That Shouldn't Be Here

“That shouldn’t be here!” Ruby Sue screams out into the silent hot desert air. An ancient brown lizard sits just a few feet away, he is nearly motionless. He doesn’t flinch at the shrill of her voice. His eyeballs roll all around, conspiratorially, as if he knows she is captive. He knows she is helpless. The lizard shifts and falls asleep.

Ruby Sue doesn’t notice the sleepy lizard. The last thing she can remember is walking beside the dirty man in the desert, her bare feet sinking and burning in the sand. She was begging for water. She was begging for shoes. She was begging for him to keep his hands off her.

Now she is slumped on the ground, lying in the hot sand, nearly naked, bruised, and bloody, shackled to the trunk of a Joshua Tree. The tree reaches its limbs up to the sky as if in worship of the sun, begging for more heat. Ruby Sue is hot and crisp, nearly finished, overdone like an egg cracked open on hot asphalt by a curious child. She’s more than overdone, she is a hard, black cookie left too long in an oven.

Brand new sparkly white zip ties cut deep into her swollen, sunburned wrists. She blinks and stares ahead at the object in front of her.

“That shouldn’t be here!” she shouts again, her lonely thirsty voice echoes over and over, and slowly disappears into the vast and empty terrain. She turns her head from side to side in anguish and tries to cry, but tears will not spring from her swollen dehydrated eyes. Her water is all boiled out from within. Her body is shrunken like a dried pea.

Images, like an old-timey home movie on a projector screen flash in her mind.

First, her husband, Kenny, whistling a cheerful happy tune as he bounces out of their home on his way to work. Keys jingle excitedly in his hand. He's wearing a crisp white shirt, his standard blue tie with his favorite dress khakis she refuses to iron for him. She sees the gap in between his front teeth as he turns to say goodbye. Kenny is always happy, always whistling, always smiling. Ruby Sue knows every detail of Kenny’s face. She has it memorized like a phone number from early childhood. How many times have I looked at your face in these twenty years, she thinks, with your gap-toothed grin, your pepper flecks of freckles, and your sliver of a white line above your left brow? Kenny's mother always insisted it wasn’t such a bad fall. He was just three years old. Just a tumble off a couple of steps. It should have healed up quick.

Ruby Sue used to trace the tip of her finger on Kenny's scar while he fell asleep. But that was years ago.

Kenny slips away. The next scene flashes. Ruby Sue sitting on a park bench in the rain. Waiting and waiting for her phone to ping. Facebook. She forgot her raincoat. Her hair is cold and wet.

She should have opened her mouth to the sky and drowned herself. Now it’s too late. There is no more rain. Only the hot relentless sun.

The image stays. Her phone finally pings. He said he was her high school sweetheart. He said he would see her soon. He said she was the one that got away, just wait, I will be there soon. We can start a new chapter. We can try again. I love you too.

Her marriage was already over. Kenny, with his gap-toothed smile, sitting at his computer whistling and smiling while looking at apartments in the city. One bedroom. Something with a view.

Her husband said he was in love. Who is she? She must like his scar. Will Kenny be okay? Does she know he likes his shirts pressed but not starched? Does she know he is extremely allergic to strawberries? Does she know he sleeps with only one pillow?

She probably knows.

Maybe she likes to trace his scar with her finger.

Kenny told her to go have some fun, "You should start dating again. You haven’t smiled in years.”

Ruby Sue sees the next image start to flash and she closes her eyes tight. She still cannot cry, there is no water left.

“That shouldn’t be here!” she shouts again, her voice now scratchy and tired.

When he finally arrived at the park bench, he wasn’t what she expected. It wasn’t her high school sweetheart at all. Catfished. Her teenage daughters had tried to warn her. The internet is full of creeps, mother, put privacy settings on your phone. Be careful.

And now she is here, shackled, alone, forever tied to a worshiping tree that is thirsting only for the sun. She has no water, no husband, no sweetheart.

Ruby Sue is broken, burned by life, burned by the sun, and she is alone. She will die shackled to a Joshua Tree. He was just a guy she didn’t know, pretending to be a guy she used to know. A guy who was nobody. She was looking for an exit strategy, a do-over with somebody else because Kenny was all but gone. Kenny loved someone else. It was Kenny's idea that she find someone new, or go back to someone old. Ruby Sue was just trying to smile.

Another image flashes in her mind. Big rotten smile, dirty hair, and grisly skin. His hands were on her quick and she tried to run but he was smart. The park bench was right beside the road. Quick exit. Blindfolded. It was raining, and even the dog walkers stayed at home, standing on their porches to keep a close eye on their peeing pets. They were alone. He was an internet creep. Her head was smashed into the concrete, her cell phone and purse swiftly stolen, and then the zip ties, she was shackled and stuffed into the trunk of a car she never saw.

A stranger. The only thing she never considered. He was just a creep from the internet. How could she be so naïve?

But still, he shouldn’t have left that here in front of her. Isn't it enough that she is cooking to a crisp, thirsty, and alone, at the base of an oblivious tree? He was cruel and that was expected, but leaving her to stare at this is too much for her to bear. Not just a creep, but a mean one.

The cruelty blankets her as she drifts in and out of disbelief. She's learned her lesson. She will pay the ultimate price. Her life.

She stares at the sweaty bottle of water, sitting in the sand in front of her, just out of reach.

“That shouldn’t be here,” she whispers, one final time.

She closes her eyes. Darkness.