The car screeched to a halt as the road ended at the lip of a grand canyon, whose gulf stretched away as far as the eye could see to the left and the right. The far side of the canyon was in the distance, slightly hazed by the mist rising up and out. The scarlet tyres seemed to sigh to themselves, and the radio, which had been playing static for the last eternity, turned itself off. June sat up. She had been lying in the back seat staring up into the sky, watching the day-squid lazily wriggle.
"Have we arrived?" she said, her voice slightly thick as though she'd been sleeping and suddenly woken.
"I think it's time you opened the satchel," said the beautiful stranger running her hand over her head. It was the gesture of a woman used to having long, thick hair, and not the crew-cut that she sported. As she finished speaking there was a soft, warm chime, resonant as a bell, and there was a breath of hot brass in the air. A ripple sped outwards from the beautiful stranger, passing through everything and touching nothing, a perfect circle of movement five feet above the ground.
"What was that?" she said, for the first time sounding unsure of herself.
"The ring of truth," said June dreamily. She picked the satchel up off the seat where she'd been lying on top of it. "You genuinely believe that it's time I opened the satchel." She rubbed at her throat with her free hand, massaging the bruises there; five medium sized ones.
"And does that mean it is time?"
"It does, but not because you said it. It has always been time to open the satchel when we reached this point."
High above them in a cornflower blue sky thin clouds wisped together and started to tangle the tentacles of the day-squid. Oblivious, June laid the satchel on her knee, and pulled the first of the clasps loose with a little snick. The day-squid, startled, squirted ink. The beautiful stranger looked up, and saw the black cloud spread out from between the day-squid's tentacles and start to fall from the sky. It was a thick black rain with an ammoniac smell and a rich, earthy taste that enhanced a dish of pasta. June snicked the second clasp free, and opened the satchel.
Everything seemed to blur, and for an instant the beautiful stranger was stood on a hot street, cracked pavement underfoot and enormous buildings towering around her. People scurried past wearing suits and carrying briefcases and pinstriped umbrellas, some banging into her and cursing her for just standing there. Traffic grumbled in a jam next to her, more lanes than she'd ever seen, or could contemplate wanting, waiting for arcane instructions from poles with lights atop them. High above her the sky was empty save for a glowing ball of light, no day-squid at all, and she knew terror. She wavered, feeling her knees go weak, and then it all receded again and she was sat behind the wheel of a high-powered car on the road to nowhere, just in front of a grand canyon. Behind her was the woman she'd been abusing, sitting with a satchel on her knees and a look of wonderment on her face.
"I never had holes in my memories," said June, possibly talking to the beautiful stranger. "I always had memories in my holes. I've been created so many times, and always for the same reason and in the same way. I've never been except when I've needed to be, and I shouldn't have any memories at all. But there's a resonance across all the dimensions, and every time I'm reformed, I resonate, and memories form that have no right to a continued existence. I've been so many people and to so many places, that the world itself records my presence and tells me about it when I come back again."
"So you were in the brothel then?"
"Yes, I was there to meet a woman."
"Where were you before that?"
"I was starting a war that would rage for over a hundred years so that I could meet a woman."
"The Americonfusion war? You started the Americonfusion war? How?"
"I smiled at the right man in the wrong place and let events take their course."
"Then what are you doing here?"
"Meeting a woman."
For the first time in a long time there wasn't an unnatural silence. There was the chirrup of crickets hiding in the grass and bushes, there was the vibrant whistles of birdsong from the trees, there was a dull tremble and roar of water from the waterfall in the grand canyon that was throwing up spray as mist, and there was the soft ticking of the cooling engine of the car.
"Sweet dreams are made of fish," said the beautiful stranger. "I hope you've come to take me away from it all, and not take me back to the city that never sleeps."
"I've come to take your soul, but some souls take longer than others."
Their hands reached towards each other's as slowly as glaciation, and the thick black rain falling from the sky started to strike the ground.
A beautiful stranger, a woman with crew-cut blonde hair and icy blue eyes, drove the open car along the highway; black asphalt disappearing beneath the scarlet tyres of the car. The car was utterly silent and shone like destruction; only the hiss of the wind of its passage made any noise. In the back seat June lay quietly, her hands and ankles bound with electrical flex, her skirt hiked up to mid thigh and new bruises flowering just above her knee. In her head, over and over, she could hear herself saying 'I want you, I want you.' Periodically the beautiful stranger would turn in her seat, lean over the back of it, and whisper,
'Something says Obsession,' to her.
The hiss of the wind changed subtly as the air around the car thickened like custard and the car began to slow. The highway, which had been a black snake through the desert around them, turned grey and the asphalt gave way to paving slabs. The desert itself surrendered to fecundity, and grass sprang up where previously there had been none. Trees emerged and threw out branches like drowning swimmers throwing up their arms. Leaves cascaded out and down, and somewhere in the distance was the glint of gold.
'Hold your head up,' said the beautiful stranger. 'They're crucifying an Elf tonight.' June lifted her head up, and the car surged back to life.
'Keep your head up,' said the stranger, 'we're moving on.'
The trees thickened into forest, and then silver shards of light darted through the trees and struck the chrome of the car. Brilliant hallucinations filled the air, and even the day-squid, high in the sky far above, was hard to see anymore. June's neck, aching now, relaxed and she let her head back down onto the seat. Again the air around the car thickened like custard, and it slowed down and stopped.
'Let's get out and walk a little,' said the beautiful stranger in her melodic voice, and she reached back and loosened the electrical flex. June sat up, rubbing her wrists and ankles, and eventually pulled the brown, soft-leather satchel from underneath her, gripped it carefully in the hand whose wrist felt strongest, and clambered from the car.
'Where are we going?' she said, her voice loud in the silence around them.
'To see the puddles,' said the beautiful stranger smiling. She lead the way, along a narrow path between the trees where no grass grew and roots were partially exposed. Shrubs and bushes pushed at the edges of the path, taking advantage of the trees retreating from it, but still suffering from a lack of real sunlight through the canopy overhead. Everything seemed tinged just a little with green, even the tiny white flowers on the smallest plants. The walked for a little under five minutes before the path ended at the edge of a large puddle, one big enough that June could have splashed almost all of the water out just by jumping into it.
There were lots of puddles here, spaced irregularly but distinctly, and it was the sunlight reflecting off the water that had thrown darts of light at the car earlier. June grinned, seeming ten years younger all of a sudden, and tensed her legs, ready to jump into the first of the puddles. The beautiful stranger grinned, exposing white teeth in what was very nearly a snarl, and laid a hand on June's arm, stilling her. June looked up, her eyes narrowing and her brow furrowing.
'There are puddlesharks,' said the beautiful stranger. 'Watch.' She put her hand into her pocket and pulled out a packet of shark-chum, vacuum sealed for extra freshness with the gaudy packaging in red and white and the flashy logo that screamed Now with extra pain!. She ripped across the top of the packet which tore with a shriek.
'There are monsters and there are angels,' said June quietly. The stranger reached into the packet of chum and pulled out a bloody lump of flesh, and tossed it casually into the air over one of the puddles. It hung there motionless for a second, long enough for June to see that it was a gobbet with long thin bloody tendrils that skirled around it like the only listenable bagpipe composition in the world and then the nearest puddle exploded into a kaleidoscope of rainbow droplets. Water expanded out like a bomb going off in a chandelier factory, and a shark easily 13 feet long arced through the air and seized the meat with a single snap of powerful jaws. It landed with horrible grace in the next puddle, sending up an additional spume of water, and then the water from the first puddle hit them both, drenching them to the skin and shocking June with its coldness.
'Puddlesharks,' she said flatly while the beautiful stranger shook herself as vigorously as an Alsatian.
'Every rose has its thorn, every cowboy sings his sad, sad song, and every puddle has its shark.'
They returned to the car, and June sat in the front seat next to the stranger, where it was easier to hold her head up and keep it up, and the beautiful stranger started the car again and soon they were moving on.
June was standing by the roadside under a purple sky at dawn, carrying a brown soft-leather satchel and wearing sandals a size too big for her. On the horizon a few spindly trees stuck up into the early morning light and the land looked as though it might finally give rise to some hills, but all around her it was flat, and quiet. Terribly, terribly quiet, as though something had killed all the birds and insects that would normally be going about their daily business of living and dying.
A open car pulled up beside her, as silent as the rest of the world around her, and June wondered if maybe the silence was in her head; maybe she'd gone deaf and not realised. Then the stranger in the car spoke, inviting her to get in, and she knew that she wasn't deaf, but that the silence was still an oddity that needed explanation. She looked at the stranger and felt a deep passion for her that she couldn't explain, but somehow no explanation was needed. Above them, the purple sky started to shade into pink, and delicate tendrils of cloud pulled themselves into wispy existence.
'What's in the bag?' said the beautiful stranger as June got into the car.
'I've no idea,' said June truthfully. 'It's been with me as long as I can remember now.'
The stranger tossed her head as though her crew-cut blonde hair had once been much longer, put the car into gear, and they moved silently off along the road. The car made no noise at all, but the wind caused by its passage hissed like a snake with bad intentions.
'I've travelled the world and the seven seas,' said the stranger, 'and I'm not sure I've met you before.'
'I'm an obsession,' replied June, her hands stroking the leather satchel now resting in her lap. The road had started to curve, the landscape at last growing a hill. Some more trees grew on the hill, like hairs growing out of an infected mole.
'I've abused everyone I've ever met,' said the stranger, but she didn't sound aggressive. She seemed just to be making conversation.
'Some people want you to abuse them,' said June.
'And some people want to be abused by me,' said the stranger.
'Isn't that the same thing?'
'Depends on your point of view.'
They drove on, and the tendrils of cloud resolved themselves at last into the tentacles of the day-squid that lived in the sky and glowed so that the people below could see what they were doing. It was less scary than the night-cuttlefish that also lived in the sky and glowed, but that seemed to eat things; maybe people, maybe planets. But it was scary nonetheless.
'Aren't you curious about what's in the bag?' said the stranger, her voice sounding melodic over the hiss of the wind. 'How long have you been carrying it for?'
'Ever since I can remember,' said June, her fingers stopping stroking it at last and lying flat on top of it. 'That's not very long though, I remember walking out into the desert a few hours ago, and I can remember being in a whorehouse in a small town some days before that, but there are holes where memories ought to be. I think there are memories where holes ought to be as well, but I don't know whose memories they are.'
'Yet,' said the stranger thoughtfully. 'But you could open the bag and find out what's inside it.'
'I don't think it's time to know that yet,' said June. 'I think I'll know when the bag needs to be opened.'
'Ah,' said the stranger, nodding and accelerating as the road straightened out once more ahead of them and the head of the day-squid seemed to nod contentedly in the sky above. 'Sweet dreams are made of fish.'
'I want you to abuse me,' said June quietly.
'I already am,' said the stranger, and laughter out of nowhere rolled around the car like manic-depressive thunder.
