Tussii Stauffer

Sunbleached

As Roald sat in his dingy house with his hard working wife, the only thing that he could remember tasting that evening was the dust that seemed to settle down upon everything that the desert held inside of it. The mountains, the cacti, the animals, the roof, the cars, the sun-bleached metals that gave away from the paint that people always painstakingly put upon them, only for the color to fade anyways. It always tasted like dust and iron in his home, and even the dry chicken sitting in front of him smelled faintly of the sun’s powerful rays. And worst of all, he could hear that old washing machine groaning and trembling down the creaky old stairs to their basement. Oh, how he hated that sound. It made Roald grind his teeth inside his skull and it made his wrinkled hands twitch.