Last Days in the Desert
“Something does stink,” exclaimed Mona, coming into Tiffany’s bedroom and switching on the light.
“What is this?” asked Stacie, coming in behind Mona, and walking around a pile of luggage and boxes.
Seven large gray pails sat in the darkest corner of the room.
“Oh God!” exclaimed Tiffany. She’d crashed in the living room after the party and had not gone back to her bedroom for more than a few minutes since the party started the day before.
“Eauw,” said Mona. “What is in there? What is this?”
“This is like horrible. That’s what this is,” said Stacie.
Across the bottom of each pail there was a layer of sawdust and on top of the sawdust a greenish-gray ooze spread in blobs, and only after they had studied the ooze for a while did they realize what they were looking at. A heap of toads merged together in a strange terrain of bumps and boils with eyes seeming to pop out unexpectedly.
“Toads. Some kind of like… toads. Who would do such a horrible thing like this to us?” asked Stacie.
Girls crowded around the pails. No matter how long you looked at the packed mass of toads in the bottom of the pails there was no way to sort out exactly where one toad began and the other ended, for the undulating surface of toad bodies stretched across the sawdust, not revealing their legs and feet, which were tucked under their bodies. The huge protruding eyes were watery and yellow and had strange pupils that were nearly closed, looking nowhere and everywhere simultaneously. The way some of the smaller toad bodies had been placed made the whole mass look like an expanse of toad skin, some commingled array of amphibian flesh, a toad slab, a cake sheet of bumpy toad spread over the pail bottom. Irregular, warty sacs clung to their necks. They were vapid, cold, languid and grotesque. Their blank expressions, their fatuity, their primordial morbidity, gave the impression of a sad, sickly swamp.
“What? What’s the fucks?” Itzel was awake and joined them.
“There’re toads in buckets in here,” said Yadira.
“What the—. You know some messed up people,” said Itzel. “You got the evil eye on you.”
“Eyes. Plural. Tiff, there’s a long note. It’s got your name on it. It’s pages and pages long. It’s all scribbly,” said Mona.
Tiffany snatched the note away. She held it up to her face and tried to read. Reading was painfully difficult in her drug-hangover state, and with the crazy handwriting, but she eventually managed to understand what was written. “Oh my God,” she exclaimed. She read for a while longer. “Oh hell. This fucking druggie tool.”
“What is it?” asked Stacie.
“He is such a tool. He never got anything I said straight any time we ever talked. I guess he thought I wanted his stupid toads to start a business selling drugs!” exclaimed Tiffany.
“Some dude thought you wanted to sell drugs? He thought you wanted these toads? He dumped these on you?” asked Mona.
“He’s telling me how to set up the terrariums and how to make the drugs from these poor toads that he bought from some other messed up dude. That guy took the aquariums back, but he didn’t want the toads,” Tiffany said.
“Aye! Changos! Carumba!” said Itzel, “I gotta sleep.” She wandered away to the living room again, tugging her skirt down drowsily.
“These poor things have been prisoners and the stuff off their backs has been harvested for people to smoke. They’re Colorado River Toads. I never agreed to take his stupid toads. Did I agree to take this jerk’s stupid toads for him?” Tiffany was fingering her heart necklace nervously.
“I dunno,” said Stacie suspiciously, “did you?”
“No, I did not. I’m telling you, I don’t remember that. Does anyone remember me saying I was going to take care of some dude’s toads? I musta been really wasted. I don’t think I was ever that wasted, though. This guy is a total tool. I think I remember him,” Tiffany concluded.
“Why can’t he take them back?” asked Mona.
“He left. To go to Utah,” Tiffany explained, “He says so in here. I don’t even have his number anymore. He left them with me as a gift because he thought they’d get confiscated at the border.”
After a brief discussion, they decided to drag the toad pails out of the bedroom and keep them in the bathroom, which seemed cooler and moister and it had a fan to remove the smell. The bumpy warty flesh of the toads, spread at the bottom of the pails, contrasted sharply with the old pink and green tub and tile interior of the bathroom. A strange decal once pasted to a pink tile by the old lady who lived there showed the silhouette of a naked woman who arched her back and scrubbed herself with a bath brush. Now it looked as though she was trying to scrub herself clean from the nearness of the horrid, warty amphibian flesh.
“I’m pretty sure the guy who left these is that guy who hit on me at the party in Reddington Pass,” said Stacie, when they had the pails moved.
“Yeah, him,” said Tiffany. “That’s the dude I’m thinking of. It was him. Skinny guy with a long brown ponytail?”
“Oh, he’s a tool. I know him,” said Mona.
“These are his toads?” asked Yadira.
“Yeah, he was so anti-environmental,” said Tiffany.
“I know that tool. He was a business major nut trying to sell all this stuff off the back of toads. It was horrible,” said Mona. “Anti-environment.”
“Yeah, he would sell anything. He would sell his own mother. He had no respect for anything in the world. Nothing was sacred or anything. He didn’t care. I hated that creepy guy,” said Yadira.
“We have to get rid of them. We’re going to have to put them outside, free them and everything,” said Tiffany.
“Yes, erp, they have to be freed,” said Mona.
“I don’t feel bad smoking weed. It’s like a frickin plant, man. Like lettuce or something. I can’t get all upset about lettuce, but I’m not taking an animal prisoner and using it for dope,” said Stacie.
“That is so messed up,” agreed Mona.
“I know,” said Yadira.
“We have to free them,” called Itzel from the living room. “Freedom.”
“That’s right. Free them all,” said Tiffany.
“Yeah, we give them their freedom. That should be the last thing we do together. We’ll do it tonight. Together,” said Stacie, getting a little emotional at the thought of this noble deed being the last thing she did with her roommates.
“That is really tight of us. This is like good karma stuff that you have to do to be tight with your sisters,” said Tiffany. “Although these things really make me want to vomit. Oh, he says we have to use gloves to touch them.”
“Okay, maybe we have some gloves around. Well, maybe I packed them already?” said Stacie.
“I know, we’re gonna give these guys their freedom. We’re gonna do it together. This is good karma. You’re right,” said Yadira.
“Does this mean we’re going to have to touch them with gloves even? I don’t know. It’s gross, really. Do we have to touch them?” asked Mona.
“Well, maybe.” Seeing the faces of the others, Tiffany added. “We can do it. We’ll have gloves on and we can kinda tip the pails over and ease them out. We gotta make sure we don’t hurt these guys.”
“I don’t like toads, but we can do it,” said Yadira.
“While the wall gets fixed. Itzel!” she yelled at the big girl who had returned to the living room, “You're in charge of fixing up these walls, okay. Get another pail of filler if you need it, okay?” said Tiffany as they all walked to the living room.
“Yeah, fucking sure.” Itzel hollered that back, and looked surprised to see them near her. She had sat down on the floor and showed no sign of moving.
“Itzel we’re leaving you in charge of fixing the wall. The rest of us pack the stuff in the cars. But before we actually leave town we take care of these guys.”
“What guys?” asked Maribel who was now preparing a hash pipe in the living room.
“Toads. Can’t you keep up?”
said Stacie.
“What toads? Did you say toads?”
“There are toads left in Tiffany’s bedroom by some asshole who know her,” Itzel explained.
“Wow, that’s really weird.”
“We know. We’re going to get rid of the toads, together. Then we hit the road early tomorrow morning,” said Stacie.
“This is so tight,” said Tiffany. “We’re gonna do what’s right together.”
Chapter Seven