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It doesn’t get too lonely out here – about six months after a new one gets dropped in, he stops screaming and sobbing. Just dries up, I guess.

There are about ten of us out here, I was the third. Shallow graves, they call them. A tombstone of pebbles. Just down the dirt path from her trailer. About once a year she gets the blood lust and I get a new neighbor.

I don’t like the shallow grave. Too hot in the day, too cold at night, scorpions too close for comfort. I’d prefer six-feet-under in a nice, damp, cool and crowded cemetery – maybe the one in L.A. where Marilyn Monroe is buried or the crypt holding Valentino’s bones. At least then, I’d have a lot more neighbors to talk to. I wouldn’t be just counting the days, each measured by the hot sun baking what’s left of me.

Hell, I’m close enough to the surface to know when I’ll get a new neighbor. First, the grunts of passion. Then, muffled screams which go on for a few hours or so. Then, nearby scraping, a thud, and the soul of a new neighbor, complaining, crying, begging for release from eternity, drops in.

I’m also close enough to hear the radio news – she blasts it from the trailer while she’s fixing her truck. Salesman disappears along I-10. Trucker missing. Pastor of the First Full Pentacostal Church not found after exhaustive search. The generally say the guy’s name. Makes it easy to introduce myself to the new guy.

“Hi Bob, I’m Jerry. Welcome to the neighborhood” I say with a bit of a snicker. Usually, I get the “What happened? What about my family? Will they find me?” sort of questions.

I’ve learned not to be too definite or too clear. Being kidnapped, ritually executed, and buried in a shallow grave in West Texas takes some getting used to – especially for those of us just passing through. I keep it to general.

I’ll never forget the question I asked Dave – the guy who showed up a year after me. He was whimpering about his family. I asked “you had life insurance, no?” He let out a wail. “No,” he cried, “I forgot to renew it!” It was ten weeks before we could talk again.

It generally takes six months for someone to accept their new reality. For about 3 months, before their soft bits get eaten away by the carpenter ants, they wonder what happened to their manhood. For some reason, they feel that it is missing – and it is. Probably in a jar on her credenza. That’s just her M.O. … our manhoods are her trophies.

Then they settle down and begin to wonder if they will ever be found. Does it matter? I usually try to assure them that this place isn’t that lonely – she’s 30 and there are already 10 of us – a minyan. By the time she turns 50, we could have our own sign in West Texas off of US-90: Mort’s Crossing, Population 30.