The sun began to set and the air became frigid. The desert temperature dropped 30, 40, sometimes 50 degrees as the daylight began to disappear. Each of us had nothing but a small, thin, cotton sheet. Ripped and so worn down, that the slightest movement could cause it to disintegrate.
I made my way over to the place I normally slept, body shivering, legs shaking with weakness. I found my off-white sheet laying in its usual spot, next to my sister's ice cold, dead body. I smoothed out the edges and brushed off as much sand as I could, and laid down.
The area around me was silent, with the exception of the occasional gusts of wind, and women coughing up the sand blowing up from underneath them. I flipped over on my back and stared straight up.
I looked up at the sky, the only beautiful thing left in this world. Focusing in on the constellations and the moon, tracing my way around every star, every world; each of them appearing as a tiny luminescent speck of dust in a sea of others.
It was magnificent...it had to be better up there among all the beauty. And in my overly clichéd mind, I couldn't help wondering if someone, somewhere, was staring at the same piece of atmosphere as I was, thinking the same thing as I was. Or if there was someone, or something, laying on their back looking at Earth. With wide eyes and an open mind, thinking, 'wow,' or 'how beautiful,' or 'maybe things are better there.'
Suddenly, I was pulled sharply back into reality, by a very calm voice on the other side of the fence. "I wish I could be up there, too."
YOU ARE READING
The Third
Science FictionWe are only human. The world is no longer in our control. It is only them. They come in threes, they leave in threes. But they never really leave. This is permanent. There is no escape. There is no loophole. This is it, you live or you die. See...
