Mirage

It was a fever dream, a truth, half-obscured— but just barely glimmering, piercing a haze of heat and sweat. Sore all over and semi-sleeping, I glimpsed something rolling through the sand, an ophidian glossy and impossibly black. It flickered—the pillows and sheets swirled in the dunes, comforters intermingling with silica under the cloudless sky, and I saw scales like asphalt thrash past me, encasing the miles of coiled muscle and bone which slithered through the desert. To the serpent, I was like another grain of sand, a particle ineffectual to such a beast. Its maw hinged open, revealing a cavernous abyss framed by scored and pitted fangs. It cleaved the dunes in two as the snake barreled toward me, closing the distance. Then, my fever broke and I vomited over the side of my bed.