storioz

The whole of the next week was spent stumbling in my mind’s eye. Finally that following Friday I was overcome by an eclectic stew of supreme irrationality and reality. Friday night bore witness to what I call the last fresh dream I ever had.

As the curtain closed on my vision… I was borne suddenly and swiftly to a place unfamiliar to me, save in myths and novels. The sun was a wavering electric desiccant, emaciating the surrounding earth and depriving the living. I was standing upon the cusp; a sheer outcropping of resistant red rock, gazing over my dangling outstretched toes to the canyon floor seemingly jagged miles below. The wind was at my face and undecided, traversing the spectrum from tender lapping to treasonous gust. Much as angels have from above, I felt my equilibrium slipping and I feared plunging through unforgiving ledges to the ant people and their craggy rust.

She placed her giving palm on my shoulder and confidently removed me from the ledge’s suffocating embrace; guiding me to the place we were to begin our descent.

“Is this your first time to the valley of the lepers?”

“Yes.” I respond.

I put one unsure foot in front of the other and we slowly come to the trailhead marked by a tall wooden post and the falling away of the earth. Following the path with my eyes it cuts ominously down the canyon wall, it is well worn from the plodding of afflicted travelers whom retreat into the hostile canyon never to return. The passage leans profanely away from the jagged wall at an obtuse angle and is littered with course sand that slows and complicates navigation.

With a simple caress she assuages my doubt and starts me upon the trek… One hand upon the rising rugged canyon wall, the other outstretched pointing across the vast emptiness towards the singing carrion birds.