The Lost and the Coyote

By Vincent Paiement Désilets

A gripping tale of survival, friendship, and the blurred lines between reality and madness.

 

Two friends find themselves stranded in a merciless desert. Their journey quickly turns from a fight against the elements to a chilling struggle for sanity.

 

Each night, the desert reveals its surreal nature, challenging their understanding of reality.

 

As one of them undergoes a terrifying transformation, the bonds of their friendship are tested to the breaking point.

 

A riveting exploration of the human psyche under extreme conditions, that asks what it means to be human when civilization is stripped away.

 

Dive into this harrowing tale where survival comes at the cost of unimaginable choices, and the desert's desolate beauty becomes a backdrop for a nightmarish ordeal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macabre Minima
• Release date: Feb 24, 2024
• ISBN: 9798223959830

Book preview

The Lost and the Coyote

Vincent Paiement Désilets

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Black Hare Press

The Lost and the Coyote is Copyright © 2024 Vincent Paiement Désilets

First published in Australia in February 2024 by Black Hare Press

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The author retains the copyright of the works featured in this publication.

All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this production may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

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Edited by Jodi Christensen

Formatting by Ben Thomas

Cover design by Dawn Burdett

Connect: linktr.ee/blackharepress

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Contents

1.Chapter One

2.Chapter Two

3.Chapter Three

4.Chapter Four

5.Chapter Five

6.Chapter Six

7.Chapter Seven

8.Chapter Eight

9.Chapter Nine

10.Vincent Paiement Désilets

11.Black Hare Press

12.Coming Soon from Black Hare Press

13.Acknowledgements

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Chapter One

Through a series of questionable life choices, influenced by drug-induced curiosity and impulsiveness, we ended up lost in the desert, on a peyote hangover, without food or water. We had wanted a secluded place with nothing to disturb us, so we kept walking, sinking deeper into the wilderness, guided by captivating visions and chemically amplified stimuli. We woke up with the sun lashing our faces, still in the blissful state that follows spiritual expansion, our minds polished by the insights of the night.

Only to find out we were in deep shit. No sign of the car, the road, or civilization.

My head hurt and my mouth seemed filled with dust. The soil waved slightly when I looked at it. My sweat-stained shirt stuck to my skin enough you could almost see through it. I wanted five showers in a row.

Felix was kicking sand around. So proactive.

What the fuck do we do now? I asked.

Don’t know. But I’m hungry.

Don’t bring up problems, come up with solutions.

He resumed his sand-kicking. His band’s logo on his T-shirt, three eyes squeezed by a guitar string on a background of purple light—The Third Eyes, get it?—made me nauseous.

I squinted around until my sight was just one flat line on the horizon—dead ground and dirt and rocks, dead ground and dirt and rocks. And the occasional shrub or cactus.

There were no traces to show the way we came from. As if we’d flown there. We dug in our memories for some landmarks we might have seen. Nothing.

We had left my elderly car somewhere along the 86,