Saffron City Press

Ziane Guedim

Algeria

The searing silence began to warp under a novel sound. Pulsating from beneath and through the sand, a faint vibration crawled up his legs, like a cold spider, and settled in his gut. Forcing himself to ignore it, he shook his legs out and pressed on.

Glinting under the sun and contrasting with the sand, the black carapace of a scarab caught his eye. He snorted. Another damn fool that wouldn’t survive the next dune. Even dung, in this godforsaken land, seemed a rare treasure; a dry chuckle escaped his cracked lips, his tongue ground against his palate. He nudged the beetle, sending it scuttling sideways, and
trudged onward, kicking up puffs of sand into the boiling air with each labored step. He wondered if he’d ever get to feel water’s cool caress on his parched tongue again.

He remembered his daughter cradling a similar beetle she used to have as a pet. “See, Daddy? They clean everything up, even the bad stuff. They’re important for the planet!” He also remembered scoffing, dismissing her childish fascination.

She was the mini-me, a dead ringer for her late mom, down to her hair, a beautiful mess as always, the color of spun sunshine and her skin like see-through porcelain. And that sparkling, mischievous smile he would never see again.

A bead of sweat trickled down his temple, and a cold dread coiled in his stomach.

He said he hadn’t been able to find a live fennec. Instead he’d procured a “dead one”, a “charming” fennec-fur… something. A purse? A muff? A keychain? He couldn’t quite tell now. His girl’s face crumpled. It was a morbid mockery of a gift, a dead substitute for what she’d wanted alive to protect.

As if the day wasn’t already a disaster, later that same evening he crushed her beloved pet scarab, the one he’d never quite understood her fascination with. An accident, he’d claimed, blaming it on his clumsy boot and the rickety floor. But the truth he’d never much cared for the beetle whose incessant clicking grated on his nerves.

He’d convinced himself it was the right call, but the stuffed fennec fox felt heavy in his hand, a wrecking ball. Offering it to his daughter… it would have crushed her. He shoved the toy back into the bag and threw it away.

Long hours passed before he saw what he first dismissed as a trick of the light. A solitary black tent protruding from the bleached dunes. As he drew closer, details sharpened and the mirage solidified into a real scene. Unlike the uncertainty of his vision, there was no mistaking the sound; a low rumble that left no room for doubt. Weaving itself into the desert’s silence, and vibrating through the sand itself, a deep rhythmic thudding snagged his ears. A relentless thump-thump-squish sliced through the haze.

Juxtaposed against the weathered tent were a woman, a fox, and a wooden frame. They seemed to ripple in the heat-distorted air, with their forms wavering at the edges as if caught in a shimmering mirage. All the while, the insistent churning sound was gradually swelling in volume and intensity. Like a simmering pot reaching a boil, the churning music bubbled, eventually overflowing in a thick, sucking vortex.

The fennec fox sat alert with its ears twitching. Its amber eyes locked onto him. The woman, head-to-toe in a ragged-black, sat cross-legged on the sand. She was pumping a massive churn hanging from the wooden frame. The churn hung low, a rounded pouch of cured hide suspended from three sturdy sticks that formed a tripod holding it aloft. The patched seams, the wrinkles and bulges on the pouch and the frayed ropes from which it hung… all spoke of
countless churnings past. Her face was to him, her movements methodical, purposeful. Jerky and marionette-like. Each push sent a tremor through the sands, each pull dragged a sickening squelch, punctuated by an occasional, muffled thump.

He cupped his hands. The faceless woman tilted the churn, and a cool, thick liquid cascaded down his palms – buttermilk. He drank deeply, three, maybe four helpings, the taste oddly metallic. With a final gurgle, the churn emptied. It shuddered. The world around him began to swirl and decolorize and dissolve. Before his eyes, the churn pulsed, then contorted, morphing back into a bleating white sheep. Then the tent billowed, revealing a small herd of
sleek, black goats. The woman’s form blurred and flowed, then she liquefied, melting into a pot of golden honey sealed with a single, thorny black rose. The fennec fox remained, lifeless. Its fur was now a dull, clumsy patch job, held together by frayed threads, straw stuffing poking through its vacant eyes.

He felt nauseous. He started morphing too, his own body was warping into… something. He could see everything but himself. A disembodied point of view taking in the endless sky, the rippling dunes, the sheep and the goats… but he was blind to his own form. His transformation stretched like an eternity. And just as abruptly, it stopped. He settled, but into what?

Before him, the world reanimated in a grotesque reverse play. The woman materialized again, the fennec fox by her side. It stared at him, then yipped. The churn pulsed and groaned, reforming from the sheep, while the goats coalesced into the tattered black tent. Everything was back, everything… except him.

Then, a colossal and dark presence. A scarab beetle lumbered into view, towards him. Its legs, thick and barbed, twitching, clicking with a sound like bone scraping bone. And as the beetle’s mandibles clacked open, revealing a monstrous black pit, he knew.

A silent scream ripped from his throat as the beetle began to roll him away.