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now and it was gonna smash into the car and then the car would explode and it would catch on fire and then he wouldn’t be able to breathe and then the worms and the spiders, they wouldn’t be able to breathe either and they would crawl inside his ears and his mouth so that they didn’t get burned and he wouldn’t be able to yell for anyone to open the latch because his mouth would be full of spiders and nobody would know that he was there. For Alex, it felt like he was in that boot for hours and days, a lifetime even. When you’re staring death in the face, everything feels like forever; the time it takes for death to appear, the time it takes for death to extend its hand, the time it takes for your heart to say no, the time it takes for your mouth to stay still and the time it takes for death’s hand to take yours and to walk you through a dark parking lot towards a rattling old car and to put something over your face and then, the time it takes for you to fall asleep and wake up sick and demented, in the boot of a car. His stomach felt really sick now and his mouth was really dry. He wanted a glass of water. If he was in his bed, he could just moan really loud for a minute or two. He wouldn’t have to say anything, he would just have to moan and hold his belly and maybe rock back and forth to feel a bit better until his mother arrived with a wet cloth to put on his forehead and a glass of water to make the sick go back down and her hand on his back, patting him and rubbing gently so that he would know that even though she might not have been able to stop him being sick, at least he wouldn’t have to go through this all alone. And it wasn’t nice, feeling this kind of sick. It was the type of sick that was different to bad food sick or eating too much candy sick. This was way worse. And he was feeling this kind of sick alone. He didn’t have his mother to put a cloth on his face and to tell him that everything would be ok and to rub and to pat his back so that he could fall asleep again.