In This World (Harry Styles)

12

(DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. It's important to remember this is all totally fabricated, embellished, and exaggerated for entertainment purposes.)

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It's a revelation

There's no hell in what I found

No kingdom shout

How the tides are changing

As you liberate me now

And the walls come down

Revelation - Jónsi and Troye Sivan

Several days later, which we'd spent working late in the studio on the bare bones of my upcoming songs whenever I wasn't withdrawing from booze, I woke to a loud ruckus. It was early as hell, genuinely too early for anyone to be functioning, but it sounded as though a helicopter had landed on the rooftop. I hurried towards the front of the house, out onto the second-floor terrace of a spare bedroom, and found the front yard occupied by two heavy-hauler flatbed tow trucks delivering construction machinery. What the??? They were enormous machines, and I couldn't fathom what business they had in our yard. And there hadn't been any local construction around for miles. I then assumed it must've been some sort of address mix-up. However, I would later discover it was a forest mulcher and an excavator that had indeed been rented by the one and only Grayson Cain. A mad, mad man.

"What the hell??" I watched groggily as several gruff Japanese men unloaded the machinery, then swiftly took off one after another. The two colossal tow trucks at last clearing the yard. That's when Gray emerged from around the rented machinery, dressed in a green flannel, jeans, and clunky Timberland boots. I gaped as he hopped into the first machine like it was the most natural thing in the world. It looked to be a mini tractor with a woodchipper attached, but I knew so little about these things I was certain that wasn't correct. He fidgeted with the mechanisms of the mystery machine for a bit, popped on a pair of goggles and a blue hard hat, then drove off into the deep of the forest for the next few hours.

He didn't return until late afternoon. By then I had showered and dressed and wandered into the kitchen to find out what the hell was going on. As I waited, I stood before the floor-to-ceiling windows lining the rear of the kitchen, captivated by the beatific scenery trapped behind the home. It simply looked unreal, like a high-definition screensaver or an advert for a tropical resort. The sunny blue bay aglow in all its glory. Heralded by a small stretch of sandy beach and jagged rocks that surrounded the private pier, leading up the escarpment to the house like a castle on a hill. Black-tailed gulls circled the area quite hawkishly, scouring the property for unsuspecting prey to abduct on their way to and from the shore. Beneath them, the water moved continually, swelling and falling in the distance, rushing in towards the shore in an unending succession of white ripples.

I still hadn't been out back yet. I was biding my time, as one does; building up the nerve to ask him about the jet skis which I'd been lusting after since I first arrived. Just then, he came lumbering in, dripping with sweat and tree shavings. Great smears of dirt streaked across his face and clothes, which he wore proudly, like some sort of primitive marker of his virility and feats of labor. Grinning from ear to ear like a drunken Cheshire Cat.

"Mornin' sunshine!" he called, headed straight for the fridge.

"It's afternoon," I retorted. "And how's about you do uz a favor and wash your hands first, mate? What, were you born in a barn?"