Assembling Shards

Maya woke from a euphoric dream, with dust in her lungs and a face full of sand. She spit by reflex, snapping her eyes open to see, and the sun exploded with light. That’s when she knew something was wrong. Even before she’d rubbed her eyelids and tried to get a sense of her location. Before she’d seen the landscape.

Barren.

Maya was facedown in the middle of the desert: the sun beating down on her bare back; a migraine like muffled wailing; sand and shrubs and heat for miles around. She coughed violently and sat up too-quick, painting more bright stars across her eyes. Then, focusing, she dragged the shards of last night to mind.

A white car door closing. A black woman with dark shades. A small puddle of blood— and vomit?… Gone. There was something else there, but the images lurched away, with a sudden breeze.

Maya looked down and saw that she was shirtless. Her bare breasts dusted over with dirt and sand, while a bottle of Olde English laid empty across her lap.

"Huh?" she mumbled, laughing. It was all so absurd. Her tits out in the middle of the desert. Failing to remember anything.

Then she saw her hands; caked in dried brown blood and dirt, and the fear slithered in. Dry blood? she thought. Where’s my shirt? She gulped and covered her breasts with her arms. Embarrassed. And alone. And the unnecessary modesty was the feather on the scale. With a grimace on her face, Maya dipped her head and began to cry.

She almost missed the backpack, through the tears. It was just a leathery smudge beneath her running mascara. Off in the shrubs as though someone had carefully placed it there. Sitting open and upright. Inviting.

Coincidence?

Maya dared to hope. She prayed it held answers. Maybe a phone? she thought. Or a fucking diary…

She walked over to spill the contents of the bag, and out clattered cans of beer. All empty. More alcohol? she thought, reaching down to grab a can, and her shoe nudged something heavy from inside. A gun dropped to the sand with a soft thud.

Maya flinched, and the night blasted back to mind.

Smoking in the alleyway. Wrestling with a black lady. Snatching the gun from the woman. A struggle. The gun—!?

Maya gasped. She’d shot the lady! She’d shot the lady, and watched her bleed out in the alleyway.

Suddenly Maya could taste the vomit from the night before. Rancid, stale acid on her tongue. She gagged, and the retch catapulted her back into the memory.

Maya looking down at the blood spread beneath her vomit. Maya alone and petrified in the alleyway. Maya buying beer in the gas station. Maya running into the desert, the border town behind her.

It was all too much. She dropped to her knees in the sand, and squeezed her head hard enough to hurt. She couldn’t breathe. She was a killer! And her temples wouldn’t stop pounding. And her eyes wouldn’t stop watering. And the damn screech was getting louder.

She opened eyes she hadn’t remembered closing and began to run; arms pumping and sweat pouring. She didn’t pick a direction. She didn’t plan ahead. She just ran, wanting to put as much distance as possible between her body and the evidence. There was only her rhythmic panting, and the screech, and the wind stealing the moisture from her cheeks. A blessed blind panic.

At some point during the running, she tripped over her feet, crashing hard to the sand. And there she laid. Crying into her arms while she considered what she’d done— what she’d become.

When she finally ran out of tears, some time later, Maya forced herself into a sitting position to think— to plan. If she was going to escape, she’d need a strategy. She'd need a way to get back into the town, unnoticed. Or at the very least, she'd need a shirt.

Imagine her surprise to see one lying in the sand before her. A shirt. Her shirt. With her bloody handprints all over the sandy white fabric. She vaguely remembered yanking the blouse off right after she’d left the town. When she’d realized it was obvious proof of the murder. When she realized she’d been stupid enough to wear it inside the gas station.

And there the shirt was. At the top of a small hill. Just outside the city limits. Meaning… Maya had run back towards the town! She looked up and she could see the buildings in the distance. The dusty short post office pressed up against the courthouse. The people going about their days.

Then she could hear the police sirens; like sharp wails or a high-pitched screeching. The high-pitched screeching. The officers getting closer and closer to a killer. A killer by the name of Maya.

She was as good as caught.

Maya could feel all the emotion leave her. The remorse and hope and fear all shrinking until she was a hollow shell of a person. Until she was empty. And from somewhere faraway, she remembered seeing the name, Cate, on a name-tag. The four letters covered with speckles of wet, red blood.

“Officer Cate,” she muttered detached, correcting herself. Cate was a police officer. She'd killed a cop.

Without thinking, Maya grabbed her blouse and pulled the bloodstained cotton back over her head. She closed her eyes. Crossed her legs. And then she waited for justice to find her sitting in the sand.

Guilty.