After a day in the bare, opaque, but horrifying cage of pure torture, during a sandstorm, when the moon shone intimately close, I had been traveling along, towards town, on an exceptionally dusty road, through a desert, but from a distance stopped there, as the colors from the sunset shone dimly, in sight, on the desolate Dry Lands. They had found me wandering, taken me captive, putting me in isolation---giving the most hideous of my fears complete contentment as the wind whistled with a wolf’s wail. The blocks of sand thumped against the walls of my prison as if mocking me---as if it was Tantalus’s thirst and hunger---as if one would endorse in the simple idea to deride me---to deride me of the sinister, specter-like, sanctimony that I may be reduced to a small, sniveling, speck of a specimen, wasting away in this abyss of perdition, with my horrors feeding on my tribulation. And as I lay there in a casket-like box, madness burning through my mind, dying slowly, I recollected how my fate had led me here.


I had been on my own peaceful way, stopping in town before continuing my trip to the desert that the locals had given the sobriquet of The Dry Lands. Now, no one can blame me for carrying a weapon---for as it was a foreign town, I needed some way to protect myself. And, in fact, had I not a knife earlier, I would be dead days ago, but spared of this chagrin. Since my journey to cross the desert was to be long, I knew I would need supplies, so I went to the tanner’s shop, where I would find what I needed; the voyage would be along an empty, thoroughfare---along a road of the same constant landscape of sand---along a path through an austere nothingness.
Immediately, I went to the tanner’s, and related my need of supplies. All I needed was a water skin in which I could keep water cool and unadulterated while on my overpass of the Dry Lands. But, instead of assisting me, he simply started to cachinnate, long and hard. Whether his syllogization for such laughter was because of my request, or simply out of drunk madness, I did not know, but, I had no time to think, for a moment later, he grabbed my arm and pulled me towards his face---so close I could smell the alcohol in his breath. Now here is where my flaw came into play.
Mindlessly, I drew my knife and stabbed at him blindly, piercing him in the stomach, just as three other men walked in. I stared at the tanner, aghast, as he fell to the ground---dead. I dropped my knife, horrified, and ran blindly into the desert. The three men that witnessed the tanner’s murder had chased me tirelessly since then.

Unanticipatedly, the wind ceased, and my mind slowly metamorphosed back into actuality, for the almost mollifying melody of the mayhem the sandstorm had made had ceased. It was as if Aeolus had simply taken a deep breath inward after his mighty exhale. But, as I lay there, in the now completely silent darkness, cadaverously still, I noticed a change in the air. Suddenly, the silence was different, as if one of being truly forlorn. Alarmed, I slowly attempted to stand, and succeeded---rising as if one suffering from decrepitude. I opened the door---finding it unobstructed, and stepped out into complete darkness. And so, isolation, my ultimate fear, had killed me, just as I had always known it would.