Untitled #1

I found myself in a deserted Savanna wasteland. In the distance there was a sparse line of Acacia trees haphazardly defining the boundary of what I could preceptively distinguish in the failing light of dusk. All around I was surrounded by a daunting sea of grass, tips tinged with orange from lack of recent rain. And as I turned surveying this foreign landscape, I noticed that slinking off towards the Acacian fence at the edge of the horizon were the almost imperceptible remnants of a path.

As I carefully attempted to follow this trail waylaid by nature, the setting sun gave way to a gargantuan blue hued moon, basking the world in its nacreous glow. The hours crept forward, but still I found myself no closer to the edge of the trees. No, I was mistaken; I had come come nearer to the tree-line. Or was it one tree; stretching for miles in a tumultuous expanse of branches, with its many limbs delving in and out of the dry soil forming an impassible throng of gray bark and shimmering foliage in the moonlight. The seamless canopy shone brilliantly hundreds of feet overhead, but below not even the faintest ray of light could be perceived, an impenetrable wall of blackness.

I walked parallel to the behemoth tree, getting as close as I dared to the curtain of shadow. The sounds of my clothes swishing as I walked, punctuated by the steady fall of my footsteps, suddenly were drowned by a rhythmic breathing so deep and full of bass that the entire world seemed to shudder in its wake.

Emerging up ahead from underneath the canopy’s ebony veil, was a massive elephant at least three times a normal size. The elephant had seen many years of hardship. Its skin was battered and scarred, wizened with turmoil of a long and weary life. His left ear had been pierced with a giant gold hoop now tarnished with age, broken weathered links hung silently from it, reminders of forced captivity; the lobe stretched and almost torn through looked like a khaki cape left to be food for the moths. And in his enormous earthen eyes there welled a sadness that penetrated beyond the scope of any words.

He turned about slowly, coming face to face with me. Dwarfed in his shadow, I saw that his great knurled tusks had somehow been ensnared within two large bottles. Whether they had been placed there by whomever had held him captive, an improvised protection from an ivory goring; or whether they where the adornments misbegotten from the litter of a civilization comprised of people much larger than myself, I had no idea. But I did know that if I were to have any hope of extricating this pachyderm from his precarious predicament, I was going to need some assistance.

I rummaged through the pockets of the jeans I was wearing, in the vain hope of finding something useful. A cell phone? Surely my cell would be of no use to me here, in fact I wasn’t even completely sure where here was. But I ultimately assumed it was worth a shot, however unlikely. I brought up the recent call list and dialed the first name on it…Jay. What would I say to him? The conversation would undoubtedly go something like; ‘Hey there’s an elephant with bottles on his tusks…No, he’s huge…size of a house huge…I don’t know where I am…he looks sad…yeah, true…tell your girlfriend I said hi.’ I decided to call him anyway, but the call didn’t go exactly as I expected.

“Hey.” came Jay’s familiar voice.

“I don’t know how long till I lose you, I need your help.”

“Yeah? What’s up…wait…I’m stuck…” answered Jay and then his voice trailed off.

“What do you mean stuck?”

“I’m stuck… in between you and the phone call” gasped Jay and as he said this he flashed in front of me, standing there semi-transparent and distorted with static.

“It means hang up the call, or I’m not gonna make it.” blurted out Jay as he slammed into the ground in a crumpled heap, inches from where I stood. “But I see you have that all under control now” said Jay in a matter of factly sort of way as he got up brushing the dust off himself.

“What just happened… that did not just happen, you can’t just teleport through a phone call!?!?”

“What?…Oh, that?…Don’t worry about that, what did you want my help with?

And after quickly recounting what had transpired up until the point when I had called him, we decided that we needed to find something to cut the bottles off the tusks. “Well can’t you just go back though the phone, and come back with something?”

“No, it doesn’t work that way.”

“Great…”

We concluded that it was best to keep walking alongside the giant Acacia tree, in hope of finding something that may possibly aid us.

The dawn was breaking as we walked, and the morning sky was streaked with auburn and violet wisps as the horizon behind us began to burn brightly. A cool morning breeze was sweeping through the Acacia to our left, and the light was finally starting to illuminate all the fauna that had been sleeping beneath its mangled branches. Two crimson foxes darted out in the distance in front of us. Though I say foxes, they were closer in size to large horses, with pointed white snouts and vibrant blue eyes that glinted in the sunlight. And after a few more minutes of walking we came across a sallow skinned anteater, larger than a shed, with its beady black eyes screwed up in concentration and hose-like mouth buried deep in an anthill. And as we stood gaping at the squirrel-sized arthropods scurrying about the hill, Jay turned to me and asked, “Where the hell are we?”

Unfortunately, I don’t know how this story ended because it was interrupted by the alarm going off. I’ll continue it if I ever have it again.