His neck had got stuck in the barbed wire at the top of the wall. He could feel the blood running down the front of his shirt. It was starting to dry and harden in parts. If he tried to move from the ledge he was standing on to throw his right leg over - he would do damage that would guarantee the attention of a couple more of the crew at Bornley Heath Medical Centre. He didn’t know the exact effect the array of broken glass would have on his leg but he knew it would be bad. The bigger problem was knowing that he would definitely need a couple stabs at it. There was a nurse at Bornley Heath Medical Centre that reminded him of his Mum.

I wonder if she’s working, he thought.

He didn’t know how much weight he had lost in the last seven months, but it was a lot. He was a confusing sight. There used to be an abundance of him, lets say that. But there was little left over now, except his neck. He had accumulated a huge amount of fatty deposits in his neck over the preceding years and the skin that had stretched out was having a hard time finding a new home. Now it had got tangled on more than a couple of the barbs. It had snagged as he’d moved to go up and over. He had failed to persist straight through and so had slumped back down, pulling at the skin in both directions, he thought of an inverted stapler.

He started at the right again, figuring he had around fifteen to get through. He pulled at the top, it needed a tug to dislodge but eventually it gave up. The bottom one felt like a lighter touch would work, he felt a little more warm blood dropping out onto this thumb and forefinger as he worked at the bottom, lifting it slowly up, using his middle finger to elevate the top skin from falling and piercing again.

Simple, he thought.

Getting out was just a matter of time now, some neck handling logistics were required as he worked down the line, keeping the newly freed skin from getting caught again. The system worked for the next six barbs, sharp tug to release the top flap and a slower careful move for the bottom one. It was becoming more difficult too as his hand and neck were increasingly bloodied, especially as he loosed the top ones. That first hook as he had tried to vault the wall had made some significant, deep cuts that were not happy when he lifted them up.

It ended up being his hunger that helped him get through the final makeshift staples. He’d been on that wall for nearly two hours before he got the last notch untangled.

Coward, he thought.

He slumped back down to where he had commenced the doomed vault. The house was still empty, the lights that had sidled up to the gate at the front of the house and the idling engine that had led him to sprint for the garden and up onto his hooks for his slow cook as a hanging kebab had long since departed, returning the way it came after correcting an earlier wrong turn. The night was darker and quieter now, no one was coming back tonight.

Opening up his backpack he checked out his haul. He grabbed the mega bag of Mini Rolls and sat down, rubbing his hands all over the grass to get as much blood off as possible before he started. He was hungry but still did the ritual. It was cold out that night, the conditions were perfect. He pressed lightly on all sides of the roll, the hard chocolate cracked and gave, he gently peeled at it, keeping the soft cake-ee centre intact. He ate the chocolate from the main body first, then the bottom before finally removing the ends. Next he bit as much of the outer sponge as possible without getting to the vanilla creme centre. He was left a moment later with the centre of the roll, there’s no dignity in any of this routine, so there’s none at the end either. The last of it goes in in one go.

He ate fourteen, one for each of the barbed notches he had unpicked, top and bottom.

All that time on the wall and sat in the garden in a quiet he was quite unaccustomed to had rested him greatly. He was not inclined to head back to Bornley Heath but reckoned it was about time. He walked round to the front gate, strolled down the long driveway and to the gate.

It opened.