#desert southwest | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rotten-whispers · 2 years

Text

Odd things happen in the desert

A creepypasta based on the mysteries of the Desert Southwest. Tales of death and uncanniness follow.

Those long, hot days really get to you after a while.

I’ve lived in the desert all my life.

Usually, when people think of the desert, they imagine rocky cliffs, sand, saguaros, lizards, and the worst sunburn that you can imagine. Those are all true.

Other people think of sudden, violent storms; strange howling in the darkness; or maniacal people driven mad by the heat. Those are also true. But the everyday lies somewhere in between.

Let me start by saying that I’ve moved around the Southwestern United States for a few years, but it is generally the same everywhere. Occasionally, the lizards change. The saguaros disappear. The temperatures peak at 108F instead of 125F. But the general aesthetic of each area does not differ.

Nor do the warnings.

I love hiking – I have always been a huge fan of the woods. On my visits to the Pacific Northwest, you couldn’t get me out of them. But hiking in the desert is obviously very different.

For example, no amount of water that you bring is ever enough. If you go hiking at sunrise, you will have drained your canteen within a few hours. Hiking around noon is enough to leave you with heatstroke if you visit the trails during the wrong time of year.

The wrong time of year, unfortunately, coincides with most people’s time off from work, or school. Plenty of people visit the Southwest believing that they know what they are getting into. Believing that they have enough water, and that the temperatures are not too high.

Every year, dozens of people from other habitats brave the hiking trails and never return. They die of heatstroke, or dehydration, or fall from a cliff after a mistimed step. Occasionally, their bodies are recovered by helicopters, search parties, other hikers. Generally, they are never found. Picked apart by wild animals and bleached by the sweltering sun.

Even the locals underestimate the violent environment and meet their demise.

I knew a young couple who were experienced hikers. They had gone on the same hiking trail dozens of times before. The day wasn’t that hot, they knew what they were doing. But somehow, during the two-hour hike, they both succumbed to heatstroke and were found dead.

Nobody quite knows how it could have happened. But this hiking path was famous for catching people off guard. You see, the desert isn’t always hot. Often, it will be quite cold here, especially if you head out early enough in the morning. The official story was that the young couple set out early enough in the day that it was still cold enough to hike. But the trail veered into higher altitudes, away from shade entirely. Leaving them exposed to the bare sky overhead, the sweltering sun that came out of nowhere, rising the temperature to the late 90’s before their hike had even finished.

And they were gone. Just like that.

It happens often in the desert. We go hiking, go to a carnival, walk to the store – and overlook the sun.

Heatstroke is a funny little thing. Just as dehydration is at its highest, your body will force itself to throw up, further ridding yourself of necessary liquids. I never quite understood the point of it.

It isn’t uncommon to find dead animals, either, even in the middle of the city. I have walked over dead cats, dead rodents, and dead birds on my way to class. However, the worst corpses to find are the ones that are in pieces.

Yesterday, on a hike, I stumbled across the intestines, kidneys, and liver of a small creature. The parts had been perfectly removed, and were still assembled as though inside the animal’s body. They were cleanly set on the dirt, and there were no tufts of fur, flesh, or even blood beside the entrails. It was as though the creature’s insides had been transported outside of its body without damage.

It never feels normal running into these corpses. You learn to ignore them, to turn aside and keep hiking higher into the hills. Closer to the ever-burning sun overhead. But you have to ignore them.

We never talk about these things, either. They are a part of everyday life that everyone quickly gets used to.

The majority of people, however, just don’t notice. And the darker areas of our world remain hidden.

But once you begin to notice, you can never go back.

While I was hiking yesterday, I had the sensation that I was being watched. It isn’t uncommon to run into wildlife in the mountains that I was walking across. I try to remain vigilant and scan the outcrop of rocks for the head of a cougar, or the snout of a distant coyote, but it really is hopeless. The camouflage of wildlife in the desert is outstanding – you will not notice them until you have wandered directly into their path.

But they will notice you. As I made my way higher and higher into the mountain, I had the sensation that every living creature in this park knew exactly where I was, although I would never even know that they were there.

It is difficult to keep an eye out for everything that could endanger you. My eyes rarely strayed from the trail, to avoid stepping on a rattlesnake, or turning my ankle on a rock. Stumbling could lead to ripped pants or a pitch over the side of a cliff – the gamble was far too great.

So you are in the mountains, and you are watching where you step. You are keeping track of your water, you are ensuring that you have enough to last the journey back. The mountains know that you are there, but they are leaving you alone, and you are lucky enough not to have run into another person. People are often more unpredictable in the desert than anywhere else, especially after they have been fried a little by the sun.

But then you get lost. All the rocks look the same, and there aren’t any trail markers to keep track of.

I tried not to panic. After all, I still had enough water for a little while longer. And my phone battery wasn’t dead. There wasn’t a signal, but at the absolute worst, I could just scurry in a straight line until I met back with the road.

Then I made the one mistake you are always told never, ever to do – I left the trail.

It was an accident – my feet wandered from the path, thinking that I found a shortcut, and then I was gone. Lost off-trail, my feet being tangled by cactus pods, which have an uncanny ability to claw through your shoes.

If you have never seen a jackrabbit up close, they look like otherworldly creatures. These are skeletal, elongated beasts – far from the round, fuzzy bunnies that most people are accustomed to seeing in pet stores. A large jackrabbit can be taller than your knees, with piercing eyes that seem much too human.

I startled a jackrabbit, and it scared the living hell out of me. One second the ground was a settlement of rocks, and the next, it was escaping into the distance like an apparition.

But I didn’t start to panic until my water dropped below the halfway mark. This is the time that you are told to turn back, to always leave yourself enough hydration to make your way home. I felt the flutterings of panic, then. Just barely beginning to build in my chest.

Because it is all too easy to make a simple mistake – one misplaced step, one wrong turn – and end up as another missing person.

There was the distant sound of a donkey braying, which momentarily distracted me from my fear. Feral donkeys live in our national parks, they are often seen wandering into town or standing outlined against the horizon. But I had never heard one bray before.

Fascinated, I remember tracing the rocks for the donkey. However, the curiosity quickly gave away to confusion as I realized that I could not tell where the sounds were coming from.

The braying began on my left, but sounded a second later from my right – close enough that the animal should have been visible. Yet, it simply wasn’t. There was nothing at all surrounding me on the mountains.

And there was no noise, either. No birdsong, or wind, or even the rushing of cars in the distance. Only the mournful cry of a donkey, twisted as though in pain.

As soon as I stumbled away from the noises, I found the trail again. It just appeared out of nowhere, but I was too grateful to question my good fortune.

I didn’t hear the donkey at all on the way back home.

Occasionally, I will talk to my other friends who enjoy hiking, and we will exchange stories of our encounters. It isn’t uncommon to find yourself completely lost, but there are other, more interesting tales of the rocky outcrops.

You will find lizards in the desert. They are everywhere – some with long, blue tails; others with blue throats; or shimmering scales in a multitude of colors. But one of my hiking friends, a graduate student named Laura, told me about her strange experience with lizards.

She was an amateur wildlife photographer on a stroll through a hiking path, when she also found herself completely lost.

“It was the weirdest thing,” Laura told me. “One minute, I could see the parking lot in the distance, the next there was nothing but rocks.”

As she wandered through the mountain, searching for the trail, she wandered by the same lizards that all desert dwellers are accustomed to. But the deeper that she went, the larger they started to become.

“I saw a Sceloporus that was larger than my torso,” Laura said. There was an otherworldly expression on her face, halfway between curiosity and fear. “I never saw anything like it before… But when I pulled out my camera, it disappeared into the rocks.”

She eventually returned to the same hiking path, but could never find the same trail that she had wandered onto. And she never saw the gigantic lizards again.

I had a similar experience myself – of straying too deep into the mountains and finding that the local lizards were steadily increasing in size. But I never followed them off the trail.

My other friends have withdrawn from hiking altogether, but they have sobering tales of the city. Stories about days spent in the sweltering heat, melting asphalt that stuck to their shoes, and birds that were falling dead from the sky.

“It was horrible,” One of my friends told me. He was a quiet man named Skylar who couldn’t afford a car, so he used the local buses to get around. This was especially difficult during the summer, when the short walk to a bus station could end up dehydrating you severely.

“I heard something hit the ground behind me,” Skylar said. “I thought that it was a piece of trash at first, that somebody had thrown something at me from their car. It wouldn’t be the first time. But then I realized that it had feathers.”

He pursed his lip.

“Sick bird, you know, you don’t think much of it. Until the second one fell. And the next. They were falling from the sky like hail, littering the ground with unmoving bodies.”

Skylar lowered his voice, nearly turning away from me. “The asphalt was so hot. Sticky. For a moment, I thought that it moved beneath my feet. I thought that my mind was playing tricks on me – you know, from the birds. But when I turned around again, all of the birds were gone. There was this sucking noise, and all the bodies were gone.”

He stared into the distance, with a little shrug. “Take from that what you will. But I haven’t left the sidewalk since then.”

My friend Elena told me to always lock my doors.

“I know that it’s common sense, but you have no idea how many people leave their front doors unlocked during the day. You don’t want to be visited by the Meat Man.”

I immediately asked her what she was talking about.

“You’re looking for unusual stories, right?” Elena lowered her tone to a secret, conspiratory whisper. But there was something serious about her expression.

“My mom leaves the front door open during the day sometimes, but only when we’re home. She told me that she was making dinner, when she noticed a strange man in our doorway. Apparently, he let himself in through the open door.”

Elena shakes her head. “Didn’t knock, or ring the bell, or anything. And he asked her if she was interested in buying meat.”

“Meat?” I asked.

“Yeah, like fresh meat that he had to sell. He just kept staring at her, asking if she was interested in buying meat. Fresh meat, whatever you want. Allllll kinds of meat.”

“What kind of meat?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say, and my mom didn’t ask. She was really freaked out – she demanded that he leave, or she was going to call the police. He left quietly after that, but she noticed that he had this weird cart outside. It was full of red, raw pieces of meat. He was going door to door, trying to sell people meat. It was the weirdest thing that I ever encountered.”

“He was probably just crazy,” I offered, but Elena didn’t seem convinced.

“Maybe. But after he came by, my neighborhood started complaining about strange noises at night. Scratching at the doors and windows, weird markings in the dirt outside. The man continuously coming back, ringing the doorbell and trying to get inside. And you know, the weirdest thing is that my mom swears that she did lock the door on the first day that the man came inside our house.”

My friends’ stories unsettled me, but I heard many similar ones through the grapevine. From a friend of a friend of an acquaintance. About the strange things that happen here, that we all overlook and ignore.

When I told my friend CJ about the giant lizards, they twisted their expression in disgust.

“Giant ants. I’ve seen the world’s largest ants building colonies on the side walk. They are the biggest ants that I have ever seen, I swear that they could carry off a hamster. But I’ve… I’ve had more trouble with the little ones.”

The Southwestern United States has several species of fire-ants that found their way here from Africa, as well as many other insects that can make your time here very painful. We tend to be very careful about insects. But sometimes it’s impossible to keep them out.

CJ looked very uncomfortable. “I’ve always had trouble with bugs,” They tell me. “I feel like I’m cursed. When I go outside, they fly at me, drowning themselves in my water, or pitching straight down my throat while I am walking. But the worst experience was last week. I woke up to a strange, itching feeling, like something was walking on me. When I turned on the light, I realized that I was covered in ants. Entirely covered in ants, from my toes to my head. They were all over my sheets, all over my skin. I don’t think that I’ve ever felt that itchy in my life. But they weren’t anywhere else in my room. Not on the floor, not even on the food that I left on my desk. Just my bed, just on me. And I never figured out how they got inside.”

After shuddering, CJ began to scratch themselves, flicking a small insect from their skin with a horrified, disgusted expression.

“Always,” They said, hollowly. “No matter how many times I get rid of them, they always come back.”

The last story was from my friend Tim. It was about Dust Devils – those random dust storms that appear out of nowhere, like miniature tornadoes. They can cause zero visibility while driving and are actually quite dangerous, but they are generally accepted as a factor of life. But my friend Tim told me that he was trapped inside one once.

“It was a normal day, there wasn’t a whisk of wind or a cloud in the sky. I was just walking around the block. And you know that I live in the city, right, not near the foothills or anywhere rural. Just in the middle of the city, walking around the block, and I notice that it’s starting to get a little bit windy. Before I even have the chance to think any more than that, I am suddenly trapped in a whirling column of sand. Tiny rocks and sticks are hitting me, my hat is clamped tight in my fist so it doesn’t fly off. And I’m thinking, Oh my god, I’m inside a Haboob.”

His eyes widened with the memory. “I was scared shitless, I had no idea if I was going to be carried off, or hit by something really heavy. And you know you can get Valley Fever from those things. But before I have the chance to fully panic, the damn thing passes over me, and I see it turning around the corner. Craziest shit that I ever experienced.”

When I first listened to the stories from my peers, I didn’t know what to make of them. I knew my own experiences in the desert were strange at best – otherworldly at worst. But I didn’t realize how much of our everyday lives were overlooked as being mundane occurrences.

I don’t know what I seek by compiling this list, but I suppose just to let the world know what happens beneath their noses. That the dark, endless woods can be frightening, but there is an uncanniness to the sweltering cliffs of the desert Southwest that you cannot find anywhere else on earth.

That while you are here, the desert knows who you are, and it is watching you.

Waiting.

#writing #short stories #shorts #creepypastas #creepy pastas #creepypasta #creepy pasta #horror #horror stories #desert southwest #southwest #desert #desert horror

46 notes · View notes