Tagged

Gerry's screaming carried across the desert. I left him with cell phone in hand to yell for a tow truck while smoke billowed from the engine, and walked toward a small, abandoned house hoping for a bit of relief from the heat. Pinkish walls, probably concrete, layered with multi-colored graffiti. Bricks from a former chimney lying heaped against a wall. No glass reflections from the window spaces, offering a sharp clear view of the Mojave stretching to the hills. Not another building for miles.

I continued toward the house, wiping the non-stop sweat from my forehead, and kept my eyes focused on the desert floor, weaving a path through the brownish green plants, the occasional mound of ants and a few empty cans of spray paint. The sound of shoes scuffling across concrete made me jerk my head up, and for a moment, I would have sworn that someone had just stood at the empty doorway, watching me approach.

The car hood slammed. I glanced over my shoulder as Gerry pounded fists, kicked tires, shouted and cursed into the phone. I felt bad for the person on the other end of the call. Other cars slowed on the highway but passed without stopping. Best to leave him be when he got into a mood like that so I turned back to the house.

More discarded spray paint cans littered the ground. The outer walls were covered with graffiti: large, rounded letters outlined in black, red, white, yellow, blue and haphazardly filled in; sometimes making sense but more often just a jumble of letters and numbers, and the occasional face or likeness; even the slab of cracked concrete in front of the door displayed big, thin letters and shapes before disappearing inside. I set my hands on the empty doorframe and peeked inside. I gasped.

The walls were spotless, at least what I could make out in the dim light. Not a line of graffiti anywhere. No litter or remnants of a fire or any of what I thought I expected to find. I stepped inside, marveling at how much cooler the air was, almost too cold for the strength of the heat outside. Walking about the room, I ran a hand along the walls, feeling the smoothness of the surface, trying to find a hint of spray paint or marker, something that would have left an indelible mark. Other than another empty door frame near the far end of the house's dividing wall, I found nothing, not even a nail hole.

I stepped through that doorway and stopped. The walls in this tiny space were covered with graffiti, worse than on the outside. Hundreds of shapes running together from floor to ceiling and across. I couldn't quite make out what the shapes were so I crept closer to a wall. Looking closer, the shapes began to resemble human figures waving their arms, legs raised to run, mouths open to shout, bright white eyes staring with --

Voices whispered throughout the room. I glanced around, trying to find where they were coming from when I spotted a man sitting cross-legged on the ground at the far end of the room, his back toward me. Why hadn't I seen him there when I entered. "I'm sorry. I...I didn't know anyone was here." The man didn't move. "Our car broke down. I was trying to get out of the heat."

I backed into the wall as the man jumped up and ran for the doorway. I felt many somethings grab the back of my shirt, and a cloud of small voices murmured close to my ears. I pulled away, spun around to see the tiny arms of the graffiti figures slipping back into place. Their eyes and mouths seemed to be moving.

The man reached the doorway and was almost through when dozens of the graffiti arms stretched from the walls and coiled around his legs. He stumbled, fell, dropped a spray paint can. The murmuring grew louder as I watched the tiny arms dragging him back into the room.

Fear forced my legs into action, and I bolted through the doorway, through the house, out into the desert heat. I didn't slow down until I reached Gerry and the car, throwing open the door and locking myself inside. Gerry pounded on the window, wondering what the hell was wrong with me. I could only stare past him at the house as a can of spray paint rolled through its doorway to rest in the sand among the others.

a work of fiction, © G.A. Carter, 2008