The Sands of Time

Wind bombarded me. Simultaneously coming from nowhere and everywhere. Grit slapped my cheeks, stinging each inch of exposed skin. An unseen hand plunged greedy fingers through my hair and curled cruel talons.

Yanked.

My equilibrium shifted. Up became down. Gravity—for the barest of breaths—ceased. I became weightless, suspended in a vast expanse of nothing.

Peace. Utter peace.

Then—

Down I went.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Eons passed and I fell.

Consciousness ebbed and drifted away.

Darkness swirled.

Then the time came:

I woke.

***

I gasped—snapping to consciousness in the same breathless rush that plagued my nightmares—and jolted to a seated position. My diaphragm heaved and I gulped up lungfuls of air—making a feast of the oxygen, tasting salt and dirt on a parched tongue. The muscles at the small of my back clenched, working to a spasm but eased in the nick of time. Cracking a bleary eye amounted to torture. The light—even meager as it was—overwhelmed my retinas. The sharp bite of an ice pick lanced through my eye socket and made the fillings in my back molars ache.

“Ouch!” I croaked and thrust my hand up. Eyelid shut and my grainy palm gently cupped the orbit.

A scene projected itself on my inner eyelids.

Flash!

Then bled away.

I groped for concrete details, but they tumbled into the abyss like grains of sand spilling from an open palm. Only a faint impression remained, the smallest heap of recognition. It spoke of a daunting horizon painted in the stark black and white of a photographic negative—eerie and otherworldly in a way that set my teeth on edge.

It was then that I first felt fear.

There were so many things I did not know.

***

I walked. Trudged; continuing in what—I hoped—was the same direction. There were no landmarks or scenery. Only swathes upon swathes of sand. A world of sand. No high point I could see. No guiding North Star. Where the sand ended—stretching further than I could see, of that I was certain—a swirling darkness arose; the sky although I was loathe to call it that. Void, my mind whispered but I thrust the thought away, terrified of its implications. I wondered what a compass might do out here… wherever here was. Spin mindlessly? Remain inert? Show me North or whatever passed as the cardinal direction in this plane. A hot spot rose on my heel and my skin slid—sickly friction at work. I winced. Another blister to join the rest. I could stop for a break, but an ominous feeling urged me to continue.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Something told me time was wasting.

Desperate to fill the stark silence, I hummed a song from long ago, hoping to drown out the roar of my heartbeat and gusty exhalations. The soft pitapat of my boots barely registered as noise. As I made my way across the never-ending desert, I understood I was traveling through an acoustic graveyard. Air stagnated without the benefit of a breeze. There was no weather to speak of. No life. Nothing made a sound—other than me. The profound sense of isolation weighed heavy, and I opened my mouth, wanting to fill the hush—unsure of what might come out: lyrics or the gibberings of a madwoman.

“Dun, dun, dun. And I miss you.”

I lost my footing and wavered, recovering my balance just before going ass over teakettle.

Plod. Plod.

“Like the deserts miss the rain.”

I giggled at the delightful irony of it all and the corners of my lips cracked. A dry tongue snaked out, rasping across chapped lips dotted with sores. How long had it been since I had water?

“And I miss you.” I hummed.

My eyeballs burned.

“Like the deserts miss the rain.”

Hopelessness gripped me and nestled in. I was it. Just me. And a song I’d played driving to school—windows unrolled, music blaring, the wind ruffling my hair. Sobs racked my body, but no tears came. Fresh out. The act of crying seemed futile if there wasn’t the payoff of tears. I wiped my forearm against my forehead and instead of sweat, I came away with granules of salt.

Time was short.

***

Unsurprisingly, I started hallucinating. Deprived of water for god knows how long—how does one mark the passing time in here?—and starved; it was bound to happen. The hunger’s tolerable enough since I still had fat stores and muscle mass to burn through.

Thirst? A whole different demon.

I staggered ever forward—and fantasized.

An oasis. Plenty of cool water to slake my thirst, fruit bursting with juice and pulp. Like magic—one materializes fifty meters away. Unable to help myself, knowing it was utter bullshit—I lurched to it and fell forward just before the water line and frantically shoveled water into my eager mouth. The mirage flickered and dissolved, and I choked, having nearly packed my maw full of the very sand aiding in my demise. I vomited, bringing up bile and a grainy substance.

I saw an abandoned water bottle filled to the brim sticking from a small dune. Wiser this time, I saw through the lie and on my next glance—it was gone.

I pictured a Diet Coke fresh from the fridge and one of the chrome appliances rose like an ancient monolith. Too obvious. I walked past the fridge, and it winked from existence.

Unbidden, an image came to me: sinking my teeth into a supple neck, tearing through skin, and opening the bounding carotid. Slurping blood like a deranged vampire. I doubted it would stave off dehydration anyway—much too salty and packed with iron.

My aching body carried me forward.

Exhausted, I lapsed into a doze.

For a time.

***

SMACK!

Something solid struck me, stopping me in my tracks. Like wet papier-mâché, my nose crumpled inward and hot iron filled my nostrils and mouth.

“Fuck!” I yelled, the curse coming out wet as if I had a mouthful of thick pudding. The pain blinded me—detonating a white-hot ball of agony in my vision—and I fell backwards. Unforgiving sand caught me, sending a jolt up my tailbone. I whimpered and brought my knees to my chest. Rocked back. Forth. Self-soothing. The pain gradually subsided and I’d mostly stymied the flow from my shattered nose. Forcing myself upright was out of the question so I resorted to army crawling. Very slowly. Weeping abrasions on my elbows felt the sting of each shimmy forward.

Even moving at a tortoise pace, it didn’t take long to reach the end of the sand, something I hadn't thought possible.

It was there. Then not. An utter of absence of sand; an utter absence of anything. Only inky abyss. I reached out a shaking hand and noted I cast no shadow. Inching forward, my fingertips brushed against a barrier—cold to the touch with an intimately familiar texture. I stroked it.

Glass.

Glass?

The caked-on grit, sweat, and oil created whorling streaks and with each stroke, I left behind fingerprints. Putting me at the scene of the crime, I thought manically. A cackle threatened to spill out—another sign of my increasingly addled mind—and I bit the inside of my cheeks to chase it off. Success. Mouth agape, I leaned forward and peered down, trying to discern what lay beyond.

There was nothing.

Another hallucination? Purgatory? Was I hovering somewhere between life and death with a sputtering, dying brain?

I flopped to the sand and willed myself to die.

Despondency took me.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

***

Overwhelming illumination burst into being above me, completely obliterating the former darkness of my existence. Temporary blindness settled in and with one sense down, I realized I could hear something—other than myself and the maddening silence—and my terror mounted as it drew closer.

Something… immense moved. Mountains shifting on fault lines, Pangea tearing itself apart. Everything shook.

I opened my eyes and saw It.

The Leviathan; towering over me. Glittering eyes the color of hellfire peered down and found me in an instant. Marked me. It groaned—and I thought of rockslides and barreling avalanches. Pop! Pop! Eardrums ruptured and fluid rushed out, but I scarcely felt it.

It reached out and craggy fingers palmed my world.

Sloop! Sloop! Sloop!

As I stared up, my mouth agape, suckers attached to the glass overhead. A glistening mucous smeared itself about and razor-sharp teeth arranged in rows chittered within each sucker. Even through the barrier, I heard all.

The better to hold you with my dear.

Up I went. At the mercy of a monster.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

It upended me and my world spun. Vertigo seized me and I fell again, this time into a whirlpool—born of land, not sea—frantically funneling itself downward to parts unknown.

The sound of shifting sands consumed me, roared through every cell of my body, and as I stared down into my certain doom—

Sand. Glass. Time. So much time.

I understood:

An hourglass; I’d woken inside an hourglass belonging to an Eldritch horror. An Old One. My insignificance was staggering. Mind broke and questions of how or why spilled from my brain. White noise. Static. The desert of time sucked greedily at my bones. Sand filled every orifice. I choked. Lungs starved of oxygen and I dimmed.

Consciousness flickered and I went into the soothing embrace of void.

Time had run out.

Engulfed in the desert's parched silence, I was nothing but another grain of sand in the wind.