Better Days

(A Short Story)

I think I’m losing my mind. No matter where I look, all I can see is sand. Sand in front of me, sand next to me, sand behind me. There’s even sand on me. Inside my shoes, my socks, my trousers and underwear! Of course there’s also sand on my upper body. Not only on the clothes I’m wearing, but also inside my ears, nose, eyes and hair. It’s simply everywhere. And if we have to take one more step in this ocean of sand, I'm going to lose my mind.

The guide for our small group doesn’t seem to care about the sand. Actually, he doesn’t seem to care about anything. His facial expression never changes; it’s just a blank face with two dead eyes. And he doesn’t like talking to us. Under normal circumstances, I would avoid someone like him at all costs, but we didn’t know what else to do after having handed all our money over to him. That's why my sister, the other defectors and I panicked and have been following him ever since. He led us into this so-called desert. Without him, we would’ve been dead by now. Each and everyone of us knows it. So regardless of his creepy looks and behavior, we try to keep up with him and follow his brief instructions whenever he does decide to speak to us.

Sadly, some of us haven’t made it. One elderly couple has been falling behind more and more and it’s the third day in a row that they haven’t shown up at the next camp. And yesterday, we unexpectedly lost another member of the group. When we woke up, a young woman was missing. I guess nature called while the rest of us were asleep, and she apparently wandered off. Maybe she couldn’t find her way back to our little camp, or maybe she decided to end her life. I don’t know. Nobody will ever know. We all just keep walking at night and resting while the sun is shining. We keep walking and dream about better days. Just like my parents used to do back home.

They even called our plans to defect “the better days”. It was a nice feeling sharing this secret within the family and a good way to prevent my stupid little sister from accidentally revealing our plans in public. This annoying little brat, who is continuously clinging on to my jacket with her dirty little hands. She looks awful. Every bone is visible, her hair is matted and she's covered in dirt like the rest of us. But I don’t want to complain about her sticking to me. At least she stopped talking a while ago. That’s a great thing because she usually never stops talking. She talks about everything and anything in her squeaky voice. I really can’t stand her voice.

To be honest, I don’t like her in general. I swear, she's a demon trapped in the body of a little girl who accidentally happened to be born into my family. As the older brother, I always got punished for all of our arguments and fights. She was fully aware of it and would provoke me and annoy the hell out of me by talking to me in a disrespectful way. Whenever she got the chance and our parents couldn’t hear her, she would stop talking to me politely and call me by my first name instead of using honorifics until I blew up and got punished for it... again!

But now this annoying imp is the only family I have left. Our father was arrested last spring for selling goods on the black market, and our mother’s sudden illness, which a few months later began to slowly but surely kill her, is the reason only the two of us had the chance to flee. During our farewell, my mother made me promise to look after my sister and take her with me because she knew I 'd be leaving soon, otherwise I would’ve been forced to join the military for the next ten years. I admire my mother for her strong will to keep our dream of “the better days" alive, but I’m not sure if she knew they'd look like this.

To be continued…