Chapter Two -

Chapter Two: The French Girl

by Andre Infante

The traveler and the girl pitch forward into the water with a mortar thump of decompression. He hasn’t had time to put his earplugs in, and his ears twinge painfully. He gets a tremendous feeling of pain in his joints, and his chest feels like it's going to burst. He feels her stiffen from mild decompression sickness, then grab him harder.

She is still clinging to him, arms around his neck, fingers digging in. His head slips under the water, and he begins to struggle. For a moment he thinks she is going to drown him, but then her grip relaxes, and he bobs to the surface. He rescues the dog from his coat with one hand, blowing snot and seawater out of his nose with the other. The dog bobs growling to the surface, and begins sneezing furiously. He turns to look at her and she hits him again.

“Ow! What the fuck?”

“Espèce de fils de pute! Qu'avez-vous fait?”

“Yeah, well, fuck you too, French girl.”

He shakes his head, rubbing his eyes and feeling the wound on the back of his head from where she hit him with the wine bottle. His nose is still dribbling blood. He shakes his head. Oh lord; this is truly a fuckup of epic proportions. A thousand years from now, they’ll be writing poems about this shit. They’ll do epic fucking murals, with bass reliefs. She’s still babbling at him.

“Dieu, où diable sommes-nous? Où avez-vous me prendre, salaud? Qui êtes-vous, SS? Gestapo? Bordel de merde, tu es un démon ou quelque chose?”

He shakes his head. French lessons a decade old shout feebly at him from the far recesses of memory. He makes an effort.

“The fuck? Gestapo? No! Wait, hold on, just - slow down, girl – Damn it, um, plus lentement, plus lentement s'il vous plait! I have, a, um, a condition, a maladie! J'ai une maladie!”

She pauses, and stares at him without saying anything for a long moment. He tries to figure out how to explain the details of his condition, and finally settles upon.

“Ma maladie. Um, Je, je voyage- voyage, um, places? Je ne peux pas le contrôler. Um, Je ne peux pas l'arrêter. Je- je n'ai pas l'intention de vous amener.”

It's not perfect, but it will have to do.

She stares at him coldly for a moment longer, and then, seeming to have gathered her thoughts, she raises one hand, and flips him the bird.

“Fuck you, espèce de fils de pute.”

He winces. He knows enough playground French (not to say playground English) to know exactly what that means. She holds eye contact for another second, then breaks away and begins doing a decent breast-stroke. He squints outwards. He can make out, shrouded in fog, the shape of a beach some distance off. He does some quick mental figuring. It looks like about the same time of day it was five minutes ago, maybe a little later. He must've jumped in longitude but stayed on roughly the same latitude. That would make this the cape of Africa, or an island thereabouts.
He thinks back to high school geography classes, trying to figure out how far Africa is away from France. Next to him, the dog sneezes again and stares dourly at him. It never did like the ocean. He starts to leave her to her fate, even turns and swims away a few strokes – then stops. God damn it. He turns around, treading water.

“Hey, French girl, come back! Reviens ici!”

She calmly ignores him.

“Hey, I’m serious. Do you even know what you’re swimming towards? This is Africa.C'est l'Afrique. Have you ever been to Africa? It’s worse than Russia, and I’ve been shot in Russia.”

She does not respond.

“Hey, I know you speak some English. Arrêt pour une seconde. Look, do you want to get back to France or not? France. Tu ne veux pas revenir en France? I can help you, you crazy bitch.”

She ignores him. He sighs, loudly. After a long moment, the traveler sets off after the girl. After the first hundred meters, two things become clear: first, that the traveler is a stronger swimmer than the girl; second, that the girl is not dragging thirty pounds of dead weight around on her back. The girl maintains a steady breast-stroke. Behind her, the traveler, puffing and straining, gains very, very slowly.

The dog makes steady circles around him. The traveler keeps swimming. He’s never liked swimming, but has become good at it, mostly out of self defense. If you pick a random point on earth, odds are, it’s somewhere in the water. He keeps his nose above water, and keeps his breaths even. He has no idea why he is going to so much trouble for the girl. He doesn’t know her, certainly doesn’t like her. It isn’t his fault she caught a ride. Well, mostly not his fault, anyway. What kind of person tries to strangle a robber, anyway? In what country is that considered a sane reaction?

He begins to feel the scritch of gravel under his feet. He comes stomping out of the surf onto the beach a dozen meters behind the girl. She’s abandoned the long skirt somewhere, her wet blouse and leggings hang off her body like old skin. Her shoes are gone. She walks out, surveying the low grass, the scrubby hills, and the hot sun bearing down on her head. She sighs.

“Merde.”

She starts walking.

The traveler drags himself out of the surf, water rushing out of hidden pockets and rags in his clothing as he rises. He checks to make sure his waterproof rubber bag is still intact, and then begins to scan the horizon nervously. South Africa is not a friendly place. He tries again.

“There isn’t any food here, French girl. Vous allez mourir de faim. Look, you can die here or you can talk to me. Your call.”

She rounds on him.

“Listen, you sack de merde. Vous avez volé et enlevé moi, salaud. Robbery! Kidnapping! Tu comprends ça?”

He shrugs.

“Nobody’s perfect.”

She glares at him.

“Vous allez pourrir dans une prison nazie, jusqu'au jour de votre décès, si j'ai mon chemin.”

He shakes his head. He didn’t catch all of that, but he did get ‘Nazi’ and ‘prison’ and ‘rot,’ and gets the gist.

“Look, I’ll end up somewhere in Europe eventually. I can drop you off near France. I’ve got a little money, you can buy a bus ticket back.”

She blinks. He sighs, and tries for a translation.

“Um, je vais revenir en, um, Europe par la suite. Vienws avec- viens avec moi si vous voulez vivre.”

She thinks about this for what he feels to be an unreasonably long moment.

“Merde. Fine”

She sat down on the beach, staring at him expectantly.

“Eh bien? Partons.”

He sighs. This is why he stopped telling people. Well, that and that they tended to try to lock you up or shoot you.

“It doesn’t work like that. It’s every forty three minutes. Toutes les quarante-trois minutes.”

She laughs bitterly, staring down at the sand. Her hair is drying in the sun. She really is quite handsome. She’s got dark, tangled red hair and a fair complexion.

“Quarante-trois... Merveilleux.”

She slumps backwards onto the beach, the hot sand sticking to her arms and clothing. The dog has curled up in the sand at the traveler's feet. He rubs its head. It stands up, scratches some fleas, and walks over to the girl who pets it reluctantly, as though concerned that it might be diseased. After a long, contemplative minute, she turns and frowns at him, suddenly curious.

Quarante-trois minutes. Quarante-trois... Always?”

“Oui.”

She seems to consider this.

“Sleep? Comment peux-tu dormir?”

He sighs. His head hurts, and his nose is still bleeding. He wipes it on the back of his hand, and decides to tell her the truth.

“Not well.”

She gives him a long, hard look, and then relaxes a little.

“You deserve it.”

He isn't really sure what to make of that. They sit there on the beach for a while longer, listening to the surf. After a long moment, he speaks.

"Do you speak any English? Aside from swears, I mean.”

"Oui. Some. Votre français est catastrophique, by the way.”

He gives her a wounded look, then freezes. It’s coming. He can feel the air starting to hum and thicken around him. He picks up the dog. The girl sees the bubble forming around him. She takes a step back. He smiles at her.

“It’s alright. Ne vous, uh, inquiétez pas. Come on, girl, the train’s leaving! Viens ici!”

She takes a breath, and strides forward into the bubble, breaches it. Her hair coils around her head in waves like she’s underwater. Something like electricity curls in her face and arms. The traveler pushes his earplugs in, and gestures at her. She sticks her fingers in her ears. He exhales dramatically, and she imitates him. Around her, the bubble begins to grow opaque. The air hisses like a glass frying pan. A few flecks of sea foam sizzle off it as it suddenly hardens, looking like hot, greasy quartz.

The stopwatch dings. There’s a thump of collapsing vacuum, and then a long silence. After a silent moment, the sound of the surf returns, the noise crashing over a new crater in the sand. After a moment, a strong gust of wind sends a cascade of sand running down, filling it in. Somewhere a long way off a seagull cries, and the surf continues pounding on the beach.The traveler is faced with a wall of white. Thick, heavy snowflakes are already sticking to his hair and coat as the first gust of freezing air hits him. He tucks the dog into its pocket automatically. The traveler shifts his weight, and a few inches of sand under his feet slide away, and he loses his balance, tumbling backwards into the snow. He glances around. The snow is coming down in sheets, and there is already easily a foot of the stuff on the ground. It’s in his collar, in his boots, in his pants. He shivers in the sudden cold. He can barely see twenty feet in any direction. Inside his coat, the dog whines. He looks around for the girl. She’s standing in the snow. Her clothes are thin and still wet and rough with sand. She's shaking from the cold Her breath curls in shaky wreaths around her head, and her arms are wrapped around herself. He stares at her for a long moment, and then comes to a conclusion.

“You’re going to freeze to death.”

“Oui. Ideas, smart guy?”

He takes his boots off, and gives them to her. She tries to say something, but is shaking too badly, already. After a moment’s thought, he pulls the deflated bedroll off his shoulder and passes it to her. She wraps it around her shoulder. A nasty little wind has picked up. Suddenly, he turns and looks at her.

“You know, this is the first forty four minute conversation I’ve had in a long time.”

She ignores him, shivering, trying to stretch the oilcloth further around her. He can see snow sticking and freezing to the wet cloth on her body. He dances in his socks in the snow, still looking at her. It’s not enough. She’s still going to die. He could survive forty three minutes like this with his gear. He has, many times, but she’s going to die if he doesn’t come up with something better. He scans the horizon for anything that he could burn. Nothing but dead wheat fields. He wonders where he is. Clearly winter, but there’s no telling for sure where.

He catches a glimpse of something out over the dark fields. He stares intently out to a spot in the black and whirling grey snow. There again – a flash of lessened darkness, far out across the dark cornfields. He gestures at her to follow him. She snorts icy air, but stomps after him. The boots flop around on her feet. He walks in bare socks in the snow, toes freezing together. His breath comes in short, hard gasps, the freezing air driving cold razors into his lungs.

She follows behind him, shaking, silent. He keeps turning to make sure she hasn’t collapsed. As they walk through the walls of falling snow, the glimmer matures into first a pinpoint, then a halo, and finally a tiny square window of light. They reach a barbed wire fence. With shaking, numb fingers, the traveler unlocks the katana and chops through the wire. Ordinarily he would have climbed over, but he’s not sure she would make it. He hooks the katana back onto his back but doesn’t lock it down. The walk the last fifty feet to the farmhouse.

The girl knocks on the door. They wait a long, long moment. The dog shifts uncomfortably inside his coat. The traveler starts to fumble in his pockets for his knife or a scrap of wire. He’s not sure he can pick the lock under these conditions, but he’ll be damned if he’s not going to try. Then, suddenly, there’s a click of a lock, and the door is open. An old man stands in the dark living room inside, looking out at them with some confusion.

“Can we come in?” He stares at them for a long second, and then turns and gestures inside.

“Come on. It’s freezing out here.”

The traveler notes the accent and relaxes. Of course. He’s in Canada. He’s going to be fine.

They step into the house. The bare wooden boards creak under their feet. A thin, reedy glow spreads from a candle in one window. They curl up shivering on a broken tweed couch, while the old man scrapes some ashes around in the fireplace, pushes a few snow-soaked logs into it, and drizzles it with lighter fluid. He stands up, and takes a book of paper matches off the top of the fireplace.

The traveler has removed his socks, which have frozen stiff with cracked snow. His feet are red and numb and his veins stand out blue against the pale skin. He hopes he isn’t going to lose any toes.

The farmer lights a match. The hot orange flare sets deep lines in his face, and they get a good look at him for the first time. He’s fat and tanned and bald, with a round head like a potato and short beard that looks like dead grass. The match goes to the lighter fluid, which flares and spits, steam and smoke curling away from the wet logs. The girl huddles close against the small heat. She’s shed the oil cloth and the boots, and her clothes are stiff with frost against her skin. In a low, gravelly voice the farmer speaks.

“You can stay here until morning. Look, I gotta ask, how the hell did you folks get out here? The roads have been down for hours.”

“We were hitchhiking, and we got robbed. They dumped us on the side of the road, and I guess we got lost. Thank you so much.”

In the fireplace, the logs begin to catch, flames licking up the bark, water sizzling on the bricks. The girl pushes her feet nearly into the fire, trying to warm them. The traveler gently reaches out, and pushes her feet back slightly. He has burns on his arms from the same thing. The farmer jerks his head at her, still speaking quietly.

“Your friend is awful quiet.”

"She doesn’t speak English.” “

Ah.”

The farmer stands up, and walks down a long, dim hallway to a closet. There are squeaking, thumping noises. When he returns, he has a warm white blanket, which the traveler takes, gratefully. It smelled of dust, and he curls the thick cloth between his fingers. He sets it down, and they curl together in front of the fire, wrapped up in the blanket. After a minute or two, the dog comes out and curls up on the traveler’s stomach.

The farmer brings them cups of hot tea. The traveler smiles at him, genuinely grateful. He feels the air around him waver, but he can’t tell if it’s from the heat of the fire, or something else. He can’t bring himself to check his watch. The farmer nods at them, but the girl is already asleep. He turns, and walks down the hallway towards his bed.

The fire is really starting to burn, and it’s dim and quiet, and the blanket is hot around his body, and he can feel his eyes feeling thick and heavy. He sets the tea down, out of range. He looks at the girl, feeling the air starting to thicken around him. Her hair, finally dry, is curled around her ears. He suddenly realizes that he isn’t going to wake her up. He compromises with himself, and reaches into his pocket for his wallet. He finds some American dollars, counts out enough to pay for the damage to the floor and the price of the blanket, folds it up, and throws it into a corner, outside of the bubble. He gathers up the oilcloth mattress into his arms.

The dog whines and rolls over. He considers trying to rapidly write a letter of thanks, but decides against it. He curls up against the girl inside the blanket, enjoying the feeling of the heat against his skin, and the peace, and all of a sudden there’s a soft note of his watch chiming, and they’re gone.

A few boards fall onto the ground in the middle of the street, covered in a thick cotton blanket. The edges of the blanket have been trimmed off by the border of the bubble. The traveler blinks out of his reverie, and is nearly run over by a horse cart. He jumps up, suddenly, glancing around. An Asian man stares at him with naked shock from a horsecart. He shakes the girl awake, who jerks awake. He propels her off the main street, rapidly realizing that she’s still dressed in a dirty blouse and cotton leggings, which is going to be a problem. The dog pads along behind them.

They make their way into a dim alley. He glances around. No cars, lots of Asian people, signs in pictographic language. He squints upwards. It’s summer, but overcast. Could be China, he can find out for sure later. The first priority is to do something about the girl. His normal policy in foreign countries is to keep his head down, but the way she’s dressed and her hair are going to cause problems. He picks the dog up and tucks it into his coat, then rolls up the oilcloth and tucks it into his pack. She’s hissing at him.

“Get down! Il s'agit de Nanjing. Les Japonais s'en emparèrent. You’ll get us killed, vous sac de merde.”

He blinks. He needs to try to find newspapers more often.

“The Japanese invaded China? When?”

“Shut up!”

She glances at him.

“Knife. J'ai besoin d'un knife.”

He reaches into his pocket and removes an army knife. He takes a long look at her. She still doesn’t look good, but she seems to have mostly recovered from her brush with hypothermia. Really, aside from the enemy soldiers, a country in the middle of summer could be worse. He hands her the knife. She turns around, flops her hair over her shoulder, and hands him the knife.

“Cut it.”

He hesitates.

“Really?”

“Maintenant!”

He begins to cut. He’s not very good at it, but manages to reduce it down to a rough red halo around her head. It’s not pretty, but it’ll serve. She glances around. “Je vais avoir besoin de quelques vêtements.”He stares at her blankly. She nods across the street. There’s a store window lit up. He blinks owlishly at her. She sighs in exasperation.

“Les vêtements du magasin. Clothes store. Moron.”

“Oh.” He considers for a moment.

“Stay. Rester. I’ll be right back.”

She shouts something after him, but he doesn’t catch it. He crosses the street to the store, and goes inside. Along a back wall, he finds a decent white dress, and a veil that obscures the face and hair. He doesn’t have any Chinese money, so all of this vanishes into his coat, along with a leather hat, which he rolls up. He's stolen a lot of things before, but never actually had the need to try women's clothing. He follows his usual shoplifting routine, and walks quickly and steadily out the door. He steps out into the street, and begins walking back towards the alley. There's a commotion across the street.

Looking closely, he notices some military police standing around a dumpster in an alley, arguing heatedly. They look Japanese. He feels his stomach clench, hard. He gropes in his pocket for the Beretta, and then realizes what he’s doing. Not going to happen. It's been fun, French girl, but not that fun. Well, it's too late to turn around now. He puts the gun back into his coat, fixes his eyes on the horizon, and starts to walk right past them. He’s nearly past the first shop when an arm grabs his coat, and drags him into the alley directly behind the one the police are in. The girl stares at him.

“Cette ruelle, idiot.”

He feels like somebody suddenly let the air back into the world. He slumps backwards against the alley wall. After a moment, he gets his bearings again, and begins dragging clothing out of his jacket. She puts the clothes on hastily, making sure that none of her hair pokes out. She makes a credible Asian woman, so long as nobody looks too closely. The traveler reaches into his coat and unrolls the hat, which accomplishes much the same effect.

They walk, shoulder to shoulder, past the military police. From this angle, the traveler notices that they are arguing over a map. He glances at the girl. Her face is white, and her hands are shaking. His sense of relief fades, suddenly. He hustles them past and around a corner.

They duck into a small restaurant. He’s trying to figure out how to order food with hand signals, when she orders two cups of soup in decent Mandarin. Voice low, he leans towards her.

“Chinese? You speak Chinese?”

She meets his eyes calmly.

“Oui.”

He shakes his head. Unbelievable. And then it starts to happen. He hurriedly finishes his noodles, palms a cup for the dog, throws some German money onto the table, and they hurry out onto the street. The woman won’t be able to bank the money, but that’s okay, it’ll only be thirty seconds, now.

There, in the street, back to back, the wristwatch dings, and the two of them are gone. A few minutes later, the restaurant owner stomps out into the street, brandishing a handful of crisp new Reichsmarks and shouting loudly in Mandarin. He trips in a new pothole.

With a quiet thump, they settle. The traveler glances around mechanically. They’re about half inside a wall. A nearly perfect circle of stone has been obliterated around them. The traveler hurries out from under the wall in case it collapses. They’re in a factory of some kind, probably a steel mill. It looks abandoned. The traveler lets the dog out of his coat, which curls up in a spot of muddy sunlight.

The traveler wanders over to a window, and peers through it. The pane is nearly opaque with years of grease and dust caked onto it. He pulls his hand inside his sleeve and breaks out several panes, peering out into the daylight. It’s a little chilly outside, but daylight- probably around noon. There isn’t much outside, just blue skies and corn fields. He can see some mountains in the distance; they’re quite pretty.

“Europe, I think,” he says to the silence behind him, “I can drop you off here, if you like. I see a road, you might be able to hitch back to France. I’m not sure exactly where we are, I’m afraid. It might be a long ways.”

He gets no response. He turns around, and sees the girl sitting on a stack of rotten wood, shaking and pale. He’s been in warzones, a lot, and it takes all of about two seconds to identify the symptoms of shock. She doesn’t even look at him, and he suddenly realizes she must’ve been running on panic mode for the last three hours. First she was mad, then she dying of hypothermia, and then she was in enemy territory. The adrenaline must finally be wearing off.

He sits back to give her some space. She has a number of excellent reasons to be mad at him, and he doesn’t want to exacerbate things. After a while, he unbolts a door, and walks out. He goes to the street. After about five minutes, a car comes along. He waves it down, and it stops. The driver, an aging, pale man of about forty leans out.

“Hallo, muss eine Fahrt?”

The traveler sighs. Fuck, he wishes he spoke German. He manages to scrape together,

“Sorry. Bekümmert. Fehler.”

He smiles apologetically, and waves him off. The driver looks a little puzzled and drives off. The traveler is about to write it off and go inside, when he notes another car coming. What the hell. He flags this one down, too. The driver, a man with a thick dark beard looking slightly like Marx leans out.

“Quelque chose que vous avez besoin?”

The traveler relaxes, a little. His French is a little better.

“Oui. Um, Quel est ce pays?

”Suisse. Pourquoi?”

“Switzerland? Merci. Uh, Mon ami et moi avons perdu un certain temps. Nous ne savions pas où nous étions.”

The driver nods, and after being assured that they needed no further help, drove off. The traveller returns to the factory. The girl is still sitting there. She’s stopped shaking, mostly, and she’s found a stick. He walks closer to see what she’s doodling in the dirt. It’s math. It looks like she’s trying to work out how long it’ll take for them to wind up in France again. She looks up at him.

“Seven ninety six. Seven hundred et ninety six sauts.”

The traveler does some mental arithmetic. One every forty three minutes meant about thirty jumps a day, which meant it’d be about a month, give or take a bit, before the odds of them ending up in France again became remotely likely.

He sighs, and sits down next to her. He reaches into his coat pocket, and pulls out a can of cat food and a knife. She stares at him as he opens it. He starts to eat it with the knife, and she grabs his arm like he's insane.

“Dites-moi ce n’est pas la nourriture pour chat!”

“It’s not so bad. Portable, stays fresh. Tu en veux?”

She wrinkles her nose.

“Nothing else?”

He shrugs.

“You eat what you have.”

She looks at him for a long time. He finishes about half the can, and tosses the other half down on the ground. The dog pads over and finishes it. He scratches it behind the ears, and tries to figure out what to do. He can’t take a month of this. She’s nearly got him killed three or four times in as many hours. She’s going to die or get him killed. Besides, she bugs the crap out of him.

“We’re in Switzerland,”

He hesitates, and then amends, “Suesse.”

She looks surprised.

“You can get back to France from here. You should be fine.”

There’s a long silence. She stares at the empty catfood can, seeming to be working something out.

“What happened to you?” she asks, suddenly.

The traveler sits there for a long moment, staring out at a wall. After a long, long time, he speaks.

“There was an accident. A while ago, there was an accident. Uh, Ill y avait une erreur, I guess. I went on a jaunt and never got back. It was just for a little money, you see. The Austrian was so sure the machine was safe. You’re eighteen, you’re stupid, you make one little mistake…”

He sits there for a moment, trying to figure out how to translate this. He finally settles on this:

“J'ai fait une erreur. Je suis venu en vrac. Maintenant, je flotte juste.”

She looks at him for a while, and then nods. He shakes himself, and picks up the dog.

“Come on, let’s get you a ride home.”

They walk out to the car. The traveler digs around in his coat, and produces, after a moment, his gun and a handful of reichsmarks, which he gives to her. They walk out to the road, and wave down a 1939 Ford Coupe. The door opens, and the driver sticks his head out. He smiles, and says,

“Quelque chose que je peut faire pour vous, les gars?”

His accent has an interest twang to it, but he seems nice enough. She looks absolutely relieved. She snatches her hat off, and beams at him.

“Bonjour, monsieur, pouvez-vous me donner un tour dans la ville la plus proche?”

He nods, smiles broadly.

"Oui, oui! Je peux faire cela.” “

“Super. Merci.” She is very nearly jumping for joy.

She turns towards the traveler. Sarcastically, she curtsies deeply.

“Eh bien, M. Blanc, qu'il a été gentil et tout, mais j'espère que cela ne vous dérange pas si je souhaite ardemment que nous rencontrons jamais.”

He shrugs. Something was bugging him, her fairly reasonable distaste for him aside. He has developed a pretty keen sense of something being a little off; it’s a must with his lifestyle. Right now, it’s itching insistently.

He turns to her. He decides to tag along, just for a bit.

“Dite, j’ai un certain temps. Ne vous pourriez, si je accompagner un peu?”

She shrugs. The driver looks reluctant, but nods. He gets in next to her, and they avoided looking at each other for the first half mile. He sighs. He is going to need to get out, soon. He is almost sure that something isn’t right.

The driver speaks

“Dites, vous les gars arrive à parler anglais? I thought I heard an accent on you.”

The traveler suddenly places his accent. American. What the hell is he doing in Switzerland? The girls speaks up, looking the driver in the eye.

“Oui. Um, yes. Un peu.”

He nods. The traveler meets his eyes.

“Yes.”

“Well that’s just dandy. You know, I’ve been stuck in Switzerland for a while now. Once the war started, it was tricky getting out. You kinda start to miss the language, you know. Say, now, what’s your story, folks?”

Before she could speak, the traveler interjects,

“We were tourists, we’re stuck here, too. We’ve been out camping for a few weeks now. I can’t wait to get home and let the family know we’re okay, we kind of got lost.”

She seems a bit surprised, but doesn’t comment.

The man nods.

“Say, son, can you do me a favor?”

“Sure. “

“Could you just lock the doors? The latches have been busted for, hell, years now, and sometimes they pop open. Miss, verrouiller la porte, s'il vous plaît.”

She nods, and they both reach over to lock their doors. The air around the traveler is starting to get oily. The driver doesn’t notice, yet. He seems distracted. The driver nods pleasantly at them. He turns and reaches to does something in his glove box that isn’t quite visible. As he does so, he says.

“You know, I’m really sorry about this. I don’t mean to impose, but…”

And then there’s a gun in his hand, pointed at them. He smiles pleasantly.

“Now, son, if you so much as twitch for that hinky Jap sword, I’ll smear your brains all over this here back seat, you get me? Girl, get your hand out of your pocket. I don’t know what you’ve got in there, and frankly I don’t care. Now, girl, there’s some rope under the seat. You’re going to tie up your friend here, thoroughly, and then I’m going to pull over, and you and I are going to take care of some business."

She stares at him with no comprehension.

"Eh, right. Attachez-le. Il ya corde sous le- holy son of a fuck, what is that?”

The car begins to fishtail wildly. The bubble reaches a crystalline sheen, and the traveler suddenly realizes that he’s about to go at thirty miles an hour. He does the only thing he can. He buckles up, puts one arm around the girl, and sticks the other into his jacket around the dog. The driver, gun hanging limply in one hand is staring slack jawed at the bubble around the traveler. He’s mostly inside the bubble, but he’s not wearing a seatbelt. The traveler suddenly begins to laugh and laugh and laugh. Furious, scared, and confused, the driver points the gun at him. The tension in the air reaches an unbearable climax, and the watch dings, and suddenly a few bounds of scrap metal are skidding and bouncing down a country road.

There’s a soft whirring noise as the headlight bounces to a stop, and the last tire rolls into a rock. Two legs, neatly severed at the knees roll into the weeds off the shoulder. A while later, another car rolls right on by.

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Sorry to anyone who actually read this. Getting the adds to target on a site like this is... challenging

Author's note:

Here is part two, done ahead of schedule. If you're totally lost, scroll back up to the top of the page. If you're reading this for the second time after following the above advice, I'm afraid you're on your own.

This one was a little different than the last one. For one thing, 70% of the dialog was in French, which I don't actually speak, which was a challenge. Second, there's the interesting challenge of introducing new readers to the premise without boring old ones.

Those with a good eye will also note that I changed the name. This is because 'the disappearing man' is more or less impossible to Google and get anything useful out. I've also changed the relevant image, since the last one was awful.

To reiterate my above warning, I don't speak a word of French, so all of the French dialog is basically best guesses, some hasty flipping back and forth in a French-language dictionary, and a healthy dose of borderline-retarded machine translation. So, if you actually speak French, first I apologize for my crimes against the language, and second ask that you kindly email me to let me know what I messed up and how to fix it.

One final note: the advertising. My Project Wonderful application finally came through, so I'm trying it out. I'm also testing out Amazon Affiliates links. I get paid a little bit every time somebody clicks through and buys a product via that link. I've put some of my favorite books down there in the hopes that if you like the stories here, you'll also like the ones down there.

   Until next time,
   A.

___________________

Buy me a cup of tea!