Deep in the no man’s land of suburbia, two college students shared a sidewalk. They were separated in age by just a few years and united in purpose: campaigning for a new public transit scheme that was destined to rub wrong the egos of the die-hard motorists. Looking at the neighbourhood they now bordered, it was like peering out onto the front.

“You ah, really shouldn’t smoke that now.” Penny cringed at the lit cigarette in her fellow campaigner’s hand, and the younger woman couldn’t help herself from grinning.

“Christ, Pen, that another one you got on the go? Saw all the damn leaflets in your car, you’re a real warrior for all this volunteer shit huh? I just need my train card not to fucking rinse me so much, till that day I need these things for the stress.” The first year student smirked from ear to ear as she smoked in the face of the other’s discomfort. “Hell, we’re taking a break. Relax.”

Penelope found that there was a fine line between proper rest and slacking off, and having to stop for a break after only a couple dozen houses read as little more than laziness from her companion. “Yes well, I know your mother… makes it hard to watch you ruin your lungs for kicks, but what do I know?” The third year college student sighed into her hand and tapped her soft pink nails impatiently against a leaflet reading ‘Better transit—Better city.’

The blonde tucked the leaflets back into her cardigan’s front pocket and fiddled with her braid idly, before twisting her lips in resignation and shooting the half-arsed activist she was carpooling with a fierce look. “Okay fine, have your break. I’m going to start on my side ahead of you, all the odd houses… make sure not to do those when you catch up okay?”

Making no attempt to correct herself, nor urge Penelope to stay, the smoking girl shrugged and took another drag. “Knock yourself out, just don’t forget the pepper spray alright? Real wacko republicans down this way, which I guess is why we’re out here. Really sending the big guns with a knight of the people like yourse—”

“Oh my god, Ruth. Fuck off.” Penny gave a light-hearted smile to show that she wasn’t too incensed by the younger girl’s mocking—even though she really was—and grabbed a can of mace before heading off. It took all the restraint she was capable of conjuring to stop herself from snidely pointing out that pepper spray was a different product.

“Christ… this place really is scary.” The activist muttered to herself in her lone trek across the hostile looking neighbourhood; it must have appeared like the friendliest place in the world to many, so quiet and unassuming, but the way every house flew their flags without fail made a woman like Penelope feel antsy. Blind patriotism in a country so steeped in blood, past and present, felt like ignorance to a girl taught to question everything.

She had stalled enough, which felt embarrassing so soon after denouncing Ruth’s own self-appointed break, and so Penny plucked up all the courage in her heart and stepped herself onto the first driveway of the new estate. It was still damp from the over night rain, and Penny found herself disappointed on that summery morn in failing to spy any signs of rainbow in the sky above. The front lawn was a little overgrown, but it was almost impossible to see any of that wild grass past the obscenely large pick-up truck that seemed to occupy a good three quarters of the drive by itself. Penny could not help but scoff at the obnoxious vehicle, commenting internally at how awful those things were for the environment… such terrible fuel efficiency, and the pollution… the blonde felt her lungs screaming at the sight of those vain exhaust stacks peeking out from either side of the bright red monster; they were like devil horns, and Penelope had already begun to write this house off as a lost cause for her campaigning before she even reached the front step. It was unlike her to play the pessimist; she lightly smacked her cheeks and reminded herself that getting through to a person like this would surely be the highlight of her college activism days.

No doorbell and a sign warning that unsolicited callers could be shot. The student grinned, sardonically, and decided to take her life into her hands as she politely knocked against the door with a synchronous pounding in her chest.

There was a long bout of silence that followed her knock. Just as Penny raised her hand to try one more time, she heard heavy footfalls within the house descending the stairs—like the tolling of bells—and a low, gravelly voice shouting out something Penny could not make out through the door. All she could tell was that the voice was female, at least she suspected, and that this woman she’d called upon was not in a good mood to have been summoned. Was she still in bed this far past noon? The woman on the other side of the door took her time, sitting on the step as Penny surmised through marbled glass that she was watching her dress.

Penny’s nervous stewing came to an end at last as the door swung open to reveal the disgruntled homeowner. Fortunately, the woman was not holding a firearm in her hand, but a pair of black leather driving gloves she soon stuffed into the pocket of her pants. “You lost or somethin’, kid?” Her tone was unfriendly, but her face revealed a cocky grin that made Penelope’s hand ball into a fist against her long, flowing skirt.

The two of them could not have been more diametrically opposed in regards to appearance and demeanour; Penny wore a cream wool cardigan buttoned up to the neck, while the other wore a faded, cropped metal band tee she soon complimented with a denim jacket that had its sleeves torn off; Penny was dressed in a long brown skirt with floral pattern, the breeze letting it blow around her ankles, while the other had high-waisted leather pants that glinted the sun back into Penelope’s rounded glasses; Penny wore brogues that matched her cardigan and the other sported black pigskin boots that reached well over her shins. They were opposites, barely united by gender, Penny nervously adjusting that light blonde braid snaking around her neck as she drank in the sight of her stranger’s fiery orange side-cut—about as loud of a statement one could make with their hair before introducing multiple dyes, Penny wagered. There was a significant gap between their ages, too, but Penelope could not quite discern how large from her cursory glance.

“I-I’m not lost, ma’am.” The student attempted to remain composed against the waft of tobacco, car oil and something else—competitive in its musky aroma. “I’m just here to talk a little about the new public transit scheme… well, fundraiser, that would see—”

The homeowner spied the leaflets peeking out of Penelope’s pocket and rolled her eyes, shoving her thumbs into the hem of her pants and pushing out onto the front step with a light patter from the settled rainwater. Penny was wrapped up in that miasma of odours she’d picked up on before, stepping back onto the driveway meekly.

“Public transit scheme, eh? Do I look like I take the bus, kid?” The woman pushed onwards into Penelope's personal space despite the girl's constant attempts to maintain distance. Before long, the blonde found herself pinned uncomfortably between the front of that obnoxious truck and its invasive owner. With a bristle at the fact she was repeatedly being referred to as a child, the blonde puffed out her chest as best she could and opened her mouth, ready to do her best to nervously speak on the values of a walkable city with less emissions and—“Save your breath, I read your little leaflet before, when the last pussy from your little scheme posted it and ran away with a tucked tail. Gotta respect your stones at least, I mean you've seen my beaut right? You knew how things'd go here, surely?” As she spoke, the intimidating older woman slipped fingers into her shiny black driving gloves, flexing her fingers with a tight creak of leather that commanded Penny's attention.

“I-I know, but the scheme isn't strictly anti-automobile it just… hey lady you're a little close…” Penelope leaned back over the pick-up’s bonnet as her cheeks turned red with flustered indignation at the way this alternative citizen had completely disregarded physical boundaries. Penny sniffed the air and caught that whiff of oil, and smoke, cringing at the unpleasantness of the exchange she now felt trapped in.

“More tolls for motorists, I read this crap already like I just said. You got wax in your ears kid?” The woman gave her blonde annoyance a sleazy grin as she took the wilting flower’s chin between her leather-clad digits. “You’re standing in a patch of oil, silly girl, you’re gonna hurt yourself.”

“Wh-what?” Penelope was frozen, startled by the sudden grip on her chin that felt far too inappropriate to even process the reality of. Her eyes flicked down to the multi-coloured asphalt at her feet, grasping anything more logical to focus on when those terrible, firm fingers yet held her face. “I’m not…”

“You’re about to slip, and if you fall onto your ass on my property I’m sure a snooty little thing like you is bound to try and press charges. Not on my watch, here.” Before the startled blonde could even register the sudden lack of leather against her chin, she found herself gasping as two strong hands seized her by the hips and hoisted her up onto the pick-up truck’s bonnet. Penny’s legs splayed out in panic before clamping back together to protect her modesty in that thin, summery skirt. Her cheeks were burning hot as diesel and turned as red as the fresh paint job she found herself sitting upon—like a child hoisted up by her daddy.

“I ah… what the…” It took the blonde a few seconds to catch up to her own outrage at being manhandled by the woman who evidently hit the gym as often as Penny did the library. “Hey! What the fuck, lady!?” Blinking away the shock and letting her eyes instead fill with fury at last, Penelope tried to let herself down from her high position on the monster of a vehicle’s bonnet only to be pushed back into the centre by those gloved hands tightly gripping her shoulders.

“You’re not going anywhere until we’ve had a nice long chat about this door-to-door campaigning crap. Pretty sure I got a sign telling you to fuck off, yeah? Well here you are, so let’s talk.” The car dyke’s grin turned predatory, one hand staying on Penny’s shoulder while the other slid up over her neck and began teasingly caressing the terrified blonde’s cheek with a smooth, leather-bound thumb.

Penelope swallowed, staring meekly at the taller woman who she only just won out in height against even with her current elevation. The blonde’s legs were forced apart by the dyke’s hips, which pushed between them and rested against the front of the woman’s pride and joy. “Can you… can you not, please… I have other houses to be getting to, a-and my partner is close by. She’ll see this and call someb—”

“Oh, so y’are a dyke then, not that there was really much question there. Red as you are, leaning into my touch like you want me to take your virginity.” The woman chuckled, the sound sultry, and gravelly, and utterly incensing to the strait-laced student.

“I… not that kind of partner! I’m not leaning into you, lady, I’m trying to get past you… ugh…” The blonde felt her saintlike patience slipping in free fall, reaching for the mace in her pocket only for the butch to swat it away onto the asphalt like it barely registered as a real threat. When Penny panicked and began to flail, the woman grabbed her wrists tight and pinned them down against the vehicle, which had been cooking in the sun for the entire summer morning. Penelope winced at the stinging heat against her milky pale skin and hissed like a house cat; she sounded vicious, but she’d already been declawed by her master.

“Quiet down, you little eco-cunt.”

Penelope obeyed, swallowing hard as she let the sternly issued command ring through her racing head. Fear was a ruler that conquered pride; her body had been commandeered by an aversion to any conflict that could see her truly harmed. Like the scared little girl that she was, Penny let her jittering body still as best she could and stared up at the woman who now held the power to instruct her.

“That’s better, god you academics in your cute little get-ups drive women like me crazy, especially the bookish girls who insist on their mommy’s life they ain’t never thought about tasting cunt. You’re such dyke-bait it’s annoying. Are you trying to piss me off, girl? Is that how you get your kicks?”

“N-No ma’am… I just…” Penny sniffed, her shoulders slumping. Then, she sniffed again. Her pupils had slowly begun to dilate, and her thoughts were becoming confused. “What’s… ughhh… why do you smell so…”

The car dyke smirked knowingly, petting the blonde’s hair with her destructive leather touch as the girl sitting on the car began to slump against the other’s front. She huffed from that loose tee and chewed her lip, wanting an explanation for why she felt so light-headed, so deliriously giddy. Penny knew that she was too dizzy and disoriented to stand, and so she resigned herself to sitting. “Yeah, you’ve been breathing it in a lot faster since you worked yourself up, stupid kid. That there’s the waft of motor oil and diesel fuel, a recipe for the perfect thrum of a beast like this baby you’re getting your floral stink all over.”

Penelope giggled, before realising that her domineering stranger was being deadly serious. “It’s… awful. Ehe…”

“Oh yeah? Take another breath, kid, nice and fuckin’ deep. Let it really fill your lungs with burn, forget that childish penchant sweet lilies like you have for covering up every real smell with cloying, flowery bullshit. Here.” The sluggish blonde was picked up with strong arms hooked under her weak, flaccid ones. As the woman held her, Penny did as she was told and took a breath—nice and deep.

“I-I… woah, o-okay I don’t feel so g—aah!” Without warning, the car dyke released the prey from her hold and watched the poor thing sail down onto the ground, unable to catch herself and far too sluggish to have supported herself if she had. Penelope found herself kneeling in a sprawl over asphalt painted pretty with oil slick. The colours were dancing in her eyes, and she felt compelled to take a closer look despite the shooting pain in her backside from the unkind landing.

“I can see you’re starting to feel it, kid. The mesmerising beauty of the machine. That’s just a byproduct, and you’re unable to peel your damn eyes away. Here, let’s see how malleable you’ve become.” With an innocent whistle, the woman still on her feet lifted one of those flashy pig-leather boots and gently rested the sole over the back of her uninvited canvasser’s slowly unravelling braid.

“H-Hey… stop that.” Murmured the blonde with a strange passivity to her voice, her head slowly pushed closer to the ground by a gradual increase of weight from that boot now resting squarely on her head. It’s not that she was completely hypnotised—ambivalent to her own dire situation—not just yet, anyway; she was simply distracted, intensely so. When enough pressure was applied that Penelope’s face was a mere six inches from that dazzling oil slick that had her in its vice, the girl’s nostrils began to flare with a deep inhale that made her eyes weakly flutter. “Wh… why’sitso…”

“Shut up. Just submit. I’ll teach you some respect; I’ll show you the face of god, but first I need you to kiss the floor and repent for that poor attitude you came to my door with. The roads are mine, kid, to hell with cyclists and commuters and pedestrians alike. Think I give a fuck? Here, let’s ruin that make-up… you students must spend all the time you’re not sticking your noses in books—and other people’s affairs—sat in front of a mirror obsessing over looks. Vanity… I’ll show you how to be real.” The boot weighed down and soon enough, Penny’s cheek kissed the oil on the ground in a cold marriage of skin, asphalt, and the slick between.

Penelope huffed, feeling a sliminess coating her cheek and an overwhelming truth filling her lungs. Every deep, panicked breath had her unravelling further under the taller woman’s heavy boot. Her eyes lost focus, as did her mind, and she found herself waiting for the older dyke to speak again; her words were an anchor now, tethering the spinning blonde to a world that she risked leaving the orbit of entirely.

“Taste it.”

Penny blinked, the unreasonable command sobering her up just a little. Motor oil is toxic, not suitable for human ingestion. The reasonable, logical part of her mind told her as much, but that area was shrinking rapidly within a smog of sudden craving. The girl wanted to taste; she wanted to obey.

Attempting not to think too hard about what she was doing, which came with surprising ease in that moment, Penny snaked her tongue out and pressed it against the refracting oil. The poisonous flavour spread over her tongue and the girl spluttered immediately, spitting and coughing as the laughing dyke grabbed a nice handful of the blonde’s barely maintained braid and pulled her up onto her feet. Penelope’s legs were shaking violently by this point, and the horrible taste that permeated in her mouth made her feel too nauseous to protest all the rough-handling; she was so out of it that being dragged up by just her hair barely even registered as unpleasant, the light distraction it caused almost felt good.

“Wait.” Another simple command for the dizzy, skittish fawn who could barely stand on her own two legs to follow. Penny waited, needing the hood of the vehicle she was becoming strangely familiar with to support her as she distantly watched her heady superior enter the front of the vehicle and reach under the dash. The bonnet popped open so suddenly that Penny almost tripped back into the puddle she’d already been made to sample once, catching herself just in time for the overconfident homeowner to wrap an arm around the poor student’s waist and pull her back towards the front of that magnificent pick-up. With her other arm, the woman lifted the bonnet to reveal the exposed hood of her pride and joy—large diesel engine sitting prominently in the middle—and shoved her young campaigner forwards.

“Ah!” Penelope crashed into the front of the vehicle and collapsed against the grimy components within. Her cream cardigan was dirtied by lubricant, hair unravelling at last and splaying out in a mess. The kindly stranger collected that hair in a fist and held Penny’s face above the powerful engine, which had been brought to life when she turned the ignition key as she popped the hood.

The engine hummed, and Penny found herself mimicking it. She was transfixed by its esoteric design, incomprehensible to a girl who knew so little of machines and engineering. So many different holes, vents, pipes and other shapes she did not know the purpose of. The more she stared, the less she understood; Penelope was a booksmart girl and this was beyond her scope, though if she had to relate it to her reading she would have compared it to the descriptions of eldritch horrors—too complex for the human brain to make sense of with the naked eye.

“It’s… beautiful.” The girl breathed deep again and found that the unpleasant taste that previously filled her mouth had given way to something syrupy sweet and unbearably moreish. “Why’s it so… m’confuuused…”

“Shut the fuck up and show some damn respect. This engine’s a thing to be revered, kid, you need to get that through your fuckin’ skull. You gotta worship it with all your senses, really lose yourself in it. Go ahead, I won’t stop you.”

The proud activist’s eyes were bugging out, her skin hot and slick to the touch. She licked her lips and nodded erratically, committing herself to the task with mounting excitement. All five senses.

Penny stared at that unknowable shape, impossible to memorise, and blushed.

“Thaaat’s right, kid. Nice and focused. That’s the face of god I promised ya.”

Penny listened to the engine breathe and shuddered in delight at its special thrum.

“Getting lost in it, deeper and deeper you go. Burning your morals and your pride.”

Penny breathed in deep the waft of its fumes and pushed a hand under her skirt.

“Because within the engine, girl…”

Penny pressed her lips against it and began to fuck her hand without any worries.

“Everything burns.”

Penelope’s former self began to immolate as she locked tongues with godlike diesel power. She was oblivious to the way her new teacher slowly undressed her out of that stuffy, silly cardigan she always covered up too much with. Penny stuffed her long-neglected cunt with as many digits as she could take and lubricated herself like a well maintained engine. The woman at her back held the keys for the machine that Penny was becoming, mechanically rewriting her values with a drooling tongue against hot steel. It felt so fucking good to burn, to roar, to sublimate like fuel for the god she now showed absolute reverence to. Her eyes closed in prayer, and her body buckled with sick desire; nothing could put that fire out now, it burned between her thighs, her ears, and between one thought and the next. It left a trail of lit oil that made it hard for her to string together any sort of complex arrangement of thought before it went up in smoke.

Penny threw herself at the engine like a wanton whore, roughly fucking herself as the woman who now held absolute power over her relieved the slut of her bra. Rough fingers sunk into her chest, groping the mind-broken student who committed herself to the conflagration of fuel inside her head that told her…

Everything burns.

Ruth sighed, flicking her cigarette onto the sidewalk and snuffing its embers into a weak pile of ash with the toe of her boot. The first year student was livid after being ditched by her partner the week before, having waited by Penelope’s car until dark before deciding to get a taxi home instead. The moment she saw she was back on the same shitty estate she’d initially been left stranded on, the girl went to check if Penny’s car was where she’d left it. Ruth did her due diligence the prior Monday and texted the blonde—a distant cousin she’d been acquainted with since early schooling—to ensure she was safe, and received a slightly incoherent but assuring response that told the brunette the hypocrite had either played hooky to get drunk, or high.

“I’ll take odds I guess, did the evens last week.” The half-hearted activist muttered to her new canvassing partner with a shrug before grabbing a handful of leaflets indelicately and stuffing them into her coat pocket for her weekly humiliation ritual. The quicker she was done, the better.

Head down, with hands in her pockets; that was how Ruth approached the first home. The sound of water spraying from hose and a light hum prompted the student to quickly correct herself, pulling hands from pockets and lifting her head to follow the source of the noise that had alerted her to another’s presence.

Water trickled past the brunette’s boots as she stepped onto the driveway, politely waving at the woman she was now gawking at and finding that the eye-candy was too lost in her own little world to catch sight of the gesture—or notice Ruth at all. Eye candy seemed the appropriate title for a thing like that, Ruth decided with a sheepish blush, wondering if she hadn’t inadvertently stepped onto the set of a trashy music video, or a porno.

The girl who Ruth was seriously finding it impossible to look away from was standing in the driveway wearing nothing but a skimpy golden bikini, her slender body arching over the bright red pick-up truck she was in the process of washing. The girl touched the vehicle so tenderly you could mistake it for her lover, her singing like a serenade meant to woo the resting beast. Thick suds ran down the bright red chassis, the bikini-clad girl smiling at her own handiwork before turning and locking eyes with Ruth. Her hair was multi-coloured, styled in the aesthetic of an oil-slick, and her face was peppered in kisses of the real thing; as was the rest of her, she was surprisingly dirty when pitted against the car she’d made nearly spotless with her efforts. Wiping her brow, the stranger addressed Ruth heartily.

“Hey there! C-Can I help ya, darl’? Oh shoot, I gotta do the seats… ‘scuse me, ehehe.” The trashy girl opened the huge pick-up truck’s driver side door and bit her bottom lip, staring at the leather with glassy, distant eyes. She’d disappeared into memory, Ruth approaching slowly and shaking the thing’s arm to break it from the trance. When the airhead blinked away the daze and turned her head back in Ruth’s direction, the latter finally recognised who she was face to face with and froze.

“Uh… Christ, is that you Pen? You… uhm… aha… what… what’s all this?” The first year wasn’t sure what to say, staring wide-eyed at the nonsensical truth before her.

Penny turned flush, eyes flicking back to that leather as she picked up the cleaner and cloth sitting in the footwell ready for her. “These are genuine leather, y’know? Not that vinyl crap… it… the smell on a hot day makes gals like me go dizzy… c’mere, give it a whiff!” The former bookworm grabbed her former partner and pulled her body through the opening, urging Ruth to catch a whiff of that real leather scent. Ruth obliged timidly, staring at the face mere inches from her own that was drowning in genuine reverence for the vehicle she serviced.

Eventually managing to pry herself away, Ruth stepped back in disbelief, watching a dutiful Penny contort her body to clean those leather seats like they were worth more than the slave who maintained them. It was only then that she noticed that her distant cousin’s thin slip of garish golden underwear had caught on the seat’s edge and been pulled aside. Ruth gulped, staring at glistening pink lips—completely hairless—left exposed in the morning shine. “Uhh…”

“Clean… Seal… Condition…” The car-girl mumbled under her breath in an eery monotone, wiping cloth over the seat with a placid, empty smile. “Clean… Seal… Condition…”

Ruth tried a few more times to get the other’s attention before looking around awkwardly and stepping closer with haste, holding her hand out like it was hovering over an open flame she didn’t want to touch. Shy fingers hooked into the scrunched-up golden thong and attempted to quickly pull it back into place, Ruth’s chunky nickel ring brushing cold metal over the other’s slickness and causing her to groan, but otherwise pay no mind. “Wh-What the fuck…”

“What the fuck, indeed. Not a normal first response, girl… guess you’re breathing in a lot already… oh my.” Penny’s master stepped out onto the driveway and trained her eyes on Ruth’s like a predator sizing up her prey. “C’mere, kid, let me get a better look at you.”

Staring at the lust coating her knuckle and conceding that the woman was correct in regards to her own surprising behaviour, Ruth balled her fists and approached the dyke with burning indignation. The smug bitch had done something to Penelope, and now she could tell from that mocking tone—and look—that the woman was affecting her own judgement now too. “Look here, lady, I’ve got a real bad temper, and pepper spray, so you better tell me what the fu—”

By the time Ruth’s senses returned, she was too busy reeling from the throbbing pain spreading over the left side of her face to react to the way she was being held by a fistful of hair, dragged over to a bonnet which popped open when an obedient Penny pulled the lever under the dash in a timely manner. Ruth’s vision was blurred as she found her face smashed down against the engine hard enough to bust her nose. Soon enough, none of those trivial details would matter; the engine was a god, all mundane factors—even broken noses—were burned inside of it in oblation to its power.

“Whuhh… I…”

“You little girls and your fucking leaflets, I swear… I’ve decided to put you all to better use if you insist to continue trespassing on my damn property. Ain’t that right, girl?” The woman shouted over to her carwash-turned-seatblack as she held Ruth down by the scruff of her neck like a runt, letting the engine’s thrum begin to roar its burning truth into her soul through the open senses.

“Yes Sir! Everything burns!” Penny sounded the fanatic, paying no mind to the way a girl she once fretted over the health of now had blood dripping down her lips and chin. That was normal; that was penance. Ruth repented in a smear of red and smile, tasting oil and sublimating soul in an unhealthy reformation of desire and priority. She was descending in a free fall and could only rely on Penny’s strange new master to catch her before she hit the bottom in a violent thud.

“Kept that one pretty, so had to go slow… but you I think I’ll have work under the car, so what’s it matter?” The woman’s harsh words clawed themselves into Ruth’s psyche, her confidence and self-worth plummeting as she accepted the new truth of herself willingly. She was made to be beneath, hidden, and yearned for the shadow of this immaculate metal god to save her from the blinding world outside of her arrested senses.

Ruth drooled, intoxicated by the oil in her mouth, as Sir yanked down the former canvasser’s denim jeans like she was impatiently undressing a doll. The 20 year old gasped, but then that shock burned away inside the engine too—like everything else did.

“Be glad my neighbours are preppers, or I wouldn’t be able to fuck you in the street so brazenly. I can tell you’re not a virgin like my Penny was, at least… good thing I already made you bleed then.”

The college student kissed the engine like a lover, staring at its esoteric design like it was sent down from heaven; an angel of steel and diesel and crushing power, descended to steer her down the right path. She was to be a willing slave, like Penny, to the road goddess that now filled her cunt and pounded her against the car like she was just as much the woman’s property. She knew that she was, succumbing to the call of the metal angels invading her ears and lungs.

Ruth knew…

Penny knew…

And Sir knew, better than most…

Inside the engine, a molten crucible of fuel, ambition and dwindling selfhood…

Everything burned.