Chapter 10
I awoke to find my face wet with…rain. A freak desert storm had blown up, to vanish as suddenly as it arrived, and the tent had sprung a leak. The thirsty ground swallowed the moisture greedily, and by the time I rose from my camp bed, the heat of the new day had evaporated the last of it.
I’d never been ill—even as a boy I’d never had any of the usual childhood ailments. Now I felt dreadful—like death warmed up.
The tea I had brewed the night before was tepid, but I drank it anyway, while I gnawed on a piece of hardtack. As I rolled up the blanket I realised for the first time in quite some time I didn’t feel as if that huge phallus I had dreamed of was shoved up my arse. I could walk freely and comfortably.
Someone scratched on the canvas of my tent. “I’m almost ready,” I
