[quote]An eagle screamed over head. The sun beat down with the weight of Olympus. As i laid on the dune, lips cracked beyond recognition, I rolled the cylinder of my revolver, counting the rounds. Four remained. One was spent on a rattler in the brush, another, on a creature from the salt mines. Water. I spent two days rambling around the desert looking for a drop. People talk about the feeling of your throat turning to parchment, but the worst feeling for me was my lips, first they chapped: then they cracked, oozing blood, i spent every waking second runnin' my tongue o'er my lips in a futile attempt to moisten them, every lick returned with the iron taste of blood, and the feeling of my lips getting harder, smaller, and more cracked. One morn' i woke up and my lips where fused together by the spittle and blood, i wrenched them apart, losing my bottom lip in the process. I found water the next day, nothin' more than a muddy stream, nothing like the glorious rivers of comments OffTopickles used to crowd around in the old times. Food. I woke up the next day, puking my stomach out, all that muddy water don't sit well on an empty stomach. That is where i found the rattler. I knew they're around. I could hear them shaking their tails ever now and then, so i waited. After two hours under the unmerciful sun, a snake emerged. Before i knew what i was doing, i had shot the head right off it. Roasting that poor snake o'er the fire was hard work, but how could I compare the scraps of meat to the lush fields of shitposts in yonder times. The snake just couldn't match up with the flavor. Ammunition. Ammo was rare in those times, when i snatched the gun-belt off of the ashes of slim, all i had was those few bullets in the cylinder. Back before the purge there where up/downvote factories that produced more ammunition than you could dream of, but times have changed, every bullet counts. Just after I gobbled down the few scraps of nourishment I heard a familiar sound. A raging screech akin to the sound a twelve year old makes when he doesn't get his way, pealed over the brush. I knew that sound from the campaigns in the salt mines. One of them was here. I rolled off my butt to a low crouch and started scanning for the beast. I heard barely a shuffle in the sand before the ugly monster crashed down on me. It was an irrationally shaped bundle of salt encrusted tendrils emanating from a dark and sickened fur lined core. It flailed those tendrils with deadly accuracy at anything in sight, striking a promethean fire box, and a sleeping simulant through the heart, wrecking them forever. With a blur, i drew, aimed, and fired a shot right through the core of the beast, shattering it forever. It exploded in a ball of horrible hatred and covered my camp with salt. Before i could catch my breath, i had made a run for it. Salt beasts never travel alone. So here i sit, broken, bruised, dehydrated, within a tickle of my life, and i only have four bullets left. Four bullets, i think to myself with a malevolent smile. There are four bandits right over the dune, settling in for the night, and they have food.[/quote] I hope you liked this most recent iteration of spooky stories, I didn't have much time to write this one so tell me what you think. © 2019. John "HoTh" McWaters. All rights reserved