Greetings !
 

I arrived here this morning. As you can see from the card, this place is integrally wasted - so much so that it hardly needs my telling it! And if you wonder in which direction I went, you should know me better by now.

Walking out onto the salt flats, it just got hotter and hotter. At first the salt was like compact powder, but after a way, it became as burnished as a billiard ball. Looking back, I could finally see nothing, the low shoreline burnt out, only the sign post a vague shimmer above the mirage. And the further out I got, the slower my progress, until finally I found myself walking on the spot, as if on a treadmill. The ground had become a brilliant ribbon, running on in an endless loop beneath my feet.

I started to have serious misgivings about finding hotel accomodation for the night.

When I returned to the beach, and started off in the other direction, I presently found myself in a large gravel parking lot. This place should be packed in summer, I thought, only it was virtually deserted. There was a green, slatted wooden kiosk, battened shut, the metal hinges of its shutters corroded as they would be from sea air. In the further corner of the parking lot was a lemon coloured Ford Capri fastback, a battered model from the seventies, definitely worse for wear. Way down the beach, I could make out a couple cavorting with a dog.

The gravel road led directly inland. I took it.

A whole while of walking later, the car appeared behind me, in a whirlwind of beige dust and black exhaust fumes. It pulled up next to me. A good old boy leaned out and asked me if I wanted a ride. I did not refuse, though I had no idea of where they would be going (or towards where I was walking, to be honest).

There were two men in the car. The driver was a fellow of unfathomable age, brightly and baldly shaved beyond the ears, wearing a kingsize Harley handle-bar moustache and a three day stubble below them. The second fellow was quite the reverse, no hair below the ears, but a tropical forest above. Apart from that, they were rather alike. If you merged their two faces, you would get something quite complete and not unhandsome. The second man was sitting on the back seat. The seat next to the driver was fully occupied by a large, black dog, which was soaking wet, and smelt of canine-flavoured sea water, action variety. The driver motioned me in front, but the dog demurred. First dog I have ever seen able to snap without dropping the newspaper clenched between its teeth. The dog's name was "Fetch!".

So I got in with the good old boy at the back, and this was not easy, as there was a huge crate of beer on the seat next to him. I squeezed in between it and the door. The car jack-rabbited off.

Silence. The two men did not speak to each other. After a few moments, the one at the back motioned me to take a beer. There was no opener, he plucked the metal cap off deftly with a spin of his teeth, spat it out the window, rammed the bottle up his nose and inhaled appreciatively, then handed it to me. The beer was so warm, that it evaporated faster than it hissed. I drained it and tried to imagine it lingering, parched as I was after the day's wanderings.

Then without any warning, the man on the back seat stood up. The car had a sun roof, or rather a large rectangular hole that had been cut out with a blow torch. He stood in the wind, grabbed a beer bottle, uncapped it, drained it, swung it high into the air in the direction of travel, pulled out a revolver, and shot it into shards. The driver solemnly said, "One!". It was the first piece of conversation I heard between the two since getting into the car. Before I had the time to be amazed, I saw a second empty bottle arching through the sky, heard the splintering glass. "Two!". The eighth bottle he missed, it smashed down onto the car's bonnet in a spectacular shower of glass. The car swerved to a halt. The driver said, "My turn!".

He was less successful. The first sharp-shooter, who was now driving, poured forth a stream of untender commentary on the other's lack of marks'manship. Since he was not really driving in a straight line, but in a straightish one that chanced in and out of the oncoming lane, he did not give his companion much of a sporting chance. After that, they told me to try. I missed at "Three!".

I asked them their names.

"Tom", said the one, who had been driving when they had stopped for me.

"Tim", said the other.

"We're the Tyson twins".

"We have the same mum but we have different dads".

"We also have a twin sister. She's Trixie".

"That's triplets", I said.

"Yes, triplets. But we the terrible Tyson twins".

I asked then where we were going.

"To Penatrata".

"Is that far?"

Tim, who was driving, rolled down the window in the windy car. He leaned out, and took a deep, eager breath.

"It can't be too far. We ought to be smelling it soon".
 

Yours truly,