Hitchhiker’s Scabs

   I pick at the scabbing wounds that cover my legs; they were new but had already found their brittle form stuck to me. I try to think of when the gristly desert first fed into my tanned skin. Since then, whenever it had been, it had spread. Out here in the middle of nowhere it seemed to go even farther than distorting my physical appearance though. The scabs may have not been the cause of my mind flailing into a void, but whatever caused the scabs was surely causing my mind to simulate acid as well.

   I couldn't think straight; the heat shivered in front of me and the trees danced in unison with the tumbleweeds when the rarity of a breeze came by. I was sitting where the guy I hitchhiked with dropped me off. I was in what could be considered a ghost town; an abandoned gas station and an old farmhouse behind were all that was visible for miles. You could tell it had sat dormant for the longest time because the drained gas pumps still had glass tanks on the top where fuel once sat and in front of the boarded up store there was an old dog skeleton picked clean by buzzards and wildlife that probably came out to creep at night. Around the sad looking dog's neck was a collar and tag that meant he had most likely been a pet. I tried to find a phone number inscribed into the tag but instead found that the tag was too worn to see anything.

  I gave up on trying to find someone to contact about maybe coming to give me a ride. There would surely be someone coming soon enough, right? Somebody had to be driving down these burning blacktop roads that could pick me up. I was hot and regretful, yet I sat hopeful of a stranger that might pass by. If I had ever needed God I needed him now to save me from this horrible situation, so I prayed that he'd send me a willing car to take me from the grasps of this cracked land. 

   I felt I was proven wrong in the course of the next day. I had drank nearly all of my water and was working on suckling the last drops down like a dehydrated rodent of some sort. The scabs had gotten worse. I could feel them hug my shoulders and grip my feet; they had invaded nearly my whole body by the second day I was here. What was even more strange and slightly morbid was the dog that had a beating heart sitting inside its sun bleached skeleton. It didn't scare me; in fact, everything was calm except the scabs that pulled at my skin and left me nearly going insane. I could feel the scabs start to froth my face and set in like concrete. Facial expression was not an ability of mine at the time. Maybe I was going insane. I had only been here for a day and a half but time seemed to run rapidly yet the day's sun blared day in and day out.

   Finally I saw a black Cadillac bounding down the road towards me. I jumped up and stuck my thumb out hoping my prayers had been answered; and it seemed so they had when the freshly waxed car coated in dust pulled to a stop on the side of the road. I opened the door and started to thank him when I realized the person at the wheel was rotting and the horrendous stench of death reached my nose. I turned away but only caught sight that two children sat in the back of the car. They looked scabby like me and their minds were distant. The poor things were probably traumatized. I didn't think for a second how the man could've been driving. I wasn't an expert on anything that was happening. In fact I was fretting and reaching into the back to check on the kids to see if they were alright. Focus on the live people, I thought. I picked up the little girl's wrist and checked her pulse; It was beating way too fast. She had to be having a heart attack but it didn't seem to click in my mind because at the moment for her skin was crumpling up and turning to dust. Her muscle seemed to melt too and her bones soon followed. I reached over to hug the little boy, I was crying, then I felt his hand on my shoulder and murmured whispers before his breath stopped and he dissolved like his sister. I was crying so hard that my whole body ached and I was even more incoherent to my surroundings than I was before.

  Next thing I know I had pulled a dead man out of a car and was driving down the road in the middle of nowhere with kids that now resembled dust. I was scared yet I felt nothing close to it as I drove down the road looking for something that could help me; I didn't quite know what that was though.