This boot was made for hiding

I don’t wish to worry you, but I have spent the last three days locked in the boot of your car, trav­el­ling with you cross-country.

You are now at your des­tin­a­tion. I am cur­rently parked (as I ima­gine it) under the shade of a tree, try­ing to breathe in cool air amidst the swel­ter­ing tem­per­at­ures. I am feel­ing choked with for­eign dust particles. My eyes sting, my throat rasps. Do I seem obsessed to you?

I have spent my time wisely. I brought some news­pa­pers along for the ride, and have passed many con­ten­ted hours rip­ping the prin­ted words into pre­cise shreds, apply­ing child­ish amounts of paper glue to each one and then stick­ing them firmly to the under­side of the boot lid. Quickly, of course, because the metal is now sting­ing hot to the touch. In so doing, I have cre­ated a small pocket novel of dubi­ous worth. Exper­i­mental in tone, non­sensical in plot, fool­ish in lan­guage. You and I are the main char­ac­ters, and I’m sorry to say that we both die at the end. It’s an unsur­pris­ing con­clu­sion, but rest assured that I have included a typ­ic­ally warped twist in the spinning-out of the denoue­ment. They like my warped twists, you know; oh, they do.

Regret­tably, now that the boot lid is entirely plastered with scraps of words and gummed let­ters. I have noth­ing to occupy my wan­der­ing mind and my twitch­ing fin­gers. I am bored. I have star­ted eat­ing the unap­pet­ising brown car­pet that lines this glor­i­fied tin grave beneath me. It tastes … well, it tastes of car­pet. Funny, that. I have threads caught between my teeth, and I am find­ing the rub­ber back­ing a little dif­fi­cult to digest. I sup­pose I should be grate­ful that vehicle man­u­fac­tur­ers con­sider it so neces­sary to car­pet the insides of car boots — even though it’s as point­less as lin­ing a box­ing glove with vel­vet or provid­ing a warm layer of sheep­skin on the interior walls of an igloo — because oth­er­wise I would be starving by now. Need­less to say, the parched cli­mate has required me to regur­git­ate my own saliva at occa­sional inter­vals, simply to provide some mois­ture for my equally parched mouth.

Sorry, you’re not fol­low­ing any of this, are you? Ignore me. Don’t worry about me. I can breathe, and that’s all that neces­sary. I am los­ing my mind, true enough, but since no one can see or hear or sense or taste or breathe me in, that’s almost imma­ter­ial. Almost. I just curl myself up in here, day in and night out, and listen for the sounds of voices, raised or oth­er­wise, and the extraordin­ary calls and responses of exotic anim­als the likes of which I’ve only pre­vi­ously happened across in wild­life documentaries.

I know, I know, you thought I was over here, passing the days by walk­ing up and down and the nights by play­ing word asso­ci­ation games with my shadow. But I wasn’t. I’m not. I’m locked in the boot of your car, eat­ing car­pet and repeat read­ing the sen­sa­tional work of fic­tion glued above my head. This novel gets no bet­ter the more times I try and coax its darkened words into my eyes, let me tell you.

So I don’t wish to com­plain, to moan, whine or whinge, but I really am extraordin­ar­ily bored now. My wits have reached their end. Can I put you back in your box? Can we go home now? Is it time? Is it time to go home? Are we there yet? There? Are we? Are we there yet? Hello?