Reprieve

There are trees all around. I would describe them to you but I don't know what their names are. If you want to know: they are big and they are green. Some are bigger than the one before it and the one before that. Eventually they're all the same. I hardly notice. It strains to look about, the glare of the sun being so strong. I keep my eyes on the pale of dust which litters the horizon. Nothing ever changes. The trees are all the same and there is no one new to hold on to.

There's a figure coming towards me. I noticed as soon as the dust became slightly disturbed in their wake. I've learned the signs of the road; know this is no trick of weakness. For a moment I have that awkward feeling of who should move for whom. That's really funny to me. I am still myself.
            We come upon each other and disappointment is apparent in both of us. He's the same as the others I've come across, the same as I. Ugly, skinny, dying. For years I've been looking into this mirror and hating what I see. The transformation of the human race into what it has become. I see it in him, he sees it in me. His face has been made a constant scowl from the glare, skin filthy with dirt. Red and black and ugly. He removes his dust-covered sunglasses and looks back the way he came. He wipes the sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his red flannel shirt. That shirt must have been years old. How old am I? He looks at me. Sunken eyes, lonely orbits.
            "There ain't nothing back that way," he says.
            "Where you headed?"
He motions with a nod.
            "Ain't nothing back that way either. Got another pair of shades I can trade you for?"
            "No."
I could kill him for those sunglasses. He realizes this, moves his right hand behind him, straightens to his full height. He is as tall as me now and much heavier. I wonder what he has back there. It could be nothing, but it's most probably a blade. Doesn't matter, I've weapons of my own.
            "I reckon I'm about twice your age and a bit. Here, take these." He offers me two wraparound lenses.
            "I lost the frames."
I press the lenses into my eyes and try to hold them there with my cheeks. They fall out and clatter softly on the bitumen. The man laughs.
            "You're just a baby. Your hair is too neat. Been cut lately with a sharp blade. Scares me to think what else you done. I look at you, I see a monster. Poison. First I thought you were Death Himself come to eat me up. Bet one time you had a mum stay up crying if she heard ya' being spoke of like that. I bet I did too."                     
           "Thanks for the shades." I move on.