A Story in Several Parts; Part Eight (by Matthew de Kersaint Giradeau)

 

This is the eigth part of A Story in Several Parts, by Matthew de Kersaint Giradeau, the previous parts can be further down the page. (The painting is by George Shaw and is taken from here;http://www.ikon-gallery.co.uk/online_shop/ikon_catalogues/artists_monographs/… )

 

This is when Alex sees the body. Just after the planes. Just as their jet noise falls lower in his ears. Alex sees the body. It is on the floor of the old den and it is pitched up like a triangle. Its head is turned sideways, facing Alex with its eyes open. But its arse is in the air and its legs are bent under it. Its legs hold up its arse and its face is what Alex sees first.

The first time Alex looks at it he doesn't know what it is. He looks at it again, up the line of its legs, over its back and then to its face and its eyes. Its eyes are yellow and red but they are looking at Alex. Then Alex knows that it is a body.

The body is a man, or was a man, but now it is just a body, all crumpled and dead. The body is still warm, if Alex were to touch it, it would still be warm. But Alex does not touch the body. The body, if it could look, is looking at Alex, and Alex, who can look, is looking at the body. The body is dead, but it looks at Alex like anyone would. Half-interested, and half not. Like anyone else would look out the window when they were bored, the body looks at Alex. The body doesn't make any sound, but its legs are slowly pulling outwards so that soon it would straighten out; gravity and rigor-mortis doing their job without anyone asking.

Bored of pulling out against the inevitable, the body will push towards the floor and be flat down on it. The clothes, which are wet with piss and sweat still, will get muddy and even wetter. The face will still look at where Alex's face currently is, with half-interested, half-bored, yellow-red eyes. But the feet will point out at unnatural angles, the knees close together, the ankles apart, and the feet out like the body is stretching its legs under instruction.

And Alex does not see any of this because as soon as Alex takes his second look at the body, and realises that the body is a body, and not some trick played on him by his friends, or some horrible nightmare where you wake up screaming but you aren't screaming. Or you wake up scared like it is the beginning and the end of the world and you are just a dot somewhere in between, but your fear is controlled and you make yourself leave the room or not leave the room, and wake up in the morning without remembering it. But it is not one of those dreams, or any other dream, or anything other than a body; this body. As soon as Alex realises that the body is a body, Alex jumps from the top tree down on the ground, feeling a twinge in his ankle. Alex runs as fast as he can from the woods, and though he remembers his back pack, he forgets the toilet roll, and by the time Alex has slowed down to a walk, on the way to school, not knowing anywhere else to go, the toilet roll is sodden with the moisture from the ground. And, by the next day, after Alex's mum leaves the house for work, and Alex gets up and goes to the woods, and climbs over the trees and down into the old den, the toilet roll has disappeared. But Alex does not notice that the toilet roll has gone. Alex forgets about the toilet roll as soon as he runs away from the body the day before. Today Alex goes to the woods to see the body, and the toilet roll is not important.

The body looks at Alex and Alex leans back against the top tree, breathing shallow breaths. The body is flat on the floor now. Flat and stiff and laying in the mud. It's face still points at the entrance to the den, towards the two fallen trees. No one can see the den from the cycle path that runs on the other side of the woods, and no one will be walking through the woods today. Alex and the body are alone. Alex is alone. Alex is on his own and there is no one else here. The body is just a thing and once he tells his parents then the police will come and take it away and no one will ever know about the shits on the trees or anything. They will probably just tell Alex that he is brave and everything will go back to normal and no one will talk about the body or the shits on the trees.

The body carries on looking at Alex, with its half-bored stare. He wants to go home and tell his mum that there is a body in the woods, but his mum is at work. Really, he wants to not have gone to the woods. He wants to have never seen the trees lain across each other like angry arms. Amputated legs arranged by a giant. He looks at his feet and they are muddy. Alex looks at the body and wonders where the blood is. He assumes the body, or the person the body was, has been killed. People don't just go and die in the woods. People don't have places to die. Hospitals maybe, but then that is just a malfunction of hospitals really. No one wants to die in hospital, no one goes to hospital with the intention of dying. But the body, when it wasn't the body, when it was a man, came here, or was taken here to die.

 

A Story in Several Parts; Part Seven (by Matthew de Kersaint Giradeau)

This is the seventh part of A Story in Several Parts, by Matthew de Kersaint Giradeau, the previous parts can be further down the page. (The painting is by George Shaw and is taken from here;http://www.ikon-gallery.co.uk/online_shop/ikon_catalogues/artists_monographs/… )

It rains for the whole evening, into the night and while Alex goes to sleep. If Alex were awake he would know that it rains for a few hours after he falls asleep, and then peters out, an exhausted vapour. He wakes up to the first warm day for a long time. It is warm and drying. An early sun making the pavement give up its water. There are puddles, and the trees glisten and the birds sing. Though birds always sing, they just get heard more when it is sunny. Alex wakes up and does not know all this straight away, though once he opens his curtains he knows. He goes and eats cereal and it reminds him to throw the cocktail stick left in his pocket into the bin. His parents are gone already and he watches television while standing up, eating a second bowl of cereal. He turns the television off and for a moment can hear his house whistling to him before he picks up his bag and leaves.

He walks straight into the woods, eager to see the trees, to see if the rain has washed them away, or perhaps they are standing straight back up, no longer one resting upon the other. The trees are still laying on each other, and they are wet, like the rest of the woods, but they are covered in human shit. Alex's shit has gone, washed away by the rain, but other shits have appeared, bigger and fuller than Alex's. Alex stops when he sees them. At first he thinks they must all be his, or that his has multiplied. But then his mind catches up to his eyes and he is scared. No one is there, but he is still scared. He counts the shits. There are at least fifteen separate shits. There might be more, or less, but from where he is standing, Alex counts fifteen shits. They are laid on the trees. None seem to be on the ground, only on the trees. They have not been washed away by the rain, by the looks of things they weren't there before the rain. They aren't necessarily recent, but they aren't old enough to have been affected by the rain. They are not runny or mushy or flattened. They all sit on the trees with fresh posture.

Alex doesn't want to go closer. If he doesn't go closer he won't know for sure how many there are, or if they were done before or after the rain, or if they smell bad. He treads slowly and carefully towards the trees. No one is around, and after a few sneaking steps his curiosity overcomes his fear and he walks faster. He looks at the ground while he walks, just in case there is a shit on the floor. As he gets closer he counts a few more shits. He walks up to the tree and peers over into what was the old den. There are no shits inside the den, and none on the other side of the trees, only on the side of the tree that Alex is on. Around seventeen distinct shits. They cannot have been done by the same person, Alex is sure of that. But seventeen people squatting at the same time seems absurd. Some of the shits are so close together that the people would have to be very close to each other. Also, seventeen people wouldn't fit on the tree, even if it is more stable than when Alex fell off it. Alex thinks that it must be six or seven people, doing two or three shits each.

Alex can't touch the tree, and now it is covered in shit. He doesn't know why he is here. He wants to climb back on the trees, but he can't. He pulls his trousers down, and careful not to position himself too near one of the shits already on the tree, pulls back his arse cheeks. This time he needs a shit and it comes out in three big chunks. He takes a tissue from his pocket and wipes. There isn't much to wipe. It was a clean poo. Quick and large, like a living thing that wants no business with your bowel. He pulls his trousers up and turns round. There are eighteen shits on the trees now. One of them is his, but he couldn't tell which one if he didn't already know. His sits as solidly as the others, pointing at the sky.

Alex is glad he has joined the people who took a proper shit on the trees. His first shit wasn't proper like the one he has just done. Maybe the people saw his shit and thought they should show him what to do. Normally he would mind being told what to do, but this time he is glad. He knows now, you can't just force a little slimy poo out, it has to be a big solid shit, like you would do in the toilet at home, or sometimes at school, but only after school when it is quiet and no one will come and bang on the door, or jump up and look over into the cubicle. Alex suddenly hopes he doesn't have to talk to the people who did the shits. This makes him feel fear in his stomach and takes away the good feeling of having done the shit. What would they talk about? They would have to talk about the shit. Alex feels certain that the people who did the shits did not do them at the same time, or watch each other shit and take turns. They would have waited until no one was there, and then gone to shit on the trees. Or, if they knew each other already, organised so as not to be there at the same time. Alex feels certain of this.

Alex goes back the next morning. He waits until his parents leave and then jogs to the trees. When he gets there, the shits from yesterday are all gone, but Alex knows that this will be the case. He does his shit and wipes his arse with toilet paper he brings in his bag. Then, careful as not to disturb the shit, he climbs up on to the bottom tree. He tests the top tree by jumping up and down with his hands on it, but he knows that it is stable now. He clambers up on to the top tree and looks around at the sky, which is clear but has two planes flying close to each other, their jet noise phasing and bouncing around the woods. He looks down into the old den and this is when he sees the body.

A Story in Several Parts; Part Six (by Matthew de Kersaint Giradeau)

This is the sixth part of A Story in Several Parts, by Matthew de Kersaint Giradeau, the previous parts can be further down the page. (The painting is by George Shaw and is taken from here;http://www.ikon-gallery.co.uk/online_shop/ikon_catalogues/artists_monographs/... )

The trees lay on top of each other. Alex's shit lays on the trunk of the bottom tree. It is not Alex's shit any more. It is just shit. It is not even shit, and they are not even trees. The sun moves slowly and the clouds move faster.

At Alex's school, break time has just finished and the kids are back in their lessons. In the playground, a flock of seagulls descends on to the cracked cement, painted with old paint to mark out five-a-side pitches. They eat all the crisps on the floor and jump up at the bins. A soft white roll is set upon. It is violence. They peck at each other and at the crisps. They peck at stones and cigarette butts from cigarettes smoked in secret. They sometimes swallow these things. The sun is sunnier than it ever has been. It is a ball of white light without heat. The sun is sunnier in the winter because it gives out less heat. There is a relationship between how much heat and how much light. In August the sun is a fat ball of orange and yellow. It still hurts your eyes but not like this sun. This sun could blind you. This is the sun they tell you not to look at. It would blind you in a second. It keeps the birds alive and shows them where the crisps are, but the birds are too stupid to tell the difference between the crisps and the cigarette butts and the stones. If there were no crisps on the floor the birds would not eat. They would die.

Alex watches the birds from the window while the teacher talks about something. Alex imagines himself walking through the birds, unnoticed. They ignore him while he reflects all the suns light and walks through them. The teachers don't stop him. They don't even notice, no one notices. There is no one. The trees lay on top of each other and the shit is on the trunk of the bottom tree and most of it is on the floor now. The sun moves slowly and the clouds move faster. It is not warm but it is not cold. The trees don't care, and they aren't trees. They move, but without moving other things. Alex moves through the birds without the birds moving and the sun moves through the sky without the sky moving.

Alex gets home from school. He watches television and eats a bowl of cereal. He goes upstairs and looks at himself in the mirror. He has no hair on his face. John has one of those ugly faint moustaches boys get before puberty. Alex doesn't have that faint moustache. Alex stares at his mouth. He opens and closes it. There are bits of bran flakes in the back of his teeth. He picks at them and spittle oozes from the side of his mouth. Alex sucks it back in. He looks at himself in the eyes and thinks of the trees and how close they are to each other. Intertwined, like they are having a slow fight. He thinks of shitting on the tree and feels ashamed. He shouldn't have shit on the tree. But as long as no one knows then it is fine. He looks at himself in the eye and tries to hold his own gaze for as long as he can, but he loses the battle with his own eyes and looks away.

There is a game that people play at school where people stare at each other until one of them blinks. Some of them can keep their eyes open until they are crying. They win though, the ones who can do that. Alex always blinks quickly, not because he can't keep his eyes open, but because he doesn't like looking into other people's eyes. It feels like when the optician shines that light in your eye and you can see your own blood vessels and it makes Alex feel like he wants to laugh and throw up and rip all the teeth out of the optician's mouth and grab the little torch that makes a clicky sound as the optician focuses it and break his teeth with it and wiggle it round and shatter the teeth like yellow glass.

Look into other people's eyes for too long and you see your own eyes, staring back at you and there is nothing between them. Their eyes, your eyes, they are both just eyes looking and you don't know what you think, because you can't know what they think. Best to just look down and only occasionally look up. Make sure you don't walk into anyone on the way home, and then, when you are walking across the bridge, just after the path next to the woods, dare time to drop you back at the start of the walk. It won't, because it is time, and not a person. If you looked someone in the eyes and dared them something they wouldn't say no. They might not do exactly what you dare, but something would happen.

Time is a coward, but a friend. It only goes forward, even if sometimes it changes speed, it won't reverse. Time is a friend because you can taunt it and it won't react. Only sometimes, time plays a trick on you, like when Alex dreams that it is the summer holidays and then he wakes up and it is not. But even then it is not time, but your mind. Time can't play a trick on you, even if the trick is about time.

So Alex stares and his eyes stare back and he looks away from his eyes and looks at his mouth. He goes and washes his mouth out with water. He tries to wash it out hard. Some of his friends have mouthwash in their bathrooms and when Alex is staying at their houses he tries it but it stings. And he pulls his lips back and closes his eyes. The sting stays there for almost too long and then it suddenly disappears.

The bran flakes are still at the back of his mouth so he goes to the cupboard and gets a cocktail stick. He digs at his back teeth and dislodges lumps of brown cereal. He pushes down hard on his teeth and he wonders why when he is at the dentist and they scrape at his adult teeth, they can scrape really hard with a piece of metal, but then they tell him that he brushes too hard. One of his teachers has the same name as his dentist and he wonders if they are related.

It occurs to Alex that his mum might be home soon. As he is walking upstairs, cocktail stick lodged into his mouth, he sees an odd light swirling through his net curtains. He walks to his window and looks outside. There are cars that are always parked in his road, there are cars that come and go, familiar cars, unfamiliar cars.

Today there are a lot of cars, but none of them are moving. The thick, odd light makes them look heavy; like they couldn't drive away even if they wanted to. The light is thick and odd because the clouds are thick and odd. They move with a force Alex doesn't understand, but to which he normally pays no attention. The clouds roll and bounce and are faster than the rest of the world. For once they are faster than the cars. Faster than the runners that normally run along the river. Faster than the dog that normally rushes up and down the back entrance of the house opposite, barking at no one. Faster than Alex, who is standing still, cocktail stick out of his mouth and into his pocket now, leaning on his windowsill, with his net curtain blowing around his head, staring at how fast they are. There is the lightning, and then there is the thunder quick behind. The clouds are suddenly still because they are above the house, above the estate, above the woods, probably above the whole town. And it rains.

A Story in Several Parts; Part Five (by Matthew de Kersaint Giradeau)

This is the fifth part of A Story in Several Parts, by Matthew de Kersaint Giradeau, the previous parts can be further down the page. (The painting is by George Shaw and is taken from here;http://www.ikon-gallery.co.uk/online_shop/ikon_catalogues/artists_monographs/... )

Alex doesn't go back to the woods for a while. He doesn't tell his friends about falling off the trees and they have no reason to ask. Alex lives closer to the woods than anyone else, and they would have no reason to go into the woods unless it is summer and they are playing man hunt, or building dens. I suppose when they are all playing football on the field, they might walk over to the path next to the woods and take a piss. Most of them piss next to the changing rooms that are used by the Sunday league players. One day the changing rooms get burnt down. Everyone on the estate knows who did it, but they don't say because the boy comes round everyone's house after school with a knife he takes from his kitchen and threatens them. He has the eyes of a sad child, but the body of a criminal. When he is older those eyes will take on the dull glint of psychosis, and his fat body will sway from side to side as he walks. He will wear jogging bottoms and eat too much. His voice though, will remain unchanged. It will always be a high pitched grinding, it will always scare people and it will always remind people.

For now though, he is best friends with another sad boy who cries about his dead father, and they wander around the estate drinking and knocking down fences. He sells poor quality hash to younger kids and makes everyone feel uneasy. He steals money from Alex's family when the door is open, but Alex's family just chastise each other and don't mention it to the boy's mum. Alex's mum says the boy's mum has enough on her plate already. Alex nods his head but doesn't like him.

Without the changing rooms, the Sunday league footballers stop playing football at the field. And the charred remains stay there for years. Eventually they are cleared away, and when the school that owns the field gets given a grant, they build a garden there. The garden is surrounded by a high steel fence with sharp spikes on top.

Once in summer, a dog is running around the estate. Its foreskin is pulled back by its bright red erection and its mouth is foaming. Alex watches it from his window as it runs around chasing the kids until the RSPCA arrive. It is not angry, and does not bark. Maybe it wants to fuck the kids, or play with them.

All of the cuts that Alex gets from falling off the trees heal apart from one. It is on the inside of his forearm and instead of forming a neat brown scab to be picked off, a whiteish pustule develops inside it. Alex picks at it with a rusty nail that he finds on the floor of his garage. He picks at the puss ball and it spins on an axis before coming loose. The next day the white puss ball is there again. Alex gets the nail out of his pocket and just before he is about to pick at it, he stops to think. He washes the nail under hot water and then begins to pick. The cut hurts, but not like cuts hurt. It hurts in a dull way. After a few days the cut begins to scab, but Alex cannot stop picking it. He keeps it going for four days. After four days he washes it with TCP and covers it with a plaster to stop him touching it.

It scares him that he has an extra opening in his body. It is uneven. He should have one on both arms, but he doesn't. He just has a hole in one of his arms and if it bled in the night all the blood could come out and he would die. His bed would be full of blood like when your nose bleeds in the night and you wake up and your face is warm and the pillow is warm. But there would be more blood than that. Like when you sit on a warm toilet seat. Or someone takes off their jumper and you put it on. Things should be cold when you start, and warm when you finish. They shouldn't start warm. That is what the bed would be like. You wake up and suddenly realise that you can't breathe and then your lips are salty with blood, like licking the nail. That is why Alex puts the plaster on the cut. Even though he enjoys picking out the white puss ball. He keeps the nail, washing it again before putting it in his drawer. In the drawer there isn't much else, just colouring pencils he never uses.

Alex goes back to the trees. There is something about the trees that draw him back. The way they are on top of each other. The way that they are laying there, wounded. The top tree is bouncy now, it must have landed on the bottom tree in such a way that it now bounces up and down when you stand on it. Alex bounces on the trees and then feels like he shouldn't be bouncing on them. He gets off and kneels down in front of them. He doesn't know what to do next. So he says the lord's prayer like they used to say when they were in primary school. OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN HALLOWED BE YOUR NAME YOUR KINGDOM COME YOUR WISDOM DONE IN EARTH AS IS IN HEAVEN GIVE US OUR DAILY BREAD AND FORGIVE US OUR SINS HALLOWED BE YOUR NAME AMEN.

They were never taught the words to the prayer in primary school, they just said it in assembly. You gradually learnt the sounds of the words, and then the meanings. Several years were in between learning the sounds, and deciphering the meaning. Even as Alex says the lord's prayer to the trees, he is melding some of the words into long chains of syllables that don't sound like the words they are meant to sound like. Alex says the prayer once, aware that he doesn't know the words and also that he has missed a bit. He says it again, from the start, because that's how he remembers it, like a mantra that he doesn't even tell himself. But he can't. It comes out again, different but the same. OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN GIVE US OUR DAILY BREAD AND FORGIVE US OUR SINS YOUR KINGDOM COME YOUR WISDOM DONE IN EARTH AS IS IN HEAVEN GIVE US OUR DAILY BREADS HALLOWED BE YOUR NAME AMEN.

Alex takes his hands down from in front of his closed eyes and slaps them on the trees. He stands up and holds the top bouncy tree and bounces it as hard as he can, up and down. He feels his stomach get angry and spits on the tree. He isn't very good at spitting, everyone else can spit properly but his comes out in little bits. Like a spray. He spits over and over again, and then sticks his fingers down his throat to try and be sick. Nothing comes up but a little bit of milk from the cereal he has just eaten. He likes cereal, but the taste of the milk is sour when it shoots back up his throat and he stops bouncing the trees and swallows and stops spitting and trying to make himself sick.

Alex is late for school. He doesn't know what to do about the trees. He is angry that they made him sick but he doesn't know how to repay them. He takes his trousers down and turn around. He pulls his arse cheeks apart and pushes from inside, trying to force himself to shit. He doesn't need a shit. He farts a little bit, and then a little bit of wet shit comes out, glistening and brown. Completely shiny but completely matt. It is a sunny day and the shit reflects the sun as it droops out of Alex's arse. Alex doesn't see any of this, even though he is looking through his legs at the shit, hoping to see it come out. He doesn't see it come out, but he feels it come out. He doesn't have any more to come out. He doesn't need a shit. Alex pulls up his trousers and leaves. He is late for school.

The shit lays on the trunk of the bottom tree. It is wet and it slides down the tree. The solid components moving more slowly than the liquid part. It takes on the appearance of a bird shit, with a yolk like centre, but all brown, and not that grey and yellow and white that bird shit can be. The ground is wet but it is sunny and it is not raining.

A Story in Several Parts; Part Four (by Matthew de Kersaint Giradeau)

This is the fourth part of A Story in Several Parts, by Matthew de Kersaint Giradeau, the previous parts can be further down the page. (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/ )

After school Alex wants to go back to the woods but he doesn't know why. It is dry on the cement but the air smells wet. It feels louder than it did then. It was quiet then. He heads off the path into the woods, treading on the damp newspapers, dumped by the older children who are meant to deliver them to all the houses on the estate. Chris delivers the free papers for a while, and Alex does it for him one week because Chris goes away with his family. It is the Christmas edition of the paper and Alex has to put twenty different leaflets into it, along with a sample of washing powder. By the time he begins delivering the papers it is getting dark and his parents end up helping him finish it.

When he is fourteen Chris begins working for JJB sports for £2.75 an hour. Alex doesn't have a job until he is sixteen, and gets paid a better wage than that. While Alex is working in his first job, he sleeps with Chris' girlfriend and the two never speak again. While they are both still at the local college, Alex and Chris make sure they don't drink in the same pubs. Then Chris joins the RAF and Alex leaves for university.

Alex stands next to the two trees laid on top of each other. He wonders if they are dead. They are not dead. Their roots are still in the ground, just like the big tree, which carries on growing for years after it falls down. Alex climbs up on the bottom tree. Its branches are stuck in the mud and the moss on the trunk comes away easily on Alex's shoes. He kicks at the bark and that comes away easily too. Alex pushes the top tree with has hands. His hands are cold now, he doesn't have any gloves. He does have gloves but they are too big and they make his hands look funny so he doesn't wear them. His mum asks him why he doesn't wear his gloves and he says he doesn't need to.

The top tree is a bit unsteady, but seems like it might hold Alex's weight. He puts one foot on the trunk and it immediately slides away which makes Alex jump like when you are trying to go to sleep and everything is warm and your eyes are closed but then you wake up like some giant hand has bounced you and all your muscles made you fly for a second. It is the moss, it comes away too easily. Alex tells the moss to fuck itself and starts kicking it away. The bark on this tree is stronger, it must be older, or the bottom tree must have been rotting before it fell. Maybe that is why it fell. Or maybe the top tree brought it down. Or they both fell perfectly together like soft bodies with too many arms.

He kicks down with his heel and it seems sturdier. Alex clambers up. He is careful, but he knows he won't fall. He is on the top tree. It is not high off the ground, but Alex is methodical as he pulls himself up, rising from the trunk in slow motion. Alex stands on the tree and it is quiet like it was this morning when he was pissing and all he could hear was piss. Now all he can hear is his own breath, which is beginning to mist. It is beginning to get dark.

Alex whisks some spit around the front of his mouth with his tongue. He pushes it through his teeth and turns his head down. The spit comes out slowly, like orange juice spit, or toothpaste spat as you ride bike in the morning when you haven't rinsed your mouth out. It hits one of the lower branches and makes a satisfying splat noise. It is not solid but it could be. It sounds like it is.

Alex brings his penis out and starts to wank it. His penis isn't really hard and he isn't really that excited so it doesn't work. His fingers just pull at the flaccid penis. He lets it fall down on to his trousers, then he turns his hips backwards and forwards and it flops from one side to the other, straight out. He starts to get an erection and just as he is thinking about using his hands again, the tree makes a huge cracking noise that goes on forever, but also in that forever Alex loses his footing and slips from the top tree. He falls shoulder first through the branches, which hit him in the face and whip his arms and spin his body round so that he lands on the trunk of the bottom tree. His coccyx takes the entire weight of his fall but he doesn't cry out. He gets up straight away, slipping on the leaves and mud but then his vision goes black and he sits down, unconscious by the time he leans his head back on the tree. Parallel visions spin in his head. A steam roller that pushes everything down into a gap that won't fit. A ball of rubber so heavy and red.

Alex wakes up with his flaccid penis laying on his leg and a headache and cuts. He doesn't even have to look to know that he is bleeding everywhere, he can feel his clothes sticking to his blood. He is so cold, but a bead of sweat drips into his eye. He brings his heavy arm up and wipes his forehead which is covered in sweat. He blinks hard and sees that he has semen on his trousers. This panics him but he cannot move yet.

Alex manages to get a tissue out of his pocket and wipes away the semen. He folds up the tissue and keeps it. He doesn't know why. He supposes if someone found it and knew he had been here then they might know that he had wiped semen from his trousers. Alex gets up and walks home with a limp. He forgets about the trees and the cuts are not as bad as all that. His headache is bad though, it is still there when he goes to bed and he feels sick the next morning.