Cole Burkhardt

The gutters were flooded, and I had a feeling the wash would be in a similar state.

The drive home was stressful, but I eventually found my way back to the neighborhood.

I saw the big yellow dead end sign and, with a sigh of relief, made the final turn towards my home.

I stomped on the brake.

The car screeched to a halt.

I froze, knuckles white around the steering wheel, staring straight ahead of me without blinking.

The mural had changed.

All of the warm colors had been sucked out of it.

What had once been vibrant rays of sunlight were now billowing storm clouds, blanketing the dead landscape in a rain of hostile blues and grays, dark and tempestuous as the monsoons themselves.

The woman was distraught.

She was drenched and kneeling in the muddy earth, hunched over and weeping inconsolably beneath her long, dark hair.

Her tears formed into a river that wound through the landscape beyond her.

Her children were no longer in the picture.

I didn't want to keep driving.

Every cell in my body screamed at me not to get any closer to the weeping woman in the painting, and I knew I should listen.

I wasn't stupid.

Even as a staunch skeptic, I still knew who I was looking at.

I'd lived in the Wild West long enough to know that if you see a weeping woman by a river, you turn around and go home.

Even if it's a painting next to a man-made wash.

But that was the problem.