This is the first part of A Story in Several Parts, by Matthew de Kersaint Giradeau, the following parts will be posted in subsequent weeks an appear above. (The painting is by George Shaw and is taken from here; http://www.ikon-gallery.co.uk/online_shop/ikon_catalogues/artists_monographs/item/what_i_did_this_summer/image/806/ )
Alex is short, but his friends are older than him, so compared to them, he looks even shorter. He gets migraines, but later on in life they stop. Alex is a strange child, but only in the way that all children are strange. He spends a lot of time alone.
Some days he forgets how old he is, but if he thinks about it he remembers. His parents love him and are nice to him. Sometimes he forgets what they look like and he gets scared.
Alex is bright and gets bored at school. He has more friends outside of school than he does in it. He gets on with people at school, but is sometimes laughed at. Mainly for being slightly weak, and too clever.
After school Alex sometimes plays in the woods. Sometimes with his friends, sometimes alone. With his friends, he builds dens, and plays man hunt. He gets scared by man hunt, there is something about it which scares him. It is the competitiveness inherent in such a game, though he does not know that. All he knows is that he can't be caught first, but he doesn't want to be caught last. He sometimes plays man hunt with his friends on the estate where he lives. Sometimes he plays football with them on the field next to his house, though he probably wouldn't play football if he had a choice. He gets bored watching television and playing computer games. He doesn't like repetition, but he doesn't know why.
Alex goes to the petrol station at the end of the main road into the estate. He borrows money from John - who always has money - and buys sweets. He eats them quickly and then regrets buying them. He hates how John always eats his sweets slowly, and saves Polos in his pocket. John is a vegetarian and is annoying. He only started eating Polos when they stopped having gelatin in them. You can't taste gelatin, and John doesn't particularly like animals. Alex knows why this annoys him. They all laugh at John for using Tommy Girl perfume and going to the willy clinic. Neither of these things are really true. John actually has Tommy Hilfiger perfume, but he is smug about having designer perfume, and everyone knows it. He did have to go to the willy clinic, but Alex and the rest of them only know that because John's younger brother told them. Also, he only had to go to the willy clinic once.
The wood behind Alex's house is not really a wood. They call it 'the woods' because they have no other word for it, but it isn't really a wood. It is the land left over from the woods that were cleared in the sixties to make way for the housing estate that now lies on it. Older kids go there to smoke weed and drink alcohol. Alex and his friends occasionally find blood stained knickers in the thick brambles that grow in the woods. Shamim and Alex once find some pornography and Shamim reads the story out loud while they walk along the cycle path. Shamim takes the pornography home.
It is summer and one of those days that only children have, awake so quickly and early. The sky is already blue and it is quietly hot by nine in the morning. Alex walks to Shamim's house. They are going to see a film. It is a terrible film, but both Alex and Shamim will think that it isn't. There is no wind and wearing shorts makes no difference to how hot Alex's legs feel. When Alex gets there, Shamim is crouching down outside his front door. Shamim is burning ants with a can of deodorant and a lighter. Alex burns some ants too. When Shamim goes upstairs to get ready, Alex is left with the ants and the burning. When the ants burn, they don't just burn, they melt. They melt on to the concrete, and on to the metal door, but they melt the best when they melt on to the leaves of the plant. When they melt on to the leaves, their legs melt first and then their bodies and finally they stop moving and their heads pop and melt. Alex thinks it is disgusting, and feels a bit guilty, but they are only ants. It is hard to justify feeling guilty when you kill an ant.
Shamim comes downstairs and tells Alex that he has had an idea. Alex and Shamim pick up some ants on their fingers and then put them into ice cube trays. They wait till the ants drown in the water and then, once they have enough ants and water to fill a tray, they put them in the freezer. They leave Shamim's house and walk up to town in the dry morning heat.
After they see the film they walk around town and talk about it. They re-enact some bits of it; funny lines, the best stunts. They also laugh at some bits which were bad. They walk back to Shamim's. They eat Solero ice creams in his back garden and talk about girls that Shamim knows. They almost forget about the ants, but just before Alex leaves, he remembers the ice trays and goes to the freezer to get them out.
The water is frozen, with the ants caught inside the ice cubes. Alex turns the trays upside down on the garden table and pushes one of the ice cubes. He watches it slowly melt. Shamim has turned on the television but comes outside as the ice cube turns into a pool of water. When the ice has melted, the ant starts to twitch. It moves more and more until it is able to walk, and then begins to walk around. If it is possible for an ant to look dazed, then it looks dazed. Shamim and Alex are amazed, they shout and laugh. Shamim says that they are Gods and that they have just brought something back to life. They try it again with another ice cube and the same thing happens. They are elated. They forget why they put the ants in the freezer in the first place. Whatever their original plans were, they forget them now that they are Gods.
They tell their friends that they can bring ants back to life. Their friends scoff in the distrustful way that children scoff at each other. They never repeat the experiment; it remains a singular action. There is a reason for the ants coming back to life, but Shamim and Alex don't want to know or need to know. In reality, Alex knows that it must be some odd truth of nature. When he is older, he hears about people freezing bees, and then tying string to them while they are frozen. Freezing doesn't kill the the bees, it just knocks them out. When they wake up, they try and fly away, but they just fly in circles. Alex never tries this trick, but when he hears about it, he remembers the ants and how they woke up. Little lives outside of his understanding. A whole world that he will never comprehend.
When the ants come back to life, neither Alex nor Shamim watch the ants for any more time than it takes them to regain consciousness and start walking. If they followed the ants, then they would watch them find their way back to their colony. Or maybe they would watch them stumble around the table and die again. Alex and Shamim never find this out because they never watch the ants for any more time than it takes them to regain consciousness and start walking.
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