by Karl Ziegler
Water... Water! My eyes burst open to behold a night sky devoid of stars and moon, only an infinite black void. Unsettled but still more concerned with quenching my thirst I tried to turn my head to reach the water only to find myself paralysed. With all my willpower I tried to move, water was right there... right there! But to no avail.
The empty void stared right at me, oh God the terror of it! It came closer, closer! Enveloping me as its shape changed, subtlely yet suddenly, I cannot tell you when it was no longer the void and when its new form took hold. The form of an eye... my eye! And then it flipped, reversed itself, and still paralysed I watched through my own eyes as something… else controlled my body, striding across the desert with cataclysmic intent.
I tried to scream, but my mouth was no longer mine to command.
The scream found its way to reality as I lurched awake and emptied my lungs. I sat hyperventilating for a few moments, clumsily pulling the sheet off my face. It was all too much. The emotional stresses of the last two days finally found a breach in my wall, and my hyperventilating morphed into a fit of crying.
What was I doing!? Following some random voice in my head just to die in the desert for the imagined promise of water from some heat-stroke induced dreams? Madness. Madness!
“You idiot!” I berated between dry sobs. “You’ve fucking killed yourself.”
I lay crestfallen for a while, but eventually recollected myself and tried to think rationally.
It was late afternoon, with sunset not far away and I was surprised that I had slept so long as my dreams tormented me as much as the sun did.
Of my thirst, my whole body was now racked from the agony of it. My limbs, my joints, all of me felt like dried out wood, ready to snap and splinter at the slightest bend. My slinged arm was consumed by a fiery itch, though I found no effort to scratch it. A relentless migraine thundered behind my eyes. Every beat of my heart felt weak and yet was like a hammer to my bones. Breathing was a raspy, wheezy, laborious affair, and my long sleep had done nothing to rejuvenate me.
Death sat beside me now; sympathetic and unjudging, waiting with dutiful patience for my shell to expire and take my soul away from this place. He would not have to wait long. The coming dawn at most I wagered. I had calmed down but had also lost focus, my mind scattering, taking me to ponder many strange and nonsensical things. For several hours I sat in idle hallucination with no grip on my thoughts until that horrible voice snapped me out of it.
South... Close...
No longer a subtle suggestion, the summoning rang through my head with words as loud as my own. But more than just words, it held a magnetic power over me. I felt the briefest of windows open to resist the call and choose my own fate… that fate being to lay here and let Death take me, but still a choice of my own.
I laughed, an unpleasant hacking sound, as the window closed and disappeared. I knew It would not open again. No matter, whatever called me could have me. Take my shattered mind, my useless, wretched flesh. Do with them what you will.
South! Now!
With a great groan and even greater protest from my body I obediently stood and climbed the first dune, using my sheet as a makeshift hood to hide from the cosmos. Every glimpse of that black emptiness between the stars hit me with the same indescribable terror as my nightmares. Part of me considered succumbing to it, to tear the sheet off and stare screaming into the void until it devoured me, but it was a pointless thought. The Voice had not commanded it and so I did not do it.
A few hours of agonizing travel passed, who knows how far; I had long since stopped trying to keep track of my distance travelled. For all my effort I doubted that I had come any more than a total of thirty kilometres. Dune after dune I ascended, descended, repeated, repeated. Idleness was not forgiven, even a moment of it would summon the Voice, which pulled at me now with deafening authority.
SOUTH! MOVE!
And yet I would occasionally indulge in defiant moments of idleness just to hear it, often at the bottom of each dune. I knew I risked its wrath in doing so but my suffering now was far beyond what I had ever endured before and hearing the Voice gave me just enough drive, enough purpose to take the next steps.
After countless dunes and who knows how much time, I stumbled, injured arm first, into a huge rock. The pain was so great it felt like I had broken my arm all over again and I would have howled but I was so defeated by my dreadful march that all I could manage was a whimper.
I stepped back to look at the rock and saw it was a large cube, one of a long line reaching to my left and right, but also stacked upon each other reaching up like giant stairs. Up... up... the pile continued as I raised my head. I risked the horrors of space and took the sheet off my head, and my jaw fell open in awe as I beheld a pyramid!
Impossible!
Some rational thought had returned to me, there could be no pyramid here! It was easily as big as the Great Pyramids of Giza, reaching around 150 meters into the sky and seemed just as ancient; worn and crumbling from millennia of exposure to elements, yet lined with mounds of sand as though it had weathered some storm, or somehow been partially buried. Who could have built it? Who could have been entombed within? Was this a hallucination? Had madness turned mundane dunes into ancient wonders?
Climb...
The Voice was eager now, almost... happy? But... to climb a pyramid in my state... Voice, you ask too much! Is not here at your feet enough?
CLIMB!
I obeyed.
Each stony slab was about as tall as my chest, and with my right arm useless I had to lift my left leg up onto the ledge and hop with my right, so I clumsily positioned myself and rolled onto the top of the first block. To call the process painful would be an understatement. Every blotch of sunburnt skin found a sand-covered surface to scrape against. My broken arm sent lightning to every nerve ending in my body, and my exhausted muscles screamed.
My roll led me to the base of the next block to climb; completely unaware of its proximity I smashed my face against it. The world spun in a sickening vortex, my consciousness began to fade, and Death squeezed my hand; a comforting reassurance of my imminent departure.
But the Voice would not let me go.
CLIMB!
Sorrowfully I shook Death’s hand away and without strength to stand somehow still did so. The moonlit pyramid loomed before me, reaching infinitely into the starry abyss above. Terror and agony were all that I knew, they felt like all that I had ever known. Over a hundred levels I would need to climb to reach the top. I couldn't go back. I couldn't stay. I couldn’t die. I could only climb.
Halfway up... by the Voice it took an eternity, but I managed to make it halfway up... and then I fell. I fell perhaps a dozen levels, bouncing block by block like a doll tossed down stairs by a child.
Several bones broke, though it felt like all of them. One particularly nasty bounce on my front caused my already broken right arm to shatter and dislocate the shoulder in what was the single most intense moment of pain that I had ever felt. My right ankle rolled and sprained. My tailbone cracked, as did my skull, some vertebrae, and a few ribs.
As thick, sandy blood pooled around my face and into my eyes I felt my soul begin to slip from my body and managed a feeble smile. Not even the Voice could keep Death from me now.
Curse my ignorance.
CLIMB! CLIMB! CLIMB!
The Voice pounded in time with my heartbeat but against my will my heart would not stop.
CLIMB! CLIMB! CLIMB!
I can't... I CAN'T! I can't even move...
CLIMB! CLIMB! CLIMB!
I cried without restraint; I don't know for how long.
CLIMB! CLIMB! CLIMB!
My muscles twitched, and through some miracle of effort I managed to roll onto my back.
CLIMB! CLIMB! CLIMB!
I pulled myself up to sit against the stone, staring out across the empty black desert.
CLIMB! CLIMB! CLIMB!
Finally I stood. Finally I obeyed. Fina
lly, I continued to climb.
Pain and all the other words a thesaurus might offer in its stead had utterly lost their meaning. No words exist in any language to describe the torture of a broken body being dragged up a jagged pyramid with the release of death denied.
Death was denied, of that I had no doubt. The climb was quite simply impossible. A healthy man would struggle. An injured man without the mightiest of wills would give up or perish trying. But a shattered, bloody husk, Death tugging at its soul already? Impossible. Impossible without the Voice shooing Death away like some fly lingering over its food. I knew not to mistake this for immortality. There had to be some limit to what a body could endure beyond which even the Voice could not keep a soul bound to it, and while the urgency of its thundering chant implied that limit was close, I did not have the will to resist and find it.
Time was as elusive as death in my purgatory but eventually the sun did rise to bear down upon me with only a dozen blocks left to ascend. Being on the south side of the pyramid granted some shade as the sun arched towards the north-east, but not much. Soon the whole accursed structure was radiating heat, as if my misery could get any worse.
No sheets or clothes remained to offer protection or comfort; the first had sailed off when I had fallen, and I don’t know when I lost my sling or the bandage around my head. My pants and shirt, already torn to pieces before finding this place wasted no time in shredding their way off me and so I climbed on naked.
With three blocks left and the sun high in the sky, my left leg (which I had become reliant on after spraining my right ankle) gave out. Pushing off the block below as I had so many times before, I felt the muscles tear themselves off the bone, and I collapsed in a gasping heap. I reached helplessly with my left hand, my last unsullied limb, but could not reach the ledge above, and could think of no way in which I could possibly reach the top now.
The Voice did not relent, so eventually I was forced to accept that my right leg still had service to offer; though my right ankle was swollen and sprained it would have to support me, just enough to hop and scrabble my way up.
The jump was beyond excruciating. With two blocks left and an almighty shriek I employed the same strategy again.
One block remained and I realised the peak must be a large, flat area, for the length of the pyramid was still a dozen or more metre-long blocks across.
Close! Close! Yes! YES!
The Voice had become encouraging now, a strange but welcoming change from the demanding drum of CLIMB! CLIMB! CLIMB! I might have said that I climbed that final block with the very last drop of my strength, but in truth that drop was spent on the very first one. The Voice had pulled me all the way up here long after my strength had failed. As the Voice heaved me over the final ledge, I rolled over to see something I couldn't believe.
Water.
By the Voice it was water! A square pool of it, five by five meters and perhaps half a meter deep, lined by finely chiselled marble, untouched by the sand and weathering that had ravaged the rest of the pyramid. At the bottom of the pool was the magnificent turquoise mosaic from my dream, depicting all sorts of things in a great spiral: plants, animals, shapes, ancient cities, their people, and at the centre of which was a beautiful golden winged scarab.
Lugging my shattered body to the pool’s edge, I hesitated. It seemed like sacrilege to throw myself into the pool and defile its purity, and I had no strength to prevent my own drowning, so with a shaking, bloody hand and tried to scoop some up. The sun's reflection sparkled across the surface of the water and yet despite the brutal heat the temperature of the water was delightfully cool, so I raised the dripping handful to my lips.
Honestly, I did not expect to be able to drink it. My dreams had teased as much, and after such a harrowing climb it seemed like a predictable final blow, so believe me when I say that when the water did pass my lips and found its way to a mouth even dryer than the desert around it, I felt a joy that could not be understated.
How to describe the taste? Pure. Perfect. Divine.
I indulged in drinking until I could drink no more, grinning all the while. I noticed as I drank that the countless tiny injuries unworthy of mention were healing wherever the water touched them. My left hand (which had accumulated numerous cuts, a fractured thumb, and lost all of its fingernails) now looked as good as new. Feeling hopeful I managed to push my mangled right arm into the water, and splash water on the dislocated shoulder. To my great delight I felt the cool waters mend my bones and even (though not quite as swiftly) my shoulder. Within me I felt the water I drank slowly heal the rest of my ruptured organs and splintered bones.
Energy returned to me, and with it hope. My euphoria could no longer be contained as I laughed, drank, splashed, and revelled in my rejuvenation.
Thank you, Voice, thank you!
The Voice responded with some sensation of acknowledgement, akin to a nod.
My Promise fulfilled.
I cheered in agreement. Fulfilled indeed! I could not believe I had actually survived this, that I had escaped Death’s cold claws (to think at the time they seemed comforting!), all thanks to this mysterious being that had called out to me. I had questioned its motives and power, and yet in spite of my faithlessness I was delivered.
Rather suddenly I felt quite foolish that my saviour had bestowed salvation upon me and yet I still referred to it as just "the Voice" so I asked for its name. There was a sense of hesitation at the request, so I did not press. I needed nothing more from it than it had already given me. Eventually though, the name of my new God was revealed to me.
Khaemakhet...
I blinked. It was not a name I had ever heard before, but it sounded similar to the names of the ancient Egyptians, so I asked if He was an Egyptian god or pharaoh. Again, I felt hesitation, as though He was sifting through what to and what not to tell me.
No. But they were the first to give Me a name... before they realised... before they BANISHED Me... ENTOMBED ME!
His rage was mirrored in myself. How dare they banish Him! I also felt Him become decidedly silent and would answer my questions no longer. I had arrived where He needed me and for now He was content, so I continued caring for my wounds as I hummed toneless praises for my Lord Khaemakhet, my selfless saviour.
Body restored, thirst quenched, mind finally at peace, I lounged beneath the Sahara sun that bothered me no longer and slept.
6
Waist deep in an ocean without end, I stood with tranquil spirit and beheld the world around me. Water as clear as air beneath a sapphire sunless sky were all I could see, but I was not alone. Khaemakhet was there with me, somewhere in the water.
“Drink... Drink of My water and become One with your God...”
And so I drank. No beverage made by man could compare and as I greedily guzzled as much as my mouth would allow it dawned on me that my wonderous deity did not dwell somewhere in the water, but that He was the water.
With this revelation I awoke and beheld the pool with even greater respect. Khaemakhet did not save me by some miracle of summoning water in a desert, instead He offered a piece of Himself that I might live. Bowing my head in deference, I knelt by the pool and drank my fill once again.
Night had returned and while my newly acquired fear of space was ever-present, I felt safe here, as though the infinite eyes in the vacuum between stars could no longer see me, shielded by Khaemakhet’s grace. Beneath His protection I stared defiantly into the universe, pondering the futures of myself and my God.
Clearly, He was trapped, banished long ago within this forgotten, impossible pyramid. Had He brought me here to free Him then? Or perhaps He planned to rejuvenate me enough that I might leave here and bring back the means to do so. Who would even believe me if I told them a God lay imprisoned within an undiscovered wonder, lost in the desert mere hours from civilization? I supposed that many would; gods of the past had sent their prophets before them to great effect, as billions now followed their teachings.
Just like the prophets... A wide grin spread across my face as I imagined myself preaching to the devoted masses of Him, Banished now Free, Quencher of Thirsts, The Water of Life, Whisperer to the Lost, Denier of Death, Benevolent Khaemakhet. And me, His first Prophet. These imaginings (interrupted only to partake from the pool) continued well into the night, until I fell asleep and dreamed the same peaceful dream as before.
Mid-morning I awoke and as I rolled over to drink once again from the pool, I was taken aback to discover a mildly unpleasant aftertaste, like some vague sourness had polluted the water. I shrugged it off, it was not so bad, and perhaps the water had always tasted like this. Having first drank from beyond the brink of death I was sure that even piss from a boot would have been exquisite! Or perhaps it was my own blood and grime that defiled the taste.
I muttered a humble apology and continued to drink.
Khaemakhet felt close but was unresponsive to any new questions, namely what He wished for me to do now that I had recovered from my ordeal. His silence bothered me not, indeed I was careful not to seem pushy; I had experienced His benevolence, I did not want to imagine His wrath! I trusted in His wisdom that for now He wished of me nothing more than that I drink.
Hunger was absent, though thirst returned quickly and often. Drinking the waters of a God must provide more than just hydration for I found myself restless with energy, and I also noticed that I no longer produced sweat or waste.
All pain had receded, all injuries repaired, and even the full strength of the Sahara sun could not bring my skin to burn, so I occupied myself by pacing around the pool. Sometimes surveying the sands without end, and sometimes the beautiful cloudless sky, though most often I found myself admiring the mosaic under the water, in particular the golden winged scarab. It was gorgeous, masterfully crafted relic and yet I felt a strange aversion to it. I was as afraid of it as I was enthralled by it, and I found myself staring at it long and often.