Nicholas DiBiase
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Poster: Nicholas DiBiase @ Mon Jun 28, 2010 7:25 pm
Chapter 6
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Hisma Desert, southern Jordan – 1957
A man stood naked in the sands, his skin badly damaged from the sun. He looked up at woman in a long dress standing above him on a dune. Her headscarf was undone and her long hair whipped about her face.
“I never thought you’d take it this far!” he called with failing breath over the gritty winds.
She said nothing. Behind her eyes burned a hot hate.
She lifted up the shovel on which her right hand had rested and threw it at the man. It landed at his side, the blade grazing his ankle painfully.
The man looked up at the woman again, this time with a plaintive expression of agony.
“I won’t dig my own grave!” he said with a disbelieving near-sob.
She said nothing. Her stare was total and unblinking,
For six interminable minutes this strange confrontation continued. The man could feel the flesh on his face burn and crack as the brutish sun worked its slow carnage. His lips were like shredded coconut, flaked and white. His neck stung as if welted by a rope. His eyes itched.
Still the woman was silent. But inside him, the man began to feel the terrible fist of her wrath. His gut clenched and twisted with violence, causing him to fall to his knees and heave. In between spasms, the man saw a large desert spider the color of bone scuttle a few feet in front of him and then quickly plunge into the sand, totally covering itself in seconds. The man struggled to his feet. A sensation like boiling lead began in his gut and traveled up his torso, moving into his chest and into his throat.
His legs felt hurt and heavy. Again he fell. The woman was unchanged.
Through dry tears the man prayed for deliverance. But the sun was still there, and the woman did not move or say a thing. She stood still.
The will within him was desiccated and broke to dust like an ancient dried flower. He looked up once more and cried “No!”
His hands rebelled. The left one reached for the shovel. He tried so hard to hold it back, but his right hand colluded with the left and soon they were both gripping the blistering metal. His arms pushed him back to his feet again, using the shovel for balance. Leaning on the shovel like that, he already had the first spadeful of sand. Oh, how he fought with the little strength left in his bones. But his arms were determined to lift that sand aside and his muscle fibers ripped as he gritted his teeth in resistance. At last he could no more. Crying sorrowfully, he tossed the first shovelful to his left and stuck the blade into the infinite grains.
The woman remained silent, doing nothing.
For four hours the man dug in the unruly sands. The winds mocked his effort, filling in half of what he took out. The sand’s angle of repose made a crater much larger than the depression dug by the man as he continually shoveled out what had been filled in.
After the second hour the man could not stand, and dug while on his knees. Finally, the man stopped. He knelt in a pockmark in the desert, about two and a half feet deep, and five or so feet around, surrounded by a slanting shield of sand.
The man was utterly empty. With eyes vacant save for a dying spark of accusation, he looked up at the woman. She stood there still, her gaze unabated.
The man then capsized and lay without moving. The burning winds picked up, bringing with them thick sand and dust. The gusts lasted for fifteen minutes, then became calm. They had erased the work of the man and obscured him within it.
The woman stood unchanged except for an imperceptible smile that warped the corner of her lips.
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Nicholas DiBiase
@Hepnova
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