The Desert Speaks

The half-moon would hide nothing of the monstrous act.

The creatures were out of their burrows, looking for blood.

The vastness of the desert seemed to expand at night giving everything the shroud of invisibility. There are no defining limits, blackness above and blackness below, with just the ambient light of cars and trucks that paint brief frescoes of rock and brush and cacti in the glint of passage.

The desert promises fate, usually nothing of good. Snakes, scorpions, unrelenting blast furnace heat… any method of killing a man… or woman. But the nights give it a veil of innocence. The magnificent sunsets that lead the civilized world to pour more wine and begin to relax – as long as they are couched comfortably indoors with climate control and pest control devices to assure one of their protection… But the night does come, and the more lethal animals crawl the scrub and saguaro cactus, the Joshua trees, or the brittlebush, in the very same aim as any other predator.

Protection is an honorable ambition if not perfect, so walls, locks, thermal-pane windows and security systems triggered by movement and sound all promise you will awaken tomorrow. Yet, even then, the snake finds his way in.

No, the half-moon would not defraud truth as the predators were out, and the hunting party had their victims, and their reward.

“Take their clothes… both of ‘em. Strip ‘em ass-bare, we don’t want anything to identify ‘em.”

The woman pleaded in a wretched, beaten voice, “Why Sal? We was just gettin’ out. We weren’t hurtin’ you, or none of ya…” a mournful, peeling whine followed, bloody drool spilling from her mouth as she scanned the six desert vultures perched above her… her eyes bulging like infected blisters.

“Shut up, Ginny. Makes no sense in telling a dead person why they’re dead, does it?”

“But I don’t have to be, Big Sal! Denny don’t have to be… we was only gettin’ away to Washington… I got family… you know I got family…”

“Well, you got plenty of family here in the desert too, and you weren’t thinking too cool about us were ya?”

Dennis was squirming in his bonds, two belts bound his legs together, a thick hemp kept his hands tied tightly behind him and had a length that ran up and around his neck, keeping a deathly pressure on his trachea. His mouth was stuffed with a dishtowel, giving no utterance life; his eyes were big, cracked moons, bloodshot and bleeding, and they still managed to beg as silent as he was.

“We can’t hurt you, Big Sal… Denny and me were gonna get married is all…” Ginny fell into the dirt, tears making mud in front of her.

“It’s what you know, you stupid bitch! Yea, that can hurt. Leonard, do Dennis and let her see.”

Leonard stepped into the semi-circle of vultures that were keeping the victims penned and bound, he had a machete impossibly shining in the night. “Bloodhound” stepped in and grabbed Dennis’ hair and pulled him face-forward, causing him to fall prone, his legs now kicking like a snake in its death throes, writhing, flopping, any frenetic thing that might spring a gaping hole in reality where he could escape this scene of death – his own.

Ginny just bawled out a sorrowful cry, the mud looking like blood in its black-and-white world of night. She turned her head into the sand to bury her eyes, to dive headlong into some other fiction, because she would do anything to run from this reality.

“Settle his ass down, Tobias!”

The third of Big Gal Sal’s heavies jumped on the whipping legs of Dennis McManus… the erstwhile client of “The Zanzibar Club” who had the fool-born luck to fall in love with a whore. Just Tobias’ weight was sufficient to fully seize every function but the bleeding and crying of the man.

“PLEASE, BIG SAL! WE AIN’T TELLIN NO ONE ANYTHING!” Ginny would not open her eyes at her plea, for she didn’t want what they had to offer her this night.

“Silkie, Gretchen, make that bitch open her eyes! She’s gonna see what happens to her prince charming.”

The two whores jumped onto their friend and coworker; already bound, she was easily managed, but the beaten woman bit Gretchen, and got a thump to the head for her courage. Silkie sat on her back, grabbing Ginny’s head, lifting her chin to make her see. But the eyes were as cemented as a mausoleum. Gretchen, with tears of her own, pulled her friend’s eyes wide with her fingers… Ginny’s only escape was to let her eyes roll up… and it only helped a little.

Leonard put one knee in the sand, and laid the machete across the back of Dennis’ neck, then lifting it high, only momentarily looking at the girl he had fucked regularly, loved enough to think maybe there was a future… but knowing Big Gal Sally would never permit it… he looked back down at the nape of the victim’s neck and heaved into it, bringing the blade down with enough force to scythe through flesh and bone and end in the sand. Dennis stopped wriggling instantly. There was an eerie silence, even as Bloodhound lifted the severed head, until Ginny wailed into an uncaring night filled with monsters.

“Shoot Ginny. Don’t need to punish her anymore.” Big Sal offered it as banally as asking one if they wanted more vodka on their ice. “Don’t leave heads or hands. Bag ‘em and sink ‘em in Lake Mead. Bury the bodies anywhere. Make sure it’s deep enough the coyotes don’t pull ‘em up. Burn the clothes somewheres else.” She was pointing about as if directing a to-do list for children with chores.

Ginny’s voice was absent as she yawed and screamed… no sounds coming… just blood-tears and agony, her head fully in the sand.

Big Gal Sal leaned into the dying woman, “All you had to do was keep fuckin’. Like that was a problem? You were like a daughter to me, Ginny.” She stood upright, briefly thought about saying she was sorry… but she wasn’t. Her operation was too important, its secrets meant everything. “Go ahead Leonard.” Big Sal turned to walk back to her Range Rover, and after a few paces of silence, she looked over her shoulder at her right-hand man. “What the fuck are you waitin’ for?”

Big Sal knew Leonard’s feelings for the broken, slobbering woman in the dirt. This was a message to Leonard as much as it was Ginny’s end.

Leonard took the nine-millimeter from Bloodhound, sighted on the woman’s head on the desert floor and fired three quick rounds. He then gave the weapon back to his partner, looking back at Big Sal without a word.

“There, doesn’t that make you feel better after she was gonna leave your sorry ass for the data analyst fuckhead from Chicago?” Leonard didn’t reply, he turned to grab his machete. They had more work to do before the night was over.

Big Gal Sal was the first to drive away. The whores were next, holding their own emotions, because any solidarity was a sign of weakness – or rebellion. One could get beat out of you, the other meant a similar death.

And as the last of the diffuse light from vehicles abandoned this vast stretch of desert, what first seeped back in, grey to black, then came in tidal completion of night, and nothing more was seen but the stars of distant celestial galaxies.

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