5 · By the Mediterranean
THE SURF of the waves tickled Ibrahim’s small toes reminding him of the delight he felt when his mother used to sprinkle her children with a hose on the hotter days of the summer.
The green in the sky was getting lighter. That huge quantity of water in front of him was far too vaster than he had ever imagined. He had tried to quench his thirst with gulps of the salty water, but the taste had made him sick. His mouth was dry and the eyes were sore. Nauseated, Ibrahim had his stomach playing a dodecaphonic revolution of eerie sounds and gurgling noises. He was starving.
A spasm made him contort, folding the trunk over the legs, forcing his chest touch the trembling thighs. He lost his balance and fell, face first, on the wet sands, bruising his skin with the tiny shells and shards of stones of various shades of brown and grey. He puked. A violent wave almost suffocated him. Desperate, he crawled up to where the waves could not reach him.
With his back turned to the Mediterranean, he complained again and swore in a whisper, paying no attention to the oranges and purples projected on the high clouds. He fell on his knees and another excrutiating pain made him curve again. He protected his face with his hands and vomited a transparent, foaming, stinking, sticky liquid without any particle of solids. His last meal had happened more than twelve hours before. He felt dizzy and fell on the sand, unconscious.
He dreamt an endless dream with feverish hallucinations.
YOU ARE READING
Lunatics
Science FictionMany years after the Third World War, three young men are up to their necks in a case of a stolen flashdisc that may cause another conflict—this time it may be an interplanetary one. "Lunatics" exposes those events, exploring the many relations amon...
