Nails | A flash fiction story
48 of 💯
There was a small forest of antennas in the distance — thin, vertical lines like the upside-down rusty nails in the coffin that was The Wastelands. The hot breeze carried in it the faint smell of lifelessness. Rock and sand and steel were the only inhabitants of this forsaken side of Anchora.
And Jax.
He stood there, mind as empty as the desert around him, chains still hanging from his wrists. He was free now. Free to roam the inhospitable land by himself. Free to look for something he would never find. Free to pick a fight with death and lose. Free to become part of the bleak landscape, a decomposing body, alone in The Wastelands.
He asked himself why he kept bothering to fight the universe, but he didn't have a good answer. Nothing, it seemed, had ever wanted him alive. So why should he?
A lonely white cloud covered the blazing sun, instantly lowering the temperature. He raised his head and closed his eyes, feeling the warm breeze caress him, fine grains of sand brushing his face, the desert whispering faintly into his ear.
He stared at the antennas beyond the thin cloud of dust that danced and twirled up in the air. That should be him: standing tall and strong in the desert, against all odds. With a family of rusty people, made of steel, made to survive the ages and the weather and the relentless harshness of the world. A tribe. A band.
He nodded a subtle “thank you” to the cloud and marched toward the antennas — toward his future.
< Humanity | Nails | Music Box >
