Temple of Sand
Rough waves breaking over sandy shoals has served as my alarm clock for many moons. Morning brings a cold, bitter wind that punishes any mere thought of staying warm. Little crabs cluster in the swirling eddie pools, offering the only company afforded to me in such a cruel place.
When the tides recede and sun warms the sand, I sprawl out before the open sky and reminisce about my life before being trapped in the temple of sand.
Devin and I were road bums with nowhere to go but the next town over. Hopping trains and hitchhiking across the interstate with nothing more than our guitars and the clothes on our back, we'd inevitably end up in a few coastal towns.
"This is a song about a girl who broke my heart," he'd always say, strumming familiar tunes. I couldn't harmonize strings quite the way that man did. He'd offer a warm smile to each passerby generous enough to leave something in the guitar case.
Amidst the distant echoes of the ocean, I sometimes trick myself into hearing his voice singing from somewhere far beyond the temple walls. A quick pinch or face rinse in the eddie pools offer an escape, for such hallucinations are dangerous.
Our favorite place to play was the beach, of course. Strumming a chorus from your childhood while soaking in warm rays of a setting sun was better than any drug or girl I've experienced.
"You ever feel sad when the sun goes down?"
I remember asking him that. He gave some philosophical answer about the cycle of life and offered me the first hit of our blunt.
Sadness is the last thing I've come to feel when the sun goes down within the temple. Violent shadows dance along the corners, playing out a gruesome scene of murder. Crashing waves begin to sound like cries for help. And every night, without fail, a painful stabbing sensation invades my chest when stars begin twinkling.
Whatever sleep I grab is tainted with awful dreams and evil visions. Shadow people and demonic beings stalking me along stretches of gloomy coastline. They wish to drown me in the salty brine. Hold my head under with their wretched, long, spindly fingers until my last breath escapes as a desperate air bubble. When they catch me and force my head into the water, my unconscious nightmare ends.
It bugs me that I can't quite remember the last time I hung out with Devin. Something was wrong with his guitar and it was making him really angry. Considering it put food in our mouth up to that point, I didn't feel good about the situation either. We got into some kind of argument... and that's all I can remember.
One day I thought listening to the waves and allowing myself to hallucinate his singing would help me remember. I couldn't possibly know how much of a stupid and reckless idea that ended up being. The singing started off pleasant enough. His voice harmonized with each note rising and falling in pleasant succession, singing about a country girl who took everything.
One offbeat note stuck out and suddenly the entire feeling of the music changed. He sounded much more aggressive and angry, almost growling the words in the song like a feral animal.
"So carry on like ya should baby cause love never did me any good."
I wanted to break away from the hallucination. Get away from Devin's anger. Something was keeping my mind trapped there like a bad acid trip. The music got faster and angrier until a pair of hands tightened around my neck, leaving me shouting in fear.
Never again. Hallucinations are too dangerous.
Y'know that song is about a girl we both liked growing up. Her name was Samantha but we called her Smiley. She had freckles and the cutest gap in her teeth. It always left me feeling guilty when I gazed at her with envy.
She's actually the reason Devin and I began our journey as roadies. They had a bad fight one night and she knocked on my door. I just wanted to be a good friend and give her a place have space. She didn't give me time to react or say no. One minute, I was letting her cry into my shoulder on the couch and the next thing I know she's kissing me on the lips.
"No, this is really wrong," I told her. She pushed away, staring awkwardly at the floor.
"Please don't tell him."
But I did. Devin called her a lot of colorful things as he packed up his bags. Of course, I didn't want to stick around to get heat for being the snitch so I had my shit packed the very next day.
Enclosed within my prison of tall sand walls, I often laugh at the hindsight of it all. Devin made a lot of good money singing about that girl, yet I let her rip his heart out like a fool. I can't let myself think about her too much, because I'll hallucinate her voice too. And the things she has to say are lies. At least, they better be lies.
The first time I heard her voice, I was trying to gather the sand into one large pile to climb out of the temple. My fingers scrapped against stone, burdening me with a heavy realization there wouldn't be any way out. Over my panicked cries, her voice tapered in from far away.
"Dev, you can't just leave him in the sand!"
Like a dumbass, I tried calling out to her. I'd do that a few more times before realizing the voices were just an illusion. Sometimes I'd sit by the eddie pool and pretend the crabs were the ones talking.
It was during one such occasion I hallucinated the most disturbing thing Smiley ever said.
"Sometimes, I wish I was the one who had the knife."
I never did spend much time thinking about what death would be like. Whenever people asked me about my stance on religion, I'd always tell them we'd find out when it was time.
Now, every day I spend within these temple walls, I wonder more and more about death. When I'm not pondering my mortal coil or tripping on hallucinations, I'll wrack my brain just trying to remember how exactly I got here. I've come up with a lot of theories but nothing really makes sense.
Yesterday I realized I haven't ate or drank anything since waking up in the temple. Any mortal would have perished, so why haven't I?