Now this might look like a puddle of tomato soup with yellow toilet paper in it. It's a little ironic, that we call such papers tissue and that the medical profession calls skin, one of our largest and most important organs by the same name; their resemblance is not at all superficial. It might look like some strange too saucy small noodled lasagna. It is all that is left of a human baby.

We can see this without horror. It is not our baby. This blood is not the future of our blood. It doesn't sink into the sand. Perhaps it has, a little, but the sand saturated so quickly, it is so viscous, now the pool floats. The skin is stuck to it, save the tiniest edge. There is no breeze in which it should flutter. The air is still and hot. As still as death. As hot as hell.

This is a desert. This is the outback. The aborigines took care of it for how many milennia? Why did they value the dreamtime so? Care to hazard a guess? Inhospitable? Now there's an understatement. This land is truly, truly dangerous. Death is behind every dune. Death is in the sun. Death is there, there on the ground. What fear holds death when it is all, everywhere? Awareness can be a horror. Why should ignorance be bliss? When knowledge is horror. Absolute.

Jessica is beyond weeping. Sadness fails to encompass this tragedy. As she blindly stares at the ribbons of flesh and pool of blood that was her son she cannot find tears. Although she is periodically racked by sobbing, her eyes are rather dry. One moment of inattention and she is damned. Tommy has been eaten by dingos. What will his grandparents say? His father, her husband? As the shock really begins to set in, she is drifting beyond words, beyond these questions.