Drag Me To Hell

The desert is coldest right before sunrise. I feel every rock and patch of gravel cutting into my bare feet while Pluto drags me steadily across the wasteland behind him. The rope cinched tightly around my waist jerks painfully with every step he takes, forcing me to stumble constantly just to keep from falling face-first into the dirt again.

My entire body aches from the fight inside the gas station, and what came after. My ribs burn every time I breathe. One shoulder throbs so badly I can barely move my arm. Pluto never slows down. The horizon ahead of us slowly begins to change color as the night finally starts dying to the light.

Black turns into deep blue. Then purple. Then streaks of bloody orange bleeding across the distant mountains. The rising sun reveals more of the desert with every passing minute, and somehow daylight makes everything worse. The rocks no longer hide in shadow. Now I can fully see how empty this place really is.

There are no roads cutting across the desert anymore, no faded highway markers, and no signs pointing toward civilization. The power lines vanished sometime before sunrise, leaving nothing overhead except empty sky stretching endlessly above the wasteland. There are no houses either, no farms, no distant porch lights glowing against the horizon.

The farther Pluto drags me into the desert, the more the entire world starts feeling stripped down to rock, dust, heat, and silence. Nothing except miles of scorched earth and jagged stone stretching endlessly beneath the brightening sky. “Please,” I rasp hoarsely behind him. “Please just stop for a second.”

Pluto keeps walking. The rope snaps tight again as I lose my footing on loose gravel and crash hard onto my knees. Agony tears through my legs instantly. I cry out involuntarily while sharp rocks bite into my skin. Pluto does not even turn around. He simply keeps moving forward, dragging me several feet through the dirt before

I manage to scramble upright again fast enough to relieve the pressure on the rope around my waist. My breathing becomes ragged almost immediately. The desert is already heating up. Sweat mixes with dust across my skin beneath the overalls while the first hard rays of sunlight spill across the canyon walls around us.

I glance backward constantly even though I know there is nowhere to run. The gas station disappeared over the horizon a long time ago. Ruby is gone. The road is gone. Civilization itself feels like a hallucination I imagined during another lifetime. Now there is only Pluto.

He moves with the same relentless pace mile after mile without ever showing exhaustion. His huge frame never hunches or slows beneath the growing heat. He does not speak. He does not look at me. He simply keeps dragging me deeper into the desert toward whatever waits ahead.

Toward whatever Papa Jupiter and Big Momma are. The thought knots my stomach so tightly I almost feel sick. I start noticing things scattered across the desert floor as the sun climbs higher. I see rusted animal traps half-buried in the sand and strips of old clothing snagged on thorn bushes.

Bones lie scattered across the desert floor beneath the growing morning light, bleached almost completely white by years beneath the sun. At first I try to convince myself they belong to animals because the alternative feels too horrible to think about, but then I catch the unmistakable shape of a human ribcage half-buried in the dirt beside a cluster of rocks.

A skull rests nearby with its jaw hanging crookedly open toward the sky. My stomach twists violently the instant I realize what I am looking at, and I jerk my eyes away immediately before my brain can fully process how many more bones might be scattered out there in the desert around us.

My throat burns from thirst now. Every breath tastes like hot dust. “Pluto,” I whisper weakly. “Please.” Nothing. He climbs a rocky incline ahead without hesitation, forcing me to stumble after him while the rope digs cruelly into my waist. I nearly fall twice before reaching the top. Then I finally see the shantytown.

It sprawls across the far side of the canyon like a cancer growing out of the desert floor. Rusted trailers. Leaning wooden shacks. Corrugated metal walls stitched together from scavenged junk. Smoke rises lazily into the morning sky from scattered burn barrels while crooked windmills creak slowly above the settlement.

Even from this distance I can feel eyes turning toward the outsider being dragged home behind Pluto like captured prey. Fear crashes through me so hard my legs almost stop working entirely. “No,” I whisper. Pluto keeps walking, the rope jerking tight again. Beneath the rising desert sun, he drags me steadily toward my inevitable fate.