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.