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

This is the twelfth 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's mum arrives home and Alex is watching TV. She says hello and he replies. She goes to cook dinner and Alex suddenly feels sick. He hasn't eaten since breakfast and the idea of eating fish fingers, chips, frozen peas and frozen sweetcorn appears to him all at once. He can taste all of them and then he can taste the body. He moves slowly, deliberately, towards the downstairs toilet. He opens and shuts the door so his mum won't hear from the kitchen and then vomits. A column of liquid pushes its way out of his mouth. He feels like he is breathing out a solid mass. He runs out of air and chokes a little, breathing in gasps. He calms down, forces himself to slow down and feels better for the sick. He listens out for his mum, makes sure she didn't hear the sick, then flushes the toilet and goes back to watch TV.

When it is time for dinner Alex sits in silence and forces the food down his throat. He responds when his mum asks things, and then helps by drying the plates as she washes them. He goes upstairs and turns on the television in his room. He wants to turn out the light but then his mum will ask him if he is ok. He lays on his bed and looks at the wall.

Alex decides that he will go to bed, he can say that he doesn't feel well if his mum asks. He has a sudden urge to turn the light off. If he can turn the light off and go to bed then that is a new deal, a different deal. A deal with everyone to let everyone off the hook. He jumps out of bed, suddenly urgent, and goes to switch the light off and as he reaches towards the switch he hears the front door bell ring.

Alex freezes with his arm out. His lips go dry and he can't swallow. His breathing is shallow and he slowly moves his arm down to his side. He is standing and leaning slightly on to one foot, but he doesn't try and shift his weight. He just balances there. Alex's mum gets up from watching the downstairs television and goes to answer the door. Alex hears her open the door.

Alex's mum shouts up to Alex. Alex opens the bedroom door and walks as normally as he can downstairs. Alex tells his mum that he is going out, manages to do it without looking at her. She tells him not to be back too late and Alex nods silently. He turns to get his coat as she walks back into the living room and he says goodbye.

Lloyd grabs Alex by the neck as soon as he shuts his front door. “I got some fucking petrol we'll go and get it.” Alex lets Lloyd guide him along the road and after a while Lloyd's grip loosens. Lloyd laughs and punches Alex in the leg. Alex winces but tries to laugh along. Maybe that is all Lloyd needs from him, someone to laugh at all the punching he does. Lloyd turns to Alex, lowering his voice, “Down here, under the bridge.” They turn down the alley that runs next to the woods. It goes over a small wooden footbridge that is always covered in slippery mould in winter.

Alex and Lloyd walk over the bridge, then they swing round the end of the handrail and crouch down to duck underneath the wooden slats. It is almost dark and under the bridge it is darker. Lloyd scrabbles around and Alex can't really see what he is doing. Lloyd finds what he is looking for and brings two big Coke bottles out of the gloom. They are greasy and shiny and full of clear liquid. Lloyd pushes one into Alex's hand.

“I took it from my Dad's bike. He's not here to fucking use it anyway. My fucking uncle sometimes rides it. Comes round and fucking rides it around like it's fucking his.”

Alex rises back out from under the bridge and the air is different now. He breathes in but finds it hard to breathe out again. He stumbles a bit up the hill. Lloyd says, “Watch out” and laughs. Alex turns around and Lloyd has a cigarette in his mouth and is waving his lighter near Alex's coke bottle. Alex pulls the bottle away from the flame and tries to laugh.

They walk back across the bridge and turn into the woods. As soon as they enter, the light disappears, sucked out by the tree tops and the thorn bushes. Everything is blue and black. They trudge through, along the paths worn by the children from the estate. Brambles beaten out with sticks and then walked into dirt trails. The ground is damp and Alex's jeans brush against wet plants. Lloyd has taken the lead now and walks quite fast. Alex wants to hang back but he knows that he can't, so he slows down and speeds up, alternately trying to lose Lloyd and then catch him up. Lloyd stops suddenly and Alex slows down so that he isn't too close.

“We should go to mine first” says Lloyd. Alex doesn't understand. “We should fucking go to mine first. That's what we'll do”

Lloyd turns around and walks straight past Alex without looking at him. He churns his mouth and his eyes are blank. Alex turns around without questioning him and follows him back down the trail.

It is dark now. The minute or so that they were under the trees has allowed the darkness to creep over the sky. The street lights that buzz when you get close to them with your ear are orange. A few of them are flickering, chopping like badly tuned radios. Alex and Lloyd walk side by side. It is a still evening and no one is around. It feels quiet but if Alex listened hard enough he would be able to hear the bypass and the trains from the edge of town that surrounds the estate. You can always hear the bypass. The trains you can only hear at night. Alex can't hear them. He can only hear the clicking of Lloyd's jaw and the low gulp that the petrol in their coke bottles makes, glugging back and forth as they walk.

When they get to his house, Lloyd walks up to the door and lets himself in. The door isn't locked. Alex is surprised that the door doesn't lock itself, like his door does.

Lloyd leads them through the hall. His house smells of dirt and milk. Dirt like dirt from the garden. Tangy and alive. Lloyd can hear two televisions at the same time. One of them is loud with the bloated, distorted sound of prime time television. One of them is quieter but Alex can hear the rhythmic pulse of computer game music and the clicking of buttons on a controller.

Lloyd gestures that they should go upstairs. Alex hesitates. They are not going to say hello to Lloyd's mum who is in the front room because they have the petrol in the coke bottles. He understands. He follows Lloyd up the stairs. They creak and have no carpet on them. They have bare wood in the middle, and paint on the sides. Carpet used to run up the middle of the stairs but it doesn't any more. The house is a similar lay out to Alex's house. The same but different. Different garden, slightly different shape. Different windows, not double glazed. Different stairs, a painted white banister with a big gap that you could fall through if you tried. The same kitchen worktop. The same glass bits above the doors. The same heating system of hot air that judders around the house.

They go to the main bedroom. Alex knows it is the main bedroom because in his house this is where his mum and Dad's bedroom is. Lloyd gestures for Alex to wait outside. Lloyd goes into the room and while he waits, Alex can see that inside the room, it is dark. There is something in the bed. It is a man in the bed. Alex sees the man roll over and breathe loudly. It is not Lloyd's Dad. Alex knows now.

Alex sees Lloyd open his coke bottle and pour it carefully around the bed. Alex sees Lloyd walk backwards tipping the coke bottle on the floor. Alex moves backwards so that Lloyd doesn't bump into him as he walks across the landing and to the stairs, pouring the coke bottle as he goes. Alex gives Lloyd his coke bottle at the top of the stairs, when Lloyd's coke bottle runs out. Alex goes ahead of Lloyd down the stairs. They get down to the bottom and Lloyd gives Alex the half empty coke bottle and gestures for him to wait again. He goes to the kitchen and comes back with a pack of big matches. The packet is greasy. Alex can see it shining. Lloyd lights a match and hands the rest of the pack to Alex. Lloyd throws the match at the petrol on the stairs and it is as though Lloyd's hand is fire, because as soon as the match leaves his hand, the whole stairs are on fire. It doesn't look like a real fire, but like a fire at a theme park where you could probably wave your hand through it and it wouldn't hurt. But then Alex hears a crackle and feels the heat. His low level fear gives way to panic and Alex turns to run out of the house, Lloyd laughs and runs after him. They run as fast as they can. The only difference between them as they run is that Lloyd looks back and Alex doesn't.

 

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

This is the eleventh 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 body doesn't smell yet, but it will. Give it a few days in this damp environment and it will smell. Give it three weeks and it will start to smell like cheese. Butyric acid. Not really cheese. That attracts a whole new suite of corpse fauna. That is the worst bit. After that, most of the soft tissue is gone and the maggots ease off. The beetles stay for a while, but the maggots ease off. They clamber down, back into the soil to wait for what comes next.

Alex gets up and feels a sudden, sharp pain in his head. The adrenaline of being beaten by Lloyd has worn off and the acid is stiffening his joints. He is cold and bruised and his face is sticky with drying blood and Lloyd's spit. He turns his face up to the sky, stretching his neck. There is a plane. Like the plane he was watching before the body.

Alex looks at the plane for a while. It buzzes, getting louder and fainter even though it is high enough to look like it is moving slowly. Alex looks at the plane and then he looks at the tent peg. Lloyd is gone, but the tent peg is still on the ground. Alex looks around but Lloyd is gone. He picks up the tent peg and moves towards the body. He wipes his face in his sleeve and he feels the pain in his nose and his head. He crouches where Lloyd crouched before and looks at where Lloyd has scratched the body's arm. He takes the tent peg and pushes it against the small cut. It is hard and pliable. Like your own skin, but different because you can't feel it. He pushes harder against the cut and tries to push the tent peg in, but it won't go in. He makes the cut bigger on the surface, but the skin feels close to the flesh and not like skin on a chicken breast which is loose and baggy. He takes the tent peg and looks around again. No one is there and the plane is still buzzing up in the sky. He grips the tent peg in a different way, more like you would hold a dagger in a film. He raises his arm, holds it there for one second, and brings the tent peg down hard into the arm. The tent peg sticks in the arm. Like a compass in an apple. Alex pulls it out and watches the blood start to move to the skin and flow over the ragged, white entry wound. It moves so slowly. Like a thermometer when you hold it hard in between your fingers.

This was not much effort. And it was good and satisfying to see that slow blood. But now they will know. If he tells them about the body then they will know that he has made the body bleed. And then he will have to tell them about Lloyd and there will be a time when Alex is walking home and it is dark and Lloyd will come and get him and then there will be real violence. This was bad, but that will be worse.

So Alex throws the tent peg down on the floor and looks at it suspiciously. Maybe he should take it and throw it in the river. He picks it back up and puts it in his pocket. But he knows that this is not enough. He has to make a deal with the body. Maybe the body doesn't want to be found, so if Alex makes a deal with it then neither of them will have to be discovered. The body can rot and Alex can just leave the woods and not come back and forget about going back to the woods.

His friends don't come here anyway. They weren't so excited about making the den in the summer, and by September it was just Alex coming down anyway. So no one will make Alex come down next summer, and it is getting wetter and will soon be cold. And then it is too dark to even play out for long after school. And then it is Christmas. So if he makes the deal with the body, then leaves and doesn't say anything to anyone, then no one will know.

Alex pulls the body's shirt up and struggles against the weight of it. He tries to pull the body's trousers down, but he has to undo the body's belt first. Close as he is now, Alex can smell the sweat and piss of before the body was dead, and the digestive fluids that are beginning to leak out of the body's intestines are producing the gases that will eventually bloat the body; make it purple and fat like a dead sniper in a tree. Alex has to half lift the body to get his hands underneath it. Then he undoes the body's belt and unzips his flies. This is all hard work. the body is heavy and Alex is small. To pull the body's trousers down is also hard work. Gravity means that Alex has to pull the trousers down on the back of the body's legs, and then pull the trousers down on the front of the legs. Each time Alex pulls, the trousers only move by a few inches, and then by pulling the other side, he undoes most of the progress gained on the previous pull.

Eventually the body's trousers are round it's knees and Alex falls back exhausted. He sits for a while. The fear has mostly gone from him know, but he looks around none the less, suddenly conscious that someone could be listening out. They aren't listening out and Alex allows his breath to become louder and deeper. Alex stands up and pulls his trousers down. He feels the damp patch on his underpants and feels ashamed. He will have to roll them up and stuff them in the washing basket with his other clothes. Piss makes your clothes stiff and if they dry then they go crinkly.

He turns around with his pants and trousers around his ankles, shuffling as he turns. Then he crouches down, and holding on to the body's shoes for support, he tries to take a shit. He looks through his legs to get the angle right. At first he feels blocked up, constipated by how exposed he feels. Then he farts and feels his bowels loosen their grip on whatever comes next. The fear and pain he felt earlier have done something strange to his stomach. He feels liquid coming out, rather than solid, and then a succession of farts and diarrhoea sprays undigested food and bowel tinged fluid all over the body's arse and back. It hurts Alex to shit, but it feels like his intestines are vomiting and he can't stop it. It goes on and on, and Alex can hear bits of it hitting the floor around the body. Alex grimaces and doesn't look between his legs, just hopes that this will be the last of it.

After he is sure that there is no more to come out, Alex realises that he has no toilet paper. He looks about him on the floor and tries to use some leaves to get the worst of it off. He can get most of the solid bits, but he just smears the liquid around on his skin. He breathes deeply and tries not to cry. It isn't far to get home. He thinks he can probably use the washing machine. He could put everything in the washing machine, have a shower and then dry his clothes in his room. They will be dry by tomorrow and no one will know. Alex pulls his trousers back up from the floor, holding them with his fingertips. He gingerly eases them around his thighs and feels the wet shit on his skin and clothes. He gets them up to his waist and decides not to do up the buttons. Alex looks at the body, covered in shit, with its trousers at its knees and feels bad. That wasn't meant to happen. That wasn't the deal he had hoped to make.

Alex limps back through the woods. His face hurts from Lloyd hitting him. And his chest hurts from Lloyd sitting on him. He can smell himself. He smells like shit and dried blood and death. When Alex gets home he locks the door, takes all his clothes off and puts them straight in the washing machine. He puts far too much washing powder into the wrong compartment and doesn't know what temperature to use.

Alex goes up stairs to have a shower. In the shower he stands still while the hot water beats him on the back of his head. He watches his blood and poo mix as they are carried along his skin and then down the plug hole. They shouldn't mix. They should be separate. He should have separate showers, one for getting rid of the shit and one for getting rid of the blood. He probably has urine on him, but that is fine. Urine can mix with blood or shit. It doesn't matter. One of Alex's teachers once told the class that urine is sterile and if you get a bad cut you can wee on it and it will clean the wound. Alex doesn't think that this is true, but he believes it in a way. No one would ever say that about shit. Shit makes you go blind. Blood is hot and tastes like gravy for the first second. Things like that shouldn't mix.

Alex gets out of the shower and sits, like he always does, on the bath mat with his towel wrapped all around him, steaming and warm. He is tired and does not want to think about the body any more. But the body keeps being there. Alex really messed the deal up. The poo should have been solid and soft. It should have lain on the body like the poo on the trees. But it is all over the body and all over the floor and the body won't let him have the deal now. He is sure of this. The body would have let him go, stayed quiet about things as long as Alex stayed quiet. Now the body will get louder and louder until no one can hear anything else.

Alex wakes up and it is dark. He is shivering in his towel on the floor of the bathroom. He takes a few moments to remember, but when he does he jumps up, worried that his mum might be home. The house is dark, she is not home. He puts some different clothes on, runs downstairs and bundles up his washing from the machine. He takes it up stairs and hangs it in odd arrangements about his room. He shuts his door and goes downstairs to watch TV, leaving all the lights on as he goes.

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

This is the tenth 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/… )

Your eyes point outwards. Your eyes point up and outwards before you are born. And when you sleep, they roll up, and sometimes back out. Back out like before you are born. Lloyd's eyes sometimes roll up and out when he blinks. Sometimes they don't make it back down into view before his eyelids retract. This makes it hard for Lloyd to see sometimes. And sometimes, when he is aggravated, or when he masturbates, or when he is scared, his eyes stay up and out. He gets double vision when they are up and out. Their axis is all wrong. And even though the brain has to process all the sense impressions that are presented to them by the eyes, it has to get used to a way of seeing before it can understand it. The brain cannot correct itself that quickly.

It is normal to get double vision when your eyes roll up and out, as Lloyd's sometimes do. It is not normal for the eyes to go to this position when you are not asleep. For Lloyd it poses few problems, though sometimes, when he is aggravated, people's response to his aggravation can be fear rather than understanding because of the way his eyes flutter up and out His eyes, when they roll back like they do sometimes, are grey. Though they are white; they look grey.

And when people are scared by Lloyd's eyes, and their rolling greyness. Lloyd realises that if only his eyes could look whiter, even if they weren't actually whiter, then somehow  it would be better. But those are his eyes. This is their colour.

Alex cannot see Lloyd's eyes. They are rolling when he blinks, and with his churning mouth punctuating the rolling eyes, his whole face beats out a rhythm. Alex watches Lloyd. The childish muscles of his back move as he scrapes the tent peg along the body's skin. They tense up suddenly, and Lloyd makes a low, uneven sound. Alex looks to where the tent peg is scraping and sees that the skin is open. There is blood, but it moves slowly. Like glass, but faster than glass. Alex tries to look away, but Lloyd has already turned round.

“Do you want a fucking go?”, Lloyd offers the tent peg. “We could always just take it to the river and throw it in. Or burn it, like I said. We should fucking burn it. But I haven't got any white spirit. We could get petrol. But it costs money. Have you got any money? I haven't got any fucking money. I bought cigarettes, but they won't let me buy them in the garage so I have to wait till someone walks past and then give them the money. Then they always ask for a cigarette and I tell them to fuck off. Just because they bought the fucking cigarettes doesn't mean I have to give them any cigarettes.”

Lloyd looks at Alex and slowly stands up, he tosses the tent peg in front of where Alex lays and reaches into his pocket for his cigarettes. He brings out a handful of detritus and searches through it. The cigarettes are loose in his pocket, and some of them are broken. He takes one of the unbroken cigarettes and lights it with a see-through, pink, plastic lighter. He smokes like he knows how to smoke, but he worries that he doesn't smoke properly. That's why he sometimes smokes in front of a mirror, and tries not to catch his own eye as he inhales and exhales. This is how he knows about his eyes rolling back. When he is concentrating on smoking, his eyes roll back when he blinks. But when he concentrates on making sure his eyes don't roll back, then he forgets to look at how he smokes.

Alex doesn't smoke. He just watches Lloyd smoke. He just thinks of how much his face hurts and how he can't run away because Lloyd is faster than he is. He wonders what it is that Lloyd wants. He wishes that Lloyd would just go and then Alex could run back to his house and double lock the door until his mum comes home. Alex watches Lloyd smoke and notices that Lloyd's eyes sometimes roll up when he blinks. Lloyd laughs and hesitates as he is about to take another drag on his cigarettes. He drops suddenly to his knees and grabs Alex's cheeks. He takes the cigarette and taps some ash onto Alex's cheek. It is not hot, but it smells bad. Lloyd's hands smell bad too. Alex struggles a little, but then gives up. He crunches up his eyes so ash doesn't get into them.  Lloyd washes some spit around in his mouth and dribbles on to Alex. Alex can feel it touch his forehead, and then it slips over his eyelids. Lloyd lets go of Alex's face and traces his finger down where his spit is. He pushes it down his nose and makes a flicking movement towards his mouth. The spit is too sticky to be fluid, but too fluid to be flicked. It doesn't make it to Alex's mouth, which is tightly closed. His nostrils flare above it, pouring and sucking hot air back and forth.

Alex stays like this, breathing heavily with his eyes and mouth screwed up until he hears Lloyd walk away. He opens his eyes and sits up. Lloyd has gone from the clearing. The cigarette smell has gone. Alex's chest hurts, but at least his nose has stopped bleeding. He feels dizzy and looks around for Lloyd, but can only see the body. He sees the tent peg which Lloyd has left on the ground. He wonders if he could hurt Lloyd with the tent peg and run away. But then if he didn't hurt Lloyd enough then Lloyd would come after him. And he knows, somehow, that Lloyd is on the edge of something. He is on the edge of a bigger violence. That is why the older boys hate Lloyd so much.

If Alex tries to hurt Lloyd then Lloyd will probably hurt Alex more. He is bigger than Alex, and he has less fear and his lack of fear makes Alex more scared.

Alex looks around for Lloyd but no one is in the clearing except him and the body. The body watches Alex and the body's arm bleeds slowly. Alex wonders how long it will be until the body rots. Maybe he can go home and not tell anyone about the body and then it will rot and no one will ever know. But someone will know. Someone will know the body.

But maybe he could go home now and not tell anyone and then even though someone probably knows about the body, they will not mention it. Like Alex and the someone have made a promise even though they don't know each other. Like how Alex and the people who did the shits on the trees had a deal. Alex doesn't know what the deal was, but he is sure that they had a deal.

A Story in Several Parts; Part Nine (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/… )

“Alright you little fucking bastard?” Alex turns around slowly, towards the cracked voice, hoping that if he can control himself, God will tell time to let him go. Standing on the top tree, rhythmically bending his legs so that the tree starts to sway up and down, creaking like an old bed, is Lloyd. Alex says that he is alright and asks Lloyd how he is, but he doesn't do a very good job of hiding his fear. His voice is slow and dry and his pitch is unsteady.

“What have you done to that then you little fucking bastard? You'll be fucked I reckon. I saw you yesterday didn't I. You fucking ran away.”

Alex looks at Lloyd whose eyes are so small and screwed up. His face is too small for his head, as though all his features could disappear up his nose.

Lloyd stands there, on that top trunk, with his puckered face and squinting eyes and he laughs. It is a laugh which scares Alex so much that he forgets that he was already scared by Lloyd, and it instils in him a new fear. The fear is of the laugh. The laugh is without humour and is absolutely fake. It is laughter laughed by those who cannot laugh. It is laughter laughed in the expectation of no one else laughing. This is mainly how Lloyd laughs. When he is alone he has to show the people how little he cares about them. When he walks past someone who looks like they think Lloyd cares, Lloyd does this laugh. When Lloyd is on his own in the woods he does not do this laugh, unless he thinks that he can hear someone on the cycle path next to the woods. Normally when he hears someone, but cannot see them, he laughs silently, to show the people that he doesn't care, but to make sure that no one on the cycle path can hear him. Sometimes if they catch a glimpse of him from the cycle path, he will do the laugh, but only for a short time.

Lloyd and Alex stand there. Alex is still, but he is trembling. Lloyd's mouth moves rhythmically in a circle. He chews the air when he gets excited, and he is excited. Lloyd has always done this. Lloyd's Dad used to shout at him when he chewed the air, but then Lloyd would get scared and this would make the chewing worse and then his Dad would hit him.

Lloyd and Alex stand there, while Lloyd chews the air and Alex tries to work out if he can make his legs move fast enough to escape. When Alex is nervous his knees go stiff. At school, when they do the 100m sprint, Alex's knees always go stiff and when his teacher shouts 'Go!', Alex's knees take about five seconds to warm up before he can run properly. These five seconds are the longest seconds Alex ever knows. Thirty people watching him fail to run. Everyone else is halfway down the track and Alex's legs don't work.

So as Alex looks at Lloyd standing on the trees, with his lips making hoops in the air, Alex realises that he is trapped. In those five seconds when his legs would be stiff and slow, Lloyd would jump down and hold him and he wouldn't be able to get out. The body watches all this with a bored stare.

Lloyd's eyes shift to the body. “Me and you should fucking set it on fire. You should set it on fucking fire. You should go back to your house, you only live over there and I live further away than you but I'm on my bike but you should get some fucking matches and some white spirit and we should fucking burn it.”

Alex nods but he doesn't want to burn the body, he just wants to leave. Lloyd doesn't notice Alex's fear. Lloyd suddenly lets out a laugh and Alex's bladder loosens and he pisses all down his leg. He can't control his bladder and he grabs at his useless crotch which is all hot and wet. Lloyd doesn't even notice.

Alex crouches down slowly, so ashamed and scared that Lloyd might see the wet patch all over his jeans and tell everyone that he pissed himself. Lloyd notices Alex crouching down and takes that to mean that Alex is readying himself to fight. Lloyd turns his gaze to Alex and jumps down into the den. Alex knows what is happening and rolls slowly backwards on to the ground, and starts saying sorry to Lloyd over and over again. Lloyd keeps repeating, “Why are you sorry for? Why are you fucking sorry for?”, and Alex keeps apologising. Lloyd walks towards Alex who has pissed all of his piss now and his bladder is just open. He is curling up with his knees and arms out as if in a dream and it all takes place in slow motion. Lloyd grabs Alex's arms and Alex apologises and pushes them weakly against Lloyd's grip but Lloyd pushes them back on his chest and kneels on them. Alex is laying now, on the mud, next to the body's knees. The body's eyes are pointed towards Alex's toes as they spin slowly on a right angle and turn towards the sky. Lloyd is kneeling on Alex's arms, and on his chest. Alex keeps apologising and Lloyd keeps saying “Why are you fucking sorry for? Why are you sorry for?” And, making sure that Alex's arms aren't struggling, which even if Alex had the strength to struggle, he wouldn't be doing, Lloyd  raises a clenched fist and he stops talking and his mouth doesn't chew the air and Alex stops apologising and then Lloyd hits Alex square in the nose and then keeps hitting him in the face until Alex is unconscious.

“Fucking sorry” says Lloyd, and then forces Alex's mouth open and forces his fingers into Alex's mouth., Alex starts to come round and can't breathe and starts to struggle but Lloyd is heavy on his arms and chest. Alex starts to gag and hyperventilate. The pressure is too much and the blood from his nose has leaked into his mouth and he is breathing his own blood and he is suddenly going to be sick. Lloyd pulls his hand out of Alex's mouth and jumps back off his chest which hurts Alex even more. His head comes up off the ground with the pain. Alex is sick all over his arms which still lay flaccid on his chest. The sick is all blood and cereal and spit and phlegm. And he is sick again, and then once more. He turns around on the ground, face to the mud, breathing gasping with snot and blood making bubbles in his nose. He claws at the mud and the body's knees are the only thing he can see. The knees turn black and he passes out again.

When Alex wakes up again, Lloyd has a metal tent peg in his hand and is scraping the body's hands with it. He doesn't notice Alex looking at him, and Alex hopes that he won't turn around. Lloyd is crouching down, with his chin on his knees, and Alex can't see, but his mouth is chewing the air. If you took a photo of Lloyd he would be grimacing. A rictus grin travels round his face but his eyes stay squinting.