Member-only story
Of Dust and Dreams, Pt. 1
Short Fiction
The well was dry. Then again, they all were. The dust had swallowed up every raindrop in a matter of years. There was no end to the search for a fresh sip and rarely one to be found. We were on the edge of nothing and it would not be long. Not long and at all.
Our home was practically a pile of stacked wood beams but it kept the dust out. And the scorpions. One had to be grateful for such providence. Neighbors had fared far worse. I stood at the kitchen sink some mornings and looked out onto the land, almost hoping to see something I hadn’t the day before. Lauren would come from behind and hold me, staring out with me, keeping the silence.
We were out of fuel for the generator and I made the two-mile walk to the gas station. Dennis was never exactly happy to see me, more relieved. I could see his body relax when I approached.
“Good to see you, friend.”
“How you?”
I cocked my head quickly, the sign for Well, you know, as good as can be expected. Pretty much surviving out here.
“There might be something.”
My ears perked up. The only something worth mentioning was water.“Where?”
“30 miles east. ‘Round Blackburn.”
“Ehh…”
“Don’t smell right, though.”
“Mmm?”
“Folks go and don’t come back.”
“No coming back from paradise.”
“Or damnation.”
I filled my gas can and headed back home. If there was water somewhere, anywhere, we had to find it. Dennis didn’t let on how much ground water he had tapped but by the look of his flaked and gray skin, it seemed the time was short for him too.
I wondered if it was too much to hope, too much to think I’d be saved by sprays of lake water or a tall, sweating glass in the hot sun. But there was little use to withering in the shade.
“We need to go to Blackburn.”
“Something out there?”
“Dennis says yes. But he doesn’t trust it.”
“Why?”
“He said people don’t come back. Maybe he thinks there’s some chasm swallowing them up. Who knows.”
“How’d he look?”
“Weak. I think he’s running out.”
