purplerabbits

I found out the secret, last night. I found it because I was on a working holiday in hell. They didn't call it hell, of course: the advert said we'd be working with wine. But it was no vineyard but a wine factory we ended up in; a large, airy, glass and chrome factory that seemed the epitome of comfort and modernity, surrounded by bright green lawns.

At the factory we were taught to bottle champagne at the champagne bottling machine, and to tie string round the necks of other bottles, as well as a succession of other important tasks pushing bottle caps around. When we weren't working we stayed in high class hotels with shiny en suite bathrooms and beautifully kept rooms, and every morning we got up, ate a luxurious breakfast in our hotel and caught the magnetic hover train from the Metro right outside. Everything was shiny and new, and people on the train spoke to each other, discussing the various hotels they'd been picked up from, the high quality of the breakfasts and the maid service, and the wonders available in the craft market on the Metro platform where we bought small decorative objects to brighten up our hotel rooms and to give to our friends and family as mementos of this delightful holiday. I snapped up a dark wood horse carved in an archaic style, decorated with gold spirals and gold eyes. Others with less taste bought jolly naked Simpsons dolls, or naked vampire muppets with their purple and black wool hair draped over their bodies.

And then one night I had a date. One of the charming tour guides, he who had taught me to bottle champagne, asked me to dine at his hotel. Of course the food would be the same as at my hotel - a fine selection of haute cuisine brought by silent waiters, but he had a quirky smile and knowing eyes and his hands were long and clever as they twisted the wire cages round the bottle tops, and so I said yes.

I had been catching the magnetic train for so long that it was strange to get off at a different stop. His hotel was decorated in dark red and gold instead of dark green and silver like mine, but the food was good, and as we ate we sipped the fine wines we had been bottling that morning, and he complimented me on the garnet necklace I had obtained at the free craft fair, his eyes running appreciatively down the cascade of stones across my breasts. He clinked his crystal glass with mine and leant across the table to speak confidingly in my ear.

"Have you noticed," he said, "the assumption that all the hotels and the factory are in the same town, and yet I have never travelled between them except by underground train - have you?"

"Perhaps I'll go sightseeing at the weekend," I said, frowning as my head began to ache.

"And you have never stepped on the green turf at the factory," he persisted, "never spoken to the doorman of your hotel or the maids that polish your large lonely room, have you? The weekend must be very far away, my dear - have you any idea how long this little sojourn has lasted so far? How long the holiday was said to last on the application form that you did not fill in?"

My head was pounding. I sipped wine and tried to think. "No. But my room has a lovely view - the city at night..."

"Lights," he said, "twinkling flames in the darkness."

The light from the chandeliers fell on the wicked glint in his eye and his cute little silver horns. "So, would you care to take a walk in the darkness with me?" he said.