Francesco Mazzotta - Cellular Activity

Abdel murmurs a silent prayer in his language, gesturing slowly with his hands as if to ward off invisible dangers.

“It’s unlikely that any one survived”, Wahid whispers softly, almost afraid to talk louder.

The dromedaries are nervous, shaking their heads and letting out plaintive verses. They refuse to go further.

“The animals are scared”, exclaims Yidir. “Abdel, stay here with them, we will go down on feet and see. Be sure that my brother stays here with you when he arrives.” Then he turns to the other friend: “Let’s move, Wahid. Stay sharp, I want to leave before dark.”

The two dismount from their dromedaries and begin their slow and clumsy descent down the high dune that overlooks the scene of the disaster. The dog stays back with Abdel, growling nervously.

Ahmed reaches the top of the dune a few minutes later, moving beside the man that’s watching the scene before him. His dog is crouching, and seems to growl at an invisible enemy, waving his tail nervously. The dromedaries are very nervous too. The boy dismounts, approaching the dog. “Ssssshh, easy, easy boy. What’s wrong with you?”

However, the dog keeps barking frightened. He cowers behind Ahmed with his tail between his legs, letting out a long plaintive cry. Abdel tries to hold the dromedaries at stance. Two of them manage to escape, and flee quickly back the way they came. Busy to hold off the other dromedaries, Ahmed and Abdel can’t do anything to stop them.

Yidir and Wahid split, walking between the remains of the smoldering wreckage, always keeping an eye at Abdel and the dromedaries on top of the dune. The experience has taught them that in the desert you can get lost easily if you don’t have static reference points.

Unrecognizable wreckage lies everywhere, sometimes unidentifiable bloody shreds emerge from the sand.

“Poor people”, Yidir mutters to himself, as he watches a child’s hand, severed just after the wrist, thinking that no one could have survived that tragedy.

While walking slowly among the debris, his attention gets drawn by something with a grotesque shape. It lies on the ground, like a burned tree, planted and twisted sideways in the sand. Yidir comes nearer, and as he approaches the mysterious thing, he can notice more and more details. A sense of instinctive revulsion and fear takes over his soul.

It’s not a tree at all, even if it vaguely remembers one. Yidir can’t even understand what he is staring at. The object vaguely resembles a trunk, carved with mastery by the hand of a raving madman. Abnormal appendages like blackened and deformed human limbs sprout from a large central strain, like distorted branches. There are aberrant and impossible geometries, out of proportion, horrible to behold.

Yidir hesitates to approach, cautiously turning around that thing that seems a strange sculpture and discovering other disconcerting details. Rough caricatures of human heads emerge from the main piece that has a globular form. The faces are distorted and some of them have their mouths unnaturally open: terrifying jaws petrified in their last cry. One of them fades into something vaguely reminiscent of a reptile head not completely defined. Behind this one emerges a bulbous protuberance that opens into a mouth that has a double row of black and sharp teeth, some of which are longer than a finger of Yidir himself. Beyond those deformities, what terrifies and scares the man who’s watching is the feeling that seems infused in that twisted and distorted mass: pain, fear, and an agony as deep as a very dark abyss.

The sun begins to sink behind a distant dune, and the many fires that still burn in the area draw moving shadows all around the place. In that light, reddish and flickering, Yidir has the distinct feeling that there is still a breath of latent life in those grotesque shapes.

Wahid’s scream breaks the terrible spell in which Yidir has fallen, drawing his attention.

“Yidir, come here! There’s something moving!”

The man steps back, feeling an instinctive fear at the idea of giving the back to that nameless horror. After half a dozen steps he heads to follow the voice of his friend, happy to finally look away from that thing spitted out of hell. Wahid’s voice comes from behind a big piece of the fuselage, miraculously still intact.

With a brisk pace, and looking back to make sure that the abominable trunk is still in place, Yidir walks around the obstacle, and almost crashes into Wahid.

“Wahid, you should come and see, there is something really weird over there. I think we should leave right now, and fast too.”

The friend doesn’t reply. He squats before the remains of a row of seats. Yidir must move to see what lies on the ground ahead of him.

In one of the seats, there is a man. He is bald on top of his cranium, but his hair grew long around the lower part of his head. He has a long mustache too. The old man is pale, perhaps because of the patina of ash and dust that covers his skin. His breath is barely audible, his chest moves just as barely. One leg is bent at the knee in an impossible angle.

“I think he’s the only survivor, and it’s a miracle if he is still alive”, says Wahid, while working with a knife to cut one of the safety straps that block the body of the old man to what is left of the seat.

“Perhaps there are other survivors, but I don’t feel safe here. Wahid… I’ve seen… I don’t even know what I’ve seen, but it’s disgusting. Perhaps it’s better to come back tomorrow morning, with light.”

“Tomorrow may be too late, Yidir…”

When the last strap is cut, the man almost falls forward, and it’s the prompt intervention of Yidir and Wahid that keeps him from hitting the ground. The movement affects his broken leg, and the man lets out a moan, followed by a string of expletives.

In this moment they hear the shout of Abdel. The two quickly raise the survivor, and without another word, make their way to the dune and their mounts.

As they proceed, Yidir looks back to make sure once again.

The trunk, that horrible totem born from a crazy and unfortunate mind, is still in its place.

Ahmed walks down the dune, facing Yidir and Wahid, to help them bring the survivor atop. Abdel is holding the dromedaries at stance. The beasts are getting more and more nervous as the sky darkens. Yidir throws a stern look to his younger brother, but actually he is grateful for its presence.

“We must go, Yidir, we have seen lights, and two of the dromedaries have escaped.”

“Put the survivor on Ahmed’s mount”, exclaims Yidir, aware of the younger brother reproachful look.

The man ignores the boy, keeping talking to the group. “Ahmed is the youngest and strongest of us, he will walk first. We will alternate walking, after all the distance isn’t too big and the sun is gone altogether. One of us will give him the change later.”

The boy willingly nods without a murmur. That hint to his strength has been enough to raise his pride, wiping out the rest.

Suddenly Yidir freezes, watching the horizon over the expanse of debris. The others turn too.

They can see a glimmer in the distance. A tiny worm of lights that appears and disappears in the dunes.

“That’s why I called you”, says Abdel. “Those aren’t desert people. Those are cars and trucks.”

“They may be a rescue team”, whispers Yidir, “but also a gang of robbers. Better if we don’t let them see us. You never know what those mavericks can do. Let’s move away.”

The animals are nervous, the dog keeps growling and barking with his teeth uncovered, alternately facing the valley below them and the survivor. The dromedary chosen to transport the wounded man refuses to get closer.