He listlessly dragged his numb legs through the dusty sand as it swished around his tattered pants. The man gasped and grabbed his gut as yet another lightening strike of pain jabbed at his oozing abdomen. He stumbled, catching himself with his good arm against a large piece of charred wreckage. Glancing around himself, he watched as the light and warmth of the sun faded, disappearing behind the rock formations as it glinted off the scattered metallic remains of a plane crash; his plane crash. The man cried out into the silence, his voice hoarse from many a try before, yet gained a weakened echo as it bounced of the sheer cliffs towering above. He hung his head in defeat, submitting himself to the hopelessness of survival that fated him.
The man grunted as he slumped against the possible casing fragment of a cargo hold. Idly he scraped at the dried dirt between his cracked and peeling shoes. The dried dirt stretched for miles around him, descending slightly towards the east, feeding into a deep river. Small, beady eyes glared back at him from the rivers surface, watching his every move; their short snouts protruded out of the water, fresh water crocs. The gentle rise and fall of the man’s chest was getting weaker and weaker with each breath, like the fleeting sunlight. Sighing the man stared up at the never yielding cliffs above; the cliffs of the great Kathrin Gorge.
A humble dweller glided across the sand, under the shade of the overhanging cliffs. She leisurely slid across the river bank, her golden-brown scales reflecting off the waters surface in a disoriented fashion. The wave like pattern of scales upon her back allowed her to blend in with the dry environment, as well as her sand coloured skin. With a quick flick of he tongue she tasted the air then directed her direction further west, away from the river. The ‘s’ like tracks trailing behind her added texture to the sand as if it were a large ocean, and she, a creature of the sea. She licked the skies once more noting her of a large metallic object not too far ahead; then glided away.
He heard the menacing hiss in the air, a sound like leaking gas; not long before he saw its source. The graceful body of his territorial neighbor slid into view, her tongue tasting his sent as she turned to meet his gaze. Two, solid, black jewels silently watched him as his pulse began to race, pumping sheer terror through his veins. The constant voice telling him he was merely hallucinating pounded through his mind, tossing away all reasoned thoughts. As fact gave way to fiction, fear poured in; causing the very bones of its victim to shake. The python bared her fangs in warning, and seeing no response, she threw herself at the intruder; forcing poison under his tender skin.
When he came to, the man could no longer feel his left leg, only the growing numbness that began to spread up his body. He eyed the crocodiles lying in the river; their stubby snouts snorted, waiting till he’d breathed his last so their feast could begin. With a heaving sigh the man pulled out a crumpled picture of a young woman beaming as she held her new born; “I’ll never know his name…” whispered the dying man. Hearing the slosh of water, the man looked up; his eyes widened as he gazed upon a croc waddling out of the river, its own eyes glowing with ravenous hunger. With his body half numbed by the poison, yet another voice spoke in his mind; it’s all a dream, it must be. The crocodile lumbered nearer as the man’s immobilized body cried out in fright; I must be dreaming, the man lifted his only good hand and pinched his poisoned arm, he felt nothing …