Chapter 3 (Cont.)
By then I moved towards the car enough that its driver seat was within the view— no one is there. Firstly, the car was unharmed so I could not imagine a disembodied body there: minor sharpnels embellishing the face, blunted exposed larynx, hippocampus puddings on the steering... Secondly, the car was not amiably parked on the land, mostly off the asphalt but still nudging it with left tire, as if to say: "I'm taking a respite here, I'm having a cigarette in this vast wasteland devoid of life and yet it's more organic than anything within the walls. But I'm doomed to be within the walls." The car looked like it was left hastily or maybe contemptuously, conveying the driver's scorn for his container. Clip clap! The door swung open with ease, implying that the car has not been stranded here long enough for any mechanical corrosion to set into its levers. Dust had however started piling, it's an arid desert with nothing but dust after all, but the relative thickness of dirt says it has been piling up for... About a month, now? I invited myself within, the front passenger seat was made of fine leather, still in pristine condition. The car from the outside had looked assuredly like a diamond that fell into the gutter for 57 minutes, but the inside was still crystalline. New car? "Oh shoot! The owner was a corpo scum", I noticed a corporate insignia engraved on the dashboard. Do I recognise it? It seems like there's more corporations now than there are earnest souls, this corporation could be from anywhere in the NWF. Maybe from a foreign continent? Unlikely cause the damage from the nuclear catastrophe was yet to be artificially mitigated to allow transcontinental passage. My father is a corporate scum too and his car too has an insignia of Datamangle Inc. But he, and most if not all corporate people, would not take a trip into the wasteland, let alone in a car. So why is this car here? Even the backseats were perfectly reeking of corporate perfectionist vanity and hints of an exotic perfume could still be discerned amidst the sterile air. Minutes had passed since I fell into a contemplation. This exact place in the highway I am right now, here in this abandoned corporate car, is not very far off from Tatterstown. The auction that I was at today was not held in Tatterstown but in its closest city-state: Painicipality. Tatterstown and Painicipality were both located further into the mainland although still close to the ocean compared to the other states more densely landlocked in the NWF. My current city is very close to the ocean and our locale is very close to the shoreside of the city. Given the way the car is facing towards, it's highly possible that this car was, from either Tatterstown or Painicipality, on a trail towards my city. There's only two possibilities now: the driver and his/her companions had come here to commit suicide in peace, maybe if I go there to the right, deeper into those skeletal foliages and inorganic debris, I'd see some deteriorating composure of flesh and bones sticking out like tombstone. The another possibility is that the drivers had separate vehicles that towed this car to this place, from either Tatterstown or Painicipality, for the purpose of abandonment or concealment. They should have just gone the extra mile and flung it off the cliff there but I suppose corporates keep time management in a short leash; but no one ever comes here so I can't precisely fault them for clumsiness. I immediately got out of the car and started making way towards the trunk.
Funtitled #14
In memoriam Mark Rothko VIII / Blue, Navy Blue, White, Brown