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For so long all he has, inside himself, surrounding him, is dust, a vast emptiness and the voices, the faces begging him to stay, to save them.
"Where are you, Max?"
"Why didn't you save me, Max?"
Little girls, little boys, people whose names he has forgotten, left behind like a rag in the sand, but won't admit to himself that he's forgotten. Because forgetting is only one step from forgiving, forgiveness and he does not deserve to forget, to be forgiven.
In the beginning when the nightmares haunted him, taunted him, no matter whether it was day or night, he would plead with them, beg them for forgiveness, beg them to stop, to let him go.
He would scream himself hoarse shouting at ghosts. What did it matter, there was no one there to hear. No one to grant him forgiveness. Only him, broken and feral and the vast emptiness and all the things that weren't even real, that were a little too real, cut a little too deep for a wound that doesn't bleed but never stops bleeding.
But after weeks and months and who ever knows how long he stops. Stops begging and pleading because he knows it has no use. They will never stop.
Eventually, when he isn't talking to ghosts anymore, he stops talking at all. There's no one else to talk to, not even the child that comes and reaches out for him because nothing he says can change what happens (again and again and again).
There's no one to talk to and nothing to say.
The words dry up in his throat and what use are they. What use are they at all?
The desert stretches before him, empty and vast everyday, and him, so small everyday.
And the emptiness stretches inside him for miles and miles and galaxies, a whole universe of nothing and nothing and in the middle, him. Too far caught inside himself to think, speak, even do anything else than the same motions over and over again on autopilot. Load the gun, start the car, swerve around a screaming girl, look back but there's nothing there but dust and memories. Eventually he stops looking back.
But the desert, the desert is always the same. Even if there's a storm raging inside his mind, there is the desert. Even if the voices are so loud, screaming, so loud he can barely hear the roaring of his engine, there is the desert.
He takes comfort in the knowledge that there is something bigger than him, that he could die and it wouldn't even make a difference, it wouldn't disturb the desert at all.
When the bastards catch him at first he isn't even sure it's real. (What even is real anymore?) It's been so many times that he's found himself rolling in the dirt, grappling with nothing but the haunting memories of his mistakes.
It becomes real when they tattoo him, muzzle him, string him up upside down. He feels powerless, strung up like a ceiling ornament. And he's still, always, powerless and caught in his own head.
He fights them, claws at their eyes with his broken nails, spits at them, bites at every part of them he reaches.
Their voices mix right in with the ones already shouting, taunting, day and night.
The worst thing is when the little girl walks into the cave and looks around, small, dirty, helpless (and innocent, she was innocent! How could you let her die?!).
"Max?" she calls out timidly, afraid. "Max, where are you? I'm afraid, Max. You said you would save me. Where are you? I'm so cold."
He looks down at her, struggling against his restraints, grunting and shaking, but she doesn't look up, not even when she stops directly beneath him.
There's a bright flash, headlights and a car thunders through in a cloud of dust, taking the little girl under its wheels and carries her away.
No matter what he does it never changes.