This is the final 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/… )
When Lloyd looks back, he does so quickly. He doesn't really see anything, but convinces himself that he can see the whole house on fire. Burning up with huge flames rising from the roof. If Lloyd had seen anything it would have been something else. He would have seen the window to the main bedroom glowing with an unhealthy orange darkness. And he would have seen a shape, thrashing around in that darkness. He would not have heard his Mother screaming from the bottom of the stairs, and his younger brother screaming back from the top of the stairs. He could not have heard that.
They run and they run and they know where they run. It is not far to the woods. It is not far to the body. The street lights are still buzzing, but most of the oranges have become yellows and they don't buzz so much once they are yellow. They don't stop to listen. They get to the woods and they slow down. They both move quickly through the undergrowth, brushing past thorns and breathing heavy breaths. They reach the two trees on top of each other and climb over them. The trees are dry tonight and there are no shits, though Alex checks before he puts his hands on the branches.
Lloyd is laughing differently, hoarsely. His eyes are more blank than ever and he is gurning harder. His bottom jaw grinding on a complex axis. Alex has adrenaline pumping so hard he can hardly choke down enough air to keep him conscious. He feels faint but perversely safe. Like there can be no more. Like that was it. But he knows that isn't it, because they are with the body now and he knows that whatever has gone in Lloyd has gone forever and what didn't happen before must happen now.
The body is still covered in the thin, liquid shit that Alex tried to use to make the deal with the body. It is too dark to see, but it is there. It is wet and greasy and sour. Most of the liquid has run off, but it has painted the skin a yellow brown. The world can be roughly divided into three colours: blue, green and brown. Blue is the sky, green is the plants, and brown is pretty much everything else. Like when you are at primary school and you mix colours, it should make white, because white is all the colours mixed together. It doesn't though, it makes brown. In reality, all the colours mixed together makes brown.
It happens fast. Alex is bent with his hands on his knees and his breathing is taking up most of his concentration. He can see Lloyd, but only in the corner of his eye, and the edges of his vision are even more blurred than usual, because of the dark, and the adrenaline. Alex hears a noise, Lloyd isn't laughing any more. He is crying. But not like a normal cry, this crying comes out from Lloyd's feet. It explodes down from his head to his body to his legs to his feet and is a sort of shout. He burps and wails and snot is streaming down his mouth which in turn is gasping out huge bubbles of snot and pain. His eyes are closed tight and he is roaring. He crouches down and Alex tenses upright. His legs are completely stiff with fear and lactic acid. Lloyd flies at Alex like a football when it hits you square in the face. You can watch it for that majestic second, as it fills your vision, but you cannot move out of its way.
Alex is on the ground and hits his head, Lloyd gropes at Alex's face and scratches and slaps him, trying to grab his eyes. Alex tries to push his hands away and Lloyd punches him. Lloyd scrabbles up his body, grabs Alex's arms and kneels one leg on the ground and one foot on his chest. He takes his time to draw his arm right back and pounds Alex slowly and surely in the face. Alex puts his arms up in front of his face but it is no use. No use at all. He tastes the gravy of his own blood thickly distributing itself around his mouth. Lloyd is roaring and crying and spitting and coughing. He even burps at one point like he will be sick. Alex loses the pain and lets his arms lay back down, they lay across Lloyd's foot, like Alex is stroking his shoe.
Lloyd gets up off Alex's chest and drags him by the legs across to the body. Alex can see Lloyd at a ninety degree angle. He thinks it looks weird, normally you sort of flip your image so it makes sense, but Alex can't make his brain do it, so he lets Lloyd walk up and down the walls of his vision.
He watches Lloyd walk up to the top of his vision wall and kick the body over on to its back, then yank the body's trousers and pants down. He watches Lloyd walk down the wall and pull them all the way, till they are nearly off, but the body's shoes stop them coming off. Lloyd lets out a scream. Lloyd walks towards the bottom of Alex's vision, his feet getting bigger and then Alex feels Lloyd's foot connect with his mouth. His teeth feel like hard boiled sweets being crunched and they come apart and as Lloyd walks away Alex rolls his bitty broken sweets around in his mouth with his swollen tongue.
Alex can't really see anything at all now, but if he could, he would see Lloyd stroll back to the body and take out a small pen knife and hack at the penis and testes of the body. Its genitalia are cold and small and waxy. It is dark and Lloyd doesn't make a clean cut. He grabs at the bloody mess and pulls away a clump of thigh skin, scrotum and part of the penis. He walks back over to Alex; pulls him over so he is looking up at the night sky. Lloyd waits till he thinks Alex's eyes are open and then crouches down and pushes the hacked off bits of the body into Alex's face. Lloyd gets up and pats his pockets. He screams again. High pitched and then low. He jumps at the body and stabs it repeatedly, in its exposed stomach, in the gap where its cock was.
He does a bent over, pained walk back to Alex and crouches down next to him, his face so close. “Where are the fucking matches?” Alex hears Lloyd speaking but can't hear him through the fog of blood and pain. Lloyd slaps Alex a few times, tries to pinch his cheeks but can't get a firm grip on the bloody flesh. “Where are the fucking matches?” Alex hears him speak words now, woken up by the new volume. And though he can't see Lloyd, Alex knows that his eyes are closed. And that he has stopped gurning. He is no longer crying now and his words are clearer and his eyes are dead and closed, no longer of any use. They are both blind now. Alex can't open his eyes properly, and if he could, they would be covered in his blood and the body's skin and he wouldn't be able to use his arms to clear his face. Lloyd has snipped his eyes off from his brain and every muscle in Lloyd's face is relaxed and soft.
Alex opens his mouth wider and moans, he wants to help but he can't quite do it. Lloyd speaks softly again, not whispering, but close, “Where are the fucking matches?”
There is a moment where Alex thinks he will just moan again, but he breathes slowly, and focuses on making his mouth and tongue and throat all work for the words he wants to say. “In my pocket.”
Lloyd goes down to Alex's trousers with his face close to Alex's body at all times. Alex can't feel a thing now. Unconsciousness grabs at him and he sleeps. Lloyd sticks his hands hard into the pocket and pulls out the long matches, they are wet from the mud and sweat and yet still greasy. If you looked close you would see that the water is all in separate dots, separated by the coating of grease. It is too dark to see that anyway, even if you were up close, but it is true.
Lloyd rises and walks away from Alex and to the place where Alex dropped his half bottle of petrol. Lloyd stands for a moment, holding the bottle in one hand, and the matches in the other and his face is turned up at an oblique angle to the sky. He closes his eyes again, and empties half of the petrol over his head. He opens one eye a tiny amount and goes over to the body, manoeuvring himself down on to it, careful not to spill the petrol or open his eyes more than he has to. He is face to face with the body and he pours the rest of the petrol over him and the body. His arms stretch out behind his back, and most of it goes on his head, and his shoulders, and the body's head, and the body's shoulders. He drops the empty bottle next to the body's slightly bent arms and then pulls a match out of the packet. He does this with his arms outstretched, in front of his head, face to face with the body, careful not to open his eyes, careful not to see. The match won't light on the first go, Lloyd's hands are sweaty and he can't see to get the angle right. On the second go he almost loses the match from his fingers but he repositions without too much effort and on the third go it lights. Like before, like when his hand became the flame to Alex for that moment, there is no time lag between him lighting the match, and all of the petrol going up in flame. A wave of heat travels down Lloyd's body and he grimaces but grabs on to the body's shoulders and doesn't open his eyes. He bites down so hard, his tongue is between his teeth and he almost bites right through it. He lets out a gasp but doesn't cry out.
If Alex wasn't still unconscious, and still basically blind, and still facing the sky, and he could see Lloyd and the body in flames, and could understand what he was seeing, then he wouldn't be able to see them anyway, he would see them as one indistinguishable mass of multicoloured flame. The fire would be so bright, compared to the dark that is all around, that it would be too bright to tell which bits of the fire were which. It would be so bright that Alex would have to look away, even after just a second of trying to tell which bits were the body, and which bits were Lloyd. And even if Alex could see them, and not look away because it was too bright, then he would still look away because if he could look hard enough, he would see one of the indistinguishable bits of flame is still moving, shuddering with the flames.
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