Mountain of Sand

Written by: Uzi Copyright © 2006

I kept climbing. Every once in a while, the guy ahead of me would turn around, ski poles in hand, and proclaim, “We’re nearly there.” I could see the summit, but it was still a while away. I kept searching the outline of his face for some sort of cruel joke, but there was none; his face was blinded by the sun that shone directly into my eyes.

By now, I was on all fours, climbing through the fine soft sand like an animal. My lips were parched, I needed water, yet I kept climbing. Somewhere in the back of my mind, a thought kept nagging at me, there is no water up there. There was no water up there, how could there be? I was climbing a 300 foot monster of sand. There are no ponds or lakes on top of sand dunes.

What was I doing? I barely had a clue myself. But I kept following him. Who was he anyway? He looked like a maniac from back here, bent on getting to the top with or without me. He was my only ticket out of this desert, though, so I kept following him. He was bound to go downwards again, and I would be on his heels. That, or I would be lying on that sand, already being covered up by the gusts of sand blowing up around me.

He turned around again, “Just a few hundred more meters”. “Oh, great” I returned. Didn’t he say that five minutes ago, too? I had no idea. I had lost track of time. How had I gotten myself into this? Where was I anyway?

I kept climbing, and each step I took was one step forward and a half step backwards. I’d move forward, get buried a little in the sand, then I’d move forward again, get sucked in again. I could see why camels needed pumps on the soles of their feet. I didn’t even have ski poles like that maniac ahead of me. I would have cursed him to hell if I didn’t have to follow him there myself to get out of this conundrum.

I looked up, I could see nothing more than a shadow falling over me. Him, again. This time he was close enough for me to see him smiling. It was a joke, after all. He extended his hand, I grabbed it and pulled myself up, sand spiraling down the crevices that had formed in my clothes. He patted me on the back. “Here we are, just a few more meters;” he’d state. We walked side by side and I saw what we had climbed for. We were at the top.

The top looked beautiful. It was not just the top of this dune, but the whole valley. Hundreds and hundreds of hills, small and large surrounded us. None was larger though. “347 feet high,” he declared proudly, as if he had won a bet against himself, beaten his own guess by inches. Good for him.

We rested a few moments. He produced a bottle of water. Curse him for saving it, and bless him too. After a few more looks around and having formed an odd expression of guilt on my face, I took it all in.

Atop this magnificent sand dune, with its sheer drop on one side and its sloping ridges of unbearable pain on the other, I realized, that now that I was here, there was no direction to go but down. Slowly, we began to jog down, kicking up sand as we went. Hurdling, I rumbled down the same slope that I had climbed so painstakingly; like a kid, I crashed downwards, laughing out all the agony that had coursed through my veins just moments ago.

Posh

Written by Uzi Copyright © 2006

Teeth chattering, words spitting out of my mouth a mile a minute, I walked into the washroom past the obviously drunk bouncer. Let me rephrase though, it wasn’t really a washroom, more of a place that had all the amenities of a washroom but hadn’t really been washed itself. A putrid stench of unflushed shit, piss and vomit rose from the dank inner sanctum of this ‘room’- so much so that there was steam coming out of it into the rest of the club. Fever, that was the club’s name. The yellow fever being contracted from either this ‘room’ or the close counters with sleazy whores walking around dancing to the latest Ludacris song. A cold reminder that this was a bad idea in the first place. There was no light in the washroom, one had to fend for himself. Not that hard to do really when you’ve visited the washroom a million times, but extremely tricky when there is shit on the commode and the door doesn’t close to your stall. Nevertheless, I was determined. I needed the hit. I took a cloth out of my pocket that I had brought in advance aware that this situation would arise. Cleaning the top of the commode off, I took out my little mirror.

Then, the real test. The shit I was here for. I slowly opened the little package I had so painstaking retrieved from my shoes. Slowly, I poured the snowy powder onto the mirror. I was sweating, profusely, it was hot in the club, it smelt something nasty in there and I was about to powder my nose just metres away from a bouncer who would not hesitate to turn me in to the cops. This was a bad idea. I contemplated packing up and leaving, but then I took a bit of that sweet coke and dabbed my gums with it. Fuck. I needed this hit. Screw everyone else, including my friends who probably thought I was lost somewhere in the club. I used my blade to carefully line it all, took out a twenty and rolled it up. Knelt down, fully aware that the dirty water on the floor was seeping into my khakis, but waiting for this shit to pass through my nose. I went for it, one nostril all the way, the whole line. It hurt. It was fucking good shit. Fucking posh- the whole nine yards. I saw stars for a few minutes. I wish I had more. I found my legs, stashed my shit into my pants and walked out of that smellhole. Fuckin’ right. That was barry. It’s what Irvine Welsh would say anyway. I needed a cig. Maybe two.