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?