This is a book of your own making. Here you can define yourself by choosing which path to tread and which destiny to forge. Whenever you find yourself at a junction, choose a path with no hesitation in your heart. Use your intuition and, if you must, take a moment to mull it over. But once you’ve chosen a path, never —and I mean never— look back. Stride forward with determination and no regrets, because life always lies ahead of you, never behind you.
******
The desert sunlight has been draining all your energy. The mirage in front of you shows your reflection covered in chlorophyll, growing stronger and stronger with every sun ray. But when you stop staring ahead, you become aware of yourself, of your puny humanity. You look at your side and see a cactus, and your heart fills up with the desire to obsolete the arrogance that severs us from plants. But you hold a patent advantage over your green trekking companion; you can settle your ordeal, while your fellow wayfarer will forever remain a prick in the desert’s fat ass.
And settle you would, even for becoming a desert mouse; at this point, even for becoming carrion for the vultures. But you know the sole law of ordeals: You cannot end them yourself. But you still hold the privilege of giving yourself up, as Jesus did on the cross. You halt in your tracks, kneel into the sand, and decry this desert, just as Jesus did the fate that was thrust upon him. With open arms, you welcome your destiny, and then, and only then, you stare the sun in the eye, and you see, to the glory of the heavens, a cloud, a martyr of the desert sky taking your place on the cross. The beclouding of the sun shakes off your obnubilation. You remember the dagger your father gave you when you were still learning to be a man; the dagger you hid inside your right gaiter before setting out, a silent homage to your father’s wise words: Murder is the closest distance between two people.
Your fellow traveler’s sacrifice won’t be in vain. You open its guts, and fresh lifeblood begins to ooze out at the same tempo you suck it dry. You vampirize your friend, just as you did your mother—suckling the life out of her. And you’re warmed by joy. Existence, at its core, is nothing but this relentless exploitation of love: first your parents’ love, and now the love of a random living being.
And as the Spanish say: When it rains, it pours. Your fleeting glimpse of joy is soon followed by an elating sighting: a dromedary wandering toward you. Part of the mirage or part of life? You wonder. But if life itself is just a mirage within a mirage, what does it truly matter?
It matters only in the human context, but you can’t really shed off your humanity, which clings to you like an unrelenting scab. So you think about the circumstances of that desert animal, which to the human eye is merely a means of transport: Who is it transporting, then? Its presence alone in the middle of the desert is as odd as the appearance of a car stranded on a highway. What does your human side tell you to do?
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You run to a nearby outcrop and hide behind it – go to this page
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You run towards the dromedary and try to seize it – go to this page
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Important: Be sure to save the final page of your story before closing it, so as not to lose your narrative thread — there are many possible, overlapping paths in this story.
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