I explain to him that nothing matters, and nothing lasts. Everyone forgets, and everything disappears. The things you do, the things you are; it’s all nothing. Would anyone miss you, if you went away? Would anyone look for you? Would anyone listen, or even care, if I hurt you? If I put my hands around your neck and crushed your windpipe and chopped you up, would anyone find you? And if it’s a no to any of these, did you even exist in the first place?
The man gets up, and tries to walk away, but I trip him. I sit on his stomach. I look into his face, and watch it melt from my boy, to Eddie from Tesco, to Will, to Lesley, to Remy, all with glass embedded in their eyes, all blood-spattered and knotted together. A rat king of boys in the face of this stranger, who is struggling and frightened.
‘Have you ever modelled?’ I ask him. He doesn’t respond. ‘Have you ever modelled?’
I take a business card out from the cup of my dress and put it in his mouth. I get up and walk away. I pass a homeless man with the boy’s face, but I don’t stop to look when he calls out to me. Am I okay? Do I need help? Where are my shoes?
I walk deeper into the park and arrive at the pond. I take off my coat and my dress, and get in. I expect to feel cleansed – to drop into the cold water and re-emerge with clean skin, filling my lungs with fresh air. But I’m just cold. I can feel a beer can by my elbow, and something soft under my feet. When I look down into the black water, I see the milky-eyed face of my boy, his head bobbing to the surface. I pick it up by the hair and find a knot of plastic bags and pond weed in my hand.
It isn’t him. It never is.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have enormous gratitude for the staff at New Writing North. Without their generous Young Writers’ Talent Fund it is highly unlikely this book would have been written. In particular I would like to thank Matt Wesolowski who served as my mentor, and whose expert assistance and encouragement helped take Boy Parts from a bloated short story to a fully-fledged novel.
I would also like to thank the staff at Mslexia magazine, where I was employed during the majority of the writing of this book, and which served as an excellent crash course in the world of UK publishing. It is perhaps worth noting that this novel was impulsively pitched by one of my ‘Sock Puppet’ accounts to Influx Press at a Mslexia Max pitching event I had organised, and was moderating. A testament to the adage that ‘shy bairns get nowt’。
Which brings us to Gary, Kit and Sanya, the stalwart team at Influx, vanguards of independent publishing and a great bunch of lads, without whom none of this would be possible.
I am grateful to my parents, Ken and Wendy, and my extended family for their support – and am likewise indebted to an anonymous group of intellectuals known only as ‘The K Hole Flirters’ for facilitating much of the research that went into this novel. Additionally, I’d like to thank my earliest readers, among them my partner George. George’s unconditional love and support was imperative to the writing, editing and completion of this book, and will be to all further projects. Unless we split up, in which case, what a massive gaffe this will be, eh?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eliza Clark has relocated from her native Newcastle back to London, where she previously attended Chelsea College of Art. She works in social media marketing, recently having worked for women’s creative writing magazine Mslexia. In 2018, she received a grant from New Writing North’s ‘Young Writers’ Talent Fund’。 Clark’s short horror fiction has been published with Tales to Terrify, with an upcoming novelette from Gehenna and Hinnom. She hosts podcast You Just Don’t Get It, Do You? with her partner, where they discuss film and television which squanders its potential. Boy Parts is her first novel. You can find her @FancyEliza on both Twitter and Instagram.