Black. The second I got out there in the open I knew I shouldn’t have gone. Went? Gone. Desert. Walking. I’d imagined the desert as some sort of glowing hum of golden sand with carts set up selling locusts and honey. Maybe I had to be in the Negev for that. I saw lots of those tumbleweeds, though. Warner Brothers wasn’t lying about those. Tumbleweed continues as cartoon. I was very excited when I found my first oasis. Oasis, ringed with weeds and reeds, a little scummy. A bit unimpressed by my first mirage. Reaches out to puddle of water on ground, hand comes back with sand, he looks at sand passively. I never should’ve left the road. Lying down on sand at night.
Night.
"Hey! Wake up Man!" a genuine Arab, looks like the great Omar Sharif.
"Urrr….?"
"Are you lost?"
"I don’t think so."
"Then what the hell are you doing out on the desert? Get the hell out of here!"
"You seem a little upset."
"Yeah, I had compassion for the second, I didn’t think you were some idiot dehydrating for fun. Drink some water."
"I don’t know if I want it."
"Drink the water or I’ll bury you in the sand."
He drinks.
"Now, where are you trying to go?"
"Nowhere in particular."
"Okay, where are you going now that I am going to bury you in the sand if you don’t come up with something better than that?"
"…East."
"There isn’t anything to the East."
"Good."
"Now I think about clubbing you on the head and dragging you to the closest gas station."
"Go ahead."
"Look Man, are you suicidal? You’re talking some pretty dumb shit."
"No."
"Why are you here?"
"I don’t really want to think about that right now."
"No, Man, I’m asking you how you got here."
"My car overheated."
"And you walked out here instead of calling for the tow truck?"
"…yes."
"Man, they shouldn’t let people like you go around unsupervised."
The morning.
"Now, you walk that way, you’ll find what you want."
Things looked familiar.
The Oasis. Sitting on the edge. Slight sunburn. A man appears in the distance, coming from the West.
The man is sandy and dirty, an Ad Exec type, Cal, he crawls to the edge of the oasis. Philip doesn’t move. He looks at Philip briefly before cupping his hands and drinking, he chokes and coughs some of the water up, then drinks more and rubs his face with it, then his hair, then he pulls himself forward until he’s in it and submerged. Silence, the ripples die away. Philip watches the spot where the man disappeared. After a minute a reed pierces the surface of the water and water spouts out of it. Time passes. The reed retracts. The man’s head emerges from the water.
"Which way is the road?"
Philip points North.
"I was way off."
They both look North.
Cal is drying off on the sand; Philip hasn’t moved, he is more sunburned.
"Plane."
Philip looks at him.
"Plane crashed, little Cessna. Crashed at night. Guess I’d gone farther than I thought."
Philip keeps looking at him.
"I took off from El Paso. I guess I ran out of gas somewheres south of Lordsburg. I thought I was West of it."
Philip keeps looking at him. Philip looks at the tracks he’s made in the sand on his progress toward the Oasis.
"Can’t keep my head on straight. Shouldn’t trust that fuel gauge."
Cal plucks up a handful of the weeds around the oasis and stuffs them in his mouth, he chews them for a long time, cups some water in one hand and pours it into his mouth then, with a little difficulty, swallows it all.
Philip: Do you exist?
Cal smiles a Cheshire Cat smile, his tracks vanish and he vanishes.
My second mirage was more impressive. Or was he my third?
Philip grabs a handful of weeds and reeds, tears them up and puts them in his mouth, adds water, chews for a while and swallows, looking where Cal was.
Night.
"Hey stupid Man."
Second.
"Stupid Man wake up."
Eyes open, lying back from the spot where he was sitting all day.
"I tell you go this way. I come back, you’re still here."
"I’ve been seeing things."
"Brain farts. Get out of the desert, you don’t belong here."
Takes out a small trail cake.
"Eat this. Now."
Philip starts eating it slowly.
"These things you see. They come from your head. Like dreams. Lot of room up there, lot of things to see, but they come from up there, not from nowhere else."
"I liked them. I don’t remember my dreams."
"That’s healthy. You don’t remember them is healthy. You’re sick, you remember them, that should tell you something. Now get off the desert. It doesn’t want you here; it doesn’t want anything to do with you." Helps Philip up, Philip is unsteady, balancing with one hand, munching the cake in the other. "Start walking now." Points north, gives him a guiding push. Philip starts walking.
Night, Philip walking.
Sunrise, Philip comes to his car on the side of the Highway. It is rusty and dusty. He gets into the car and turns the ignition and it starts up with a roar. He sits there for a second, then starts driving.