• There was a man who tried to cross a desert. Soon after he entered he forgot why he was there. He had once had a plan and a destination, and he had once had adequate supplies, but he had them no more. All he had was heat and sand- miles and miles of dry flatness to be surrounded by. He had his body, parched and weak and unwilling, and he had some motivation, but for what he had long forgotten. Behind him was nothing, ahead was nothing. Above was the sky and sun, cruel and bright and glad, as if it were mocking him. Below was sand- burning and flaming, grains and identical grains of the pale hot thing. Every grain hated him. But this man knew which way was forward, so forward he stumbled, until he blinked and saw her. She was a reminder of his life before he entered the desert. She was a smiling and healthy woman with bright unblinking eyes and wide strawberry-colored lips. She was dressed in long and bright and rich loose-fitting cloths, standing and smiling and holding a jug of clear water. He wanted to shout, but his voice was a whisper. She smiled and continued to stand, smiling in the dry sun. He crept forward, slack-jawed and wide-eyed, and she seemed to smile at his approaching. He ran. He ran toward her inviting smile, breathing hard in pain and in effort. Though he bowed as he jogged limply, he looked up in brief moments. She was so clean, standing so straight, smiling so brightly. She was so healthy, with skin that looked soft and perfect, and teeth white and shining. He wanted her to meet him, to cure him and clean him, to take him to the place from wherever she came. So he ran to her and tripped and fell and ran again and wheezed and rasped and coughed and spat dry sand onto the ground. And when he looked up again, still panting, she still stood there in the same place, beckoning with her wide smile. And he picked himself up, ready to finish his journey, but he went no further then, for then the woman moved for the first time. She put up her hand as a signal to stop. She set her jug at her feet. Then she extended her arms from her sides, as if gesturing to and indicating the whole world. He looked around, and saw the sand he had been seeing for so long. He looked back at her. A crack opened behind her and sand began pouring past her bare feet into the abyss. On both his left and right too, cracks opened and sand filtered past him to either side. Now there was a long pathway of sand, leading from him to her and to no one else. The abyss around them widened. Then the woman thrust her hands to the sky as if she were an explosion, and the sky darkened everywhere but above his island in the abyss. Everywhere but the island, it began to rain. The rain was not regular rain, but waterfalls plunging and surging from the clouds, rushing and gushing and roaring as they poured, as quick and mighty walls. But even strong as they were, no drop splashed on the sand that was his island. The air was just as hot and dry as it ever was, and the sun was still in the blue sky above, but now a roaring was in his ears and the rest of the world was a waterfall. He looked to his side. Though if he dared to touch it, he knew that he would be swept in and crushed and drowned, it was so beautiful. It was the thing that could save him. He didn’t care about dying. He knew he would die anyways. He just wanted to feel the coolness of the water all around him. He walked for the first time in a long time. He stepped to his left. He kept walking that way, longing to feel the water, but it never got any closer, and the water on the right was just as close behind. So rather than left or right, he looked ahead. And there she was again, that smiling woman. So he sought her instead, moving slowly forward, broken lips parted. He didn’t blink, because blinking no longer brought a pause in pain to his red fogged eyes. He fell as he walked, and crawled after he fell, and cowered when he could crawl no more. But then he looked up, and saw the jug at her feet in front of his face, and her standing over him. But then the woman and the water and the abyss vanished, and he was alone again in the flat desert, alone with all the miles of burning sand and crushing dryness. And there he finally died.