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.
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