Desert Songs: The Desiccated Cell

Re watched the horizon. Sunk her teeth into a bologna sandwich. Spicy mustard oozed out the sides. She dug her toes into the hot sand.

Sun goes up. Sun goes down. She thinks.

In the distance. Over the dunes. Black shapes rose. Long, pointed at the ends. So black in the middle it hurt her eyes a little but she didn't look away. Three of them, and they were coming this way. Slowly. And then. In jerks and spasms. Like badly spliced film eating itself. Backward and forward. Blinking out and winking in.

This distortion of motion has something to do with time, she thought. Something to do with time. maybe. these black violations are a manifestation of the opposite of nature.

She didn't like these thoughts. They possessed her in an odd manner. She touched the top of her head. A nervous habit.

Tricky thinking thoughts such as these.

Her attention returned to the black shapes. She still did not know what they were. Re finished her sandwich and rubbed her fingers together. Knocked crumbs off. They disappeared into the sand. She reached into her pocket and took out her watch. Held it in her hand. Put it back in her pocket without looking at it.

The black shapes were in front of her now. Hovering. Undulating. They were extraordinarily long this close up she realized. Re looked left and couldn't see its end. she looked right. Same thing. But when she looked right toward them. She could see them all. in their entirety.

She thought. What a strange vantage point I occupy. She shrugged.

She looked only a little bit to the left. And the thing was close enough to touch. She reached out. Slowly. Couldn’t touch it. But. The middle part of it - right as she achieved the limit of her reach - turned gray. And her hand was gone. Re jerked back her arm. There wasn't anything there. There didn't seem to have been anything there. Ever. She felt as though she were forgetting something. That she lost... what was it?

Never mind. She thought as she rubbed her stump. It was a nervous habit. She stared at the black things. The gray spot was darkening.

Like the sunset in black and white.

And then just as the spot was about to become black again a sound blast erupted from the exact pinpoint of zero within the blackening circle. A high-pitched keening wail like a thousand bagpipes, flutes and mothers mourning. The gray circle matched the black majority and the sound disappeared.

The backward forward jerk spasm motion of the traveling black things began again. And as Re watched them go. She realized. It wasn't temporal fluctuations. They weren't aberrations. That was just how they moved.

Very inefficient. Re allowed a bologna sandwich to slide out of her arm. And took a bite