“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.
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