Turning Loose The Mind...

So I felt like going another round tonight, just for the sake that I haven't much else that I feel like doing right now. I could be playing video games, but right now I just feel more like writing rather then playing. Besides that, the night is young and gaming can come later.

I enjoy writing and I've been going at this for years now, though it still doesn't quite seem so to me. I am certainly glad that I picked up this passion or else it would have been a heck of a thing to have missed out on. It allows me so much more freedom then I think any spoken word can do for me. I could be wrong, though nothing else has proven otherwise to me yet.

So anyway, hopefully I can write this short little story out of mine out so that it'll make sense and not come across as a mass of nonesense. Then again, it'll probably end up that way, since this writing is a new idea in my mind and what you see is what you get from my mind.

Wow, I think I just managed to quickly confuse myself with my own damn words. That's talent folks, raw and uncut. >.>

Either way though, here goes nothing...

Was it life that was so bitter and cruel to him? Or was it fate again that dealt out yet another bad hand for him? Or perhaps this pain he endured, this suffering that tormented his mind and soul, was all just a part of a higher purpose? For all he knew, it could just be God's way of punishing him for the sins that litter the path which he walked.

He could have gone on thinking about it forever, but at this point "how" and "why" didn't really matter all that much. She was dead and gone, as was his entire family. All thanks to that damn war, which had ended some days ago with both sides effectively killing each other out and wiping whatever was left clean off of the planet.

As to how he managed to survive, well... that is beyond what any logic can ever hope to explain.

And now here he was, stranded in the middle of what seemed to be an endless desert hell, feeling like the damned fool he always thought himself to be. Still, he couldn't help but wonder if this truly was the only path he could trend? Shouldn't there be more then just life and death?

Quietly he noticed that his feet were carrying him away again, to yet another unknown destination in this universe. In the beginning, back when he first set out on his own, he tried to stop himself from going. But now he doesn't fight it, but rather, he simply follows the flow nowadays. Forward he would go, always holding tightly to a hope that maybe the next time his feet stopped, fate might feel a little more charitable and a hand worth keeping will be dealt to him.

Wishful thinking, yes...

But even those who've got that expression on their faces as if they had lost everything, even they cling onto a sliver of hope, contrary to what they would like for the world to believe.

Then his feet stopped suddenly stopped, leaving him slowly sinking down into the shallow sands beneath him. That fact, however, didn't seem to bother Alex all that much. He, like his mind, appeared to have been otherwise occupied at present.

It did, after all, amaze him as to how quickly sand can ingest something. Or someone. He wondered how many lives this desert had claimed...

...And then his mind came back to him in a flash and the situation began to filter through his mind, slowly yet surely. Now why did he stop so soon? And what was this feeling of anxiety that twisted his very gut?

"Alex..." Said a faint yet familiar voice, carried lightly by the winds. It sounded like his mother.

He turned and looked behind of him, at the sands which he had already passed. His eyes searched into the sandstorms that began to kick up around him, though each of them kept a fair distance away.

"Alex..." Said the voice again and this time it even startled Alex.

"Who's there? And how do you know my name?" Asked Alex.

"We know you better then you know yourself. We know your sins..."

That was enough to send Alex over the edge now and those words just kept echoing through his mind over and over again. Who knew anything about him? Or his sins for that matter?

He couldn't come to any clear conclusion, nor could he figure out who or what was speaking to him in this desert. A mirage perhaps? Or maybe his mind had finally unraveled itself to the point where his sanity was forever lost.

"We've come to collect..." It said again.

"Who is 'we'? And collect what?" Alex persisted.

"We are your family Alex... and your time has come..." Said the voice, now sounding as if it were directly in front of Alex's face.

That voice, it was indeed his Mother's...

"...time to come home big bro..." Said another voice, coming from behind of him.

His little sister...

"...time to be a man and die..." Said yet another, this time the voice came from the right side.

His Father...

"...time to be together, forever..."

His love...

Was this really happening to him? Alex just couldn't grasp the situation, given his state of mind and physical condition. Are these voices real? Was any of this real at all?

Then a hand appeared through the sands, a cold and chilling grip to be sure. It rested upon Alex's shoulder and Alex's body began to shake with fear.

Alex turned his gaze slowly to find that he now stared into the grim face of Death itself. His heart felt cold, almost frozen, as was the rest of his body now. He couldn't move, not even an inch.

It was far too late now and his time had come at long last and he knew it. He ran from the war like a coward, and in turn he left behind his love and his family to share an equal and final fate. He ran because he feared what fate had in store for him.

Now fate had caught up to him and the price he was required to pay was all too clear now. He could run no longer from his destiny and it was his destiny to die. Yet he felt it in his heart, the guilt and the sorrow and the regret all the same. If he could just turn back the hands of time...

But before he could even whisper a word of regret from his mouth or even conjure the thought of atonement, the face of Death disappeared in an instant. Equally as quick did both the breeze and sunlight vanish, followed momentarily by Alex himself, as the sands engulfed his body and pulled him under forever.