CHAPTER 14: THE PROMISE

“I…” he paused for dramatic effect “have a theory.”

“What is your theory, Virgil?” she asked.

He was sitting on a rocky outcrop a few hundred feet outside the city limits, staring at the glinting black

mountains in the distance that erupted from the earth like solid night.

She had her back to him, and stood bent over with a black, charred stick in her hand, writing words in the

fine grey sand.

“You may not like this theory.” he warned her.

“Oh really?” she noted, not looking up “Is it controversial?”

“All the best theories are.”

“Go on then. Shock me.”

“My theory…” he said turning and walking towards her over the outcrop, and nearly tripping over a jutting

rock “…is that you are absolutely insane.”

He stood and looked at what she had written. Words stretched off in a good thirty foot radius, variations of a

single sentence repeated over and over again.

STRANGE DAY TO GREET ANOTHER

STRANGE WAY TO SEE ONE OTHER

STRANGE GREY TO MEET OLD LOVER

STRANGE WAY TO SEAT A PLUMBER (This one had been crossed out with repeated angry strokes.)

“Really?” she said, looking up with genuine puzzlement “Why’s that?”

Virgil decided that if she had to ask the question, she was beyond help.

“You do realise.” he said “That the more you try, the less sense it makes.”

Marie gave an angry grunt and threw the stick down. She reached for the bottle of Red Marie that she had

left half buried in the sand and was about to raise it to her lips when Virgil grabbed her wrist.

“Hey.” he said “Enough for one day, day don’t you think?”

She looked at him for a second, and the nodded.

He nodded in return and let go of her wrist.

Quick as a flash, she had raised the bottle to her lips and drunk.

(more…)