This is a continuation of a short I posted a while back, which you can read here. Please forgive my clumsy voice acting. I have some ideas for continuing it even further, so we’ll see what happens!

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“I talked to the mother,” said the Sheriff. “The car was her daughter’s. She was traveling with her boyfriend—about six months they’ve known each other.”

“The car was on the highway, abandoned,” the trooper responded. “Both doors were open, and the tank was empty.”

“And no sign of the kids?”

“Nothing.”

How far could they have gotten? The Sheriff wanted to ask but didn’t. Nothing but sand and rock and dirt around, and the sun above casting vengeance on the world. If they left the car and never returned, dawn would have been enough to burn away any chance of survival. And yet no bodies in the sand.

“Maybe they got a ride,” he said. “Someone passing by.”

“Maybe. Nothing wrong with the car—we checked. But they were out of gas. They might have thought they would be coming back.”

“Then why leave the doors open?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Tell me again about the noise.”

“Right. None of us could tell where it was coming from. Not from the car, though—all around us, it seemed. Like all our ears were ringing. And this…humming sound. Like machinery.”

“And when did it stop?”

“It never did. My ears were still ringing when I drove away.”

“Alright. Let me know if anything else comes up.”

“Yes, sir.”

After the door shut and the Sheriff was alone again he leaned back in his chair and watched the ceiling. These kids should know better than to fuck around in the desert. Every year it was the same. A handful of them each summer who thought they had enough gas to make the crossing, hadn’t checked their tires in a few hundred miles, or—God forbid—planned on trying to camp out on the way across. Their bodies mostly were never found. Those ones, the coyotes got to. Sometimes they would turn up in a search, not far from the road, browned and withered from the sand and heat. Cargo shorts and flip-flops, shirts unbuttoned, bikini tops and fraying jean shorts—all signs of life against lifeless skin. More souls claimed by the desert.

Strips of paper taped to the vent above his head stuck straight out. The building came to life with the hum of AC. He thought about the noise his troopers had heard—it struck him as somehow not out of place in the scene. A car abandoned, doors open, and the desert humming a tuneless song as it watched them sift through its sand. He breathed out, reached for his coffee. Before he could lift it, the trooper burst back into his office.

“Sheriff—they found the girl.”

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So… anyone else waiting for the Senate report on the DOD admission that UFOs are real, and that the Pentagon has no idea what they are?

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Photo by Rémi Jacquaint on Unsplash