Ashes to Ashes Pt. 01

The mask keeps out the dust. Not all of it, but enough to keep me from hacking and coughing and falling to my knees. A storm rolled in, towering clouds of ashy grit blacking out the sky. It tastes bitter. It always tastes bitter and sour and clogs the throat. I want to spit it out, but that requires me taking off the mask. I refuse to do that because it would only make all of this worse. Its already slipped through the lens and stings my eyes. I don't want any more of it in my body.

The wind, though, the wind is the worse part. It keeps me from moving. All of my strength collected in my legs and I cannot move as I wish. That is the deal we all have. If there is strength there is movement. And that deal has been withdrawn. The storm has taken it from me, taken me down to a stone. Immobile and still on the precipice of a dune that dwarfs mountains.

Dust and grit and sand, I sit on dust and grit and sand, constantly swirling and shifting and buffeting into me and the world keeps spinning without my movement. I pull the coat tighter around my shoulders. It keeps out some of the grit and some of the sand. Not all of it, but enough.

Something shifts beneath me and I am forced to stand up. The wind, the howling wind of razor blades lifts me and for a brief moment, I take flight upon a bed of knives. Broken skin, and I can feel the blood trickle from me, spark, and sputter against the cloth. It slams me down again and the dune collapses. A landslide of bitter grit, and I am but a single stone along for the fall. Tumbling and scraping, sand working its way through the cloth and lens, finding every single soft, sensitive part of my body, and tearing it open. Pain, dull itchy pain of insect feet and needle pricks hit me and I do not want any more.

I am buried. I am free. The moment passes and I am under a mountain of sand. Another moment comes and I am flying again, the razors taking my weight and keeping it aloft. And throughout it all, I am calm. The storm will pass. The pain will pass. There is still the spark and stutter of my blood against the cloth that will always be there, always be in my deepest core and that will see me through this storm. The mask slips and I swallow the desert.

Immediately, my hands scramble to cover my face, to keep as much dust out of my lungs. Some slips in and the burn starts. I need to cough and hack and expunge the foreign contaminant from my body. But I can't. The mind says that I cannot because that would only allow more dust and grit and sand to enter my body and that cannot happen. It burns. It burns the chest and the mind and the wind does not stop howling. My hands scratch and tear at the cloth, trying to get it back in place. The lenses have shifted and I shut my eyes. Maddening howling dark, blind, deaf, pain, scratching pain of sand burrowing in my skin. The mask slots back and the lens clamp tight. I huddle in the sand as close as I am allowed, hunched, and covered against the howling wind. The dune settles in its collapse and I am offered a brief respite.

In a valley now, some shelter from the wind and the dust. I hazard an attempt at opening my eyes. I am only rewarded with an expansive stretch of dull brown sand and choking gray ash covering all that I can see. But one foot moves in front of the other. And the cycle repeats as I slowly stagger forward against the storm. The jacket's getting more and more worn down, more and more threads coming undone and loose and snapping in the storm. By the end of it, I probably won't even have a jacket, just tatters and holes and threads roughly in the shape of a torso clinging to my body.

I think it is my imagination, but the wind is dying down. Still biting and stabbing and scratching and doing all sorts of terrible things to my body, but I can move. I can move in the shadow of the dune valley. Shadow of the wind blowing across the ash, the hidden hole of my movement.

I am not moving as my strength would allow. I am not moving as I should, for the shadow of the wind is still stronger than I am. But I am moving forward. My will is still manifest in the physical, still pushing me forward. And I relish it. I relish the challenge, the spark in me that seeps into the stained cloth sticking to my skin. It grows and surges as my legs burn and strain. Beneath the mask, I smile with grit-stained teeth. I shut my lips again. Too much, even a cracked smile is too much entrance for the storm. But still, it is enough.

It is cold, the surge in my gut. Ice cold, no matter how much I tap into it. Always cold and sharp and digging into my flesh, just as the wind does. Knives and daggers and razors and thorns. My existence in as many words. Knives and jagged blades and so many wonderful sharp needles. I start smiling again before I think better of it. That can wait for later when the world decides to start being less terrible. Poor choice of words. The world is always terrible. But it can be terrible in different ways. I will smile when the storm stops and some other travesty strikes my journey through the desert.

---

Heat, blistering heat that bakes me through the shredded tatters of my stained leather. I do not miss the wind. That would make me an ingrate. And I do not want the wind to cut and rub me raw and sore and I don't want to bleed. The chill, though I have the chill to keep me cold. Searing cold in me, through me, and the sun and the baked sand ash cannot do anything about it. I watch the swirl of colors, gold brown and white gray twirl in my footsteps. Tumbling dance hypnotic and shaking the dunes down. Mountain ranges that slowly fall due to my footsteps and the change of the world at a whim. Bleeding sun, flaming orange red that slowly burns on my skin. The jacket does not cover enough of me. I am pale, turning red and charred.

It's a slow burn from the blank sky above, the white uncovered by black clouds. That's good at least. No sign of any more storms. But the sun, the endless burning sun, keeps my focused occupied.

The light shimmers and quivers, wavering lines that lead me forward. Ever forward and I cannot stop. I do not have the mask on, for all the good that does me. I can breathe and cleanse myself of the grit in my throat as I see fit. But I have to keep the moisture and chill in me. The heat seeks to rob me and the light, the quavering light in the horizon does not want me here anymore. In all fairness, we are in agreement. I do not want to be here. And the sun does not want me here with the light on my back, but I am here and it is burning me and shimmering and I cannot keep moving.

Water. I need water and food and I have none. I just have the heat and the walk and one foot in front of the other and that is enough. That will let me put the next step down the path. And I have the lenses making the light less harsh. Scratched black glass that gives me some small peace of mind. The jacket is useless now, only the lenses.

The light quivers and shakes in the distance and it has shapes now. Shapes rising and falling from the dunes and the sand. Shapes breaking down the waves. Shapes that are not smooth and round and rolling.

I do not get my hopes up. I do not let that wonderful little kernel of joy settle in my stomach. It's better to just let that little bit of me die so I can keep moving. The desert plays tricks. It plays my senses and tells me of things that are not there. There is no water, there is no settlement. There is no grand reprieve from the deadly sun. There is just another step forward and maybe a raging storm if I am lucky enough to receive it. I doubt it though. The sky is too clear for such a blessing.

But I am wrong. It is not a trick of the light, nor a fanciful hallucination to offer me false hope. It is real. There are real shapes strutting up from the sand. Square things, low things. Almost like stones jutting up from the earth. But they are cut through in squares. Worn, certainly, by the sun and the wind and the sand, but they are still too sharp for anything made by the storm. I sigh and let the chill seep into me once again, feeding it. I do not trust the square hovel ruins in the sand. I do not trust that they have the insight to keep anything insane from moving in.

It slips through the joints and the fibers in my muscles, the gap of fat underneath the skin, all the smallest parts of my body, driving ice and glorious pain through every small nook of my core. It hurts. It hurts to tap into the chill, the jagged knives that part my body. And it feels simply sublime, the growth, the stretch, the wonderful rip and tear of my body. Something cracks in my core and I finally, finally smile the savage smile of daggers and needles that I am.

The ruins remain quiet as I approach over the dunes and the grit. Smart things, hiding in the scant shade of slanty shanties. Smart things that do not approach and collect and assault. They will not remain smart for the foreseeable future, but they are smart now. They hide and scuttle and scamper and skitter from the heat, content in their small burrows. The shifting sand hides them, their tracks, their presence from me and my senses. But I know. I know they are there, snuffling and lurking. I know and I am getting impatient and they are going to be recipients of the impatience.

The first building that draws my interest sits on my right. Red stone line with poured gray between them. Been a while since I've seen something like this. Pretty, interesting texture. A stray hand traces the smooth lines and the chill leaps from my fingertips and snaps against the worn stone. I draw it back and it snarls at me. It snarls at the leash around its neck. Patience, it needs patience and it will be released. It will be released and it will be glorious.

The wayward touch shifts the stone and something settles and clicks deeper within the structure. Unstable, the whole thing is unstable. Probably all of them now that I think about it. Every single one of the ruins. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter at all. It will drop in time, and all I am here to do is speed that up if necessary.

At least a dozen of the same red and gray stone buildings line themselves up down an avenue reduced to dust. My chosen one looks to be something like a market. Maybe. I can never tell. But these types of ruins are always full of markets. Some of them are probably cantinas or something similar. Never could seem them up and running though. Tables too small, no benches. Every so often, a drinking hall slotted in, but all the good stuff picked clean or empty. Shame, real shame that. I don't much care for the mash, amber and murky. Saw a bottle up for auction once at a way station, but all the way to the stars in terms of price. If only, if only.

Something shifts and creaks to my left and I freeze. The chill sharpens and spikes and finds its way to my palms before I shut it down again. I need to know what it is before I let it loose. It doesn't understand that. It never understands that, but it batters and throws itself at its cage of flesh and bone. It hurts, it hurts to stand still and wait instead of throwing myself down the hole of savagery. But I shove it down to the veil of civility and caution and I wait.

A shadow moves from beyond the noise, beyond the glass and beyond the lined worn stone.

In a way, I am relieved. I am relieved to know that the shadows are against me, amassing a legion line that I cannot see. But I know it is there. I know that there are things lurking in the dark, sharp biting things with jagged teeth and starving maws. Knowing is always better than not, even when the nightmare is given form.

I stop and move to the center of the road, open and clear under the burning sky, and the chill grows. I let it grow and spike and surge through my chest and down to my feet. It hurts. It hurts as it arcs through my feet and spider webs along the sand. It melts and slots and slips together and I am standing on swirling glass that molds around my feet. Sharp cracks and snaps pour from my body. It has some amount of gratitude as it pours from my skin.

More shadows and more movement and more falling stones from brushes and caresses. A screech pierces the silence. The stone is cut and gashed deep enough to draw blood from veins. The chill shifts and slithers and hisses through me, and once again I smile.

I keep scanning and keep turning, eyes to shadows. More movements. More slipping things and long languid motions that just leave a cracking tip beyond the corner. More, the chill takes more from me and I give it. My eyes go to the roofs and I grin. One of the braver ones has finally decided to make itself known.

Gray, so long and gray, thick plates covering its stomach. Even still, it slithers. There is motion in their statue pose on the precipice and my eyes can't stay on one part of it. Leads to the neck, scales and lines and scutes, before dipping down to a coiled tail draped over the edge of the stone. No eyes but always watching. No ears, but always listening. No soul but always judging from their nests in the hidden corners of the world. And this one, the one on the top, the one not looking but looking at me, is the distraction.

The chill spikes and shudders and shatters the world behind me as an associate of the gargoyle gets a stray thunderbolt to the chest. It hits the back wall as the clap of sky booms and echoes to the bright burning sun. I sigh. It's good. It feels so good, so incredibly amazingly good to just let it pierce into me. Light and power and surge through my blood, my bones, my flesh, and it feels right. The world aligns behind me and beneath my feet and it all makes sense for that brief series of moments where the thunderclap echoes and bounces and fades back into nothingness.

The silence reigns again and I gaze to the lone sentry still on the perch. I watch the gears turn and the thoughts collect in whatever passes for a mind in the thing's skull.

I don't hear the noise they make. I can't hear the noise they make. I don't even know if they make noise. But the shift in the air, those threads beyond sense that they pull and pluck like violins and loom, I can feel that. I can feel that in the chill. The soundless howl of anguish and pain, a limb severed, and the growing rage beneath the sorrow. The chill grows and slips into the folds of my gray matter and it does not care.

It does not care for the assault, the slithering things of rock steel scale from the shadows of the warped stone and blazing sun. It does not care for the whipping tails, long and weighted and stinging. It only cares for the released, the tempting releasing of itself from the prison of my body. And it feels good. It feels right to let it go and let it surge and spike and arc around me in a maelstrom of delectable pain. It hurts to let it out, to let it do as it wishes with my body and the surge and the chill do not care for my pain. I do not care about it either, for the slips and the folds, the forgotten savage parts in the depths of my mind sing and dance at the carnage of the hurricane.

I feel raking talons grasp my arms, only to fall away as the discharge enters whatever passes for their heart and stops it cold. I feel the whiplash tail strike against my cheek and the surging power travels through my jaw, through my teeth and scorches the linking tail bones as it slinks away. It does not get far before it hits the sand and melds into glass.

A gap, a short gap, and my eyes open once more. A dozen or so slinking things of steel scale and slithering figure sit around me and I stand in the center of a glass sculpture, still molten and dripping in the desert sun. Dirty, murky glass, grains and blobs and grit still not quite a part of the new existence of its brethren. Pieces and blood and bone scattered and froze in the sculpture, slowly sinking to their place for all eternity. Dull gray-yellow, a sick sun beating through the window of the chill's making.

That same shifting howl from beyond reality echoes and bounces through the structure, the whorling shifting waving thing that traps me. And the chill grows again, against his sorrow. It cares not for the sadness, and frankly neither do I. I was happily content to simply slip through on my way to somewhere that wasn't a desert, but they decided I was an intruder and that was the worst crime imaginable. And now there is only one left and I am still the villain. The chill prods that simple thought and I do not know if it is mine. But the rooftop vanguard finally shifts and slinks down to the molten earth, weaving in between its brethren frozen forevermore.

It sticks to what it thinks are the shadows. Even though my glass is murky and opaque, I can still make out the movement of the avenging snake. Whipping and fluid, joints not quite locked in as they should be, tendons and muscles too loose and flexible. It pours itself through the gaps and the passages, the channels and canals like slick oil. And it thinks it's clever. It thinks it's sneaking up on me. It thinks that it is smart enough to go through the glass and hide in the stone shadows so that nothing could ever see it coming.

The surging chill shatters around my feet, tendrils of electricity, blinding blue-white, stretch and filter through the glass, melting more and more and more stone to viscous orange. The guardian keeps circling, keeps finding new places to cram itself into so it doesn't have to face me head on. That is inevitable. That will come and it is a fool to think otherwise. The bodies frozen melt and slump and collet in their jumbled heaps.

To its credit, it does a good job of finding new places to hide, compressing and shifting its body to impossible shapes. But everything's gone now and it is open and free and staring at the monster that came into its den and slayed its kin. It lets loose as wordless howl for the stars alone and sprints towards me, silent as the grave.

My hands find its chest, the slick scales offering no real purchase, and the chill takes over. It is not my body. It was never my body. It is the chill, the spike and needle and jagged saw that tears me apart and it looks to a new territory to conquer.

And the scales provide that. The bones are new perches, the flesh, new warrens and dens. And the skull, a new prairie to roam and explore as it sees fit. Through the blinding white, I watch. I watch the arcs and the glow and the sparks travel in the gaps between, the overlaps, the disjoints and the spaces where nothing exists at all. And I watch the glow turn the gray to black and char and smolder. Fat and muscle melt and fuse into one as more and more of the spark pours into the pitiable thing. It can't take it. It can't take the spikes and the needles slipping between the fibers and it can't do it.

Another beautiful scream, agony, sorrow, and boiling hatred for the world that made me exist and let us meet. The air moves around me and the shifting glass settles into a molten plain surrounding us.

The chill relents and stops and I get a chance to breathe deep and finally see the world for what it is beyond the arc once more.

I stare into the blank eyeless face, blackened and charred and slack. I withdraw my hands from its chest. I burned a hole through it, more glass on the other side. Nothing interesting beyond the char and the melt. It's not my best work, but my hands are at least clean. A little ashy, but that's almost a given. Think it's more from the desert than the hole in the scaly skin. It falls and shatters a pane.

Tired. I am tired and hungry now, the chill and the spike receding. It's tired from the play and the work and the glorious conquering of a new place, too. And I am hollow. The gaps still ache and twinge with the receding. Everything's static and pinpricks, insect legs plucking at my skin. But I sigh an ugly, revulsive breath to the burning air and stretch, letting the muscles grow back to their proper shape, letting the bones slot back to the proper joints.