Highway From Hell

[I wrote this for a Creative Writing assignment in Fall '07. Our class held a competition - with voting opened up to our class, and any other students who wished to participate in judging - to determine the top three story entries. The requirements of the assignment: the story had to be exactly 200 words; had to contain a supernatural element; had to have a local setting; had to feature two of the five senses; and had to have dialogue/speaking part. My story was voted 1st place!]

He staggered past boulders in suffocating heat. His feet burned, hot gravel crunching loudly beneath them, as heat-waves hovered above the highway like a fiery fog. His eyes felt like sandpaper with each blink. His mouth was Sahara dry, and his tongue, swollen, like a bloated, beached whale. He reeked of urine and sour milk – the putrid stench of salty sweat.
“Where the hell am I?” he asked himself, smirking at the irony of his question. Hell was a vacation destination, compared to this furnace! Angrily, he thought of Lucìfa, who was responsible for his being here on this dusty, lonely road. He’d done everything she wanted, no matter how evil or despicable her request, in order to be spared from her wrath: the black flame of her glaring eyes that seared his flesh and incinerated his very soul. Still, she’d thrown him down the one-way portal from Hades to this desert wasteland.
He looked around helplessly, wondering about the name of this punishing new home to which he’d been banished. A battered metal sign standing a few yards away, glinting in the blazing sunlight, caught his attention. “Imperial County,” he read aloud. Overhead, a lone buzzard shrieked his welcome.