Simon Le Bon Chronicles 5 – Kiss of the Scorpion 

It was my third day in the desert. Everything had gone terribly wrong.
At the meeting point at the gates of the Sahara there had been a shootout between the ransom extortionists and government officials. The kidnappers dragged me into the jeep and drove into the desert. They cursed incessantly and decided that I was a burden and threw me out of the car.

The heat was unforgiving and I had nothing to drink. My mouth was sticky and with my last strength I crawled through the eternal sands, past many Fata Morganas, in search of an oasis. I would die here. I wanted to see the sun one last time because there was nothing else to see here. I looked up and everything went black. I was blind! Now I had lost my eyesight in the desert. I passed out…

I woke up from engine sounds and male voices coming closer.
“Hey, Lady… are you ok?” said a very pleasant voice. I couldn’t answer, my mouth was still sticky.
Another voice came in:
“Simon, she looks pretty horrible, we should just leave before we get into trouble.”
“No Liam, take her to the oasis you just spotted on our way, she needs something to drink.”
“But what do we tell the police?”
“Well, the truth: That I found a blind and dehydrated woman in the desert while I was flying out my falcon.”

The men drove me to the oasis. I drank like crazy, it was so good, better than all the Champagne in the world. I threw myself into the water and felt how my life spirits and my legendary beauty came back. Blind or not, I was alive.
Suddenly I felt a horrible pain in my lips. At the same moment my eyesight came back: I could see again!
“Oh my god, a scorpion stung her! Let me through, I know what to do” yelled Simon.
The man in a white Jellaba came up to me. Only his eyes were visible, the rest covered by a scarf, like a Tuareg. He knelt down, took me in his arms and put the scarf aside.
“Le Bon”, I croaked “Simon Le Bon”.

He bent down and sucked the scorpion’s poison from my lips.

by Saliha Enzenauer