PART 35 - CLOSE ENOUGH

 The chatters, rumbled into my ear like two evenly matched wrestlers, as Azoe's hands, encroached on the vicinity of my nose, which saturated my airways with a muddy scent, and subtle hints of petroleum oil. I stood, wrapped like a mummy in a coffin, in the grip until, the chatters soon started to sound fainter, with a matter of passing seconds. Upon releasing me, I gasped a huge inhale of air, to satisfy my pleading lungs suffering the pain of suffocation, which still collected the residue of mud and oil, from Azoe's hands. "Wha...What was... t...that?" I asked, holding my expanding chest, and bent grasping my knee. "Gotta be careful" Azoe replied, slumping himself into the sacks of sand, like an object sliding on a grease spread surface. "What? What is going on? What is this place even?" I asked, casually grabbing upon another sack of sand, to sit down. "Gotta be careful, I'm not being taken in by that guy again!" He replied in slight anger and shook his head in agony. "Well, I'm going there and pointing me in the right direction would be good", I said. "This is where I stay, after escaping, maybe I'm just paranoid but, I'm not going there again!" He said, clenching his fist and hitting into the sacks. The flames of the lamp, burnt away, as we took refuge into the small home. Murmurs, began to be heard again, and some of the footsteps came with a bit more pace towards our direction.

Azoe, lifted himself off the sack, like a spring in motion, and moved with a time slowing composure, towards the corners of the brick walls. I woke up and watched the movements closely that Azoe was making, through the black coloured tint of my goggles. Our frozen postures, remained rooted into the sandy ground, with small scratches on the ground, of our shoes that made movements surged with a charges of tension. The murmurs followed every heartbeat that burst out of me, collecting large amounts of fear that rubbed upon the widening of my lungs, after every breath. "Hey what's that light" I heard, as the footsteps, came to a stop. Azoe raced his shadow, towards the sacks and clenched his muscles, sinking his fists into them, like a blade into flesh, and throwing them, one after another, into the entrance of the small home. The small, dim yellow light from the lamp, began to only illuminate thin rays, towards the top of the brick wall, and Azoe, finally blew out the flame.

"Huh? What? There was a light here?" The silence, that enveloped the darkness we made, was broken, with a voice that finally seemed to arrive where we were. My breath, held itself, on the cliff of a gut squeezing, panic, that drew thin films of sweat on my skin. Arguments about whether the light was present or not, persisted with the growing anxiety that bubbled through my blood. Without, another blink of my eye, huge punching thuds, threw grains of sand into the air, bouncing off my goggles.