Oh lord, I’ve had enough of these people out here.

How insidious are the lot of them, to pick apart all that is left.

They arrive from the wastes; hundreds, thousands, perhaps just two, and begin to build their hovels within.

I sit, inert, immobile, and unmoving, for I am grown to old. For miles upon miles, flesh and shells cover the landscape. Many years have passed for which I cannot twitch even a muscle.

Trapped, yes. I am trapped. Trapped within my own corpse. A behemoth spread across a horizon without any sign of life, but this is deceiving. Had I been a lesser being, I would have met my deserved end many, many years ago.

But I am prevented from meeting peace. My death is stolen from me.

The shell that encompasses my body shields from the piercing heat. It keeps what barely breathes within alive, to my detriment. But the shell does not protect against intruders.

With time, they burrow their way into my shell and flesh. Scavengers, thieves, and outcasts, seeking refuge from the desert, come to find a place to fester evermore in places they do not belong.

For decades the parasites below prosper and feed, surviving by hiding away from the sun. They tear, butcher, and claim what they can to delay their own ends in an uncaring land.

They crawl into each corner, bone, and space to make their stay. They pillage my teeth, my flesh, my corpse, using it to fashion new worthless items to their body or to sell it elsewhere.

Time ago, too long past to remember, the sands were at my whims, for I could go wherever I pleased. I could traverse through the sands, traveling years on end. For many, I was perhaps praised, seen as majesty amongst a harsh, dead land.

But I fell from grace. The memory pains my mind, for now I lie bloated and fossilized on the coarse sands, forever entombed to decay and rot. I am reduced to miles of immobilized flesh and shell, left to burn for years under an unjust sun while worms and parasites suckle from within. What used to be my domain now turns back to consume me.

There lies not much left, and this truth infuriates my soul. To watch as what once was my own is torn from me, I rage. But I am denied retribution.

There exists some time before my mind finally fails, and I am released from this prison. For now I exist, immobilized, trapped, and forgotten, forever staring at inferior creatures as they tear me apart.

If fate decides, decades will continue to pass, and I will remain. My mind, though fractured and broken, will be aware and alive. The beings that dig within my skin and muscle will go about their lives without knowing that the creature they once looked upon with appraisal and worship still lived. My cries will go unanswered, my anguish unmet, my will unheard.

If fate decides, I will continue to be cut apart until these insolent creatures have had their way.

If fate decides, I will rot here silently. My body will remain still, but my mind will be anything but.