Hazel stared at the smooth ceiling of his apartment, mind racing. With a sigh, he hopped out of his comfortable bed and headed toward the small kitchenette in the adjacent room.
As he grabbed a cup of instant noodles from the cabinet, he couldn't help but stare at the stunning cityscape. It was nearly two in the morning, yet so many people were awake and living their lives. Some were out on dates, others still hard at work, and more were shopping or driving. Before he'd arrived in Columbus, he couldn't have fathomed that there were eight-billion people on this small rock flying through space he called home. But now he could understand. After all, there were almost a million people in Columbus alone.
The sparkling skyscrapers set the dark sky aglow, illuminating the lively metropolis beneath. Shaking his head, Hazel filled the cup with water and set it in the microwave for four minutes. He watched as the timer marched it's way slowly down to zero. When complete, the device let out a jubilant ping!
He grabbed the piping hot plastic and closed the microwave, almost burning his fingers in the process. With a plastic fork in one hand and the hot cup tentatively held in the other, he returned to bed.
Sleep soon captured him in its warm embrace, enrapturing his mind.
* * *
Hazel could feel his eyes burning, even though they were closed. His hand twitched at the familiar feeling below him. Was it… sand? His eyes snapped open and were greeted immediately by a scorching sun.
"Ughhh, where am I?" He pushed himself to his feet, eyes watering. He checked his watch, it read 7:00pm. Around him endless dunes rolled, large and reddish in the… midday light? It's the evening, shouldn't the sun be going down? How is it still shining this ferociously? Unless… I'm in a different time zone?
Yes, that had to be it. His watch had been on time last night, so there was no way something would've happened to it without him waking up.
Hazel took off his shirt and pants. Then wrapped his shirt around his head like a turban, hoping to provide some protection against the blinding light. He used his pants as a marker. Slowly, he ripped off a small piece of fabric and stuffed it into the sand so only the top was poking out. He began to walk, the scorching grains seemed to melt the bottom of his feet. He hadn't worn socks to bed last night, leaving him barefoot when he woke up.
A little while later, after placing down four more pieces of his pajama pants, Hazel mounted his third dune. He was soaked with sweat, a large amount of which was in his boxers, causing him to chafe uncomfortably. He'd considered stripping nude, but chosen not to for two simple reasons:
1. Somebody might spot him.
2. He didn't really feel like getting his balls sunburned.
As he looked out at the surrounding desert scape, it really hit him, he'd just woken up in the middle of nowhere. In a desert right after going to bed.
What is going on?! Am I going to die out here?! What do I do?!
His mind began to race frantically, looking for any way to fit his improbable situation into its focused reality. Had he teleported? No teleportation isn't possible.
Had he been kidnapped? No way! What motive would someone have for kidnapping me?
Had he awoken in another world? No, thats way to fricking cliche and inter dimensional travel isn't even possible.
Hazel sat and closed his eyes, breathing slowly and he tried to calm himself down.
C'mon me, ignore the fact that I woke up in the middle of a random desert. What do I know about deserts?
They get extremely hot in the day and cold at night, most animals spend time under rocks, cacti contain large amounts of safe drinking water, and if you see an oasis, it's most likely a hallucination.
So he had to stay away from rocks, in his boxers during the day and fully clothed at night, if he needed water he could find a cactus, and if he saw an oasis he shouldn't get his hopes up.
See me, that wasn't too hard was it? Survival plan created!
He stood again, though his rest had been short, he was reinvigorated by his newly created survival plan. He trudged, humming along to motivational songs.
Then his foot hit something solid.
"Huh?"
Hazel looked down to his feet.
"WHAT IS THAT?!" He yelled, jumping back from the body that he'd stepped on.
What is happening today?!
First, he'd woken up in a desert in the middle of freaking nowhere, and now he'd found a dead body in the sand.
Hazel calmly stood, taking a second look at the body. It was a man, probably a decade older than Hazel himself. He had brown hair and tanned skin badly damaged from years of sun exposure. Hazel's eyes moved down to the man's back… where countless stab wounds marred his skin.
There were too many to count. All of them were deep, easily reaching the man's soft, vital organs. The sand around the corpse was brown with dried blood, showing that the death was recent. If it wasn't, the sand would have been blown away already.
What do I even do with something like this?!
Hazel started to slowly and carefully dig through the sand for a murder weapon. The object that had done the deed was obviously a blade of some kind, so if it had been buried, Hazel was not going to go in with hands moving around quickly. He didn't want to find himself a finger or two short of ten.
Knowing my luck, I'll find a way to get cut anyway, he thought.
Sure enough, he felt something sharp slide into the skin of his palm. He reflexively drew his hand with a curse, assessing the damage. It wasn't too bad, but he was still bleeding.
Hazel ripped off a part of his pajama pants and swiftly tied it around his hand to quench the bleeding. Gingerly, he inserted his left hand back into the sand, keeping his bandaged hand out of the ground.
"There you are, you little bugger," he said triumphantly. Gripping the hilt, he pulled the large blade from the sand.
"Dude…," Hazel admired the gleaming blade. It had to be almost a foot long.
"This is a fricking meat cleaver, whoever did this meant business."
A man was murdered, this is something to take seriously! He reminded himself.
"What do you think your doing?" A voice said from behind him. Hazel whirled, raising the cleaver. He then dropped it as he stared down the barrel of a gun.