A Crude Headstone

"I went hunting for my own shit with a shovel and genuine fear that something in this empty world might have stolen it. This is what exile does to dignity."

I collected the shovel from where I had left it lying on the ground, its metal head half-buried in dust alongside the two rolls of toilet paper Luke had brought. The items looked almost surreal against the backdrop of this alien landscape—mundane artefacts of human necessity marooned in a world that seemed to have no use for such things. I left the toilet paper where it lay, a beacon for my return, and ventured along the edge of the river upstream.

The soft burbling of the water accompanied my steps, a constant companion in what was otherwise the most profound silence I had ever experienced. Its melody wound through the stillness like a thread of sanity—calming and relentless, utterly indifferent to the chaos that had brought me here. The sound spoke of cycles that predated humanity and would continue long after we were dust ourselves, unbothered by the concerns of one displaced man with a shovel and a mission he couldn't quite believe he was undertaking.

I could easily have stripped off my clothes and plunged back into that cool embrace. The water promised escape—temporary, illusory, but escape nonetheless—from the heat and the dust and the weight of everything pressing down on my shoulders. My skin remembered its touch, the way it had washed away not just grime but something heavier, something that had nothing to do with dirt.

But I was on a mission.

The absurdity of it wasn't lost on me. Somewhere out there, in the fine rust-coloured dust that seemed to coat every surface and fill every breath, a piece of evidence needed proper burial. My evidence. My humiliation. The physical proof of a moment I desperately wanted to erase from this world's memory, even if I couldn't erase it from my own.

Breaking from the river's comforting proximity, I turned due west. The transition was immediate and unsettling—from the soft, malleable banks where water had worked the soil into something yielding, to ground that grew increasingly arid and hostile with each step. The dust here was finer, drier, rising in small puffs around my feet as I walked.

I was nearing the spot. I was certain of it.

My determination solidified with each stride, even as the landscape offered nothing in the way of encouragement. My eyes locked on the ground in front of me, searching with an intensity that felt wildly disproportionate to the nature of what I sought. And yet here I was, scanning the barren earth like a prospector hunting for gold, my treasure infinitely less precious and infinitely more personal.

"Hmm."

I brought myself to a halt, the sound escaping before I'd consciously registered my confusion. The large, round boulder protruding from the ground ahead served as a landmark—I remembered it clearly, had noted it during my earlier desperate search for privacy. This was the right area. This was definitely the right area.

But where is my poo?

The question was absurd on its face, the kind of thought that would have made me laugh under any other circumstances. But standing here in the silence, alone in a landscape that seemed to stretch to infinity in every direction, nothing felt amusing. My eyes widened first with curiosity, then with something colder. Fear, perhaps. Or something adjacent to it.

The possibility crept into my mind like smoke under a door. Something might have found it. Something might have claimed it. In a world I didn't understand, with rules I couldn't predict, anything was possible. There might be creatures here—scavengers, predators, things I couldn't even imagine—that had tracked the scent and made off with my shame like a trophy.

Did something actually take my poo?

The thought was ludicrous. Surely. And yet in the profound isolation of this place, where silence pressed against my eardrums like a physical weight, even the most outlandish possibilities seemed to demand consideration. My imagination, starved of the normal distractions that kept it in check, began constructing scenarios I didn't want to examine too closely.

I raised the shovel, holding it in front of me with both hands. The gesture was more reflexive than rational—what would I do if something actually emerged from the dust? Swing at it? Fight for my dignity with garden equipment? The image would have been comical if my heart hadn't been beating quite so insistently against my ribs.

"Hello?"

My voice broke the silence with a note that aimed for defiance but landed somewhere closer to uncertainty. The word disappeared into the vast emptiness, swallowed without echo, without acknowledgment. I took a few steps beyond the boulder, peering into the expanse as if expecting an answer—expecting anything at all to break the relentless monotony of dust and sky.

But the silence that greeted me was absolute. Complete. The kind of silence that seemed to have weight and texture, pressing against me from all sides like something alive.

I stood there for a long moment, shovel raised, feeling the full absurdity of my situation wash over me. Here I was, a thirty-five-year-old from Broken Hill, armed with a garden implement, hunting for my own faeces in an alien dimension while simultaneously terrified that something might have stolen them. If Claire could see me now...

The thought of her was a knife between my ribs, and I pushed it away with the desperation of a man shoving furniture against a door.

A gentle breeze flirted with the edges of my fringe, offering a brief respite from the unyielding heat that had been building since morning. I found myself rubbing at my arms—not from cold, not really, but from some subconscious attempt to comfort myself amidst the vast emptiness that surrounded me on every side.

I lifted my gaze to the sky.

It stretched above me in an unbroken expanse of blue, constant and unblemished. Not a single cloud dared to mar its perfect canvas. And there were no birds. I realised it suddenly, the absence hitting me with unexpected force. No birds wheeling overhead, no distant calls breaking the silence, no sign that anything with wings had ever traversed this endless azure ceiling.

The silence wasn't just quiet. It was an emptiness so profound it felt like a physical presence, pressing down with almost tactile weight. I shivered—not from cold, but from the bone-deep realisation of just how utterly alone I was. Another breeze whispered across my bare arms, and I found myself almost grateful for even that impersonal touch. As if the wind itself was attempting to offer companionship in the absence of anything else.

If I can't find the poo soon, I found myself thinking, a hint of resignation threading through the notion, I'll just head back to the tent.

The thought of Jamie surfaced immediately—would he be wondering where I'd gone? Would he have noticed my absence at all, or was he still unpacking in sullen silence, content to pretend I didn't exist?

Scepticism followed almost instantly, snuffing out the fleeting hope like a candle in the wind. I shook my head, nearly amused by my own naivety. Or not. The reality of Jamie's indifference was something I should have accepted hours ago. Expecting concern from him was like expecting warmth from stone—technically possible, I supposed, but requiring conditions so extreme as to be practically impossible.

Motivated by a mixture of determination and the simple need to conclude this bizarre quest, I took several more strides across the barren dust. The landscape stretched endlessly in every direction, a sea of rust and ochre that seemed designed to swallow any sense of progress.

Then—

"Aha!"

The exclamation burst from me before I could contain it, a small sound of victory against the backdrop of desolation. There it was. The object of my singular focus, sitting in the dust exactly where I'd left it, looking for all the world like a museum exhibit nobody wanted to claim.

It wasn't customary for me to fixate on such things. Under normal circumstances, the very idea would have been grotesque, unthinkable, the sort of thing you actively avoided contemplating. But these weren't normal circumstances, were they? This had become my mission—peculiar, absurd, but somehow necessary. A task I could complete. A problem I could solve. In a world where everything else felt impossibly beyond my control, this one small thing was within my power to address.

I crouched down beside it, drawn into an inspection that felt oddly significant.

It's so strange.

The detective in me awakened despite myself, observing details I hadn't expected to notice. There were no ants marching toward it in organised columns. No flies buzzing overhead in lazy circles. No beetles, no crawling things, no evidence whatsoever that anything in this world recognised what lay before me as the organic matter it clearly was.

Back home—back on Earth—this would have been a feast. Within minutes, perhaps seconds, it would have attracted every small scavenger in the vicinity. The natural cycle of decomposition would have begun immediately, life feeding on waste, waste becoming soil, soil nurturing new life.

But here, nothing.

The realisation was eerie in a way I struggled to articulate. Unsettling in its implications. Here I was, in a world that seemed to reject the very essence of what I had always known to be a natural cycle. The absence of interest—the apparent absence of any life that might take interest—underscored the alienness of this environment more starkly than the portal ever had.

Clivilius, it seemed, harboured no life that thrived on the remains of others. Or if it did, that life had no interest in what I had to offer. I wasn't sure which possibility disturbed me more.

Straightening up, I turned my attention to the task at hand. The shovel sank into the soft surface layer with surprising ease, the dust parting around the blade like water around a stone. For a moment, I allowed myself the luxury of thinking this might be simpler than expected.

The illusion shattered with the second scoop.

Beneath the soft, yielding surface lay something altogether different—a firm crust that resisted my efforts with stubborn determination. The contrast was jarring, as if the planet itself had laid a trap for the unwary: a welcoming exterior concealing an unyielding core.

I crouched to examine this resistant layer more closely. Its colour was darker than the surface dust, a compressed density that spoke of pressures and processes I couldn't begin to understand. Curious despite myself, I pressed the tip of my finger against its surface. The crust yielded slightly, leaving a small but visible indent—a minor victory that felt disproportionately satisfying.

Standing again, I took a moment to gather myself. The shovel felt heavier in my hands now, weighted with the knowledge of what it would take to complete this task. I gripped the handle with renewed determination, raised it high above my head, and drove it down with all the force I could summon.

The crust cracked with a sound like breaking bone.

The noise echoed slightly in the silent expanse, the first sharp sound this landscape had produced since my own footsteps. Encouraged by the success, I wriggled the shovel blade into the newly created fissure, working it back and forth to widen the gap. Then, taking a step back, I jumped onto the shoulders of the blade with my full weight.

The shovel sank beneath the dark crust, breaking through the barrier that had seemed so defiant moments before. Beneath the resistant layer, the soil was looser—still darker than the surface dust, but willing to yield to determined effort.

Much better.

The thought carried a small sense of triumph as I worked, enlarging the hole with each careful scoop. The physical exertion felt good after hours of inactivity and emotional turmoil—simple, honest labour that asked nothing of me except effort. No complicated relationships to navigate. No questions I couldn't answer. Just a man, a shovel, and a hole that needed digging.

When the cavity seemed sufficient, I turned to the object of my quest. Using the shovel's edge, I nudged it into its final resting place with as much ceremony as the situation demanded—which was to say, none at all. Then I began the work of covering it, tossing the mixed dark soil and soft dust back into the hole until no evidence remained of what lay beneath.

It's safe now.

The sentiment was bizarre—a strange thought to have over such a task—and yet there it was. A feeling of completion. Of having addressed something that needed addressing. Of having restored, in some small measure, a dignity that had been stripped away by circumstance and desperate necessity.

My gaze shifted to the broader consideration of marking this spot. The thought of accidentally stumbling upon this makeshift toilet in the future—or worse, choosing it again without remembering—brought a grimace to my face. It would be most unpleasant. Some form of warning was required.

I scanned the desolate landscape for something—anything—that could serve as a marker. But the barrenness offered no assistance. No tree to strip a branch from. No bush to relocate. Not even a distinctive rock I might position as a cairn. Just endless, featureless dust stretching to every horizon.

My eyes fell back to the shovel in my hand. The only tool. The only companion in this endeavour.

It'll have to do.

With the decision made, I gripped the handle tighter and raised the shovel once more. This time, my action was not about breaking through resistance but about leaving a lasting sign of my presence—a marker that would stand as warning and monument in equal measure.

I drove the shovel down into the firm crust with all the force remaining in my arms.

It stood there when I released it, upright and surprisingly stable. A solitary vertical line in a vast horizontal landscape. A crude headstone for a crude burial. A testament to the oddity of what I had just completed and a guidepost for the memory of this moment, however strange it might be.

I stepped back to survey my handiwork.

The shovel looked almost defiant against the empty sky—a small rebellion against the vastness that pressed in from every direction. It wasn't much. It was barely anything at all, in the grand scheme of things. But it was something I had done. Something I had finished. Something that marked my presence in this place, however temporarily.

And in a world where everything familiar had been stripped away, where every competence I'd cultivated over thirty-five years seemed worthless, where the simple act of living had become an exercise in constant adaptation—that felt like enough.

For now, at least, it felt like enough.