Harvesting Shadows part 1

 

This is my first attempt at something I've always loved — literature and reading (who doesn’t, right?). It’ll continue for a few chapters, and I’ll be sharing them here.

Harvesting Shadows by JG

The desert was a bleak expanse, its cracked skin stretching endlessly under the indifferent moon. For most, this was a wasteland — a place of sun-bleached death and shifting sands. For those desperate enough to cross it, it was a portal to new life. But for some, it was a graveyard paved with illusions.

Javier Ortega knew that better than anyone. A survivor of three failed attempts to cross the border, he'd seen what the desert could do: how it could shrink a man’s hopes into a kernel of despair and leave him hollow and burned. Yet tonight, he wasn’t crossing alone. His sister, Rosa, clutched his hand, her knuckles white, her breath tight with anticipation and fear.

They had found a path — a "safe" route offered by a coyote who charged too much for promises too thin. The darkness seemed like an ally as they trudged forward, keeping low beneath the whispers of wind. Around them, the vastness was punctuated by thorny mesquite and scattered rocks, shadows on shadows. Nothing moved except the dust and the quiet terror in their eyes.

But the desert had watchers. Unseen eyes. Silent machines. And where the watchers found movement, they descended like ghosts, cloaked in silence, swift as the wings of a hawk.

Javier first heard it as a dull whump of compressed air. A sound that shouldn’t have existed in the middle of nowhere. Before his mind could process it, Rosa's hand slipped from his grip. He turned, his stomach a twisting knot.

She was gone.

The night swallowed her. He blinked, the darkness suddenly alive, monstrous, whispering. He opened his mouth to shout, but his scream barely formed before something hard hit the back of his head. His vision went white, then dark.

---

When Javier woke, his body felt suspended, weightless. No desert grit beneath his fingers. No sky above. Cold light beamed down on him, sterile and sharp. He tried to move, but metal cuffs bit into his wrists and ankles. His clothes were gone, replaced by thin paper-like fabric clinging to his skin. His head pounded with a nauseating rhythm, and panic clawed its way up his throat.

The room — if it could be called that — was mobile. Walls of reinforced steel vibrated with the hum of an engine. A screen flickered nearby, displaying a list of body parts. Kidneys, corneas, lungs. Values next to each, like items in a marketplace.

He wasn’t a person here. He was inventory.

Two figures moved around him, their faces hidden behind surgical masks, eyes glinting like obsidian chips. No words, no hesitation. Just the efficiency of those who had done this too many times before. Gloved hands prepared syringes, scalpels gleamed under the harsh light.

Somewhere behind his terror, a realization pounded in his brain: This was a machine built on desperation, powered by shadows. Was it government? A rogue syndicate? A private enterprise in the dark underbelly of global markets? It didn’t matter. The result was the same: Human bodies fed the gears of profit.

Javier strained against his restraints, muscles burning. The figures didn’t look at him. To them, he wasn’t dying — he was dismantling. A series of parts being carefully salvaged. The cold bite of antiseptic filled his nose.

Somewhere, someone would wake up with a new liver, a fresh pair of lungs. They’d never know his name. They’d never see the cracked earth that had swallowed him.

A machine beeped softly as the first needle plunged into his arm, delivering a cold wave through his veins. He couldn’t scream anymore. His thoughts fragmented. Rosa's face blurred in his mind, her eyes wide with terror.

Outside, the desert wind howled over the dunes, a whisper covering shallow graves. By dawn, there would be no trace of him. Just more shadows stretching across the endless, indifferent sand.

 Harvesting Shadows to be continued. Part 2 You like or need to comment please do in box in comment section