by Sandra Parker

Created on: June 03, 2009

The sand is cold.

Strange I thought. This is the desert, and desert sand should be hot. I scooped up a gritty handful and let it trickle through my fingers, which were also cold. It was so dark that I couldn't even see the sand as it fell.

Where am I? I thought.

The stars winked at me mockingly. They knew where I was. Then one great wash of starlight smeared across the great black sky in a giant arc.

No moon, though. Where's the moon?

I could taste the salty-bitter taste of blood on my tongue. Had I bitten it? I couldn't recall.

What was happening to me? I moved my hand toward my forehead as I struggled to keep my eyes open.

There was a maddening buzz in my head and it hurt.

My head hurts, I tried to say out loud, almost as an experiment, but the words wouldn't make their way past my swollen lips.

I struggled to remember what had happened. I could barely remember who I was.

I shook the last grains of sand from my hand and touched my face.

It was sticky.

Why, I wondered as I sat cross-legged on the cold desert floor in the middle of the night.

All alone?

And where was all that noise coming from?

Chris? I tried to call out. I could almost see his perfect, lopsided smile in my muddy mind, though it hurt to concentrate.

Ow, I whispered, surprised. I reached the fingers of my left hand to my lips and gently explored the alien terrain. A white hot pain shot through the left side of my face as if I had just pressed a lit match to it. I dropped my hand immediately, stunned.

Where was Chris? Why hadn't he answered me? What's going on?

I frowned a little, trying to think. Broken creosote bushes filled the air with their unmistakably pungent odor, so much like the smell of burning brakes, mingled with-what? With something else. What was it? Gasoline?

Chris? I said, but the word bubbled through my swollen, blood streaked lips as I uttered it. I could feel the panic start to blossom in my stomach. Something was terribly wrong.

As I slowly moved my head back and forth, searching for Chris, my gaze settled briefly on an unimaginable scene of twisted metal and broken glass some fifty feet away, and averted my eyes. That must have been a terrible accident, I thought.

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