fragments (Illusions)

I walked away into a sand storm… Just a moment ago I was sitting in the comfort of an indoor bar, nursing a glass of red wine and staring into the mirror, that reflected the people behind me, for nothing better to do. The similarities between the two women suggested a mother and daughter relationship. They have an infant on top of the table in some kind of a baby carriage, I was not familiar with. They were engaged in a busy conversation: talking loudly, smoking excessively. The infant was silent, I wondered whether from the intoxication or realization about in what kind of hell all those cycles of rebirth can drop you at one time. I watched them until their faces disappeared in the cloud of bluish smoke…
The rough, tasteless granules of pale sand crunched under my teeth. It was annoying. Sandstorms…. I used to like them: traveling with Bedouins, being buried into the moving sands, measuring deserts from the edge to edge… I used to like it; perhaps I am getting to old… I stayed still for a moment, leaning against the gusts of wind, mixed with sand, then I turned around and walked back to the sanctuary of the indoors. To my surprise the building, I just left a moment ago, was further and more to the north that I remember. I realized that it was not only a sandstorm I stepped in; I completed my running circle and ended up back home, from where I was so desperate to escape… many times. One step, one more... I am still alive. He did not devour me this time. I was not even wounded. I was puzzled, the thoughts and images that were flooding my mind were bizarre, invasive and not familiar at all. “He acted human” I muttered to myself “and he almost succeeded, almost convinced me”. I wondered about his foul language, about the riddle with two whorehouses and a church, even so there are only sand dunes for miles and miles, in any direction you can see. And he was not the type who would be familiar with any church, perhaps the whorehouses. My mind was frantically looking for the answers; trying to find the memory and origin of that thought.
I felt that I escaped my usual ordeal, but did I? Doubt and fear squeezed my heart, there was nothing human about him; I had sensed it. Pain of the mortal wounds and helpless desperation of the violent death sharpened my senses. My acute awareness about my surroundings told me that something very important was missing. As I opened the door, human scents rushed through my nostrils and flooded my brain with slowness of their thoughts, retardation of the speech and action. I remembered him now, he was different. He was one step ahead of me; he sensed me before I could realize that I was trapped. He definitely puzzled me today, not a beast, not a flame breathing dragon, almost a human... almost.
He had killed me for so many times, I wondered, whether he was infected, at the time when my blood was all over his beak and claws, whether my human pieces of flesh got imbedded into him and started the mutation process. But on the other hand...
The waiter silently materialized himself by my table “You are back ma'am. Would you like more wine, or perhaps dinner?”
“Bring me a burger, make it rare” I replied. The waiter disappeared faster than I finished my phrase. I was tired; I closed my eyes for a moment and drifted into the comfort of darkness.
“Ma’am, here is your burger. Would you like to have more wine?” I opened my eyes; I meant to say “Yes”, but it was already too late. Red thick droplets lazily crawled down over the bare mirror's body, that a moment ago reflected my appearance. The sharp smell of iron unpleasantly tickled my nostrils, made me nauseous and I threw up all over the table, observing with a horror that the surface of the table absorbed blood and vomit and shined back again with virgin cleanliness…
I was not concerned anymore about my long and tragic past, nor my feelings of disgust, unanswered lingering around my heart. I was dining and it was about time, after all that wine….
The dark cloud of the sand storm were moving away, south, pushed by strong gusts of wind and pulled by the invisible horizon. The occasional bursts of flame appeared within the clouds, and disappeared with the speed of lightning.
Lazarus and his Camel were hiding from the storm in a deep pit that he dug earlier, before the storm. He looked at the distant clouds and tongues of flames and he thought he smelled the smoke of tobacco and a distant woman’s voice pleading for help. But he knew that deserts are like the afterlife famous for their illusions.