Cold Boy's Wood by Carol Birch (best books to read for students txt) 📕

Pepper and Lady and Little Sid, coming with their lurching shoulders across the field to him to eat from his flattened palm, to snort upon his face and blink their patient soulful eyes at him.

Funny how the memory of three horses could cut right through. God, the quick pain.

In the end he walked and walked till the darkness came down, and still walked. He went home, sighing, ah God, another night, how long could this go on, and where was it all leading, same as ever, and now he was wet and achy so out with the old companion, the bottle, onwards, music, to the head, by the fire, like to be one of those old geezers you see with a fiddle or something, that must be nice even alone, making music by a fireside. Things aren’t like that nowadays. You wouldn’t really need anything else. The fire burned his eyes. He fell asleep and woke and drank and slept and woke and it was deep in the night, got into that good old state, drinking and sentimental, but close to panic, talking to the rambling cats. Sometimes he wondered whether they were on his territory or he was on theirs.

‘C’m’ere, you old fucker,’ he said to Jintoo.

Poor Jintoo.

‘How did your ears get like that so soon,’ he asked, ‘all notched and snaggled? What have you been up to, eh?’

Stuck music on a random play. Didn’t even know what this was. Jazz. Thought of his old dog, good old Billy, bounding through the wood with a look of joy on his silly face. Tears streamed down. He chased the orange cat down the hall, caught it and scooped it up into a big strong hug next to his chest. It tensed and a low snarl came from its throat.

‘What, you fucker?’

He crooned to it.

The autumn leaves

Dancing, the poor thing struggling.

drift by my window

Though these were April showers that come your way, they bring the flowers that bloom in May and the cat lunged out of his arms, he grabbed at it. Next thing he knew it was hanging from the end of his arm, its teeth and front claws fixed in his hand while its mighty hind legs kicked away at him over and over again.

He roared, shaking his arm, but it clung on tighter, more furious.

‘Get off, you cunt! Fucking bastard cunting fucking…’

Hurt like fuck.

With his good hand he grabbed and pulled. Every claw and fang sank deeper till it let go suddenly and flew through the air with a screech, landing on all its feet and streaking away through the open door into the hall. Ungrateful bastard. He grabbed a log from the wood basket and hurled it after. Oh fuck! That hurt. The log hit the edge of the door and fell to the floor. Jesus, look at that. Holes oozing blood. Everything throbbing. He cursed his way into the kitchen to the sink, ran the cold tap and stuck his hand under it. Blood dripped into the sink. Worst of all, though, was the feeling of betrayal in his chest, ridiculously out of proportion to anything that had actually happened. That cat. That cat was my friend. Why? Why? His palm hurt, a sharp whining pain worse than the punctures the cat had made. There was a dark line under the skin. When he touched it it screamed. The tap ran, rain trickled down the black window.

That’s a splinter. He got a tea towel and wiped his hand, knocked his cowboy mug on the floor as he turned. It smashed, the bits flew everywhere, great jagged bits and hundreds of tiny deadly shards. Blotting away at the blood. Need a needle. God, how he hated that! Poking down under your skin. From that log. He got down on his knee and picked up the main bits of his mug and put them on the draining board. He felt sorry for it lying there shattered. He should wrap them in newspaper or something and put them in the bin in case one of the cats walked on the draining board and cut its paws. They weren’t supposed to, but who knows what they did when he wasn’t there? Why am I thinking about the cats? Bastards. Look at my arm.

The music schmoozed along beside him, a nice gentle plonking piano and a languorous vocal: but that was long ago and now my consolation is in the stardust of a song.

You could never find a needle of course when you wanted one. Good God, this was no life. Probably go septic and they’ll find me eaten by cats. Fucking cats.

The nightingale tells his fairytale

He just wanted to go and sit down and have another drink, didn’t want all this hassle of opening drawers and looking on shelves and not being able to find the damn thing, whatever it was, this just didn’t feel right or fair, he’d been good to those bloody animals. Tweezers, some of those tiny tweezers. A pin. Whistling, who was this, lazy whistle to the piano.

My stardust melody

The music rippled away into silence and someone walked along the landing.

He couldn’t move, just froze there with his mouth bone-dry.

No mistaking it.

The creak of a stair.

His arm, his hand burned. The thumping of his heart made him sick.

‘Who’s there?’ he shouted.

No sound.

He stood with his raging hand held up foolishly, listening intently to nothing but the rain. A minute passed. A sound once it’s gone is gone, there’s nothing left so it never existed. You doubt your own sense, and rightly. If he was ever to move again he had to go and look upstairs, so he walked to the door. Nothing there of course. Nothing on the stairs, nothing in the hall. The dark at the top of the stairs was thick. He turned on the landing light before going up. Nearing the top his mind forced vivid impressions upon him, hideous faces that suddenly appear, voices, things that aren’t there but don’t know it.