"So what's your name?" the stranger asked.
"My name…" what was my name? I hadn't thought about it yet but I couldn't recall my name. I thought but I just couldn't remember. Then out of nowhere I said the first thing that I could remember someone calling me… "Theo. My names Theo…"
"Nice to meet you Theo…" the stranger said in return.
"What about you?" I asked "what's your name?"
"Hm. That's a really good question…" he replied "I suppose I don't really have one"
"Well what do people call you?"
"Lots of things I suppose, what do you want to call me?" He said.
I thought about it for a long time and couldn't come up with anything. We sat in silence for a long while just watching the countryside go by. I'd never really taken the time to go on holiday at least not since my parents took me when I was young. "Nature really is incredible" I thought to myself…
We began to slow down after a while until we came to a full stop. "We're coming up on a town" the stranger said "you'll have to hide yourself or else you'll cause a riot"
"How am I going to do that. The back has windows as well you know" I said.
"There's a piece of green and black material in the back I've been saving to make curtains, but I think it'll suit you a lot better as a cloak" he said as he rooted around amongst the mess in the back of the motor. He then pulled out a beautiful piece of green velvet backed with black and handed it to me. It had a strange feeling to it and the way the velvet shimmered was unusual, but I felt as though I would be safe if I was wrapped in it, like that no one would see me if I didn't want. I wrapped it around me over my head.
"You look good, now we can go and get something to eat" the stranger said "I'm feeling like jacks snack shack…"
"No…" I said "I believe me when I say I've had enough 'Jacks snack shack' for a lifetime"
"Right then what do you feel like eating?" He asked.
"I'm not hungry, in fact for as long as I've been like this I haven't needed to eat" I said.
The stranger looked at me with confusion "you shouldn't eat because you're hungry dude…" he explained "you eat because it tastes good, because it reminds you that you're alive man…"
"I don't even know if I can still taste" I said.
"Then let's find out we'll get a bit of everything while we're in town" he chuckled. I tried to stop him, fearing for his funds, but he simply said that "money is nothing more than an object, it's not something you need to worry yourself about"
By the time we'd finished going through every drive through in town the middle seat of the van was piled high with wrapped hamburgers, fries and enough puddings to to cause a heart attack 10 times over if I still had a heart. The smell was intoxicating, I would have been drooling if I could. I wasn't hungry but the smell made me want to eat. We eventually stopped outside of town, and I pulled the bandages down from around my mouth. I didn't have teeth per-say more of a large jagged crack where my mouth once was. I unwrapped a burger and put it between my jaws. I bit down and despite the fact I had no tongue, flavour flooded my mouth. The beef, the tomatoes, the onions, the lettuce all reminded me that I haven't eaten in days. I grabbed a box of fries and some chicken nuggets and stuffed my mouth.
"My gods" I said as emotions flooded back into my heart. Mostly just a basic human love of good food, but also a memory of feeling happy when my mum used to cook burgers.
"I told you right, food reminds us we are human doesn't it" the stranger said with a full mouth.
"Mm-Hm" I agreed in return.
"of course there's lots of other things that remind us we are human but food is a good start" he munched away on a rather large doughnut covered in chocolate.
We sat there for a while just eating and chatting about normal stuff. I told him I was trying to get back to my mum and my fiancé, and that they probably thought I was dead. He said that he had never had a girlfriend before let alone a fiancé, but he had been with plenty of women before.
"I find I'm not really one for settling down" he said "I like to move around a lot and help where it's needed"
"So you've never been in love" I asked.
"Now I never said that dude" he replied "I love everyone I meet especially the women I meet if you know what I mean…" he paused for a moment "but there was once this one woman who I met who I was actually in love with I suppose…"
"What happened?"
"She was on her own journey, she's probably a world away by now" he looked out toward the sun setting in the distance "if I ever see her again I think I'll join her on that journey…"
We spent the night driving and finishing off the food. Unlike the day in the countryside it was quieter. No birds sang, and no animals filled the fields. To the a normal eye the night would appear dead, but I could see things that others could not. An owl diving to catch its prey, a fox hiding in the hedge on the roadside, a snake in the field, a family of grouse. All these things that no other could possibly see. Once again I thought to myself "nature is incredible" but this time I felt connected to everything around me. Everything: living and dead, awake and asleep, plant, animal, microbe, fungi…
"Stop" I said to the stranger "I need to spend some time outside". The stranger said nothing and merely smiled and stopped the motor.
I stepped out of the van and moved towards the hedge. I felt everything around me. More specifically I could feel the electromagnetism holding every atom together. I thought about how I wished the bandages were stronger and how they became and did exactly what I wanted. Right now I wanted to get over this hedge, and one moment I was on the road and the next I was in the middle of the field on the other side of the fence. I let my bandages loosen and my cloak fall floating in the air behind me. The moonlight glittered off my onyx bones. I felt the wind on my face and the electricity holding the world together. I saw the universe around me as I looked up into the clear nights sky, the prism that is the cosmos and the energy flowing through it, transforming, transmuting everything. I looked and saw infinity and it was the universe, the great infinite void filled with innumerable glittering shining lights. I realised that immortality was the way of the universe, matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed, just transformed and divided. Life and death were not a beginning and an end, but a continuation from one place to another. With this I allowed my bandages to rebind me and my cloak to once more to cover my head…
"Dude that was some freaky light show you did in there. what happened?" The stranger asked.
"I understand…" I said, not really understanding what I understood exactly, just that I knew of the universe.
"That's good…" the stranger replied "but that green lightning was some crazy shit man" I just sat there and did what I could to express a smile on my immovable face "at the next stop we're getting a drink, I think I need one, and you deserve one man."
"It's not far to Brummagem now but I think a drink before we get there would be a fine idea" I said.
We came to a pub in the next town we came to that was still open in these early hours of the morning. The stranger ordered himself a lager while I… well what drink would I order other than a gin…