Running . . .

He is forbidden . . .

There is no going back for him. "I feel like Oedipus," he remarks.

How was it that he got here?

His feet have become tender; extremely soft . . . open sores vomiting fluid. His hands also bear the same sores. He has climbed mountains. Night and day are becoming minutes to him. Where is life now? He looks to the wilted self; the spaces between his ribs are thin shadows. The stomach is nothing at all. "I can put my hands in that peculiar cavern for warmth."

Nothing exposes itself to him. That is one of the many passages to his fate; it is fate that opens up to him; it is the only thing that opens up to him. He fears that he is living and that they are too pleased with his performance to release him.

He is running through the desert. He is looking for shelter. He feels the sores in his throat opening up wider . . . wider. He swallows; stops to look at the sun. It is a treacherous thing. He drops to his hands and knees. It is . . . Could this be what he has been seeking? An end to ends? But that it impossible. Whoever brought this up is doing this to him, and there must be many, many of them; it is the wind and the sun and this . . . "Water." It is everything that he needs to keep his eyes open; and sometimes more. They let him feel good from time to time. They take the pain entirely away. It is at the junctures that he wishes death on himself more than any other . . . Weighing pain against the possibility of health and prosperity.

They went as far as offering him a companion. He'd nearly forgotten how to communicate.

He opened up his mouth and made a dry sound.

"Come." It was a female with dirty skin and dry green-brown eyes. Long red hair draped in clumps over her bony shoulders. "I . . ." She touched his face. "I . . ."

"I feel like Oedipus." It was one of the many remarks ingrained in his mind; it rested there like a corridor, winding down to that first source of fear.

"Then pluck thine eyes . . .

"Stop."

"I . . ."

"Is there anything else."

She lied down beside him.

"Is there anything."

She took his sandy cock into her hand and began to stroke it.

They were going very far with this, he thought. This was by far the cruelest treatment they had ever bestowed upon him . . .

He ran his fingers through her hair. Sand that resembled stones that resembled the life in the this desert (assortments of her own suffering), were set free by this gesture; they tumbled down the back of his hand, and through the crevices between the weak bones there.

Her rhythm came sloppily; but she managed to secure a bead of his life there on the tip of his cock . . . It shone in the desert sun with a glittering newness that was terrifying.

"You see?" She said.

He took the full head of her hair in his hand. He pulled her up from the desert floor. He brought her face to his. She disgusted him. It was obvious that she was another distraction created by them; something to bar him from his own existence, albeit pathetic. "Why don't you go?!" He screamed.

"Where?"

They each looked at the desert spilling out around them. "Infinite horizons," he said. "Just go."

"I'm tired of being alone," she said.

"Than find somebody else."

"There is nobody else."

"There has to be."

"Have you seen them?"

He was silent. It was only that he knew they were out there. Still, he couldn't explain to her the inner workings of his mind; the necessity of his survival, and how they would not let him die. He wanted to explain to her the position he was in; that she was in. He felt like a messenger, but was uncertain as to what he was relaying. There was only one thing he could do for her.

"Well," she said. "Have you?"

He still had her by the hair. Her face was still inches from his own. "Remember that I am sacrificing myself to you." And he brought her face down on his knee. A pain raged in him, through him, brought on by the contact of her skull against his knee cap . . . he only wished that she was doing this to him.

Again, he brought her face to his. Her face was smeared with blood. Hurt welled up in her eyes. Are you judging me, he thought? That look was relating judgment. She started to say something with her broken lips, but before she could get a word through he was forcing her head down, forcing his knee up . . . This second attack forced a scream from his own lips. He lifted her to him. Her face was imperceptible save for the terrible look the green-brown eyes were giving him through the wreck of mangled flesh, bone and blood. The hole of her mouth managed to articulate sound into voice into a pleading thing: "Choke me." It was barely a whisper, but he understood its desire. It made him angry to think of that desire.

He brought her head down again and again until there was nothing left expect for a cruel pain in his right knee cap, but that would go away in time. He looked down at the slumped body, shifting his own weight near it. He buried his hands in the tangles of her hair, moving them smoothly through the lengths of it; most of the clumps had been beaten out.

What right had she, saying that? He was the one who was alone.

"I feel like Oedipus," he says, over and over, not even understanding the meaning of the words.

Running . . .

He has forgotten his past. Whatever it is he is running from, and whatever it is he running to, he can only guess . . . It is the action itself that pumps lifeless life into his body. He believes in death . . . That's all he believes in. If there is anything at the end of all this, it is that . . . Death; an end to ends. He had his chance with the girl in the desert, and he wished he would have asked her to "kill me" because he feels that nobody has suffered out here longer than he has. Nobody.

They have pushed him to his limits.

They have pushed him beyond his limits.

It is easy to say now that he is alone. If there is another opportunity to die, he will not pass it up. If . . .

The infinite horizons remain cruel barriers around him. He can see for miles. He can always see for miles.

"I feel like Oedipus," he says, moving in a direction, any direction.

C. C. Parker lives in Seattle, WA with his wife, Zoe, and daughter, Natalie. Right now he's working in a used bookstore (Couth Buzzard Books) in North Seattle. As for publishing, he has just recently warmed up to the Internet and the plethora of speculative fiction zines it has to offer and has only been submitting to them for a short time. He has published short pieces in Deviant Minds, Alternate Realities, Planet Magazine, Suspect Thoughts, Apocalypse Fiction, Dark Muse, and Demensions; plus the hardcopy journals, More Than That and Demontia.

He has been writing for many years and doesn't intend to stop. Mr Parker can't think of anything better than creating little, twisted worlds to slip into from time to time. "After all," he says, "it's what keeps us going."

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