The fuel gauge screamed “empty.”
I screamed along with it, cursing under my breath every obscenity I could muster. I had been told once that cursing could help you endure anger or pain up to fifty percent longer than when holding your tongue, but it failed to take effect. Sweat rolled down my temple, to my cheek, splattering in a messy circle upon the rocks and dust. Probably the only moisture this joint had seen in weeks.
I lifted the visor of my helmet, and the sun’s rays seemed to immediately puncture my vision. Bad idea. Swiftly, I flicked it back down, settling for comfort rather than visibility. Cacti and water-deprived bushes sporadically dotted the landscape. If there was a God, he was certainly disorganized. The road was His world’s antithesis: calculated, perfectly straight, not too narrow nor wide, and seemed to flow over the distant hills for miles as an asphalt-sprinkled tablecloth would. I licked my lips.
It occurred to me at that very moment I would have to abandon my motorcycle. The thought sickened me. That thing was my baby, and I had nurtured her from her first moments after manufacturing to now, six years later. The effectiveness of my parenting style provided that rough love and hard experience were as necessary as oil changes and rim replacements. The electric blue paint was chipped every place you looked, and she may or may not have been difficult to start, but she got me from point A to point B--not only that, but with a style and adventure I could ask from no other. I took a few deep breaths, gently pulling off my bag, and, in a split-second decision, peeling a strip of blue paint off her side and stuffing it into my jeans pocket. A pain settled into my heart, and I patted the black leather seat, cursing a little to waive it off.
It was a grueling dilemma: I had no clue how far I was from the next town, yet I nearly convinced myself to continue in that direction, straight into the unknown over the fluid road. I decided instead to walk towards the way I came, remembering vaguely the decrepit gas station I had passed a couple miles back, out in the middle of nowhere. I was in the middle of nowhere. Heaven forbid I find a snake, or trip on a rock or dead bush limb. Suddenly I was suspicious of nature and its dangers, as if the innocence of nature were something I had completely accepted before. I might as well have.
I’ll save you the juicy, exciting details of my journey through the desert. It was mostly comprised of skipping on and off the asphalt at random moments, watching especially for jutting stones or the deadly sound of a rattle, and thinking about nothing in particular to edge time on. No cars passed, which I found incredibly peculiar, considering that buildings still occasionally appeared even this far out into the Nevada sands. Every so often I would lift up my visor and peer at the sky, and sure enough, the sun continued to sink--less noticeably at first, then all of a sudden dipping past the completely level horizon. My priorities were not water nor food, as I had those in my pack, but shelter from the bitter cold beginning to bite at my heels. The sun presently became a semi-circle of pastel pinks, yellows, and oranges, and I took off my helmet, if only to appreciate the beauty of a desert sunset. The haze of night began to settle around me.

And then, all at once, I had come upon it: a sprawling of smooth pavement leading out into the dusty gravel, adorned with small glowing lanterns settled into the ground. The path lead past a row of rusted barrels, which I must have assumed were gas pumps as I rode past, to a wooden porch. It was made of the same cracked and dead branches as the bushes surrounding the area--not only a morose gray at night, but most likely in the daytime as well--which continued to an open space by a front door. It was a house, made entirely of the bush wood somehow tied together and preserved, with two windows at the front and one on the side I could view. A shadowed mass shuffling inside the one-story building appeared, and I stepped closer and squinted in an effort to see who was inside. I could glimpse the aqua blue shine of a vehicle in my peripheral around the back, past a scraggly wire gate.
Immediately, the mass turned directly to face the window, and I froze, a shiver running right down my spine. Its eyes, tinted a moonlit yellow, connected with mine, and for a few moments I was glued to the spot. Composing myself, I straightened up and offered a wave, pointing to the front door. It left my sight and appeared on the porch in a flash, beckoning me inside with an arm gesture. By this time, I had forgotten the questions I should have been asking--where had this house come from? Am I safe here?--and instead only wished that the cold were banished. I climbed up the three porch steps, careful not to put much of my weight on the sagging wooden handrail. When I looked up, I could see the shadow’s face illuminated by the light seeping from inside. It was a man, with warm chocolate brown eyes and neatly-trimmed graying hair. He wore a lopsided black hat on his head and had wrapped his beige coat around his shoulders instead of using the sleeves, like he had rushed to join me. He removed the coat and wrapped it over me instead, covering one of the fabric’s holes on my back with his hand. “Come inside,” his gruff voice urged as he pushed me gently to the door. “It’s cold out here.”
--------------------------
“How long have you all lived here?” I asked.
The man had sat me just moments ago at a wooden table in a gray chair of the same color as nearly all the furniture around me. The kitchen was separated from the table with a simply designed counter, and in the living room around the corner I could see what seemed to be a seat or couch covered by a ripped dirty white sheet, but nothing much else beyond that. The kitchen contained a conjoined stove oven and sink, the biggest clunky white refrigerator I had ever seen, and a row of slate-colored cabinets which drooped on the walls just below the ceiling. I pondered a moment, and realized I had no clue how these people received electricity--there were no telephone poles anywhere around the house. I think I would have noticed those.
However, I did notice what seemed to be countless hung photos and crosses all along the walls. The crosses, of all sizes and colors, hung just below the roof--as close to God as possible, I guessed. All of the portraits, which were embroidered with golden yellow frames, seemed to be consistently of three people--a man, a woman, and their daughter--smiling and laughing at one another in various settings: the desert for the most part, but also a dark forest with monstrous pine trees, and on the beach by an ocean, where the sea breeze wafted the girl’s hair. She seemed to be about my age, with pale skin and freckles, and had spectacularly pure aquamarine eyes, which almost seemed to blink back at me when I concentrated on them. I could imagine her giggling and throwing her brunette mane about just before the pictures were taken.

The woman and man both sat in the chairs across from me. Their daughter, she had said, was in the other room. I heard no noises from behind the wall just beside me. The woman’s voice shook me out of my thoughts. “Oh, we moved out here some years ago. It’s awful quiet,” she murmured in a raspy voice, her eyes shifting for a moment to the man. She sat with her back straight against the chair, peering curiously at me, fidgeting with the sleeve of her tattered corduroy jacket. It seemed to be two sizes too big on her, or maybe she was just incredibly thin. I nearly expected her sparsely-haired head to droop forward without support from her emaciated neck. The man stood up from his chair and walked towards the kitchen, opening the left side of the refrigerator and blocking my view of him. He reappeared with a plate in his hands, already prepared and waiting in the fridge. The cheap plastic plate had been painted with flowers around its circumference, and in the middle was a grand helping of mashed potatoes and a slab of pork.
Carefully, he placed it in front of me on the table. I blinked up at him.
“You look hungry,” he explained, walking back around to sit by his wife, lowering into his seat with a huff.  “Eat.”
I can’t accept this, I thought. I repeated this statement. “That’s very kind of you to offer, but I...just ate. Before I left.” His face distorted in a flash of anger, then relaxed. If I had blinked I would have missed it.
The woman continued to glare at me with a sort of morbid fascination. “Where’re you from, sweetheart? Why’d you leave home?”
My sight automatically focused behind her, on both a small blue cross and a picture of the loving family in a forest. The girl was clutching the hands of her parents as they walked side by side away from the camera, and she was grinning ear to ear over her shoulder. Our eyes made contact once more. 
I could only guess that living just along a desert road made their house a frequent stop for lost travelers. If not for this the questions would have seemed personal and quite assumptive to me. “Around here,” I answered, refusing to meet her gaze. “And home just...wasn’t the right place for me.” My eyes flickered back to that cross.
She nodded sympathetically, but before she could respond, the man kicked out the back of his chair and stood again, nearly mechanically, brushing off his brown pants. “I’m going to check on Sharon,” he told his wife. “She’s being awfully quiet.” 

“I’ll come with you,” she announced, almost before he had finished speaking. She jumped up with such excitement that the chair fell backwards underneath her. She reached back and picked it up from the ground, pushing it into the table and energetically following her husband into the living room. I stared at her back as she disappeared behind the corner with him. The rips in her jacket’s fabric moved erratically. 
I drummed my fingers on my leg as they spoke through nearly inaudible whispers in the other room. My mind wandered through a maze of thought, and I half-strained to make out what they were saying. They were being quiet--awfully quiet. Why had the woman suddenly become so energetic when she said and heard that phrase? Both her and her husband had said it to one another. I made eye contact with Sharon in the same picture on the wall across the table and could imagine her sinister laughter in my head. She was taunting me for finding myself in this strange house with these dangerous people. I could sense it--the acute feeling of terror, the dash of fear sinking in my chest. I needed to find her.
I also needed gasoline; that could be my escape. I stood, noiselessly scooting out my chair from underneath me, and glided silently through the kitchen past the huge white refrigerator. Only being this close allowed me to see faint blotches of red splattered across its doors. I gulped, my fear physically manifesting itself as a clog in my throat, and turned the corner.
Darkness suddenly encapsulated me. The first thing I laid my eyes on was the black mass sprawled across the covered couch in the middle of the room. I had been unable to see it from my position at the gray table, but the man and woman would have. It took multiple seconds to register in my brain that this mass was, in fact, a body. The body of a girl pale as the desert sands, her straight bloodied hair a waterfall cascading over the side of the white and red sheet. No one told me, but somehow I knew. Sharon. I lifted my head, my eyes growing wide in shock, to face the man and woman standing on the other side of the room.
They seemed to have grown, and suddenly they were looming over me, lunging with an animalistic ferocity. I shrieked and pushed my feet against the ground with all my strength, fleeing into the kitchen. There was no time to think. I grasped at the nearest object on the counter--a ring of keys--and fumbled with it in my hands, finally wrapping my fingers around one of them. Then I pivoted and struck the body right behind me--the woman, I discovered--and the key pierced her vulnerable stomach. She screeched and thrust her arms forward in an attempt to seize me, but the corduroy jacket covered her hands, and she had little grip, only clawing at me behind thick material. Her husband left her side, panting heavily. As I kicked at the woman, I could sense my face morphing into one of alarm and panic. What was the man doing? It did not take me long to discern that he was reaching into a knife block at the other corner of the kitchen, removing it and rushing back in my direction. In a desperate effort, I screamed the loudest I had ever before and kicked outwards at the woman with as much power as I could muster. Immediately I spun around and fled to the door. She howled in pain as I scrabbled at the doorknob, managing to swivel it and swing it open. I couldn’t look back--that would be my death. I clambered outside and slammed it shut, closing it onto a limb--the woman’s arm. The piercing sound of her continued wails was drilled into my head as I, with labored breathing, leaped over the steps and sped around the back of the house towards the gate. My legs burned from both the strain and cold as I jumped the wrangled fence, fearing that time spent unlatching the gate would be enough for them to reach me. I would have forgotten about the keys in my hand if not for them nearly catching on the metal. I had only one possibility of escaping these people. I sprinted for the blue truck, its shining metal finish reflecting moonlight. The door latch was rusted and covered in sand, but I managed to shakily yank it open and shut it, locking the doors and forcing the keys into the ignition. Their screams were gaining volume, and I could see two black lumbering shadows charge from the side of the house. I rotated the keys and slammed my foot on the pedal. My ragged breaths caught in my throat.

The fuel gauge screamed “empty.”