Creative Writing: Things Fall Apart

The sun beats is a furnace.The desert roars, merciless in its power and greed. Gasping, groveling, the figures lurch forward, their actions lined with hysteria. Grey skin is pulled tightly over jutting cheekbones. Simian, unhuman. Eyes are black pits, engulfed in a network of wriggling blue veins. Below, silhouettes of ancient figures loom across the sand. Decrepit with the appearance of age, their backs are bent roughly into unnatural positions. Malleable. Broken. Thud, thud. Invisible boxers slam punches through their brains. Blades of suffering stab manically at their bodies. Skin, muscle, bone crack with the strain: the demise of human feeling. Some of the figures look to the horizon, their eyes wondering just out of reach. The majority just stare downward. Cold as corpses, left for death.

Rise and Fall. Inhale. Exhale. It rumbles like an ocean, ancient. Violent. Waves after waves crash down from the dunes, aided by the wind. The sand flows like molten gold, speckled with nuggets of onyx and quartz. Bright beams of light bounce of the sand, leaving delicate arcs of colour spattering its surface. It is a single, beautiful being. Where one dune falls, another forms. The individual grains cling together in unity, driven by a magnet-like force. The clusters gravitate towards the centre of the desert, clicking like clockwork with each other until they are a single, unfeeling machine, an ornate layer of silk draped expertly over endless plains. Elegant. Exquisite. Smothering. The grains buzz and pop like overexcited children, unable to remain stable in confined quarters. Potential energy radiates of them, directly into the belly of the sand. It leaves ripples of motion through the earth and the desert thrums with power and wealth. The halcyon glow is