3 In the shadow of death

I woke up feeling as if my chest has been hit by a train, I had to breathe slowly at first. I opened my eyes to look around me. It seemed as if I ended up in a hole when I fell during my effort to escape the storm. The hole looked like an accidental tear on the ground. As I turned to lie on my back, I noticed that the walls of the hole were purely hardened sand. I looked up only to realize that the hole was around twenty meters deep. the place of my entrance looked like a crack on the roof of a sand cavern, the sun illuminated the sand that was cascading into the cave giving one's eyes an illusion of some goldish waterfall.

I couldn't help feeling the pain on my chest and ribs. And the realization of being trapped there worsened my state of hopelessness. I tried sitting up. The pain was excruciating, but not beyond endurance. I could still taste the dust and blood in my mouth, and I was glad to realize that I was lucky to have fallen in a sandy hole, otherwise, I would've survived that fall at a cost of few broken limbs. I stood up and swayed dizzily as I admired the height from which I fell. I tried thinking of a way of scanning the wall directly in front of me. The sunlight was slowly withdrawing from the gap at which it shone into the cave, and then I realized that I didn't even scout the cave properly, but it was no use, darkness was sneaking in the cave so fast it felt as if time was in a hurry.

I started realizing how fast hope can come and go, it can come in darkness, light up a little, then suddenly become extinguished.

I knew that the night was going to be cold, I could tell by the chill in the winds, so I sat in a small crevice on the wall and hugged my knees. the cave got so dark I couldn't see three meters in front of me. Being in that hole also provided a false sense of security, and soon I fell asleep.

I awakened to the sound of a howl from the opposite side of the cave. It sounded like a bass version of a wolf howl, but more hoarse and menacing. I slowly stood up expecting some hideous desert monster to pounce on me any moment, I had nothing I could defend myself with. I wouldn't die without a fight though, that much was for sure. The creature howled again, you would swear by the sound of it that it was just there inside the cave. It was fearsome, but fear is just a trajectory of one's imagination. A deadly silence followed after the howl, and that's when I noticed the cold sweat on my forehead.

I actually realized that I slept longer than I intended to. I wondered what would happen if that night creature found me with my guard down. I crouched in the hole wishing away the night, but the darkness seemed eternal. I started thinking about a way out of my predicament. Somehow I finally dozed off.