Flash Fiction 2

There's a man walking down the street, and he's barefoot, and shirtless. I'd worry, because he looks so skinny and dried out, but that's what everyone looks like here. Skinny, dried out, and windswept, just like the desert in which we live. Sparse and thorny.

The desert gets into us all, the rough erosion of grit tearing away the layers of us, cutting holes into us so we bleed ourselves out and the sand can fill us back up.

Some people are better for the wear of the heat and the wind. They keep their horses at a slow gait as they wander through the unincorporated streets of their rural hideaway. No police department, no fire department; no one to infringe on their quiet meandering. A bandit's roost sprung up amidst the joshua trees. A place for crows, and coyotes, and men with leather boots and hats.

There are places where you can see as far as the curvature of the earth. A landscape dotted with tumbleweed and distant rock formations. A one gas station town, with a population of not enough, and too many at the same time. In the morning, you can hear the echoing crows of a thousand waking roosters, and the returning barks and yips of hundreds of feral dogs.