old friend and had barely driven out of town before realizing she had made a wrong turn.

She’d decided to turn around when the hunk of junk car she’d rented decided to lurch forward and stall.  Unfortunately it had lurched at the edge of the narrow roadway while she was turning and it had gone sliding nose first into the ditch. She probably would have been able to back the car out of the ditch but it had refused to start up again.

She tried for nearly an hour before deciding to give up and walk back.  She would have called a tow truck but ever since she’d arrived her phone had been acting erratically and now it didn’t even want to turn on. She’d only been driving for ten minutes anyways how far could she really have gone?    

She could see the ridge which marked the edge of the valley the town sat in and it hadn’t looked all that far away even if maybe she’d been driving 15 or 20 minutes rather than 10 before turning back.

She’d started out fine, better than fine really.  There had been a bunch of water bottles in the trunk and she had taken those as well as anything else that might be useful to her including the first aid kit. She’d even had her umbrella which she’d opened up to shade herself from the desert sun.

It hadn’t taken her long to realize how hard walking across the hot ground was going to be and several times she had turned back towards the car wondering if maybe she should just stay with it.  Even if no one passed by accident she’d spoken with her friend on the phone just before leaving and her friend was bound to get people looking for her when she didn’t show up after a few hours.

Eventually she walked just a little bit too far to change her mind.  Just as she’d decided that walking really had been the wrong choice the sun started going down and without it glinting off the roof of the car she couldn’t quite make out where it had been. She thought she saw it for a moment but without any footprints on the hard pan and each bit of brush and cactus looking exactly the same as the next she couldn’t be sure. 

She could be sure where the ridge was though and so she decided to keep going.

As it had gotten darker she’d begun to stumble. What from a distance looked like a solid flat expanse was actually rather uneven sometimes even dropping off several feet at a time.  After falling headlong off of one of these drops Joelle realized trying to walk in the dark wasn’t only useless but dangerous.

So she’d scooted back until she rested against the mini cliff she’d just fallen over and leant back determining that it would be best to stay put for the night.  More tired from walking all day than she’d realized, she had pulled up the hood on her sweatshirt and fell asleep in just a few minutes.