Desert Grave

Chapter 1

Patience only lasts so long. No matter who you are. Surely, even the Dalai Lama wanted to punch someones teeth out at some point. Every living being has a limit. A limit to how much punishment, physically or verbally, they'd take before they break and absolutely lose their minds. Everyone breaks in a different way. Some start screaming uncontrollably, some start swearing every bad word in existence alphabetically, others, throw objects like coffee mugs or toasters across their kitchens or living rooms, or maybe they just go completely mute and disappear for a few hours to calm their minds again.

A select few, lose complete control of their bodies and minds and do things so deeply disturbing, they regret it almost instantly. Good people can do very bad things.

It was a Thursday, exactly forty three minutes past three and it was hot outside. No bird should lay an egg in this heat, for they'd be cooked before they'd ever be born.

Thirty four degrees celsius in a car with no air-conditioning out in the middle of nowhere on a desert highway, was considered less than ideal. By any standard.

Mark, a young man who had just bought a new house and got married to the love of his life, was driving a full fifteen kilometers per hour slower than the speed limit. Not because he was a law abiding citizen or scared of driving faster than that, or even because he was hiding something and didn't want to draw attention to himself. But because he was so deep in thought, that he'd have to find a metaphorical rope ladder to get himself out of it.

He kept rubbing on his sweaty forehead. He had these stinging pains on his skin, like someone kept poking him with a bunch of needles. Probably the heat. He looked at his watch every three and a half minutes or so. It was one of those fancy ones, that could tell you the time, the day, the month, the year, how many steps you've taken, what your heart rate is, how many times you've pooped in the last week and so on and so forth. He was only looking at his heart rate. He was concerned because it felt like his heart was beating in his throat and it felt like it was trying to escape his body via his jugular.

Even if the air-conditioning in his car worked, he would still have all that sweat all over his forehead. He would still be a little bit out of breath. He would still be that deep in thought.

The sound of a gunshot ripped him out of his daydream.

"Fuck!" he yelped nervously. Thinking someone was shooting at him. It was the car, it was breaking down. He stepped on the accelerator, but nothing. He looked at the gauges, he was slowly going from one hundred and two kilometers per hour down to ninety, then eighty, then seventy. His car had no power, he turned it off while it was cruising in neutral and tried starting it again, but nothing happened. He slowly pulled over to the side of the road. Safely.

"I don't have time for this." he said while looking at himself in the mirror. He realized his eyes were bloodshot and moved closer to inspect it. As if he could diagnose the problem himself.

"Fuck!Fuck!Fuck!" he screamed uncontrollably while hitting his steering wheel with his balled up fists.

Today, of all the days that had yet to come, was not the day. It couldn't be. He kept on, for about forty seven minutes, trying to start the car again. He turned the key hundreds of times in that time, each time hoping, this time it'll take. There are many things in this world that frustrate an already frustrated man, but that felt like the worst of the worst when it came to frustrating things.

He wanted to give up, he almost did, but he couldn't. He had to make some other plan.

Because being stranded, on the side of the road, in the middle of nowhere with a corpse in the trunk of your car, has a way of crushing absolutely every ounce of hope that you ever had.

He had to make a plan.

He got out of the car and started pacing around it. He was hoping for two things at the same time. That someone would come along and help him, and that no one came along to help him. Both of those ideas scared him.

"Mark!"

"Huh?"

He thought he heard his wife call his name. He looked around to see her. To see any living being that had the ability to utter words, really. But no one was there. Obviously. He was in the middle of nowhere.

"You're in the middle of nowhere, get it together!" He whispered to himself while slapping his sweaty cheeks.

He had to make a plan, and fast. It was getting dark, and though he might have been able to survive out there for a night, he might not have been able to survive the inside of his own mind.

A guilty conscience is a hungry hyena.