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"What the hell am I even doing?" I muttered to the empty desert. “I carted my happy ass all the way out here hours ago to capture the stark, beautiful isolation of the canyons, and I got… this.”

Trying to salvage something out of the trip to the desert, I stepped to the opposite side and tried tilting my head. Still nothing like what I was after, but weird– really, really weird.

“None of this makes any sense,” I grumbled and griped. “It’s like the damn brush had a mind of its own. There is no way I painted this mess.”

“With all due respect…” Neysa cleared her throat. “I can assure you that you did paint that mess.”

“I’m ignoring you.”

“Do you, Girl. Do you. Just know that I am right …again.”

Throwing my hands in the air and letting my head fall back as far as it would go, I bellowed to the Heavens, “Can I get a refund without a receipt?”

“Don’t make me put you on mute,” I snipped.

“Do you, Girl. Do you.”

Pressing the ignore button on the remote of my brain, I went back to staring at my painting. The longer I looked, the more the images seemed to shimmy and slide around the canvas.

There were no rock formations or cacti, not even the damn tumbleweed I knew I had painted at least three of them. All I saw was a warped landscape with a strange glow, and structures and buildings that rose from my canvas like broken teeth. Shadows bled into shapes that looked suspiciously like cages, and a weird, pulsing sphere dominated the center of the piece.

“Ha! This is nuts!” Chuckling with a heavy dose of mania and shaking my head, I took two steps back to see if that helped.

It did not, but it did give me an idea.

“Artistic inspiration,” I flatly stated. “Probably the weird mood I’ve been in for the last couple of months messed with my mojo… but inventing a grim, fortified ghost town out here in the middle of nowhere?” I smiled and nodded proudly. “Ya’ know what? I kinda dig the creepy vibe. It does fit my aesthetic perfectly.”

“And Halloween is just around the corner,” NeyNey helpfully suggested.

“Yes!” I whooped and did a little happy dance. “Thanks, Neysa!”

Deciding that I actually kinda, sorta liked my painting and it definitely fit the season. A whole series of paintings, with the one before me as the pièce de resistance, flashed to life in my mind. I could see them displayed at Rodeo, the bar where I was the headliner who waitressed, bartended, and washed dishes when Earl was too hungover to come into work.

I had just imagined the third painting in the series when my stomach growled so loudly that I was sure everyone within five miles heard it. Reaching for the turkey and cheese sandwich and the chips I’d packed, I looked up and realized how dark it had gotten. The Sunset was completely gone, the sky had become an oppressive, pitch-black blanket, and the temperature had plummeted.

“When the hell did that happen? How did I miss it?”

“You were too busy being mean to me,” NeyNey sniffed, putting on a performance that just might have won her an Academy Award if anyone but me could see it.

“YOU started it.”

“I did not.”

“Yes, you did, and that’s all I’m sayin’,” I huffed. “I am hangry, and it’s cold out here. This is a good time to remember the phrase, ‘do not poke the hangry Alicorn’.”

My mouth tasted like cardboard, and I was in no mood for Neysa’s antics, so I once again pressed mute on my imaginary remote control and reached for my water.

It felt light, so I shook it and quickly found out the damn thing was bone dry. Then I remembered that I had finished it a while before. "Great. Starving, dehydrated, and I’m miles from the Rodeo Bar and my apartment." I grumbled, already dreading the long walk back. “I swear, I have to be the…”

Turning to pack my gear, my mouth refused to work as I saw that my surroundings had completely changed. Not one damn thing looked familiar. It was freaky and incredibly disconcerting. Not one damn landmark that I mentally made a note of on my way to MacAllen Mesa was anywhere to be seen.

The low ridges were gone, swallowed by a strange, heavy fog that I had never seen in all my years of living near the Chihuahuan Desert. Spinning in a slow circle, my heart did that quick, uncomfortable flutter that always made the goosebumps jump to life and start dancing the Macarena.

“Dammit, what is happening?” I turned back to the right.

I knew these sands. I could pretty much identify every damn grain. After all, I had spent half my life wandering the Chihuahuan Desert to escape my family's suffocatingly sweet, 'frilly' expectations. But right now? I was utterly turned around, sadly, completely lost, and worried that I had somehow been suck into Middle Earth and was about to see a freakin’ Hobbit.

A flash of light in the distance stopped me in my tracks. It was a glimmer in the distance that cut right through the unnatural haze that was rolling in all around me. I wasn’t sure if it was a flicker of light, a flashlight being turned on and off, or a moonbeam bouncing off an old beer can one of the teenagers left out there… But I didn’t care. It gave me hope that I wasn’t gonna have to spend the night in the desert.