They told me not to go, but I needed to get away. From the noise, the screams, the people, the rent. I've been sleeping on couches in stress eating ramen, watching my sanity fray thread by thread. So I packed a backpack, bought a gallon of water, grabbed my favorite pipe, and took a rental car onto the Mojave. No plan, just open sky, sand and a strain called mirage dust that Caleb said was spiritual as hell. I parked off a dirt trail no one uses anymore and wandered out until I couldn't see the highway or my car. Just dry land, dying sun, and a breeze that felt like an old breath from something long dead. I smoked beneath the lonely Joshua tree, watching shadows stretch into monsters. The weed, it hit fast, made the wind sound like whispers and the sky melt like ice cream. Everything was soft and flowing. I felt like I was drifting between pages of an old dream I'd forgotten. Then the sun dropped behind the hills, and I fell asleep in the sand. I woke up in the dark, mouth dry as cotton, head pounding, stars looked too close. Like I could pluck them down and eat them like mints. The desert had gone cold. My hoodie wasn't enough. The wind was gone. Total silence. That's when I realized I had no idea where I was, no landmarks, no moon, just shadows. I checked my phone. One percent battery and no service. I clicked on the flashlight, weak, dying, but enough to see something. Footprints. Not mine, their feet, too long, six toes on one, leading away from where I'd slept. I told myself not to follow them. But I followed them. The tracks led me through a small canyon, the walls tight and jaggered like clenched jaws. My flashlight flickered, but I kept going. The sand crunched beneath me with a rhythm that didn't match my steps. I heard breathing that wasn't mine. When I turned a corner, I found it. A grove of Joshua trees, twisted taller than they should have been, their limbs reaching like they were begging the stars to fall. Hanging from the branches were bones, ribs, femurs, skulls, swinging gently as if rocked by a wind I couldn't feel. One of them was still fresh, red, sticky. I turned to run, and the flashlight died. In the pitch dark, something brushed past me. It was cold. I stumbled through the dark, panicking, calling out stupidly for help. Then I saw the fire. A small, flickering campfire up on a ridge. I ran towards it, tripping over rocks and my own feet. When I got there, the fire was burning in the circle of stones, and the man sat beside it. His skin looked cracked, like it had been out in the sun too long. He wore a wide brim hat that shadowed his eyes.
SPEAKER_01You smoke the dust?
SPEAKER_00He said. I I don't know where I am. I'm lost. Something's following me. It always follows, he said, calmly stirring the fire with the long bone.
SPEAKER_01You sleep in their desert. They notice. Smoke mirage dust. They hear you.
He pointed behind me. I turned. There were shapes in the dark, dozens, tall dry figures with sagging skins and no mouths. Eyes like black pits. They didn't walk. They just appeared each time I blinked. Why are they coming? I whispered.
SPEAKER_01You woke them, he said. Now they're thirsty.
I don't remember running. Only flashes, falling, screaming, blood in my mouth from biting my tongue. The creatures moved like broken film reels, flickering, jittering, laughing without sound. At one point I think I blacked out. I woke up with the sun rising alone. My back at my starting point, no footprints, no fire pit, no bones, just a cracked pipe beside me and a half burned nug of mirage dust. My water jug was gone. My lips were blistered. I walked all day in circles, the sun cooking my brain. Buzzard circled above. My vision blurred, and every Joshua tree looked like it wanted to whisper. I saw the man in the hat again, far off a ridge. He lifted his arm and waved. Not hello. He was beckoning me back. Eventually I made it to the room. A park ranger found me collapsed on the shoulder, sump burnt and babbling about bones and trees. They airlifted me to the hospital, said I was lucky. Said I was dehydrated and hallucinating. That's what they say. But sometimes at night, when everything's still and I light up to calm down, I hear them again. Dry footsteps in the hall, whispering through the vents, something brushing past the curtains. And when I close my eyes, I'm back in the bone grove. And the fire is still burning. And the man in the hat is still waiting. The doctors told me to stop smoking. Your body went through severe dehydration, one of them said, clipboard tight in his hands. Your kidneys took a hit. Your brain too. THC can exacerbate. I nodded, promised, and lied. Because the first night I didn't smoke, I woke up choking. My tongue felt swollen, glued to the roof of my mouth, my throat burned like I'd swallowed sand. I staggered to the sink and drank until my stomach sloshed, water spilling down my chin. It didn't help. The thirst wasn't physical. It was deeper, older. When I finally packed a bow, some mellow dispensary indica, nothing weird. The relief came instantly. My mouth loosened, my jaw unclenched, and with the smoke came the smell. Hot dust. Bone left too long in the sun. I heard the wind then, moving through my apartment like it didn't understand walls. The vents rattled, the smoke curled wrong, flattening instead of rising. A whisper slid along the edge of my hearing. Still not enough. I didn't sleep after that. I started researching. Forums, reddit threads buried under jokes and bad advice, obscure desert myth blogs written by people who clearly hadn't slept in years. One name kept appearing, always half-censored, always argued over. The thirsting ones, Los Secos, the mouthless watchers. Spirits of places abandoned by water, beings that don't eat, don't breathe, only wait. They're drawn to altered minds because altered minds blur the boundaries between here and there. One poll stood out. No comments, just a block of text and a single warning. If you dream of fire without warmth, they've marked you. If your mouth dries no matter how much you drink, they're close. If a man offers you shade in the desert, don't take it. He doesn't burn. Tense, like a garden or a herd. It got worse. No amount of water worked anymore. I carried bottles everywhere, chewed ice until my teeth ached. My lips cracked and bled constantly. Doctors ran tests. Everything normal. I wasn't. Sometimes I'd catch people staring at me on the subway. Not my face. My mouth. One woman recoiled when I yawned, whispering, Jesus. Under her breath. I checked the mirror when I got home. For a second. Just a second. My reflection had no lips. Just moved dry skin stretched tight over teeth that looked too long. I smashed the mirror, sat on the bathroom floor shaking, tuff scraping uselessly against my gums. That night, I dreamt of the desert again. The bone grove was bigger, fuller. Some of the bones were clothes I recognized. The package arrived with no return address. Inside was a wide-brim hat. Cracked leather, sunbleached, warm to the touch, like it had been sitting in daylight moments before. When I lifted it, sand spilled out onto my floor. And underneath, my water jug. The same one I'd brought to the Mojave. My name scratched into the side just like I'd done with the key. Bone dry inside. A note was tucked into the brim of the hat, written in careful slanted ink. You left before you finished. They don't like that. Come back. Bring smoke. Bring thirst. My mouth watered painfully. Outside, somewhere far too close for a city, I heard dry feet dragging across the sand. I haven't decided yet. Part of me knows what happens if I go back. Knows I won't leave the bone grove a second time. Knows I'll end up swinging gently from a Joshua tree, warning no one. But every night, the thirst gets worse. Every night the fire crackles in my dreams, and the man in the hat sits patiently beside it, stirring embers with that long bone never burning, never aging. Waiting. My lips are splitting again as I write this. I can hear them in the walls now. Not walking, not breathing, just arriving closer every time I blink. I think the desert doesn't blink because it doesn't have to. It always knows where you are. The first time it rained after the desert, I cried. Not because it was beautiful, but because it didn't help. I stood on my fire escape in the middle of the night, letting cold rain soak my face, my clothes, my open mouth. I tilted my head back and swallowed until my throat hurt. Nothing. The thirst laughed at me. Not out loud, but never out loud. But I felt it threatened by my dog, behind my eyes, like something touching the walls of the cave. Like it had already passed through something else before touching. Across the alley in the dark window of an apartment I knew was empty. I saw movement. A silhouette in the wide brim hat. Watching. I tried quitting again. Three days without weed nearly killed me. My mouth sealed itself shut when I slept. I woke up gagging, jaw locked, tongue cracked and swollen like dried meat. When I forced my lips apart, skin tore, blood tasted like dust. On the fourth night, shaking and desperate, I packed the bow. Didn't matter what strain. The moment I exhaled, the room changed. The walls pulled further apart, the ceiling rose, the apartment smelled like desert heat even though the radiator clanked and hissed. Ash fell upwards, drifting towards the corners of the room instead of the floor. And for a moment, just a brief blessed moment, the thirst eased. That's when I understood. Smoking wasn't calming it, it was feeding it. They started appearing around the city, Joshua trees where they didn't belong, one in the medium near the bus stop, thin, twisted, wrapped in police tape by morning. Another growing out of the cracked concrete behind a liquor store, its branches hung with wind chimes that didn't sound like metal. No one else seemed to notice, or maybe they did and just didn't want to talk about it. I followed one once. I don't remember deciding to, I just realized I was walking behind it, dry feet dragging across asphalt that had turned into sand beneath my shoes. It led me to an underpass, and there, painted in flaking white graffiti, was a symbol I recognized from the forms. A circle, a fire, a mouth crossed out. I tried the hat on. I don't know why. The moment it settled on my head the city vanished. Not disappeared, but peeled away. I could see the desert beneath everything, beneath the streets, the buildings, the people, an ancient, endless dryness waiting patiently under concrete skin. I'd smell smoke, saw the fire. The man sat beside it, closer now. His face was clearer than it had ever been. Cracked skin pulled tight over something that wasn't quite a skull. You're leaking, he said, nodding towards me. I looked down. Sand poured from my mouth when I tried to speak.
SPEAKER_01You belong to the thirsty places now, he continued. Cities are just shelters people build to forget that.
SPEAKER_00He handed me the bone he used to stir the fire. It was warm.
SPEAKER_01Help tendon.
SPEAKER_00I don't drink water anymore. I don't need to. The thirst doesn't hurt like it used to. It hums, sings, guides. I can feel dry places now, even with my eyes closed. Abandoned lots, empty houses, rooms where people die alone and no one cried long enough. I leave small fires in those places. Just enough smoke, just enough sigil. Sometimes people follow it. Sometimes they smoke with me. They always say the same thing afterward. My mouth feels weird. If you're reading this and your mouth feels dry all of a sudden, don't panic. Drink something. If it helps, you're fine. If it doesn't, pay attention to the corners of the room. To places where dust gathers even after you clean. To the way shadows stretch towards you when you light up. The desert doesn't care where you live. It doesn't care how far you run. And it never stops noticing. The fire's still burning. The bone grove is everywhere now. And we're still thirsty.