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Seemingly out of nowhere, out of place and out of time in the severe vastness of the desert, a murder of crows found its way to us.
Sitting perched atop large rocks and black branches of dead trees, some fifty birds, tired and hungry, but ultimately alive - their frigthfully intelligent eyes twinkling with some secret mirth.
(We have survived.
We shall prevail.)
I strech out an arm, a meagre offering of dry fruit.
The crows watch, silent.
Max raises an eyebrow.
I persist.
A gust of wind.
A flap of wings.
Max smiles.
"You make new friends pretty easy, huh."

"Fuck me into stratosphere and then twice around the Moon, Max, I mean... This is really something. This is... Fuck, this is the greatest shit since..."
"Since ever?"
"Since ever," Arthur agrees happily, squinting in the midday sun. His skin is flecked with tiny shimmering dots. He is...
He is radiant when he strips down to his nude self, racing over hot red sand, diving under the clear blue surface of the waterhole that I found by coincidence an hour ago.
Is there such a thing as Luck?
Guess not.
I thank it regardless, and follow Arthur into the deep.

Max drags the dry, mummified corpse out of the sad ruins of a war rig, and up the sand dune towards me. He pauses for a few beats, catching his breath.
I pass him the canteen and he drinks briefly.
The corpse, now lying at his feet, offers me a forced smile.
“Robbed of dignity, even in death.”
Max gives me a disgruntled look, picking the dead body up again.
“I get it. For dead, dignity is an option. While we, the living, have to keep intact as much of it as possible.”
Max shrugs, unbothered. “He’ll make good kindling.”

I didn’t ask.
Arthur tells me anyway.
About his family.
His parents.
His sisters.
His brother Joe.
The Baby.
Mostly Joe, though.
Joe who always rocked Baby to sleep.
Joe, who used to pull Pinkie’s and Noodle’s ponytails.
Joe, who always helped Mama and never talked back to Dada.
Not like Arthur, who was never home, hunting lizards and rabbits in the outback.
Gradually moving on to larger and larger prey.
Joe never talked back to Dada.
Not even when Dada smashed Pinkie’s head with a brick.
“Joe,” Arthur says, his eyes reflecting the fire he built. “My better half.”

Max dozes off, I drive.
He doesn’t sleep at night.
So the terrors follow him into his daytime catnaps.
He tosses, he turns, he murmurs fitfully in response to their calls.
Every time he growls like a wounded animal that he is, I shake him.
He blinks groggily.
Drained of pleasure and purpose, on the verge of sanity and that other, dark, sacred place.
“How much?”
He hums, confused.
“How much for a good, long sleep?”
“I donť have that… kind of wealth.”
“Max, you don’t have anything.”
“Yeah,” he says after a long while. “Can’t buy it back, either.”

I took a right old beating.
Not proud of that.
Got a few scratches ‘n’ bumps.
Sprained wrist, too.
Tried tending to it myself (once we finished scraping “The Navigator” off the windshield).
The bandage kept slipping through my fingers.
Fucking silk.
Useless.
Arthur does the bandaging in the end.
“You don’t have to,” I say.
“I locked you ‘n’ cuffed you,” I say, later.
Arthur scowls, nods, then slaps my injured wrist.
Hurts.
Fuck that hurts.
“You ain’t doing that shit to me again, understand?” Arthur says, serious.
I nod my head yeah.
Ain’t gonna.
We journey together now.

Been a week since Max finally let me out.
Whole stinking week.
And only now does he uncuff me?
Now, while being viciously attacked by a roadkill-gobbling, piss-swigging, camel-fucking, chainsaw-wielding creature in a pair of cracked aviator glasses and shit-stained overalls who calls himself “The Flight Navigator”?
Or herself.
Hard to tell underneath all that shit…
Dumb fuck, Max is.
Dumb, incredibly lucky, Fuck.
I open the handcuffs with the keys he throws me.
I get in the car.
Then I hit “The Navigator” with it.
The creature soars through thin air, spilling guts like confetti.
“Have a safe flight.”

Saw it standing by the edge of… Well… ain’t no real road here to speak of.
Only tracks in the red red dust.
Tracks we inherited
From our former selves.
Dutifully trudging along
I saw it there, standing, barely standing.
White, serious face
Defiant mouth
Starved-out eyes
Scrawny, boyish frame swaying in high desert wind.
Used to be a man.
A better man.
Would’ve cared
Before
Would’ve trusted
Before
Only tracks in the dust
Now
I am hollow, eroded by time
Now
I am a half-life man.
I survive.
Seemed smart
To lock him in the boot of my car.

Fuck me twice with a tire iron, this dumb fuck ain’t exactly fucking around the bush, is he?
What did he do that for?
He goes and…
Then just keeps staring at me with those dumb, fucking, green-and-rust eyes and I...
All I demand
Want
Pray for
Is a reasonable
Comprehensible
No-nonsense sound…
Tough luck.
Not a blasted peep.
Dumb Fuck’s prob’ly Feral.
Just keeps staring at my confusion, then slams the boot of the damn car shut and here I am - cold, tied up nice and neat, and no stars to navigate by.
Where to now?
Still no light.