The anticipation was unbearable; the seemingly endless countryside evenly coated in a layer of bright white by a full moon that only exacerbated the tedium of traversing a course in which the scenery never changed. Appropriate was the surrounding silence which seemed to aggravate the banal atmosphere within, yet was entirely necessary for maintaining the ambiguity of the night. Ahead, the rising hills in the distance rallied for recognition as they attempted to draw attention away from the immediate terrain whose own furrows and slow rolling knolls stood out to add a depth to the spectacular shading upon the land that cascaded from light to dark and back again.

A clear sky overhead seemed almost iridescent under the bright astral influence that hinted of daylight while stripping away the colors to bathe the earth in a gray scale for the eye to behold. Conversely, the lack of pigmentation injected an indescribable skeletal beauty upon the scene which falsely reflected a coldness lacking in the surrounding temperature.

Barren of a ground covering of any type save for one lone emaciated tree atop a hill in the distance, the soil lay susceptible to nature’s whims. On the other hand it appeared in the cool, almost-bluish light to have been preserved, even protected, from the harsh reality of the ravages of time in which the most savage of storms should have ripped away layer after layer and the blazing sun baked the soil to dust.

Hearing his footsteps plodding softly below as he progressed over the hard ground assured him of the realism of the situation yet granted no guarantees as to his direction. Therefore, it was under the hope of his safe passage and eventual arrival to an unknown destination that he continued forward through the warm, almost sultry air of the night.

He was alone. Both his eyes and ears confirmed this reality. This visual desolation perpetuated an isolation that was, by its own definition; spiritually crippling, and yet he managed to carry on toward an unknown future in which the continuation of his very existence might very well come into question.

Amidst the lack of aural stimulation and the monochromic landscape he sensed the slowly growing impression of an erosion of his solitude. It had started out as a mere whisper of a thought but over the course of the night it had mounted to a notable annoyance and as a result he felt his guard going up like some imagined force field protectively surrounding his body. Unfortunately, as the sensation grew, so, too, did the weight upon his shoulders that suggested a large and growing number of eyes keeping watch over his every movement. But where the hell were they? There was absolutely nobody in sight. Anywhere.

In direct defiance, the sensation grew more and more powerful until the hairs on every part of his body were standing straight up and his skin was beginning to tingle. Painfully obvious was the reality that, should his senses be correct, there would be nowhere to run if an unexpected foe were to emerge since the surrounding countryside offered no means of retreat or concealment. Similarly, the area did not reveal any source of weaponry should the need dictate so he would have to depend upon his own resourcefulness - which was not a very comforting thought at the moment.

There was always the probability that his subconscious was being oversaturated by the vastness of the area, and that, combined with the almost eerie lighting, was allowing his imagination to run away with him. That being the case, he would be in no danger. There would be no eyes tracking his moves and his nocturnal stroll would merely be that of an evening spent walking while overcoming a temporary inability to sleep. The only problem with that hypothesis was that he did not remember not being able to sleep. In fact, he did not remember his having come here at all although recent memory recalled the last hour or so of his journey across the moon blanched land that bore no resemblance to any course upon which he had previously traveled.

With another cautionary glance around the sterile landscape, he resumed his walk while paying particular attention to the tree sticking out of the ground upon the rise about a mile away. In the bright white light pouring down through its bare branches the tree was blatantly obvious and, in fact, almost seemed to resemble that of a skeletal hand; its bony fingers reaching up to the sky for want of an explanation for its having been remanded to the vast emptiness in its company.

Irrational fears of an unconfirmed enemy hastened his steps and without conscious thought he had broken into a trot, leaving noticed pools of dust in his wake as the soft souls of his bare feet impacted with the hard dry ground. With the humidity being as high as it was it was not long before beads of perspiration formed upon his forehead and soon began rolling down his face, prompting his long slender black fingers to wipe the moisture out of his eyes. This, however, was only a minor irritant compared to the angst within which had grown disproportionately with the ground being traversed. Running at full-throttle he noted his slight six-foot frame silhouetted upon the impoverished landscape by an overambitious moon to his back, causing his shadow to precede him like some ambiguous phantom.

Selected text © 2011 MT Shivers