Thirteen androgynous men and women, dressed in pressed black suits, like some swarm of government bees, stoically entered the dilapidated school bus with solemn disregard for the general mass of people surrounding them in the California street, and the sun was shining. An ecclesiastic figure, swathed in purple robes with wild glittering gleaming beads adorned across the body, stepped forth from the shadows of a cluster of palm trees; it wore an incredible mask, damask as a rose with intricate golden patterns around the cheek and toward the forehead of which was embellished with an etched geometric pattern that seemed to resemble a flower and faint lines that would require a keen eye to be seen and elaborated upon. The hood was up and formed a velveteen waterfall at the back of the head, as it crumpled over, though it was probably designed to look that way. As each member of the secretive yet oddly unconcealed cult traipsed onto the growling, garish yellow bus, the pensive figure gazed on and regally followed the group, taking a place at the back, holding a staff with arms crossed, and the rest sat coldly, staring ahead, unblinking and sedate. The hours passed under the drab desert sun as a singular cloud passed overhead and gradually dissipated into invisible vapours that fell gradually into the densely blue backdrop of the California sky. The old school bus chortled along the deep black road, with pristine lemon lines hugging the left-hand wheels and a driver as stoic as the passengers. There, in the desert, amongst the snakes and the saltbush, a rusted old bus, full of strangers had parked, and with little fuss the suited men and women reached below their seats and removed a piece, they exited in an orderly fashion with eyes fixed ahead and hands immovable from their guns, gripped tightly as if life itself was within those guns. Colt M1911 to be exact. Every gun, though not obvious to an outsider, was loaded with a single bullet (230 gr Federal HST) and cocked, with the manual safety on. Each of the silent group had left the bus, with their apparent leader at the back of the line, holding the staff and the driver stayed seated with the engine off and staring straight ahead into the vast expanse of the sandy hell ahead of him. Twenty metres from the stationary bus, the man and women formed a perfect circle, each were standing a little over an arms distance from the next person. The robed figure took centre stage and uncrossed its arms, the staff outstretched in the left hand. A magnificent golden rod, a thousand etched stories from base to tip, each one emblazoned with fantastical jewels, this staff could belong to a Queen, a King, a God. The followers were still silent, and still stoic, despite the glaring sunlight reflected from every wild diamond and ruby on the majestic phallus like object. The masked person made a crude attempt to engage a member of the round by walking before them in a cyclical fashion, making eye contact with each but none did move, nor bat an eye. Finally it took its place, back at the centre of the circle and made an unholy sound that sounded as if the Devil himself were dying. Garbled words and unnatural screeches thronged from the unmoving masks mouth piece before suddenly falling silent and it raised the staff higher before striking the earth with passionate fury, and this led a simultaneous movement from the centralised hive mind as they each removed the safety from the own weapons. A single shrill scream echoed across the valley and a second strike to the ground from the staff was the indicator to raise the guns to the person to the immediate right. No noise was made, but a third strike of the staff to the desolate, cracked ground caused thirteen concurrent shots to ring across the arid lands, followed by thirteen solid thuds and a ghostly silence fell across the desert once more. A perfect circle of death among the cacti and Kangaroo rat, and the silence finally broken by the starting engine of a school bus as the driver awakens from his trance and returns back to an apparently civilised world. The fine figure gently steps over a corpse and lifts its robe so as not to disturb the pooling blood before sauntering into the basin of a lonesome American desert and fading into obscurity.