I open my eyes, the bright sun pushing itself through the gaps in my windows. As I stretch myself awake from my long slumber, I slap to the side of me, looking for the table I constructed at my bedside. My hand finds its soft surface, a layer of dust pushing itself up into the air. My fingures connect with a glass vial, it making a quiet clink as it taps against other, similar vials that rest beside it. I grab the vial, rubbing sleep from my eyes as I raise it into my blurry vision. As my eyes adjust to the sudden bright light, I uncork the vial and press it to my lips. A small amount of a green, bitter liquid touches my tongue as it glides down my throat, causing me to cough and splutter due to its taste.

"I'll never get used to that," I speak out into the otherwise empty room. I put the vial back down onto the bedside table and again a puff of dust, this time smaller than the first, launches itself into the stagnant air. After a few more minutes of silence, I push myself from my bed and up onto my feet, sitting up and stretching myself awake once again.  I stand up and walk the few short feet across my room towards a sand covered piece of glass I had hung on the wall, looking into it like a mirror. My face is pretty much how I remember it, however as I look I see my cheek is hanging slightly lower than it should. I raise my hand towards my face and push my cheek up slightly, however as I remove my hand, it dips back down again. The weight of this dip pulls at my eye socket, revealing the pink, slick flesh that hides underneath. I quickly look back towards my bedside table at my collection of vials and see that most are empty and clean, almost as if they were never full at all. One vial, the one I picked up earlier, still has a small amount of the green liquid inside it. I quickly pick up the vial and uncork it again, pressing it harder to my lips as I attempt to suck out the last of its remnants. No more than a few drops find their way into my mouth, but I gulp them down as if they were the last drops of water in an arid desert. As the drops slide down my throat, I quickly turn back to the mirror. My cheek has returned to its proper position, hoisted perfectly upon my cheek bones.

"I can't believe I have run out," I say once again to the empty room, "I must have drank more than I planned." I put down the vial and look around for my bag. It sits just past the foot of my bed, leaning on a short white pole that is curved at the centre and leaning gently on the wall. The bag itself is no more than a few straps of a leathery fabric, roughly woven together and attacked to a fibrous rope that forms a type of sash. I pick up the bag and sling it over my shoulder, setting it to rest on my back as I also pick up the pole it rested on, collecting the vials from their spot on the table and pushing them deep into the makeshift bag. I head towards my window and push aside the ragged curtains that I had hung to cover it. As I head out of the window, I have to cover my eyes against the harsh sunlight. Covering my eyes still with one hand, I head into my pack with the other, grabbing and pulling out a set of primitive goggles, hand made by me and with lenses that look to have been darkened not artificially and not totally made of glass or plastic. I strap the goggles to my face and lower my hand, now able to handle the blaring light coming from the cloudless sky. I look up towards the green tinted sky and notice the sun is nearing its apex.

"Oh god, I slept too long. It seems those curtains I put in last night worked too well. I need to be quick or someone will take my spot." I take my pole and push it into the soft ground beneath me, causing a squelch and a fluid of some description to come from it. Using my pole as a brace, I push myself up the squishy surface to an outcrop, at which point I redo the process, slowly climbing the curved surface. Minutes pass as I continue to perilous climb, only stopping to catch my breath briefly before continuing. As I crest a peak, I see just above me my destination, a part of the mountain that has been carved away, showing a rib-cage like structure that was hidden beneath the walls of flesh. On the structure are a few people, probably having been there for a few hours before I even woke up. In their hands they hold crude tool, axes and picks, seemingly made from the same material that the mountain itself was made off. The people wear the same goggles as me, although they are each customised to be unique to mine, and they swing their tools at the bone like material, stowing what comes off in their own ragged bags. I climb up to an empty spot towards an elderly gentleman, who sits upon a roughly fashioned seat that has been firmly embedded into the side of the mountain.

"Good morning James, how goes the find today?"

The gentleman looks towards me as I prop myself up with my pole and swing my bag round to my front, digging into it."

"Morning? Its nearly noon." The man points towards the sun that has nearly crested its apex, pushing unceasingly through the sky as I had climbed to where I am now."

"I know I know," I reply, pulling a rusted tap out of my bag. One of the ends had been attached to a bone coloured tube that had been sharpened into a point and hollowed out.

"You're just lucky I saved your spot for you, a lot of people want to be this close to the head, it's where the best stuff is."

I take the tap and slam the pointed end harshly into the bone, it embedding itself easily into the bone as if cutting through the air itself, only stopping when the rusted metal hit the structure. "And I thank you for that, it won't happen again." I produce one of my vials from my pack and attach it to the opening in the tap, turning the valve at the top and watching as the green fluid slowly trickles out, filling the vial. "The curtains worked too well, so now instead of waking up at the first dawn, the sun had to rise too high before it got to me. I'm going to take them down when I get back." I gently put the now full vial back into my pouch before repeating with another empty one. The man looks down at me as I continue the process.

"Why don't you just move to a different room, we are loosing more people every day, so we have the room to spare."

"After getting it just how I like it, fat chance. I'll keep dealing with the sun thank you.

"Suit yourself." James continues to chip away at the bone before turning back to me, seeming to want to say something but stopping himself as he seems me continue to fill vials. "The radiation getting to you?"

I wave away his question as I continue my work. "I'll be fine, I must have not extracted as much as I thought last time."

James gives me a worried look. "Don't let the masters catch you extracting that much, you know what they do with people who become..."

He is interrupted by a rumble and a lout yell that echoes down from across the huge peak above me. "FLESH FALL!"

I instinctively push myself into a tight crevice in the bones and James does the same only moments before a rush of flesh and viscera flow past me, the speed creating a wind that threatens to pluck me from my perch. In amongst the sound of rushing wind, I hear a loud scream that grows fainter as the flesh flows on. As suddenly as it started, the wall of flesh stops, and I clamber out from my hole. I quickly scan the side for James, fearing the worst, before noticing him clamber from his own hiding spot and reattach his seat to the side. I let out a sigh of relief as I look back for my tap, but it seems to have been washed away by the tide. I let out another sigh, this time of dejection, as I look into my pouch. Four vials, hopefully it will be enough to last me until I can fashion a new tap. James looks up towards the peak again. "That's the third Flesh Fall this year, they are getting more frequent for sure."

I wipe the sweat from my brow. "Well, if you consider how humans decompose and scale it to this size, it makes sense that it would take a few years instead of a few hours for the muscles to finally start to give up."

James looks at me with a confused expression. "What?"

"It's starting to rot."

James looks back to the wall. "Ah, I see."

 As I look back around my area, I notice something that wasn't there before. Just below my perch, caught in a fracture in one of the ribs, a colossal bug like creature hangs by its unmoving limbs, dead, probably from the fall. I look over to James as he stares at the creature, dumbstruck.

"You lucky bastard, it's been months since someone last scored a tick. You can make whatever you want from that thing."

I quickly but carefully climb back down towards it, standing on its back as I reach it. "How about we share it."

James looks at me with a surprised expression. "You mean it?"

"For sure." I smile up at him. "I just need enough to make a new tap, after that what's left is all yours. Call it thanks for saving my spot for me."

James climbs down to where I'm standing. "You're the best."

"I know." I pull a knife from my pack and start to carve away at the end of one of the legs, taking the tip and tucking it away in my pack. I'll need to wait until I get back to my room before I can fashion it into a tap, but at least I don't need to worry about finding materials before I run out of fluid again. "There you go, it's all yours."

James gives me a hug, climbing down towards the base of the creature afterwards in an attempt to shift the massive creature. He gives it a push, bracing himself against an outcrop, but it doesn't budge. "You want to give me a hand moving this back to my room, it doesn't seem to want to move."

I shrug. Without my tap, I can't do much more today. "Sure, why not, but you owe me."

I climb down to him and together we hoist the creature onto our shoulders before attaching it to the side of the cliff with a hastly woven rope and lowering it down gently. Over the course of a few hours, slowly lowering the body before bracing it and climbing after it, we make it down to James' room. Just as I give it the last push to get it through the window, I hear a claxon sound from the top of the peak. "SUN IS SETTING FOLKS! GET BACK TO YOUR ROOMS FOR THE NIGHT!"

I say goodbye to James as he pulls the creature through the door and I grab my stick to begin the long journey back to my room. When it eventually get there, after another hour of effort, the sun has just kissed the horizon as the shadow of night creeps across the desert around me.

I grab some food, flesh carved from the upper peaks of the mountain and cooked by the suns hot raise, and tuck in as the sun continues to set. I hear the silence of night suddenly broken by a loud roar as the sand starts to shift, revealing the tips of missiles and massive artillery shells that scatter the ground, as well as the tops of buildings long forgotten. I take this as my sign to retire to bed, finishing my food and standing to head inside. I take one final look up the mountain, revealing the true reason I don't want to leave my room. I gaze upon the magestic view of the a massive head attached to the peak of the mountain that pokes out over the ridge above my window, it half stripped of flesh with massive cracks and breaks in its skull like frame, inflicted by the massive ordenance that litters the dessert. I grip the makeshift curtains and pull them from their bindings as i head into my room and fall onto my tarnished mattress made of muscle and fibrous tissue, a thick layer of dust wafting into the air. As my head hit the bed, I quickly fall asleep, preparing to repeat the day tomorrow. Despite the danger, despite the mundanity and the meloncholy, I endure. WE, endure.