I

I know what I heard.  I know what I saw.  They think they can fool me.  Tricks of the trade.  A little Now you see it, now you don’t.  To hell with that!  I’ve been around.  I know the score.  Nobody’s fool, no matter how hard they try, and they never stop trying.  Keep the parrot locked in his cage. Plenty of grain.  Plenty of water.  Put a crude painting of the mountains and sea in front of him.  Keep him from feeling like a prisoner, keep him from wanting to escape.  It doesn’t work anymore.  Hear me you bastards?!  I’m wise to the whole game.  Years of it and I went along.  At the beginning, nobody had to twist my arm. It was a handsome way to make a living.   Betrayal can become a way of life, just like any other.  You learn to avoid the mirror, to pretend you can’t look yourself in the eye.  Smoke and mist, smoke and mist.  Then after a time you no longer hide. You stop seeing with real vision.  The image grows dim.  Finally nothing remains of the dignity you once were ashamed to cheat.  A paid informer must shed his conscience like the new skin of the lizard.  The sinister evolution of one who sees and hears for a price.  They have paid my price over and over.  I’ve spent a lifetime on the other side of the ancient table while the powerful pushed coins toward me as though I were a dog panting under the table for crumbs.  Can you hear me?!  I acknowledge my debt!  I admit my deeds!   I know all of you, each and every one.  The stains on my soul will not dissolve if I name you, but you won’t escape either.  All of us are guilty.  I’ve sentenced hundreds to death with my words, my identifications, my predications...my betrayals.  Some of my senses gained in acuity, others lost their powers of perception.  I cannot hear the train from inside my quiet room.  It is as if I am secreted within the depths of a distant chamber, but what is outside?  What do I really hide from? The voices of my superiors?  The thousands of files swollen with the photographs of the hapless victims I betrayed?  The face of the man who brings the new package, the new file with the profile of the next one to be murdered?  Certainly not the train, since the elevated platform on which it roars is only a few yards from my window.  He will come today, his leather shoes will not creak when he climbs the iron staircase.  He will come today, hear that?  Hear that you hypocrites?!  The parrot just gave up a piece of information.  Better snatch it away before his claw strikes it down into the excrement of his cage.  The messenger will hold a bunch of papers under his arm; they will not be folded into a rectangle. With the documents will be a surveillance photo of this month’s target.  Another fool, another necessary sacrifice?  What you are about to do, do quickly.  That’s right, that’s right, stay on track, let the script speak for itself.  No, no more of this, no more of the food that drives you insane with hunger, the drink that makes your throat fill with thirst. On this final occasion, I will not examine the papers, I will not identify the faces, no more predictions, except for what I will say now.  I will not delate any further.  On his way up to my room he will pass a door left ajar, there will be nothing for him to see beyond it, his movements will be jerky, mechanical, awkward, he’ll want to get it over with, he won’t be happy to be up here.  There are no windows in his spacious, heavily guarded office, there’s only one window in my suite of opulent rooms.  My treasures surround me: paintings, antiques, objects d’art, rare gems, first editions, the rich rewards, all of the proof of my excellent labors.  All of my narcotic self-delusion; the long, intoxicating, deep breath of culture made possible by my suffocation of the living.   But if I were outside, looking at the wall surrounding the window to this room, at this moment I would see the shadows cast by the speeding train cars.  The sun shines upon the white wall from behind the train, and the narrow spaces between each car, creating cracks for the sun to enter, give these shadows an oblong shape and a broken sequence: long dark blocks consecutively divided by vertical slivers of brilliance.   Like a hieroglyph, like an Aztec inscription on a piece of stone, like the border design of the silk handkerchief of the wretch who was killed that summer by the Eiffel Tower.  They stuffed a dead bird into his mouth, wrapped it in the bloodied handkerchief, to show he had been killed for treachery against us, something about his failure to maintain a sacred code of silence.  I think he was killed by the man bringing the new file tonight, and when he climbs the third flight of steps he’ll stop for a moment to catch his breath, the fold of papers having loosened.  He’ll adjust it as he notices a bare light bulb hanging directly above his head.  It won’t project very much light, no shadows will appear on the walls, unlike the outside wall, upon which many train car shadows are appearing at this very moment.  I cannot see the effect.  It is a fleeting image.  The speeding car shadows regularly interrupted by the flashing white wall.  I said some of my senses have been sharpened, enlivened, expanded, my talent for association, for the poetry of observation, hasn’t abandoned me.  The image reminds me of the surface of my table, made of pink marble.  Pale white swirls run in thin veins across the lustrous stone, but when he stoops down to pick up this table, he won’t notice that these white strands are quite unlike the single spot of blood on the floor.  After the Eiffel Tower incident, I acquired this table, a rare Greek piece, the sides ornamented with carvings in a pattern identical to that of the shadows cast by the train cars: narrow, vertically positioned rectangles inserted at regular intervals between a series of wide, horizontally positioned rectangles. There were little wisps of straw from the packing crate stuck to the white gloves they gave me in the antique shop when I examined the table, and like the man’s eyelashes under the windy Tower, the straw fluttered gently in the draft of the shop’s door.  The train is still passing, moving very rapidly, attacking the air with the tremendous vibrations of its steel body.  Subjected to this sudden energy, the air around the train is shocked out of its immobility and frenetically twisted into confused invisible gusts. Alone in this room it is not impossible to imagine that these gusts are as much a part of the train as they are of each other.  A passenger aboard the shaking vehicle has just turned a page of his newspaper in an awkward, stiff manner.  When he boarded the train, he carried the daily in the right pocket of his coat.  That the newspaper was vertically inserted into the pocket, the bottom half concealed and the top half protruding, proves he was unaware, at least while boarding the train, that I would choose this moment to look at one of the horizontally positioned rectangles carved into the side of the table.  Did you think the parrot lost his wisdom, his ability to see, to hear, to know?  I’m in the last box in the last chamber on the last level of the mad house, but I have the answers to the questions asked in the light.  The knife is on the table, I made sure of that, because he will come today, and after he climbs the tenth flight of steps, he’ll stop again, he’ll lean over the stairwell, looking down the entire length of the staircase, fatigued from having climbed so many flights, and a feeling of vertiginousness, produced by the sight of the serpentine staircase, will make him cough up some phlegm in order to clear his head.  He’ll crane his neck so that the glob of spit falls free of each flight and lands on the ground floor, he’ll try to follow its descent with childish curiosity, to see if it drops all the way down, but the darkness of the hallway will prevent him from doing so, and he’ll move on.  The sputum will in fact pass each flight and hit the ground floor, striking it with a quick, tapping sound which cannot make him think of the clicking sound just made: it is the cap of the pen pushed down by the thumb of the man sitting in the train.  He’ll not even hear his spit hit the floor, having already climbed the eleventh flight of steps by the time this impact occurs.  The man in the train has been circling advertisements in the classified section of his newspaper, and within the vastness of my apartment, the sound of the closing cap is instantly muffled; already it has faded, quite as if it never occurred.  The man coming to see me will not make footfalls, as though he were in a silent film, like a man walking ankle deep in fresh snow, maybe this will affect his hearing, as he’ll take no notice of the impact of the glob of spit which, after all, will resound rather loudly on the floor of the empty hallway.  Let’s not forget of course that this impact won’t reverberate as sharply as that of the table falling to the floor, and there is little chance he’ll discharge additional mucous, expelled as a result of horror, when he picks up the table.  He’ll fail to notice the unpleasant contrast between the white swirls and the single bloodstain, and he won’t react to this vile combination of decorative design and violent death. Am I making it easier for you, have I diluted the opaque haze of the crystal?  You bastards!  You would like me to remain a speaking mannequin, a mouth embedded in the sand whispering clues to the buried treasure.  Where is the next one, how do we find the next victim?  But the fool is awake, and a last stroke is needed to remove myself from shame, even the man in the train has put away his newspaper and tightly shut his eyes, because I am looking at the splendid things in my vast apartment and he is without employment.  There is a small group of people standing beneath the train platform with eyes open, their conversation has been interrupted by the din of the train, I could hear what they were talking about because one of them was complaining of the cramped apartment he and his family occupy, and their urgent need to find a more suitable dwelling.  With this and any other discussion temporarily suspended by the deafening noise of the train, a member of the group, the one who was speaking of his desire to move his family, vehemently curses the train that is violating not only their conversation but the placidity of a beautiful spring day as well. It has been spring for some time but I have perceived nothing to tell me so.  There are those who believe it is wonderful (or almost wonderful) to move and use the body in spring, to take long walks or swim or perform calisthenics.  It is not impossible that he is among those who support this belief, for he will suddenly reach for a useless wire dangling from the ceiling at the landing of the twentieth and last flight of steps.  Here too, there will be no shadows on the walls.  He will be startled merely by the unexpected appearance of the wire and, while grabbing at it as if deflecting an assault, he will lean back defensively before hopping with alarm onto the next step.  So diverse movements will occur instantaneously: the reaching movement of his arm and hand, the arching movement of his back, and the hopping movement of his feet.  Of course, there is the remote possibility that he will lose the pages because of this flurry of motion, but I have picked up the knife in spite of this possibility and I hold it in my hand as I finally look through the window. The train is about to disappear as quickly as it appeared.  Behind me are my quiet room and the table.  The carvings on the table remain unchanged despite the fact that the shadows on the wall will soon be erased, since the last car of the train is speeding by and, when it has completely passed, will allow the sun to uniformly cover the wall.  I would like to see how radiantly the white wall reflects the sunlight.  And as the train vanishes from earshot, I would hear other parts of the conversation resumed by the group of people under the platform.  But the train is still audible (although I cannot hear it), and I do not possess the necessary viewpoint (I am in my room), and the group of people hasn’t returned to their conversation precisely because I am in my room and cannot hear the train.  Slowly I raise and lower the knife, plunging it into my heart.  I stagger from the window and topple over the table.  Overwhelmed by the incredible pain my chest, I slowly lose consciousness while trying to preserve the vision of a distant point at the opposite end of my room.  Past images whirl behind my closed eyes, images of the papers throughout the years, the faces I have identified, the forecasts I have made of who would do what and where they would go...then a sudden image of myself in the papers, my photograph disclosed by another delator too weary to go on, alone in a large room near the window.

II

Remove any contractions

The truck pulls up quietly despite its bulky shape.  Across the street, a man been has watching television.  He does not hear the truck through his open window as it comes to a stop.  It is as if the truck has been there all the time, instead of first emerging from a long tunnel en route to this street.

A commercial for aspirin appears on the television screen.  An unseen commentator is comparing several different products.  Three rectangular aspirin boxes have been longitudinally placed against a very light background.  The tiny spaces between each box reveal slivers of the background that contrast with the much darker color of the boxes.

It is night.  The man transported by the truck slides open a panel door and steps into the street.  He brushes himself with an easy, fluid motion, as he checks the sheaf of papers he’s been carrying.

The cab of the truck is separated from the rear by a screen that had been left open during the trip.  The man looks closely at this opening, trying to see the driver inside.  For a few moments the dimness prevents him discerning the driver, but the man finally attracts his attention and waves to signify that he can go.  He leaves the van through a side door and looks around briefly.  Then he slides back the panel door that shuts tight with a quick, tapping sound.  He hears this sound with his head bowed, looking absentmindedly at the pavement, hearing the departure of the truck without returning his eyes to it.  Unlike its muffled arrival, it leaves with a burst of screeching tires.  He enters the building on the corner where the truck left him.

It is late.  Dawn is not far away.  The other man has shut off the television and gone into the next room.  While the man carrying the papers noisily climbs the echoing metal steps, the man who was watching television extinguishes a bare bulb suspended above his bed.  He enters the bed in darkness.  He is disgusted with his solitary existence and the stifling enclosure of his two shabby rooms.  In the corner is a newspaper with several circled advertisements for larger apartments.  He closes his eyes.  His breathing becomes irregular because for some inexplicable and probably irrational reason he finds it difficult to freely inhale when in a supine position.  He unbuttons his pajama top that seems to constrict his diaphragm (or so he imagines).  Now that the light has been turned off, a few spots of light appear on the walls of the man’s bedroom, cast by a dim, flickering streetlight only a few yards from his window.  

The truck is still moving.  The driver speeds away because he is anxious to leave this city before daybreak.  He is not used to his role as an operative and is sometimes made uncomfortable by the pressures it entails.  The day before, when he entered the cab and patiently waited for his passenger, he glanced at the rectangular rear view mirror.  Noticing that it was not in its proper position, he adjusted it accordingly.  Yet, throughout the trip, he remained unaware of the bundle of papers carried by his passenger, as the man had placed the documents in his coat pocket, facing the opposite side of the cab, on the right.  Thus, the papers were kept completely out of the driver’s field of vision.

The man has climbed another flight of steps.  As he continues, he hears loud coughing through one of the closed doors.  He decides that someone must have been rudely awakened, or even made sleepless, by this rather fitful and apparently uncontrollable cough.  Moments later, he still hears the coughing although he has already climbed the next flight of steps.  This reminds him of an incident which occurred many years ago.  His younger brother, then only a child, had taken a large but harmless fall down a steep hill while flying his kite.  The boy’s grandfather was looking on and, when he saw this unfortunate yet comical accident, broke into such peals of laughter that he began to cough.  The grandfather’s coughing was very similar to the coughing heard on this occasion, although on this occasion there was no accompanying laughter.  When the boy got up he naturally was overcome by dizziness but had sustained no serious bruises or injuries.  His grandfather, still laughing insensitively, wanted to continue flying the kite, but the darkening sky and the boy’s obvious loss of interest ended the day’s recreation.  It had rained early that morning and the ground was still soggy.  The man also remembered that their sneakers squeaked as they crossed the muddy valley.  As they were leaving, his brother, in a fit of puerile rage, broke the thin strips of wood fastened to the plastic material of the kite.  In the expansive, sprawling valley, the snapping of the wood quickly faded away.  He recalls this minute detail even though by this point he has mounted enough flights to make the coughing completely inaudible.

The man who was watching television just awoke drenched in sweat.  He opens his eyes and looks at his cluttered room.  For some reason totally unrelated to his dreams, he suddenly thinks of the friends with whom he spoke the previous afternoon.  He gets out of bed and gropes through the darkness, trying to make his way towards a table where there is a bottle of pink and white pills.  He has difficulty seeing and reaches for the table without realizing that it is just in front of him.  This gesture knocks the metal table over with a crash.  Overcome by exhaustion, he leans against the wall and stares at the floor, growing livid and grimacing as though he were experiencing pain or nausea.

After climbing the last flight of steps, the other man wonders whether or not the party to whom he was instructed to deliver the papers will be home.  His mind is quickly filled with grating irritation.  He curses these nightly undercover excursions that so often disturb the serenity of his otherwise simple routine.  But he reconciles himself with the thought that these special jobs are just a small departure from his regular reconnoitering work that, for the most part, he finds quite agreeable.  The greatest drawback to his present duty is that he must travel many miles in order to perform it.  He much prefers to remain idle in his small office and occasionally look through the window.

It takes him several moments to find the right apartment number because, here as on all the previous landings, the lighting is poor and the walls thick with shadow.  Curiously, he feels very chilly in spite of the spring air that has grown so warm over the past few days.  

As he is about to knock at the door, an adjacent door suddenly swings open.  An old woman emerges, her hair tied into long ponytails that make her look ridiculous.  One of the ribbons has come undone and dangles uselessly in the air, held against her head by static electricity.  After appearing in the doorway, her eyes wide and shocked, she lurches forward as if she was going to strike the man, who holds up his arms in a protective fashion.  Then she retreats into her apartment, backing away with the same abrupt motion as before and shutting the door with a bang.  The man merely smiles and shakes his head, turning to the apartment he must enter and gently knocking on the door.

There is no answer.  Anxious to complete this annoying task, he knocks again only louder and faster.  Still there is no answer.  Believing that the apartment is occupied, and that the man inside is asleep and unable to hear his knock, he applies himself to the door in the hope that it may have been left open.  He is relieved to discover that the door is unlocked.

He stops once inside the vestibule, quietly shutting the door behind him.  He listens intently for a sound that might indicate the presence of a human being.  He hears nothing.

If he were outside and looking at the skylight in the hallway, he would see the first traces of dawn brightening the murky landing, filtering through the skylight in soft, bright rays.  The vestibule is unusually long and, because of its constriction and the small amount of light, gives the impression of being in a subterranean passageway, leading into what appears to be a very big room.  Directly across from the vestibule, at the other end of the room, is a single window.  Through it streams several wan rays of sunlight, illuminating one or two indistinct objects a few feet away.  The man uses this coruscant area as a focal point to guide him through the room.

As he enters, taking slow and cautious steps, he becomes tense and again looks at the rectangular window, at the same time placing his hand over the fold of papers.  He’s grown uneasy finding himself in a dark and apparently empty room.  He takes a further precaution by unfastening the safety strap on his holster so that he will have easy access to his revolver should he need to use it quickly.  He can see very little and is now unsure if the consignee is in fact there.  Still he hears nothing.

He is about ten feet from the window but the objects lying there remain indistinct.  Behind him is the enormous, silent room.  For a moment he thought he heard part of a conversation from an apartment on this floor.  But the sound of the voices was no louder than a whisper and faded as quickly as it arose.  Finally, he reaches the end of the room, runs his hand along the wall, feels a light switch, and turns it on immediately.

The first thing he sees in the fully lit room is a body lying face down on the floor.  Next to the body is an overturned table.  He lifts the table in order to get a better look at the cadaver as he crouches over it.  He doesn’t completely set the table right side up, but holds it at an angle, balancing it on just two legs.  Gripping the dead man’s shoulder with his free hand, he turns him over and in the process leans backward, making his other hand lose its grip on the precariously balanced table which falls to the other side of the body.  As the table tips over onto the floor, its marble surface can be seen only from above.  There are white curlicues throughout the marble. They gleam under the strong, fluorescent light shining from the high ceiling.

Not even once removing his eyes from the body after discovering it, his attitude has become casual, almost indifferent, now that he’s seen its face.  Although he does not know the dead man, seeing his face somehow dilutes the unsettling feeling of discovering a body in a gloomy room.  What remains is the simple fact that his time has been wasted, since this man must be the special informer for who last night’s deliverance was intended.

As he stands up, he glimpses a knife stuck into the chest of the corpse.  There is a solitary spot of dried blood several inches from the body, a surprisingly small amount considering the size of the wound.  Looking past the bloodstain, he notices the overturned table with its legs sticking in the air.  At first he’s puzzled to see it on the opposite side of the dead man, but then he remembers that he made it fall in this direction while turning the body over.  He stands by the window, turning off the light switch as he lights a cigarette.

Slowly he raises and lowers the match, gently shaking out its flame.  Dawn has risen, giving the room an extraordinary shine illusorily fixed upon the blade of the knife, embedded within the body by at least four inches.  

He hears the faint rumbling of a distant train.

From dust we come, a voice from the cabin outside, as a hunter pats down his fatigues. Clouds of dirt rise into the early morning air. Last night’s party returned at dawn. From the top drive rig over the bed of the truck hang two varmints strung up by their back legs. The coyote’s sacrificial blood drips down the side of the wheelbase and onto the passenger’s side tire. The group of men are unloading their thermal scopes, firearms, and digital predator-calling tripods, slapping backs and hollering congratulations at each other. 

Don clenches his jaw, looking out the cabin window. It’s going to be like catching lightning in a bottle to try and produce in the same area twice in twenty-four hours. He would’ve liked to have claimed first kill, but his job needed him for a last-minute shift, making him arrive 

a day late to their annual coyote hunting trip. The permit they have will only allow them to hunt certain spots in the area to avoid private properties, and as it is, these boundaries continue to narrow every year. 

Don heads out the front door to greet his friends. He is affirmed in bond by rough handshakes coupled with shoulder pats. 

Well well well, Rim. 

Hey, good to see ya, man. 

There’s my man, Mr. Rim!

2 

Don takes himself for a drive in the desert while his buddies use his extra cabin to shower and unwind for the day. The group of hunters will leave again at sunset. 

He passes out of the San Bernardino Mountains, heading through Yucca Valley and toward Twentynine Palms. Snowcapped mountain peaks cradle the vehicles traveling below on the highways, and the lower elevations are blazing hardened desert sand. The snow line this year is as low as 500 feet elevation. Sand washes over sections of road where intermittent flash flooding has carried it in heaps across the broken asphalt. Don takes a turn to head south through the national park, where he decides to pull over and take a walk through a flat of teddy-bear cholla cactus. 

The trails are choked with tourists, outfitted in crisp outdoor gear, posing for photos. The trail is barely a quarter mile loop on flat ground. He listens to the chattering of visitors coming from all around the world, the crunching of their new boots over the hardpan, and the cooing of mourning doves birds in the thin, warming air. 

He decides to move on farther down, pulling off at an interpretive sign on the side of the road. The vista here faces the Pinto Basin and the sign describes the inhabitants of the region, hunting large predators and gathering seasonal plants some 4,000 years ago, before their way of life evaporated from the face of the earth. Don stands alone, looking toward the horizon, contemplating if he, too, is at a time in history when his way of life is disappearing. People here used to move freely with the seasons, to follow the hunt, and the hunt followed the hidden regional waters. 

Looking over the sunbleached interpretive sign, Don wonders if these early inhabitants thought of their own annihilation. The faded sepia figure of an indigenous woman stands twisting herself toward the camera: topless, barefoot, her woven basket perched on the crown of

3 

her head. She stands in the shade of California Fan Palms, the fronds reflecting in the pool of water behind her. One foot in the cool water, one foot on dry land, like an angel of temperance. Don leaves Joshua Tree, and the highway bleeds into a dry beige lowland, where the earth is naked of plant life. In the desert valleys, white wind turbines tower over the cars on the road, spinning in the oscillating heat. Don changes his route, deciding he wants to drive underneath the “Angel on the Mountain” on the steep slopes of the San Jacinto mountains in the Desert Hot Springs area. 

The chalk white figure spreads its wings, reflecting so much light, it appears holographic. Why do angels always appear before those crossing the desert? Don thinks as the horizon lopes beside his truck. And although they are often illustrated as beautiful giants, with feathers like white swans, Don recalls that in the bible they are also described as beings existing in multiple dimensions at once, and therefore appear to man as a terrible mass of eyes and swirling wings. 

Don’s fingers grip his leather steering wheel tightly. His vehicle is surrounded again by the rotations of the wind turbines, giants powered by a terrible force felt but unseen. The hot rising desert air roars across the road, slashing and clawing, throwing ropes of sand across his windshield. Apparitions rise out of the earth and bloat themselves on the violence of the harsh winds. Dust devils rattle Don’s truck as they swirl through him and howl away across the impassive land. Everywhere the desert is kept at bay by sealed and temperature-controlled homes and cars. The people living here are unimpressed with the land, and in return, the terrain does not need or care about them. 

Pulling back into base camp, Don immediately smells the boys frying up liver. They eat heartily and pack their gear as the sun slips over the horizon.

4 

The desert landscape reverses the domain of the sun as the giver of life, and instead returns it back upon the diminished moon. In a land with such sparse rainfall, the sun hoards every drop of moisture it sets its cyclops eye upon. Its greedy rays wither any fluid, flowing thing, plump with life. 

Life here is lived in the shadows, hidden waters are reserved and stored. Night eyes are enlarged, filled with liquid ink, and they drink in what little light pours down from space. Their bodies are designed to sense more movement than light. The silent moon above stalks their activities. 

The hunting party unloads in the dark, in roughly the same spot they were last night. All around Don, his buddies unpack an endless catalog of equipment: LED lights, thermal riflescopes, clarity optics, high-density loads designed to drop predators and save fur. The food chain stops here, eh, Rim? Don hears clicks, snaps, and screws threading as tripods expand and digital gauges are set. Night vision goggles slide down each set of eyes, remotes for the digital predator-caller speakers are secured in each hand. They hold an elevated and unobstructed view over the land, and the wind is in their direction. The boys continue their talking, content to settle back and let their gear do the work for them, to kill the staying earth. 

Don sits in silence, unable to hear anything but their talking. 

Don has only his shotgun slung on his back and a few callers looped around his neck. Boots up to his ankles protect against snakebite, Carhartt trousers, jacket, and beanie. His gloves are the leather pair he uses to ride horses. 

With the boys talking, he can’t focus on the wind, scent, movement, nothing. No coyote would be stupid enough to come back a second night to the same location, Don thinks. At first he

5 

tries to ignore his buddies’ chirps and chatter, but Don finally erupts into movement, standing up and shouldering his rifle and small ammunition pack, and slouching off into the dark. As he trudges away, his friends fall silent, placating themselves that he must just need to take a piss or somethin’. 

Hey, Rim! 

Don hears an uncertain voice call out after him in the darkness, but he has already made progress over the hard earth. He is closer now, to a crescendo of silence. He desires only the sound of his boots, his heartbeat, and the rushing night wind scaling down the slopes and meandering through the bajadas lined with mesquite. A few creatures scurry away by his feet as he makes his way in the dark. 

The farther Don gets from his group, the more eyes are upon him; his lonely, towering figure stalking in the night stinks of a death that is more barbaric than the death these desert dwellers have become accustomed to in the already harsh landscape that has produced spines of stones, fangs, and hypodermic needles pulsing with venom. His stature alone, upright over the land, roaming, makes him a terrible and foreign predator. 

After some time with his own clumsy blindness in the dark, Don begins to hear the hum of the stars burning overhead in the great velvet threshold above. He can feel the vibrating echolocation of bats, their call and response sound bouncing back to their vessels, like the naming of things, and the throbbing allure of saucers of night-blooming cactus. He is far away now from blinking lights and the magnification of scopes. Trapped heat spreads from flat stones. 

Thousands of iridescent eyes shimmer in the night, their aurora coating allowing them to watch Don’s movements in the dark. There is nothing but sand and earth, and below that, lost mines and trapped fossil waters locked inside stone. Palo verde, acacia, and mesquite scratch his

6 

jacket sleeves as he passes. Creosote scrub expresses its scent against him. Wands of ocotillo flutter in the dark. Everything is slithering, breathing, and blinking. Hearts made smaller than Don’s are beating at different rates in the chill night air.. Early Spanish colonizers moving across this landscape saw everything living here as work of the devil because they believed the lies of the sun. But the creatures here are guarded by the borrowed light of the moon. The silence is full of it. 

In an instant, the temperature of the already chill night air drops. The darkness becomes even more profound. The creatures stop their humming, as though an eclipse is passing overhead. 

Don stands still, not able to make the outline out of anything in the absolute dark. He feels something like static building at the back of his neck. Slowly he turns, sensing a figure as large as himself in his shadow. Something is spinning, as large as a black hole. Don can barely make out the edges of it. Movements like globules of mercury just barely flash in the pitch dark. It is more terrifying than the padding of animals encircling prey, and Don is frozen in place by a force as powerful as a glacier sliding across a continent. Don’s last visions, as his rasping breath leaves his body, are of the figures of the Nephilim being washed away in the great flood, their spirits left to roam the land. 

Rescue parties scoured the hills for weeks, searching for their lost friend, to no avail. For although Don is close by—in fact, sometimes the men brush against where he lay—his body has been dragged inside a pool of liquid light that rotates like wings around him, muffling their calls and concealing its victim. Although his clothing was torn in strips off his body, and the materiel 

he carried is pushed aside and discarded at the edges, the swirling mass obscured his remains.

7 

Don’s heart was surprisingly tender as it slipped down the gullets of the various nocturnals that came in shifts during the desert’s chill night. The teeth of their jaws cracked through bone while a chorus of tongues licked meat from ligament. The stars above gazed down from their incandescence to see paw prints forming constellations around his remains like patterns of scattershot. A chortle of clicks, yips, purring, barking, and cries. Their voices come and go, and are carried off together as a babbling in the wind.