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.
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