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You Don't Belong Here

 You dig. You’ve been digging a long time. A featureless blue sky sprawls, staring down at you. It scorns you white-hot sunlight, painful and scorching. Judgmental as long vanished gods. 


You’re dirty. Dust on clothes that in another world, another time, were expensive, implication of status. Now they’re just a shell. A hollow you live inside of. 


Digging. Digging. Digging. A shadow crosses the sky on huge wings, plunges you into darkness for just a heartbeat. There’s blood under your fingernails. You swore you scrubbed and scrubbed, you were careless this time, so careless— 


It’s done. Another doll in the dirt. 


Dusk comes and chases the Sun over the horizon to usher in perpetual, desert midnight. Cold, unblinking stars manifest in silence. You numbly climb into your car beneath them. Driving away from this, from the thing you broke. 


She’s there by the side of the road. Bloodied. Gazing at you. 


Every mile is accompanied by that face. 


No other cars. No gas station light, no haven town. 


Just a cracked, porcelain face and bottomless, black eyes. 



_______________________________






It’s such a beautiful town. You’ve been driving for so long. Endless, parched desert stretching in every direction. A cratered, monotone landscape changed only by distant table mountains that seem impossible, purple smudged mirages. They’re not real, you tell yourself, driving on a thin asphalt ribbon to nowhere. Not real. 


It’s such a beautiful town. You’ve been driving for days. It comes up out of the desert floor like manna from Heaven, like a miracle. Quaint little homes and businesses, all draped in familiar Americana, red and white and blue everywhere. Signs smile with the words “Open For Business!”— it’s wonderful. 


It’s a beautiful town. 

You’ve been driving for.. how long has it b—-

You pass carefully cultivated parks so green they seem like dreams. Like a fantasy oasis. Homely baseball diamond, football field. Neighborhoods that should be filled. Alive. 


Where is everyone? 


What’s happening? 


It’s a beautiful town. 


You’ve been driving for so long. 


Road after road after road. 


Avenue after avenue. 


Empty homes. Empty parks. Nothing but silence. 


It’s a beautiful town. 



_________________________________





This rifle was the Devil’s favorite. He slew legions of angels with it in the War of Heaven, hungry golden bullets that could crack universes and turn concepts into meaningless bundled words. It is beautiful. Metal so black it’s almost blue, refined onyx overlaid with silver, ivory. 


You pulled it from dead hands. Victorious. 


It feels perfect— familiar. Like an old friend. The sinking Sun descends and throws warm red light over everything, drowns this world in blood. 


Somewhere deep down inside, you can’t help but feel that this weapon, this rifle— has been waiting for you. 


_______________________________







There is a woman in black at the edge of the town, standing just off the side of the road. 


The Sun is everywhere, bleaches everything that it touches, like this world is a scattering of bones turning ever paler under its gaze. But the woman stands, still as a mesa, her cloak defiantly still against any clawing desert winds. 


Her wide hat plunges her face into shadow completely. You see no features— nothing except staring, golden eyes. 


Watching.

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