Years later you cross the Persian-Afghan border. Long ago you had a trajectory and an objective, but you cannot remember them. Sometimes the sky clears, the sun is pale, and the rubble and stone of the desert shine with a silver tint. On other days the mist descends, like thinning milk, and the rocks at your feet are transparent.
Your legs are still strong, bounding up the hills of gravel. You often feel weightless, like the air were pulling you up from the hips, and you cross the landscape in huge strides, the earth skipping past your feet. But there are times when you feel weak, and you cannot bear to rise in the morning, cannot even lift your face from the dirt. When finally you do, your muscles groan and you grimace and cough and mutter at the sky.
Your wrist-watch is useless, its mechanism rotted. The clock-hands jerk against grains of dirt. Still you travel, and weeks pass. A goat-like animal comes out from the mist, groaning and babbling at the sight of you. It follows you a while, trotting behind you and licking your calves. But by sundown the creature is nowhere to be seen.
A month goes by. In the afternoon you spot travelers up ahead. Soon you are passing them, two young boys, mouths hidden in their scarves. When they see you they stop, all four eyes fixed upon your watch. You remove the watch and offer it to them. One boy snatches it and runs away downhill, shrieking like a bird, and the other quickly follows. You wince and continue. The priority is to travel faster.
The hills spread and flatten as you enter the steppe. There are sounds far up in the desolate sky, the blurting of animals, some kind of howling, the acoustics of hell. At night you sit for hours and shiver in the dark. You realise that your journey has entered a period of decline. But haven't you been deteriorating for years? Even when you set out from the beaches of Cataluña, even then your eyes were misted, your shoes damp. You think all this while the sun is rising, as you gaze out into the vacuum. There is nothing, not even evil, in the gormless sky or the broken clay.
But soon you feel a breeze, and a fruity smell lifts your nose. The sun thaws and gleams on your skin. Ahead, white clouds nest in the turquoise skyline. The earth seems moist, there are patches of moss, and around them swirl a few flies. You are among hills again, tufts of grass spring from the ground, and ants march to the drumming crickets. You run forward as a horrible shiver shakes your breath: you have realised where you are going, and that you are almost there. A hundred feet ahead are fields of poppies, all pinkish white. Their tall stems sway in the glitter of water drops, stretching so far that they dye the horizon.
Now you walk among the poppies. The height of your waist, they tickle your fingers and slide up your knees. How you could sink into the earth with these flowers, grab them, suck them, swim and starve until you fell. You stop and gaze around, swooning, scratching your head, trying to remember what brought you to this place. Because we both know you have been here before.
Conan McMurtrie was born in Malaysia, and grew up itinerantly in South-East Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and Spain. He later studied physics and music at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Last summer, his short story A Walk Before Santa Soledad was shortlisted for the Momaya Press Award, and, more recently, his fiction received a commendation in the Aesthetica Creative Works Annual. He currently lives in London.