The Whale in the Desert

Prologue to An Epic that Never Was

A man walked in the middle of a desert, disoriented, mouth dry, skin as well. He wore the same pair of worn steel-toe boots, brittle-dry cement clung to his washed-out jeans. He raised his face to the sky and shielded the sun with his hand. Rays scattered between his fingers into shifting spectrums. Empty—he observed—a breathless landscape of sand and nothingness. Sand wafted by wind gusts from the South—lifted minuscule gravel dots that hurled at his face.

Woken from the waking dream he had no choice. The only way was forth.

He tried to swallow, but what slid down his throat was a sailor’s knot that churned his guts. To escape the desert, he needed shelter before the cold arrived with the absence of the sun. Water was vital. His lips, throat, his bones—dry. With no shirt, he didn’t know how many hours he’d been exposed to the sun, but already felt himself getting slow cooked. Shade—the only lifeline.

Hours passed. His feet marched along an imaginary path, a descending slope that blocked the working man’s reason. Stagnant clouds dissolved as the oppressive sun began to set.

Then.

Everything beneath his feet trembled while the skies lay still. A low hum. Rocks rumbled—repositorios de civilizaciones de antaño, de sueños y ensueño tronaron con furia, la venganza del tiempo sumida en la arena.

Waves of sand churned, dipped and rose, bouncing back and forth. They ebbed and flowed. Un mar en crescendo, indiferente. Static charged the air, and floating sparks glimmered, a saline intoxicating smell lingered, and under all of it, it reeked of fish. He lost his footing in the shifting grit, but managed to stand, his spine charged, his skin tingled, all pores closed. Full of spirit. An aroma of chest pain gave him a sharp poke that sounded muffled. Then a wave caught him—barreled him, swallowed him whole, swished him around in its jaws and spat him out into the earth.

Can’t I have soup without rain? The first thought since he regained consciousness, and then—the thoughts poured in, a narrative voice that spoke of him in the third person, odd. His voice came back. He wondered if he was dead, but the body experience remained too powerful for him not to be. As the waves of gathered dust folded into themselves a swoosh and boom revealed a dome that peeled from the ground, and as it rose more details came to light, meters of thin smooth skin, grooves that ran lengthwise, imposed themselves in front of the minuscule mass of flesh and bones, nerves and muscles wrapped in a bag of skin of a man—a whale stood before him.

It hovered above the sands.

The whale stared through the man’s eyes and saw everything—beyond his desires, it saw his intent.

And the whale spoke and gave directions to two different destinations—kingdoms. One of cardboard, the other, stone.

A century from here stands the kingdom of stone, it said. It is desolate, a river runs through , not a kingdom of promising riches, but it is calm, safe.

A thousand years away the Kingdom of Cardboard rises. Its fortress perched atop a mountain of the firmest sand. Ringed by a river at its base. It is guarded by the toughest cardboard known to man.

If you choose the Kingdom of Stone, you have to look to the bottom of the valleys, and seek green to find water. You need to watch for vultures and other birds to eat meat.

If you chose the Kingdom of Cardboard, I will grant you one drop of water that will quench your thirst throughout the entirety of the journey, and my flesh, it will fortify you, to make you resistant to the sun and its lashing chains.

Confused, he walloped his head with the palm of his hands—A whale in the middle of the desert? Last he remembered: he stuccoed the facade—as his father did. As his father’s father did. A mason. Truth was the rotten fruit of a fallen tree.

The bleak night seduced him with romantic notions of a perfect life. He was to become master of his unfortunate fate.

---

Then—an explosion rang out, leaving the already confused, living-dead man in a buzzed-trance, a wave rose—and crashed—took him again. He drowned. The man tried to open his eyes, but the moment his eyelids parted, it felt as if his eyes were scraped with 676 sheets of sandpaper. The ebb and flow of the dense sea of sand crushed his ribcage. It played him like an accordion. Through his ears, nose, and eventually his mouth, a coarse liquid poured in, suffocating him. From head to toe, paralysis crept in, as if millions of ants slowly filled his body, every crevice, under the skin in between muscle fibers, everywhere. Once that sensation reached his waist, desperation set in—the slow agony

Each second a minute

each minute

an hour.

Granules

tight

together

sucked the body

inwards

deeper, where all the dust met,

and funneled to a chamber below

the hourglass.

Clusters of sand

fell in

with

the

man.

At the bottom he stood. Eyes to the spiraling sands above, clenched fist, a semblance of hope.

Nowhere to be seen. The whale was gone.

Steps from where he stood

Roots peeked above the powder.

Air was gray, silver and cold

But a fire inside incendió

Su voluntad y le hizo ver

Las raíces como algo más que una

Base.

And so he moved,

No stars,

No clouds,

Just bleakness.

The wind carried with it a zap, it bit the crisp

Air.

Signs of life, he thought.

What did that mean for others

He wondered.

The wonders and marvels that go

Beyond the marbled floors of

Temples built by men, the bones

Below the silt

Buried.

Each thread as he trudged deeper into the

Vastness revealed more of nothing.

Yet, nothing revealed more than

Vastness.

Devoid

Of clear sight and reasons to push other than

Pride, the man went forth against the wind,

Against logic, and reason. The gusts zapped.

Flapping clothes and rags, tarps tied to timber

Posts burrowed into the

Unstable foundation they stood at.

He grabbed the clothes and covered up,

Face, arms, all but his eyes and hands.

Feet beating like a racehorse’s heart, the Mason grabbed a post and

Walked.