Here

I lie here, a thin layer of dust between me and eternal peace. I want to scream at anyone or anything that passes my way, but I no longer have the means. Coyotes stole that part of me long ago. As another seething hot day gives way to chill of night, my hopes of rest go unanswered. Time becomes viscous, a morass I cannot escape. I beg to be freed, freed at last from this arid hellscape, but what parts remain will not work. I wait impatiently for that moment of discovery, the moment I am uncovered, the moment justice is served.

I know some time ago, how long I can't calculate anymore, they got close. A phalanx of people spread out over miles, systematically poking at the ground, peering at every little detail below them, but it was not me they were looking for. It was another. Another like me, who came here after I had already settled in. I am sure she fell the same way I did, as I could feel the vibration of the footfalls of he who interred her was familiar to me. I felt the thrumming of footfalls reverberate through the area, and I could even imagine someone had come near enough to hear my ethereal scream. But they moved on, achingly slow was their retreat, then in the distance their footsteps thumped quickly to where she lay. The cacophony that ensued should have shaken me from my hiding place, but alas I remained hidden.

The worst part was early on, when the animals sniffed the pungency of my rot. They poked around, snuffling near, so near me that the sense of panic and revulsion I still possessed drove what was left of my mind to utter madness. As the wild consumed all that they could reach, my silent howling filled the desert. Oh, for revenge on he who did this to me! Justice could not come soon enough.

Bit by bit, they took me away from this place, first parts of my appendages, phalanges taken by desert rats to their burrows to become building materials. The larger pieces became dinners for coyotes dexterous enough to draw out my rotting limbs. I wailed at the impunity with which they took me. At last, they dared to gnaw at my face. My jaw was drug away one early spring night. With each piece of me leaving this place, my dream of closure faded.

Eventually, the weathering of the ground threatened to bring me back up for all to see. Now only millimeters of the desert sand separate me from discovery, and I beg for just one hiker to come upon me and sound the alarm. I beg for the authorities take what is left of me from the unforgiving desert ground and find the answers they seek. I beg that one day my blunt trauma will be diagnosed. I hope they find the tiny bits of evidence I held for so long in the cracks of my skull, and those clues which I still carry will bring my killer to justice. Here. I am still here to be found.