Rippling Sands

Note : this very short story was part of a creative writing assignment and was inspired by a specific piece of music that, sadly, I can't seem to find.
What I can suggest to you instead is to listen to this somewhat resembling piece of music composed by Klaus Badelt and Lisa Gerrard for the Original Sound Track of the movie Gladiator. The track is called Sorrow and can be listened to on the Youtube platform.

Fred

 

    An overflowing crowd started to gravitate around the juniper coloured tent. Inside was a girl, not past the age of candor, whose disharmonious moans were bleeding out of the makeshift shelter. Whilst her body had laid down roots in a squeaking bunk, her hand was held by a wretched mother praying for hopelessness to lose the battle against innocence. Not a single soul had not been feeling the stings of the scorching sun, nor the fiery sand ambushed between the toes, yet, it seemed the only feeling their hearts had room for was despair. The girl would need a miracle.

A rift carved itself in the crowd, leaving a breach for an old man to seep through. Draped by a scarlet silk tunic, ornamented with golden runic scriptures or arabesques and held together with a perfectly braided cord, everyone recognized the maverick they had known as “The Hermit”, although noone had ever really known him. Whilst a beard as white as his bun concealed his chin, one could not miss his cerulean eyes attesting of his resolve and determination, nor the wisdom time had chiseled over his burnished amber skin.
As if it was an extension of his arm, he was hauled by a hardwood walking stick, choked by two slithering ropes whose colours matched the tunic’s so tightly it was as if the man was waving a miniature of himself much like a puppeteer.

When the assembly came to realize he had finally reached the girl, his left palm was already smothering her forehead whilst his lips seemed to crackle words out of this world. Her whole body chose to answer by performing a series of spasms, off-beating the clamours of her mother.
After a while, the song ended. The girl woke up, her complexion gleaming from dreary ash to radiant bronze, and then everything else stopped, as if time itself had not allowed anything nor anyone to even age, if it were not for the hissing winds which had seemingly deemed themselves beyond the laws of nature.
The petrified state of the crowd suggested that they had not only just witnessed something they had never laid eyes upon, but instead that they had unbeknownstly glanced at the gorgon’s mirror of the soul.

Time eventually resumed its course and then, when the last tear had reached the burning ground, the task to douse the sandhills was taken over by the empyrean domain. This place’s thirst had not been quenched for days, as if its will to live had been wiped out, yet it chose this very moment to start and remember how wetness feels.

The girl turned her head over, and everyone could decipher the single word that had washed up on her swirling lips : “Water”.

Fred

Escape Game, part 3

Right under our nose

    James Tissot. Judas Leaves the Cenacle,
1886-1894. Brooklyn Museum

Oh my. Oh dear. Did that really happen? I think I've just witnessed some sort of abduction... Could it be though? I mean I did see a man violently push a girl into his black van, but how can I be sure of what I saw?

No I mean, let's think about it. I could have hallucinated, couldn't I? Sure I'm not a drug addict, I haven't taken any shrooms or anything, but I did have a few glasses of wine at noon. Alcohol can cause hallucinatory effects, right? Or it could be poisoning, ha! Maybe something I've eaten, or maybe something I've breathed. That's it, I've breathed a noxious gas. Some nitrous oxide or whatever. And it has given me visions of things that have never happened.

... Okay. Right. Maybe there's like little probability for it to happen, but how often does an abduction happen? I don't know, but I know it is not a lot. Probably less than domestic poisoning. See? I'm not being unreasonable here. What? No, I'm not trying to hide behind reasoning. I'm not! There's a lot of ways to be mistaken about what we think we saw. Our eyes are weak, our ears are weak. We keep being deceived by our brains, and our limited senses and the mishappens of life being thrust unto our imperfect lives only to be filtered through the flawed judgement full of biases inherent in our human condition. It could have been an optical illusion, maybe the light from those street lamps over there gave me the illusion that some guy abducted some girl, but really they were just dancing, or maybe it wasn't a girl but a bag of something, or a dummy. And the scream could have been screeching wheels. We are in a city, screeching wheels are a thing.

Did you know you could not even trust your own memories? I've heard of this experiment where they could implant false memories into some people's heads. Sometimes people could believe they had done something even though they did not. Well, not believe, but remember. That's some scary shit if you ask me, but it does happen! And it could have very well happened to me. I mean I think I saw something, but what I see has already happened in the past, because of light speed or something like that, so technically, it would already be a memory, right? And since memories can be flawed, well then... One plus one equals two. Noone can argue with that.

But what if I am wrong, you ask? That's what trying to tell you. Oh, you mean what if I am wrong about being wrong? Shouldn't I take the chance, the risk, of doing something about what I think I saw, even though it might not have happened, because the cost of it is much smaller than the cost of not doing anything in case something really did happen? Well, I mean sure, some people could deem an acceptable moral stance to pay the lesser cost with the greatest benefit, that is maybe save a life, but how can I be sure how much does it cost?

Let's pretend for a minute that I did see something real. How can I know that what I saw is what it seemed? That's one thing to witness something, but then you and only yourself make up the meaning of it. You don't really know what happened. Okay, because we pretend we did see something, let's go and examine this hypothesis. So, a guy abducting a girl would be considered a fact.
Well sure, but why would I stick my nose into someone else's business? I mean I don't know who this guy is, why is he doing it. I'm not trying to rationalize this man's behaviour, I'm not the kind of guy who thinks she "deserved it" or something, this is not where I'm going. What I mean is, this guy good be from a gang, or the mafia or whatever. And thus the cost of saying something would be way higher. I'm pretty sure they don't like snitches, well that's what I've learned from movies anyway. I don't want to be shived in a dark alley, or be the next one onto the "To Abduct" list. Maybe he's like the FBI or something and she is a terrorist. How would I know?
Also it's assuming that the cost of not saying something could be high. But it doesn't have to be. Maybe this is nothing but some weird sexual fantasy. I know people have those, some Fifty Shades of Gray amateurs who have taken the roleplaying a tiny bit far. How would I know this wasn't consensual? People do have weird fantasies, I'm not making that up, so who am I to judge, right? Maybe they are even filming. This could be a movie, I know they have some weird movies out there in Serbia, so this might very well be one of those.

So yeah, my decision has been taken. It's too late now anyway, I was lost in my thoughts and didn't have time to catch the number plate.

...But what if someone saw me see this? I mean, could I have troubles for not saying anything? Can someone be the witness on the case of my own refusal to say anything while witnessing someone potentially in danger? Will I be required to testify anyway, at the risk of being condemned? Shouldn't I just avoid this risk alltogether by giving my own testimony, getting ahead of anything that could be used against me? Or should I just let it flow, and if I'm caught, just pretend I was confused, and panicking or something, and afraid. Which I might be, to be honest, I mean, panicking. Is this me panicking? Oh my god. It is, isn't it? I don't know, is it? Oh dear, I think I'm panicking.

Fred