Read The Lanyard for Free Online

lights off, for the battery's sake."
    "It's ok."
    He turned the key towards him so the headlights died, and then reached down to the side of the seat to recline it. The boy did not say anything as he turned half onto his side, put his hands under his face. He considered the button, unsure how long to wait before he pressed it. How long should he wait. The air felt thick. He didn't wait long.
    He must have slept here, but could not remember. It was too fast. Too soon, as the lights of this city they had seen weaved around and under his eyes, balled into a sun that glided over the front window of the car. Imagined and then real.
    He woke suddenly, sat forward with a jolt to escape the new light that left a bruise over his vision, as if the dawn had slugged him square on.
    Outside, two clumps of thin trees stood either side of a strange purple shape. It was too bright. He pulled down the visor and long blinked to try and wring the light out of his vision. As his view cleared he saw his reflection in the small mirror staring back, brow scrunched, uncomfortable, as if short of breath, as if he had spent the night dreaming of being drowned, swollen flesh pushing over his eyes, ageing him, the corners full of sleep not slept out. Behind his head, in the mirror, the empty beige headrest looked like the side of a rock.
    He pushed the shade up and the sun came again, presenting the image of the lion in its place in the sky, king on top of an outcrop of grey straw, clouds choked around the base, the peak of the mountain rising like a jagged rock in the ocean, a savage tooth that threatened to eat the sun, willow white with snow at the top, so high that mist spilled from it, rushing away like the breath of ice that would sometimes crawl out of him and fall in winter, as if the world sucked his soul from his belly, from the place where the urge to act, to eat, often came, like a trail of thirst, a longing for food he felt most days, which he felt now, a sweet desire to bag warmth, to burn, to smoke, to keep the spirits of fear dozy like bees, to set away the flame of frost outside that felt like it might loom over the car, over the trees like clouds. What would the city look like now, beneath this? He would have to leave the car to see it. He should try and see it. They both should.
    He turned to wake his father and share this idea, but the driver's seat was empty. All traces of sleep fell off him like snow on a speeding car. He scanned the surroundings, moving his eyes over the forest around where they had stopped, all the way to a large sign on the front of a wooden hut, which seemed to hold a pictorial map of the area, the top shaped like the roof of a house, with trash cans beneath the bench. The letters at the top that once could have given the area a name had begun to peel and fall, rolling into tubes, shrivelling into white cigarettes that might come with a kick if smoked, perhaps leaving the last trace of the meaning in the lungs, the words, the breath, like spider silk on the hand.
    In front of this sign was a dusty brown patch of dirt poured over with colourless gravel, a dozen sections marked by logs sawn in half and pushed into the dirt flat first, rotted to jagged dregs, gone green, as if sinking, soon to be turned to coal, or whatever it was that happened to wood.
    Around to the far side of the area he found his father, standing next to the back of some sort of Land Cruiser, a vehicle not much different from their own, peering into the window with his hand pushed onto the glass, shielding his eyes from the light. The boy climbed up onto his seat and walked on his knees across to the driver's side to get a better view. As he reached the window, his elbow bumped into the horn.
    His father jumped, turned, and put his fingers over his lips, glancing behind him. The boy held up his hands as if to show they were empty then followed his father's gaze to a part-hidden path that sloped from the area up towards a clutch of taller trees