Sediment

Trunks of rock lay scattered across the horizon, as layered shelves of the earth's former life loomed above them. On his right wa a riverbed that had spent its lifetime drying up, until a million years later it transformed itself into a mountain. It was strange to him, how this linear world could forge such examples of eternity and yet the sentient beings that walked the periphery of that mystic riverbed were themselves nothing more than specks of dust in its memory. There was no forever for a human being on Earth. Only the vague recollection of carbon in the mountain's layers could distinguish what was human and what was animal. One day, even this civilization would disappear beneath the sediments, the only clues to a human populace being the rims of motor cars, porcelain plates reduced to tiny shards. Arrow heads. A rusted switchblade.

The heat was the worst he had ever experienced, an oxygen-deprived wasteland that was fit to fry a lizard. Clara was likewise melted by the pursuit of the sun, the silk top of her dress billowing out as the motor car forced a breeze over them. It cooked them with its even heat, a slow, symmetrical roasting.

"We should have stopped in Nevada when we had the chance," she complained. Her lips were dry as she spoke, her hands never leaving the wheel to rummage for lipstick in her handbag. She was as rooted to her post as the trees that lay in stone on the vista surrounding them. "We could have stopped at The Northern Club, out on Fremont Street. Bit of gambling, bit of drink, would have done us good."

"Nothing good comes from us," he reminded her. She was wisely silent at this, her jaw set and determined as she concentrated on the long, desert road before them.

They passed the remains of trees, the graveyard of a forest long dead, the route outlining the tragic story of the earth, where sands tore over craggy rocks that were once winding veins of life, now red sediments full of the blood of strange creatures that once walked a very different surface. A vague memory of his own home assailed him, a multicoloured landscape of bubbling tar and swirling twin moons. Just as quickly, it disappeared, a fragment of a dream only partially remembered, yet its residual feeling left a haunting imprint, chipping away at a stranger's bones.

"We're heading towards Meteor City, near Two Guns," she explained. Her lit cigarette pointed out to an unidentifiable spot on the horizon to her left. "It's a big hole, left by some rock from up there." Her cigarette pointed upwards at a ninety degree angle, ashes raining down the belly of her wrist. "They say it might have wiped out the dinosaurs. Covered the whole planet in ashes and choked them all out." She narrowed her gaze at the horizon before her as she took a long drag of her cigarette and tossed its stubby end onto the moving sands beside them. "Kind of strange, when you think on it. Maybe even a little scary. That's how easy it can be to wipe us all out. A big rock hitting the desert. Like a bullet in the gut, I'd say. Everything dying all at once–that's just the earth bleeding out."

He could feel his inner body squash itself along the right side of his host, an unconscious need to be separated from her even if it wasn't physically possible. Of course she would use an analogy similar to murder, her mind so preoccupied with that heinous act she had no other frame of reference from which to draw her understanding. He turned to her, reluctant to engage her in conversation, yet needful of finding any sentience upon whom he could confess.

"Why did you kill your friend?" he asked.

She shrugged, as though this mattered little, and in her case, it didn't. "Reggie always had good liquor," she said, by way of explanation. "A nice tall glass of rum does a body good, it really does. You ought to try that instead of that nasty motor oil. Goes down hot and smooth, settles the nerves. It's from the islands down south, you know, where all those pirates used to put their feet up. Rum is all full of that kind of history. Guess some of it rubbed off after a glass or two."

"What are you talking about?"

"Pirates, you lunkhead." She sighed and thought about snatching another cigarette from her handbag, only to toss it back at her side, delaying the inevitable for now. "All they're famous for is mayhem, stealing and murder. And that's what they drank, morning, noon and night. So, like anything, like a clock on a mantel that witnesses a family growing up, like some rocking chair that an old granny spends her last days in, it gets itself haunted. That's what rum is, it's a haunted drink. You get that spirit in you, and you can't help but go a bit pirate yourself."

She pressed her bare foot firmer on the gas pedal, forcing the motor car into its top speed. The road spit up a cloud of sand and dust in protest, every grain infected with the spirits of distilled, vibrant life.

"That still doesn't explain why you killed him."

She let out a hiss of frustration through her clenched teeth, and he was sure she was going to careen into the ditch out of spite, just to toss him onto the road and be done with him. Perhaps she would do him a further kindness, and murder him as she once promised she could do. But her hands only clenched the steering wheel firm, and her jaw softened slightly as she spoke.

"He got grabby. I don't like it when they get grabby. And I told him to quit it, but I guess he had too much of that pirate in him, too. Reggie, he wasn't all there, if you get what I'm saying to you. Watched his family burn to a crisp in a fire once. That does things to your mind. Makes you a little strange. A little off." She shook her head. "Poor Reggie. But still, he had the grabbies, and I can't tolerate that from no one. Like I said, I had plenty of that haunted rum in me, too. If I went a little Blackbeard, then that's Reggie's mistake. He should never have offered up that rum."

* * * * *

The half can of motor oil he'd sipped along the way had hit him hard, and when he awoke it was night, the moon a bright white circle, its shine making him feel like the sky was eyeing him. He rubbed his host's eyes, forcing a wakefulness into them that he hadn't felt for days. Or was it weeks by now, or even years? The desert that surrounded them in its speeding vista rolled past time, defying all linear logic. The present rushed headlong towards a future point they hadn't yet visited. Every grain of sand was full of next week.

To his right, a great black chasm had opened up, and he stared into it, wondering if that was where the past was finally resting. It was a good enough vessel for it. A deep, impenetrable valley chiselled between massive cliff faces. "We should leave it here," he advised her. The words were thick and blackly oiled on his tongue. "The past and all the terrible things that had to be done. Let's leave them right there, in the middle of that darkness where it belongs."

She scoffed at this, white hands unfeeling and tight as carved, polished stone on the wheel. "Don't be stupid," she chided him. "That's the Grand Canyon, seeing as how you don't know nothing. Everybody who comes here thinks they have some kind of nature commune or getting into their roots, or some other artsy fartsy reasoning, beats the heck out of me. All nonsense, if you ask me. It's a big ass river that dried up, and there's nothing worth throwing in there but trash." She cocked her head to one side, the marble hue of her skin beneath the moonlight congruous with the walls of rock that surrounded them. "Mind you, I got plenty of trash to get rid of, you're right on that. Maybe you're onto something after all."

She let out a low whistle, one that had a longing for a cigarette in its cadence. She ignored the way he slouched in his seat, the bubbling essence of motor oil seeping into his consciousness, destroying his sense of linear time. He could see her, as a child, driving the motor car, her hands dripping with blood, bits of terrier fur embedded beneath her fingernails. He closed his eyes, only to discover the back of his host's lids were covered in memories. of a lunkhead brother with a tooth knocked out by a rock and a slingshot. A gold replacement glinted in an adolescent afternoon spent fishing at the local pond rather than going to school.

He rubbed his host's chin with the heel of his palm. "It's all slipping away from me," he admitted.

She glanced sideways at him, a narrowed cat's eye view of concern "You really got into it this time. Look at you, barely able to think, can't make a real sentence up right. You're a mess. Here we are, almost at the finish line, and you're a big, oily, goopy piece of work. Tar sands, that's you."

"I'm not…" he said, but the universe was spiralling around him, the lines of the road's edge curving and twisting into knots, black asphalt and dirt and water seeping into every time frame. Huge motor cars made of solid steel sailed past them like ocean liners. Bullets roared in the sky, leaving long, thin trails of cloud behind them. A horse galloped beside them, pulling a waggon full to bursting with a harsh-looking family who stared him down for the villain he was. They disappeared into the billboard declaring they were now in Perch Springs. He could still hear the clack of the horse's hooves as they scurried off into the past, the dust settling itself behind them.

"Hot like Hades, ain't it?" Clara complained. She fanned herself with her hand, but it was a futile gesture. The only relief they had was if she kept her foot on the gas and pushed the speed high enough to create a decent wind current. Even in this the air was acrid, leaving a sandy feeling at the back of the throat.

"Get used to it," she warned him. "It's a long stretch of this desert before we get to California. The most boring ride you'll ever have in your life, even if you are with me."

He coughed into his palm. A black, sticky glob lay embedded in it. He wiped it off on the rail of his window, his body positioned so she couldn't see what he what he was doing.

"You said you never got this far."

"No. Never."

"So how do you know it's boring?"

"I can read a map, can't I? It's only what I've been doing since Chicago, gee whiz. You really are some kind of lunkhead, that's what you are. How do I know it's boring–of all the stupid things I ever heard! It's boring because boring is what's on the map you big lunk. One big stretch of nothing at all, it's right there along the thin blue line, in case you were wondering. See?" She tossed the map at him, which he puzzled over, unable to decipher what any of the strange symbols, lines and complex layers of illustrations meant. "Flat as a pancake, all along Route 66 to Pasadena. Nothing, nothing, nothing. We're riding into purgatory, that's what we're doing."

She pursed her lips, and let out smoke from an imaginary cigarette. The shadow of one played upon her lips, a past event superimposed upon the present. "That body you were wearing was just fine. Why'd you change your clothes?"

He fished in his pants pocket for the badge belonging to Sheriff Borden's brother, the metal hot against his skin. "I don't know," he lied.

His neck ached as he turned to her, the milky hue of her skin luminescent beneath the moonlight.

"Maybe I'm becoming like you."