Changing directions // Tsiuri&Edric

The sandstorm hit, as always, when least expected. The grey cloud covering the aching sun, suffocating my lungs in its dry nature. My fingers gripping the dog’s leash tightly out of reflex, paranoid once the world was full of beige I would lose him to the void.

The day had started out with nothing special about it, just as the day before that. I woke up in Marcus’s bed, still refusing to call it my own, beginning a routine in its utter monotone complexion. I had begun going through the motions a while back, time blending together as I woke up each morning to wash my face and brush my teeth before heading to the other side of town where my family lived. My older sisters and I convening each morning for breakfast with our mother, a few rolls of bread and jam she had picked up from a farmer down the road. The sweet sense of strawberry, bitter against the stinging taste of reality.

A simple life with nothing much to it.

That is all it had been since the 96th, another year almost passing by me without a second thought. Only a few more hours until my shift at the bar would start, until then I would walk the dog throughout the district. Placing one foot in front of the other, the pace slowly picking up as the dog roamed in its freedom. Eyes staring at the empty faces, a mirror I wished I had never held in front of my face. A pearly white smile and a simple nod of my head at everyone who walked by a familiar feeling of faux safety. The faces engraining themselves into my routine, only the promise that they could disappear from my life continued to remain consistent.

Nothing was ever safe, and nothing was ever a given. The world had been erased right in front of my sand felt, burning eyes. Shutting them tight before the tears started to roll, I let myself be tugged in the direction of the dog’s will.

I really should have given him a name, but he was never mine to call my own.

Along the way, my leg had scratched itself against an object. Sharp and swift, just before the blood began to trickle, running down my left calf leaving a trail I would never be able to follow. An empty moment of hope that for a second I would soon find myself in the safety of the run-down bar. Patron’s who had sold their souls long before me offering a moment’s shelter, but it was another stranger who’s paths I crossed with. Stumbling footsteps right as he had hit me, my shoulder then crashing into a door and my fingers panicked on their search for a handle.

It took a moment, a moment of fumbling around hoping to keep my fingers on the leash and find sanctuary at the same time. A hopeless task proving itself to be fruitful as a door swung open and I stumbled inside, coughing between breaths. The sand scratching its way up my throat as I struggled to get any words out.

“Are you getting in?” I threw my question into the void. Wondering who, if anyone, would step inside. I do not know how many more lost souls I could take before mine joined the ranks of the damned.

But who am I to turn down company.