Gently laying on the soft ground, a man awoke to the piercing silence. The evening sun light shot through the branches of the enormous trees, striking the man’s face and the ground behind him. He got up and shook the sand and dust out of his hair. The landscape spread beyond sight, tall evergreens sprouting out of the flat, silky dunes.

“Hello?”

The man called out. His gravelly echo vanished into the distance. Endless questions flew through his mind. He couldn’t even remember his own name, or what a name meant.

With nothing else to do, the man began to wander. The soft sand gave way beneath his bare feet as he walked in silence, the only sound being his own heartbeat. As he walked, his mind buzzed with curiosity. He knew things, but he couldn’t name them. He saw colours but couldn’t identify them.

Above him the massive trees seemed to look down on him with pity, groaning in the wind. The man had never seen trees before, or maybe he had. He was unsure. However, he was sure of what they were, but did not know how.

‘How did I end up here alone?’ he thought. With no footprints in sight, how could he have gotten here? The wind blew gently. The sand sung its glassy song and the sun began to set. No end in sight, he sat down yet again. Darkness fell on the world the silence rang louder than ever. The wind had stopped. Quickly, a deep loneliness crept up on him. Without the reassurance of the friendly giants that he called trees, the world fell empty.

He knew the trees were still there. At least he thought they were, but without the light of the sun to guide him there was no way to be sure.

Behind the man, a voice called to him. It was distorted, misshapen by distance and age.

“H-i aga-in.”

It was like a whisper, sorrowful and gravely, but also higher pitched. But just as abruptly as it arrived, it vanished. The echo finally fulfilling its only goal, to be heard. Again, silence filled night. He lay down and stared up. An empty dark void stared back. He knew something was missing but had no time to think as he quickly fell asleep.

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The TV was on, advertisements flew through one ear and out the other. Outside, the wild woods surrounded his log cabin. The smell of bacon and eggs was wafting in from the kitchen. His wife humming as she flipped the eggs in the pan.

Anna.

His wife’s name was Anna.

She called out, “Breakfast’s almost ready Jason!”

Jason was his name.

“Alright! I’m coming!”

The Television shuddered and turned off and the kitchen went silent.

“Hun?”

There was no response.

Outside the sliding doors a siren began to wail. The sky went dark, but it hurt to look at.

“Anna?!”

Jason stood up and the couch fell to sand beneath him. He sprinted toward the kitchen, the doorway flowing like a waterfall of sand. Through the door the walls disintegrated, the once homely smell of bacon and eggs had been replaced by the chemical scent of war. On the ground lay nothing but a wedding ring, slowly being buried by the falling sand. He grabbed for it, but at his touch it vanished. Turning to atoms between his fingers. Jason looked back at the dark cloud in the distance, glowing like a flaming nuclear mushroom. All the trees were gone, his house was gone, his wife was dead. He tried to cry out, but no sounds came out as Jason stood and watched through his burning tears as the world came to an abrupt end.

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Jason’s eyes flung open. The sand on his left cheek boiled and burnt while his right scorched in the sun. He scrambled to his feet screaming in pain. The sand beneath his feet burnt every nerve ending on his sole. Where his face had been in the sand, a large red raw burn was sizzling slightly.

Jason ran for shade at the nearest tree. Every muscle in his body in constant agony. He dove to the closest tree slamming up against its cool side, untouched by the blazing morning sun.

Thoughts came rushing back as he settled down against the tree, but they weren’t enough. His dream did nothing to explain how he got here. A morbid sense of dread overcame him.

Jason couldn’t help but think this all couldn’t be real. Nothing added up to him. His first thought was perhaps this was a dream, but it was too real.

For a few hours, Jason sat behind the tree struggling to think of any sort of reason for his current existence. With no luck, a sudden realization dawned him. Soon the angry sun would be directly overhead.

Jason pulled off his khaki coat and tore the sleeves off. Tying off the ends, he slipped them onto his numb feet. The rest of his coat he wrapped around his head and neck; a thin piece of cloth tied over his eyes.

The raw burn on his left cheek was covered in sand that was agonizingly grinding up against the cloth. Whereas his right cheek no longer had any feeling whatsoever.

Once he decided he was ready, Jason slowly stood up and shuffled out of the shadow into the sunlight. The heat was intense and unnatural. Even with the sleeves over his feet, the ground burned intensely.

Jason bounced between the shadows of trees, attempting to avoid the light as much as possible. The layout of the forest was extremely unusual. All of the trees were perfectly spaced out by 7.5 meters and they all grew very tall and straight. There were no branches until about 50 meters up. They were very small and pointy, more resembling of ice cream cones than anything natural.

After running for about an hour in the same direction, Jason began to lose hope. The sleeves on his feet were wearing away along with any and all determination he may have had in the morning.

Clambering up against yet another tree Jason fell to the ground. He was sweating profusely, it dripped down and around the still sticky burn on his left cheek leaving a feeling similar to iodine on a fresh cut.

 He had to keep moving.

He got up and began bolting to the next tree, the sun’s rays boiling the sweat off his skin. But Jason tripped; he was so focused on the tree that he didn’t notice the small piece of a man-made structure poking out of the sand. It snagged Jason’s toe and immediately threw him down onto his face.

His toe, still caught in the exposed handle, bent backwards and broke. Bone ripped through the end of his foot and exposed itself to the sun while the toe itself stayed attached by a thin piece of flesh between his toe knuckle and his foot.

The pain was worse than anything he had ever felt. The blazing sun and boiling sand felt like tickles in comparison. Still lying on his stomach, Jason instinctively pulled his leg up closer to his body. With that, the remaining connection between his toe and his foot pulled the trap door up slightly before completely ripping off.

The trap door fell with a slam, followed quickly by the small thud of Jason’s right big toe. He got up and began to wrap the end of his foot with the worn piece of sleeve he used as a sock. His agonizing screams could have been heard for miles.

After stopping the blood flow Jason realized he was still out in the full power of the sun’s raw rays and intense heat began to bombard his senses. He crawled over to the trapdoor on his hands and knees, black scorch marks burning into his palms. With a desperate pull, the trap door opened under the sand. Jason rolled in through the hole, immediately falling unconscious as his head hit the steel floor.

The once empty void was alive with voices. Sounds of home and family echoed through the visually empty chamber of Jason’s mind. A world just out of his reach.

Suddenly, a force pulled him back, pulled him away from the one thing he wanted most.

Jason’s bloodshot eyes snapped open, dry and glassy. He was lying in a pile of cool sand that had been completely drenched in his own blood. He sat up and looked around. He was in some sort of tunnel, wide enough for only one person.

Both directions looked endless. The left path curved slightly left and the right curved slightly right. In theory they would eventually connect back together, so it didn’t matter which direction Jason went.

As Jason stood up, his thirst and hunger crept up on him. He fell back to his knees with a crack. He felt something though. He was so close to the end. He knew he just needed to make it a little further. Determination filled him as he got back to his feet and started right.

Jason took note of the strange structure of the tunnel as he slowly limped his way along. The walls were steel panels with slight amounts of rusting hugging the edges of each. A trail of bloody footprints followed behind him.

Again, his stomach rumbled angrily, but he ignored it. He leaned against the right wall as he walked. Time had become irrelevant and his only focus was to find something, anything.

Unfortunately, no amount of raw determination could distract Jason from the depressing memories that flooded him.

In this foul world which he had somehow lived to see the end of, was there anyone else left? The thought was torturous to him. If anyone was alive, they might just kill him on the spot. All of his hard work to get to where he was at that moment would have been for nothing.

More long hours passed. Jason was hoping deep down that this was all some kind of sick dream that his mind had conjured. Perhaps it would end at any moment and he would wake up to his life once again.

In the distance something seemed to protrude from the left wall. Using the last of his energy, Jason walked as fast as he could to the abnormality.

An old rusty door stood on the wall, small amounts of light seeping from the crack below it. Jason put his hand to the handle and attempted to open it, but it didn’t budge.

He slammed his fists desperately on the door.

“Please!! Is anyone in there?! I need help! Please!!”

Jason’s grisly voice echoed through the tunnels, but nothing happened. The voice of his wife and another woman sounded from the other side of the door but was barely understandable.

“Are you sur— do this- “

Annas sobbing voice responded,

“I don- know! –-- think its f- the best.”

“Okay the-n…. An-y la--- ords for him?”

Then quite clearly, as if the door itself was talking, Anna said,

“If you can hear me Jason, I love you.”

The light under the door went dark. Jason collapsed against the door, his hunger and thirst clawing at him. He tried to scream out again, but his throat was too dry to make sound.

So, in Jason’s last waking moments he sat there against the door, shedding weak tears from his eyes as they slowly shut, and Jason’s heart stopped beating. 

Next to him, Anna held his hand as the doctor unplugged Jason’s life support. She hoped ignorantly in her heart that he didn’t feel a thing.