SUDDEN SACRIFICE

by El Queso
painting by
shaun lawton

I awakened to the sensation of blinding light and burning heat.

"What the hell? Where am I?" I thought.

Struggling to open my eyes against harsh light, I became aware of a parched mouth, a brutal pain in my stomach, and a feeling like I was lying on a hot rock.

Trying to move, eyes still closed, head spinning....

"Am I on something...? Did someone dose me and ditch me somewhere?"

The pain in my stomach stabbed me.

"Have I got food poisoning, or something?"

Colors swirled in my vision. I tried to open my eyes, but they seemed slightly crusted with sleep dirt...no...maybe blood? What the fuck, am I tied up?

My heart started to pound. Struggling, my feet and hands responded weakly--but to no avail. I was bound.

My hearing faded in, so slowly...this couldn't be right. I heard...what the fuck? Tribal drumming at a football game? That couldn't be a TV...so loud...I squinted, and worked to get my eyelids free. My head listed left and right--a crowd seemed to cheer in response.

My pulse was pounding, my mouth so dry I couldn't swallow. A ball of red agony pulsed in my abdomen. I felt like screaming, but couldn't manage even a muted gargle.

My right eyelid finally pulled open...

I blinked again and again--the light blinding me. The drums pounding. The crowd cheering.

From white, my vision faded in. I was reminded of an old TV set, slowly powering on.

I was on my back. The sky...the sky seemed to swirl and pulse with bleeding hues of strange color. I was definitely on something. But I haven't taken acid for 20 years, I thought.

At that moment the drums swelled in volume and intensity. I could hear some kind of chanting in the crowd's roar. I turned my head to my right. Oh--what the fuck is going on?

I was bound, on some kind of stone platform--in the middle of a soccer stadium? Through the haze of drugs and adrenaline, I desperately tried to focus on the crowd: Shirtless, South American people by the thousands.

Were they chanting "Quetzalcoatl!"-? I couldn't be dreaming. I could feel the warm, rough stone on the right side of my face.

A huge shadow loomed over me. My head turned so slowly...

My sanity shattered into fragments that refused to acknowledge each other.

A massive, bloody beak lowered into my midsection as one baleful eye peered into my soul without mercy or understanding.

The crowd cheered again, but the pain was gone and things were getting quieter now.

Quieter and darker.

Slowly.

Return Monday, March 8
for Chapter 5 of
WAITING FOR THE END
by Vincent Daemon