Deserted

I am no longer worried about people knowing where I am. It doesn’t matter. They can see me when I come back. They can spend their days with no thoughts of me, until a story with me wanders past, and they say “I’ve been thinking about her, I wonder what she’s up to now? I hope she’s happy,” or sad, or disappointing, or whatever they think of me. To those fleeting thoughts, I say, “I’m not happy, or sad, or disappointing, but I am alone.”

At least, I was alone, until I couldn’t stand it anymore. I couldn’t take this small house anymore, a ridiculous size to live in while in the middle of the desert. I walk out the back door until my porch light could no longer reach me.

I lay face down among the brush, feeling the dirt get into my pores and mouth and getting immediately gritty.

One day, I left work, and I didn’t want to go home.

I wanted no more schedules, no more paychecks, no more rent, no more plans to make, no more laughs to fake, no more weird looks from white people, no more arguing what my face says when I’m not talking, no more consideration of you.

I drove west towards the closest ocean on the chance that I felt like driving for six hours. I left my suburb, passing the city, passing smaller and smaller towns until I hit the open desert. The brush and saguaros stood stoic in the unchanging landscape, guarding secrets I was never meant to know, and housing creatures I would never see.

Once I passed my sixth lonely house at least an hour away from the last small town named after a gemstone, I wondered if any had been abandoned. When I passed the next one, I took the next exit five miles down. It didn’t even have a rest stop. I u-turned on the small street, following it even as the bumpy pavement turned to hostile dirt, warning me.

As I was about to get violently nauseous, I saw the white adobe house ahead. I turned left on its mile-long driveway. How were you supposed to find this address if there’s not even a street sign? “White House on the north side between exit 131 and 130.”

My car door slam fell flat. I reached the door, the only barrier to a new life without even a lock. Why have a lock where the ground is flat for miles with only two-foot-tall brush?

Miraculously, the stove worked, and there was running water. Whoever built the house was not ready to give up indoor plumbing, and I am grateful to them. I found the bed with reddish sheets, but sitting down brought up the brown layer of dust. I found a basin to fill with water and got to rinsing them off. My first night was spent next to the fireplace - there was even firewood, along with dead saguaro, on the side of the house - wrapped in sheets that weren’t completely dry. I hated it, but I couldn’t bring myself to get back in my car. I didn’t want anyone.

The first week was golden. People reached out, but receiving no response from me was not new. I only did what my body asked of me. I slept for as long as I wanted, stayed awake as long as I wanted, becoming nocturnal for a time but I quickly missed the sun, even while it scorched. I did have to go back to the small town named after a gemstone to pick up food and supplies. I finally had an excuse to buy an ax. Others would think me stupid for not buying a gun.

The vole finds me first. I feel its little nails on my leg when it decided that I had been still for long enough that I was no longer a threat. It starts chewing on the fiber of my clothes, testing the toughness. Then it finds my hand, nibbling at my fingertips as I stay still, relishing the feeling - I am not alone.

Usually, in my crowded rented house in the suburbs, I could do nothing in silence. I listened to audiobooks, podcasts, radio, music, videos, anything to avoid being alone with my thoughts. Here, I didn't want to listen to another human voice. My mind didn't even linger on the embarrassing situations it used to, not even the one that might have brought me here.

The morning I decided to leave, my mind was like a dust devil - unexpected, yet easy to rile up. I was angry at myself because I had run out of tea and bread because I had forgotten to go to the grocery store the night before because all I wanted to do was stay in bed because I didn't want to face my office walls, again, like I was expected to because it’s how I was supposed to get ahead in life. I still went to work that day to stare at a computer screen with dozens of tabs and windows that were supposed to show my success. I got easily distracted by my office shelf that day, seeing the nails start to peek out of the wall. All the books on it that were supposed to show off my intellect were weighing it down. It wanted to crack. I ripped it off the wall. My coworkers heard the crash, stopping at my doorway to find me holding a shelf with the nails pointed out and all my books splayed at my feet. My boss pushed through them, and I told her I would clean up tomorrow.

Once the vole starts to try to chew my fingertip off, is when I hear her approach. The swoop at the end of her flight, sailing down to grab the vole in her talons. She takes it to a nearby saguaro, rotting with holes in its body to make room for new life.

It was only once the novelty began to wear off and my callouses were thickening that I was able to hear to life around me. The doves called in the morning, easily mistaken as owls with their cartoonish cooing. Sometimes there was skittering in the house from mice or voles. At night, there was a ghostly screeching. A few nights into listening, I finally felt brave enough to sit up and look out the window. The moon was not yet full, but it gave enough light for me to see her - the barn owl, gliding like a spirit.

I heard the miniature crack of a small skull being crushed in beak. I still don’t get up. I was listening to life around me for the first time since I had left. Not just a cry for help or companionship from doves and mice, but death as an act.

I walked out the back door because I still couldn't bring myself to get in my car, to leave back to a life I didn't want. I wanted to be part of the calls for companionship in the desert. I wanted the dirt to swallow me whole, to be integrated into the desert cycle. I could greet the rain and feed the cacti. At least here, I would not get lonely.

I’m still face down, coated by dust and brush, when she calls out. It’s the ghostly screeching I’ve been hearing at night, incorporated into my dreams. I could not see her heart-shaped face that haunted my nights. All I could feel was her powerful beak piercing into my cheek, slicing it up to she could regurgitate me - along with the vole - to her chicks. I still didn’t move, relaxing into feeding her from my own flesh and blood. I relaxed until I could see her face eating my cheek below me. She looked up. She knew about me. Someone had to.

My face, half-eaten, looked out blankly, mouth slack and full of dirt. Once she was done, she dipped her wing under me, showing the moon her latest catch.