Work Text:
My feet are heavy as I climb the dirt trail. Sand stings my skin, and I raise an arm to shield my face. A storm is building on the horizon, but it won’t bring the cleansing reprieve of rain, just choking dust and wind.
A sun bleached cross greets me as I crest the hill. Weathered paint flakes off the dry planks, the wood beneath turned grey with age. The grave it marks is sunken and old, and nothing remains to indicate whose bones lie beneath. I wonder who mourned this person; who was it that cared enough to lay them to rest on this little windy hill?
A dozen more just like it stand scattered across the small cemetery, held in by a jagged wooden fence that juts along the edge of the hill. Wiry vines curl over the old wood, pulling it down into the earth to join the bones of the dead. Following its path, I find what I’ve come here for: a mound of fresh dirt, and beside it a shallow trench big enough for a man.
Wind whips across the hilltop. I steady myself on the wooden fence, and try to take a step forward, but my feet are stone, my stomach lead, and in my mind the scorching sun no longer hangs in the sky, but the moon. I see stars spilling across the void of the universe, and in the distance New Vegas, glowing like a beacon of life. It’s never seemed so far away.
I’m on the ground, three men stand above me. One of them speaks, but I can barely make sense of his words. Blood rushes in my ears. My hands are bound, and I can’t get the rope to loosen. The man has a gun.
I try to shake the vision from my eyes. The sun is hot, it pounds down on my exposed neck. I take my hat off and let the heat sear my face. I try to remember where I am. I try to remember that I’m alive. I touch the wound on my temple, feel where the bullet went in, and my hand trembles. I can’t stop the thought that my bones should be here too, buried in a nameless grave on a windy hill. A fitting end to a life not well lived.
I stand alive among the dead, the heat of the Mojave sun on my face and dusty air in my lungs, and try to find a reason.