A FOOL'S DRINK (short story... for now!)

"I made it! I don't know, but (miracle of miracles) nonetheless, I did!" Nelson was kneeling at the shore of a vast, clear blue lake.

How long had he searched? How many sacrifices and losses? How much blood had been shed as some kind of appeasement to a long dead, distant god? Nelson cupped his hands, dipped them and filled them with the clear, cold drink. He swallowed it down and felt the icy liquid drift down into his stomach and put out the fire that had been burning there for so long. He leaned back and laughed into the sun.

It was a hysterical laugh, like the kind a madman makes when he is seeing a comedy no one else can. Nelson's lips cracked and split open from the width of his smile stretched taut across his face. Tiny drops of blood flowed and dripped into his mouth. Still, he laughed, deep and loud, his whole body involved, convulsing.

Leaning forward, he simply allowed himself to fall into the cold grip of the lake. His head underneath the cool blanket, Nelson opened his mouth and drank his fill. He drank long, he drank deep, suppressing every urge to vomit it back out.

Nelson could feel the water drifting out of his stomach and into his bowels. The machine of his human-ness began to function again.

The shaking in his hands and legs began to subside and he pushed up from under the water to get air. The sun and its cruel games could no longer claim him the loser. He had MADE IT!

Leaning back on his knees, he could feel perspiration under his skin begin to seep out like a billion drops of poison; cleansing out from all the past hell, now behind him.

The laughter began to diminish and Nelson looked around him, eyes fully open and his senses heightened. As his brain clicked back into gear, the truth of the situation registered.

As Nelson began the final descent into madness, he could see the lake disappear and become the vapor mirage it had been. His mouth, esophagus and stomach taste alkali and sand; the truth of judgement and death entirely clear.

Nelson pitched forward into the sand and breathed his last. The sun, in its conspiracy with the endless desert, had won.

----------

Think you know what this is really about? See you at Der Waffle Haus.