Well...
Yeah, I've decided to write a little somethin'...not a rant, just a short thing of fiction. I've been putting it off too long...here we go. Don't mind the cliche beginning.
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He was tired.
He was tired and hungry.
He was tired and hungry and his feet hurt. His boots, which had been soft and supple and smelling of fresh polish on the day he received them, the boots that had once been a joy to wear, were now cracked and stiff, rubbing his heels raw and causing them to bleed on several occasions. They damned things would have been discarded had it not been for the sharp plants that seemed to cover every square inch of the place (he had tried walking barefoot once, the results were painful, to say the least). His hair had long since lok'ed up, no longer well groomed, but just a tangle of greasy, leaf and plant strewn filth...he had no doubts that if a Teacher happened upon him in his current state (not bloody likely in this Midwestern wasteland) he would walk away with quite a few red knuckle marks on his forehead and a splitting headache, not that it mattered much.
He was totally out of food and almost out of water, his canteen clanking almost mournfully against his belt buckle, joining the crunch of his footsteps and the rattle of a bottle stowed deep down in his rucksack. He stopped for a moment and opened it, taking out the bottle and examiming the faded yellow label closely. "One-A-Day Multivitamin", it said, though he had no idea in hell what it meant, only a clue given to him by Teacher Grey on the day of his departure. "Helps with scurvy, don't y'know," he said with a wink, "you'll find out what that is soon enough..." And so he did, too soon for his own liking. It had been his fifth day without a proper meal and his teeth started to feel loose in their sockets. On the sixth, he noticed several scaly spots on his face and hands. By the ninth day his mind made the connection between his current condition and the little bottle given to him and he ignored the label, downing eight during his rest and continuing on. That was the end of that. Though it still didn't end his hunger.
He took one now, chewing slowly and thoughtfully while taking a moment to gaze up at the sky. Oh god, he thought, is it ever going to rain? He knew that it wasn't going to, regardless of the fat clouds that hung lazily in the sky for the past two weeks. They seemed to taunt him, skirting around the sun but never in front of it, keeping him in constant heat and torment. Hahaha, I hope you're enjoying your joke...I know you're laughing...and they were, interstingly enough, big belly cloud-laughs, shaking the earth beneath him. The sun joined in silently, the grin of a madman spreading over its face as it seemed to grow brighter, blinding him. A bolt of pain lanced through his head and he found himself swooning.
"Oh God, oh god...I'm hal...I'm hallu...". He had never heard the concept of heat stroke, but hallucinations he was quite familiar with, and he knew they were always the heralds of doom.
The laughing grew louder as the poor traveler collapsed forward, unable to stop his fall. There was a dull thud as his head hit a rock that jutted up sharply from the grass (this patch was strangely soft and non-pointy) and he had a moment to look up and see that the spot where his head hit was painted with blood. Damned stones are always out to get me, he thought. Then all went black.
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Yeah, I know, not great, but I felt like doing it.
---------------
He was tired.
He was tired and hungry.
He was tired and hungry and his feet hurt. His boots, which had been soft and supple and smelling of fresh polish on the day he received them, the boots that had once been a joy to wear, were now cracked and stiff, rubbing his heels raw and causing them to bleed on several occasions. They damned things would have been discarded had it not been for the sharp plants that seemed to cover every square inch of the place (he had tried walking barefoot once, the results were painful, to say the least). His hair had long since lok'ed up, no longer well groomed, but just a tangle of greasy, leaf and plant strewn filth...he had no doubts that if a Teacher happened upon him in his current state (not bloody likely in this Midwestern wasteland) he would walk away with quite a few red knuckle marks on his forehead and a splitting headache, not that it mattered much.
He was totally out of food and almost out of water, his canteen clanking almost mournfully against his belt buckle, joining the crunch of his footsteps and the rattle of a bottle stowed deep down in his rucksack. He stopped for a moment and opened it, taking out the bottle and examiming the faded yellow label closely. "One-A-Day Multivitamin", it said, though he had no idea in hell what it meant, only a clue given to him by Teacher Grey on the day of his departure. "Helps with scurvy, don't y'know," he said with a wink, "you'll find out what that is soon enough..." And so he did, too soon for his own liking. It had been his fifth day without a proper meal and his teeth started to feel loose in their sockets. On the sixth, he noticed several scaly spots on his face and hands. By the ninth day his mind made the connection between his current condition and the little bottle given to him and he ignored the label, downing eight during his rest and continuing on. That was the end of that. Though it still didn't end his hunger.
He took one now, chewing slowly and thoughtfully while taking a moment to gaze up at the sky. Oh god, he thought, is it ever going to rain? He knew that it wasn't going to, regardless of the fat clouds that hung lazily in the sky for the past two weeks. They seemed to taunt him, skirting around the sun but never in front of it, keeping him in constant heat and torment. Hahaha, I hope you're enjoying your joke...I know you're laughing...and they were, interstingly enough, big belly cloud-laughs, shaking the earth beneath him. The sun joined in silently, the grin of a madman spreading over its face as it seemed to grow brighter, blinding him. A bolt of pain lanced through his head and he found himself swooning.
"Oh God, oh god...I'm hal...I'm hallu...". He had never heard the concept of heat stroke, but hallucinations he was quite familiar with, and he knew they were always the heralds of doom.
The laughing grew louder as the poor traveler collapsed forward, unable to stop his fall. There was a dull thud as his head hit a rock that jutted up sharply from the grass (this patch was strangely soft and non-pointy) and he had a moment to look up and see that the spot where his head hit was painted with blood. Damned stones are always out to get me, he thought. Then all went black.
---------------
Yeah, I know, not great, but I felt like doing it.