1

Listening Closely to a Desert

By Diego Tobin
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I call this GOD: SUN.

As of right now, I am sitting crossed-legged in a boarding room, meditating between the

walls and dreaming up theories on the essence of the Pyramid. The reason for it. That is what it
seems. As if there is an explanation. Often, my mind drifts and continues to imagine that we are
under the sacrament of some unknown order, under some false hope, which posses as a fallacy. It
seems as if we were led here for imprisonment, but no, another fallacy. We cannot know of
prison if that is all our world consists of. There is no further imprisonment. All of our knowledge
lies in the Pyramid. Our first conception of life was in this room.

Rita imagined that we were singing on a vacant island, pretending that a boat was
approaching. Yet, this was how our life really was. Any sense of familiarity had slumbered in the
wretched Pyramid (hush), it had colored the vision in my eyes. The Goddamn desert had watched
our illness worsen. The room we have called our womb had witnessed the withering in our
hearts, of the white lilacs inside that we tried so hard to keep alive.

This Sun, I call God, casts the shadow of a dormant, equilateral triangle in the sand. I
stare at the umbra all day long, creating myths about its infantile nature. Did it end up here, or
did we end up here?

And to remind me once more-

“As long as SUN doesn't keep its eye on you, you can keep breathing.”

I stared at the shadow that has yet to leave, stared at it with anger, stared at it with fear.

2We could also be daydreaming in our coffins-another theory that I had yet to say aloud.

We paraded through the center of the room; she was an elephant of some 1950s circus. I
played the trumpet in tune with the wailing from her trunk, following her close behind. That’s
Rita and me, trying to entertain each other with a match. Rita just said we kept looking at it too
many times, the clock that was. She was right. I would read it like a novel and not move for days
until I realized that the numbers consisting of the clock were just mere symbols that we
associated as numbers. Sometimes these symbols and numbers also ended up in our heads
inexplicably, toying, and entertaining with our opinions and personalities. We would have
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conversations with ourselves that would soon break into an argument when stone, painful silence
concluded our days.

Sometimes, SUN caught you calling it quits, and at a distance, every conversation looked
like a helpless cry. Our gaping mouths were just struggling, trying to form coherent sentences at
this stage. All of this overwhelming fear didn't get into our heads up until a few weeks ago.

Before, we started hearing tiny voices trying to explain the truth behind the walls.

Before the loudspeakers of no origin sounded, called out:

"SUN CAN SEE YOU, IT WILL BE YOU!”

Before we fell asleep to daylight, only to awake again to daylight.

"Infinite fucking daylight. Heh!Heh!"

And we greeted the flesh of the earth scarred in daylight.

I would be pacing about, caught in some internal conviction, telling her that there was no
such thing as God. How could an infinite shadow equate to an infinite being? If so- how could it
just stand there, linger?

Look at this mess, I would say. I would point out the window,

"Look at this mess.”

The little window poked out of the assumed declined wall of the Pyramid. If a mad man
were to climb up a hill, look up in wonder, or in desperation at this-bless him if he somehow gets
trapped inside-he would see a glass pyramid. The glass pyramid sat shimmering beneath a
descending Shepards-Tone of sunset. Isn't it funny? I always imagine that a mad man to be the
one to find us.

I could cover the window with both hands if I wanted to- and I have. I have.

Often, we were drinking the psuedo-liquor that was stored in the pantry. We were in the
middle of an argument, just dipping the whole of our glasses into the murky bowl of orange
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liquid. We didn't mind the foul odor, no, we were breathing it in, all in hysterics, wringing the
incorporeal spirit, deciding it wasn't working, taking another glass, drinking again…we were
trying to get as much satisfaction out of the drink, as we could.

All I say is: "watch your mouth and keep your conscious spotless.”

Sun can see through walls.

Rita liked to tell the truth in which I would say,

“Good for her. Good for her for seeing the truth in this obscurity.”

She would also say, "We are dreaming and we have yet to wake. It's simple."

I couldn't tell you if I believed her then, all I could do was give a small nod and hold in
my disputing words as they burned like fire in my chest. We would drink to the health of every
living soul in the Pyramid and sigh with relief when we finished our glass.

She was on the three-legged stool, knocking her bare feet into the table leg, the wood
wobbling with each measure. She pulled out her hair often, I would see it in clumps everywhere,
and I would smoke a cigarette and watch her pull it out. She was doing it with such delicate
elegance. She was pulling the strewn pieces, taking the strands, and wincing when she had to
give it a harder tug. Doing all of this while humming, She had not eaten her dinner, which was
mashed potatoes piled up, the spoon still beside her plate.

Sometimes pulling her hair made her giggle.

As for myself, I kept my eye on the window, watching for fabled birds, thinking to
myself. I picked up the spoon, shoving each piece quickly into my mouth, and making a mess of
myself on the wobbling table. There was a bed shoved in the corner, a blanket and pillow beside
the dinner table meant for me. My eyes crawled toward the clock on the wall adjacent to the
window until they closed habitually. One small peek would ruin the inhabitants of what remains
in here. She would go back to tossing and turning, vomiting, and cursing the room.

The door remained locked, as it always has, just across from the window.
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One day that door would be opened.

I would watch all the fantastical people that met me, or rather, soothed me in my dreams.
Their faces had no shape, eyes, or mouth; their skin held no texture, their bodies were hollowed
and only the whistled of their tunes resonated deep within in my subconscious. I worried that
these figures would soon erode within my delicate memory if they were to remain there any
longer. I hoped that we didn't have to wait here much longer, either.

I once believed that if you asked hard enough, then you shall receive it.

Yet, miracles take time, and beauty takes time.

Which takes me to my own glum theory. Life crawled forward ever so tirelessly down its
path, and now we only wait for it to make its final breath.

We are in the middle of the floor, crawling.

I lit another cigarette, and stared up at the chute that delivered us our food, our
knowledge, our past times, anything really. Sometimes a little extra would come through, like a
carton of cigarettes, a pound of coffee, a nudie mag once even. It's all free, all for us.
There was a toilet in the corner which had been broken after we ingested rotten meat and
nearly died from dysentery after a week passed by, and mysteriously, no water was delivered.
Beside that was a little space we cleared to dance in circles. We loved to dance. When we
danced, we smiled and laughed, Rita would swing her hair and tiptoe in place, and I just loved to
see it. We were in our bodies, looking with our bodies, admiring each other's bodies. But deep
down inside when we winded down, the flood of air had been reduced to limbo. Our minds
wandered out of their shells once mored and floated with unease. That's all we were, without
looking there, at that clock, God damn limbo! Just floating, living in our heads, and trapped in
the eternal sun phase.

"Look there, some time's don't you only 'think' that shadow moves?" Said Rita.
"SHHHHHHH- WHAT DID I SAY?"
"yadda-yadda okay wise guy, God" She started to whisper as I have instructed her to do so
before.
"God, sometimes he moves. Right now, you say he is looking at us?"
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She smirks.
"Yes," I agreed, I could tell she was going to question my theory of the overhanging being that
just sat there and watched us.
"Say don't you think God would cast not a form indicated by shape, but something inexplicable
all together?"
"Yes." Questions like those often infuriated us, but we got into the habit of stabbing them into
our arms and letting the water boil for too long.
"And wouldn't you say something of the supernatural sense doesn't exist in three-dimensional
nature?"
I took a sip of my water and tried not to start anything.
"Before, I finish. I'd like to add that, just because you see a shadow outside, doesn't mean its
God."
"I suppose if we were given a dominant image to look at, memorize, wander about, perhaps this
isn't God, maybe it is a message from God. An interpretation of God or maybe God (I was
growing impatient ) is just on his perch-forever. You've ever heard of God hiding behind his
window too? Don't you, Rita?

"Don't be so dreary," she groaned.

Rita turned her head and coughed, tilted a glass with little water to her lips, and stared at
me admiringly. She spiraled into chit chat as we beings never adjusted to.

"Can't say much about it." She turned her shoulders and twisted her spine, cracking it, moving on
to another topic of interest.
"What convictions do you really have when you are blindly locked into your reality?"
She asked.
I couldn’t really comment, knowing that she was right.
"All I'm doing here is waiting for Goods to be delivered, Rita. Don't you feel like we are
entitled to some opinions? I'll keep them to myself, mind you, but don't you think that if we are
given this ability to discern hell in this life, don't you think I can have at least some say in how I
feel…" I rambled.

She intervened and giggled again:

"That door, remember if you can't hope for anything else, hope for that door."
The door was as real as flesh and blood to her. It spoke to her and talked to her when she
tried to sleep. I could tell she was really gullible to her visions.
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"No, Damn that door, damn that window, damn that bed, Damn the CLOCK, DAMN
ALL OF US, DAMN…" and I set my fist on the table, tremors shaking the silverware atop until I
could collect myself and stop.

The perpetual sunset met my eyes again and again and again and again and again………..

The single note roared outside from the cruel gale. This wind was in a constant struggle,
the horns of life blaring and their divine context remaining indecipherable.

She went to the window of the room and went silent, staring through an almost port side
window and laid softly on her side. Her hair ran down the length of her body, and she put her
hand through it, stretching it to its full length. She closed her eyes as she listened closely to a
desert outside. Just below the window were a pair of shoes, only worn around the room a few
times, an extra chair, and a shower-head that extended to about a foot from the ceiling. The floor
was concrete, the original wood having been torn out from past escape attempts. The cans of
food stacked in the corner that we never finished, the stacks of books in foreign languages that
we used as tinder- besides that was a top hat.

This was one of the many obscure gifts we had received.

At first, it wasn't much use to us. We just passed it between each other.
"Too bad there isn't a rabbit in there," I said.
"I wouldn't know how to pull one out anyway," She laughed, tossing her legs to each side
in a vaudeville trot and slipping the tall hat on her head.
"How does it look on me?" She turned towards me, her hair falling like water, dreams
awash in her vision. She laughed like it was all an act, she fell into tears, right there looking at
my hat, laughing. I soon fell into tears, perhaps into the sudden realization that I was the one who
knew it was all an act.

There was no mirror included with the room, but we supposed that it might be a gift
someday. Once a jar slipped through the chute as if it was tossed aside as useless. It arrived quite
early in the day, which was unusual. Still, we shook away any suspicion and left it on the kitchen
table with fermenting bread and apples and months worth of sugar and ketchup mixed inside.
After weeks of preparation, the batch was ready. We opened up the lid, dipped a cup in, and held
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our noses, and finished our glasses at the same time. Three glasses got us mad and acting like
wild animals. We figured one glass would help us sleep, and it was something new to enjoy.
"Getting past the taste, it honestly does the job." She slurred.
I nodded and spun in my chair, and she just did a little dance. I blindly snatched the top
hat and put it on my head, I imitated a man, a man I had never met, but one constructed in my
dreams:

"Well, hello there, miss! Fancy the day!" I did a little waving motion with my hand.
"Fancy the day, it is quite warm outside, don't you think? Mind if you take a walk around the
room with me. Well, hello there, miss! Fancy the day! Would you care for a meal? Hello, I am
KIND OLE' Tom!"

She smiled weakly, perhaps in some sort of pity, and took another drink. After a moment, she fell
into a fit of laughter, and Dreary Tom fell into a big frown.

I filled my glass once more and hummed an obscure, rhythmic noise in my head. I
hummed it again, picturing my skull emptied, the sound a sprig in the wind solemnly drifting
through its caverns.

"What a terrible gift, what's the use! What is the use?" I announced in sudden frustration
as my ears grew hot, and my stomach boiled.
"Don't be so dreary, "she crooned.

She had the right idea, but I spat, "Look at me, I'm Dreary Tom.”

And I tossed the hat aside, sending it skidding off the tabletop until it slid underneath the
table. I have no recollection of how long this had gone on for, but I have played this character
frequently. Dreary Tom has surfaced on occasion more and more, painfully, who I often forget,
doesn't write quite empathetically like this.

Sometimes, I would exclaim in agony, that I would crawl out of the God damn window if I
got it open. I would crawl out and step outside. I would run. Slide down the length of the
Pyramid, maybe I would be rewarded for my freedom. 

I screamed in misery and shoved the table aside. One of the legs snapped in half, and the jar
slipped to the floor and shattered.

"Look what you did," She said. "now this whole place is going to smell."
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When I don't have much to say, the color in my eyes reminds her of static; they didn’t
really say much.
Dreary Tom acted as if he was dying of thirst, and she wasted the only water we had left.
"What's the use?" Dreary Tom gasped once more.
"What's the use!?”

She scratched her open bed sores splotched across her shoulders and head. I watched her
from my stool, dousing my cigarette into the ashtray.
"I think I would be lying to myself- If I were to say that I'm content and complacent with being
here. But, to be honest, I will have grown to love that view, right out that window. I don't mind
endless sand, I don't mind SUN. I don't mind, SUN. Nothing mattered, in the few moments,
before I suffered, the next moments will mean nothing too, you see?"

"This room is made for one," She said, her eyes adjusting to something far and distant in the
horizon of the plaster wall.
"huh?" I ignored her, feeling incompetent.

Once we had an argument whether the clock was digital, it had been so long that we had
forgotten. We must have been teenagers. That's when we still looked at the clock. That's when we
always knew. Not anymore, I figured, after what seemed like weeks of brooding, writing steadily
to unravel a particular allegory we found ourselves in.

 "This mess," I said, turning around in my chair, rubbing my eyes and bending down to Rita.



SUN was looking at us now. SUN knew we weren't meant to have a story, to have life in
sequence.



"Events never occur," I began, choking. "Don't you know? Why is it still out there? Why?"
"God had died?" She said.
"What? No. Why?" I stammered in shock at her accusation, she was really losing it.Poor dear,
brainwashed by solitude.
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"Dead in his tracks, If you want to argue, then explain the dream. This is no place where Christ
suffered anymore, no place to clean. To be destroyed, to continue for goodness sake! We are his
interrupted dream, collapsed even. Stuck collecting honey in an empty hive.”

After that, she stopped talking altogether.

She looked about the window again to see if the shadow moved.

"No! Why is it we are still here? Why has the Sun not left? Where is everybody?"
"Dead," she said
"Where is the wind? Where is rain? Where are the clouds?"
"The, cars, the horns, the lights, the planes, if there is no place to start and to end, it's all just a
hallucination, a dream we persuaded ourselves was real,”
"lightning? Have you seen lightning?" I spoke, half-listening, half in a panic over this discovery.
"no."
"NO?"
"It all just stopped.”

There was a period where we used to flush things down the toilet. We contemplated flushing our
names down the toilet. Still, we decided to leave them written on a scrap of paper under a drawer
in case we were ever found. But never the clock. We were all too afraid to take it down though,
too scared that if we're to look at it any more than we had, we would remember that we had two
eyes and were not just pawns in somethings game. We would have it in our heads and think
about it all night. We just wanted to forget about that altogether.

She claimed that we were not born here, that we just shut out the past, that we were just losing it.

But no, she's losing it. She's losing it.

 
"I thought I just saw that door open!" She screamed, rushing to the door and pulling at the
fake knob that only turned and turned.

"I swear. I swear it opened!" Rita tried the door and felt along the flat surface of the wall
surrounded by claw marks all around its fake wood borders and drawn hinges. She was just like
one of my characters, and for a moment, I thought that she even disappeared. I laughed, I
laughed hard. We were both losing it, on the verge of realizing it or not.
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One more theory: life is pure comedy. It is nonsense, it is deranged in this world and
deranged in the other. It is sharing a stage made by a stationary GOD, and we are acting
accordingly, dazzling SUN, who will be laughing.

"There is no point to all of this. The machinery of life has ceased. What the hell is the
point? That illusion up there, that is why we can't let go!" I crossed over to the window, looked
outside, in all directions, screaming.
"SUN, CAN YOU SEE ME?"
I wished I had not let my emotion get the best of me. I take blame for everything that happened
at this point. SUN showed me its eyes. I banged my fists against the window. Just below the
round glass was a warning sign with a discretion reading: DO NOT OPEN.
 
I must have read that warning a million times.

 I stepped back, heaving my fists into it, one against another, as hard as I could until my
ears turned hot with tears streaming down my face. I reached for the stool and swung it right into
the window, cracking it. Rita started to scream behind me and attempted to grab for my arms to
restrain me, but I lunged the stool forward once more, crashing it into the window. The sheet of
glass shot out of the frame, falling into some kind of mysterious oblivion that seemed to
disillusion the awful dream, crumbling the brittle reality of my own conception.

Rita stood back in horror, her hand closing over her mouth.



"Rita-"I said, grabbing for her hands as she moved them out of reach and just pointed ahead.

"Do you hear anything, do you feel the air?" She asked, sputtering, and beginning to sob. With
no warning and with a quick leap, she leapt to her feet, shoving me past and kneeling to the
window, digging her hand inside the frame, which looked giant around her thinning wrist. She
reached around the outside wall and found what I assumed to be an emergency latch and opened
it up, screaming. It swung open, and she continued to scream that desperate, distant scream, a
scream I had never heard from her, up until this point. 

A scream digging its nails into my skull to this day…

…Screaming as she drew out her hand, in agony, a whimper caught between her lips. She forced
her head through the window, drawing in a breath of fresh air out of either desperation or what I
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now think, succumbing to the might of SUN. The reason why she could have even fathom this
action, still floods my mind to this day.

She lifted her head through the empty little frame, right down there to greet SUN, who gazed at
her in dissatisfaction:



bursting her into flames.