Who’s gonna drive you home?

“Where are we?” “Where? I’m not sure. I’ve been here for a long time, a long time Brick. They told me you would be coming. They’ve been waiting for you.” “They?” “I think you’ve met them already. I’m sure you have. I heard them talking, they said you got away. They said you wouldn’t get…

Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams

Few thought it strange that Brick never asked him about the papers. Jesus, maybe he knew. He fished out a phone and put on the new Angela Aux album, “Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams”. Weirded out, wired, time stretched to breaking-point……Neil Young, Visage, Sparklehorse… “and when there’s no words left to say play piano play….”

The Hissing Of Summer Lawns

McGivney’s mind was turning, a clicking clacking broken wheel, a noisy painful bastard that wouldn’t go but won’t stop. He passes a long abandoned petrol station, an old Fanta sign faded by the incessant weather, falling off, hanging on, above the door. There’s a man sitting on a chair by the Texaco pumps, he’s smoking…

Bishop to Knight 4.

Tooler is watching Dimitri through gimlet eyes. Then he’s back in the bog, running alongside the ass and cart, knocking over the stacks of turf, tumbling headlong into…what was it the nuncio had said? It was his due? The children were of no consequence? It was difficult to remember…had Dimitri been there all the time?…

Animal Life

Dimitri stands by the dead pool. “My brother was a painter. My brother was an artist, to be more precise. Yes. He did this huge painting of Chairman Mao in the socialist realist style. It was 2 meters high. He planned to present it to the local party boss, he had big plans. I was…

Knocking On Heaven’s Door

Sarah casts a cold eye over the guy in the back seat – so this is Brick. He would have been quite handsome if he lost the ridiculous beard. “It’s been a while Sarah, after I got you and McGivney away on the boat…I hear you’ve been doing well for yourself…never expected to find you…

a clamour of rooks

Afterwards we leave together. Hand in hand.  I’m bitten, bruised and bloody from the frenzy. It’s already fading like a bad dream, discarded in the morning light, forgotten in the rush to be normal. I’m not like everybody else. Then the rooks arrive, a clamour, a dark cloud on the horizon, they smash through the…

Too Few Two: The “story” so far.

ONE. Ex Con , Rerry and Bickers staggered out the door, a little bit drunk , festive, and happy to be going home to their kith and kin on this enchanting Christmas Eve. It had started to snow and the sounds of merry revelers drifted up from the streets below. I was sitting on the…

Not the demons, but the ghosts.

Some time earlier When Few woke up he was quite alone. It was early morning. It was early evening. He rolled off the bed slowly. He felt like death, he looked like death. Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps. He was in a some kind of hall, it was strewn with broken furniture, mainly pig iron beds, a…

Stay On These Roads

The call and response drifts through the fog almost making words almost making sense but meaning is elusive a foreign language never written down. Sometimes behind her, sometimes far away sometimes so close she feels like she could reach out and touch whatever it is whoever it is. She manages to stay on these roads…

Fractures

There was a games room, it was off limits. For the priest only. I remember it. Gloomy, shafts of sunlight catching beams of dust. Catching the beady eyes of the stuffed animals on top of the cabinets. A full-sized snooker table, Father Harris, Harry, used to let us in. Me and Paudi. He was the…

The Old Bog Road

I am in the darkness. Alone. Floating in the darkness. My glassy-eyed friend is still here but you could hardly call him company. They took my clothes, they took my dignity. They left me alone with the fox, the ferret, whatever it is, it’s hungry now, it bares its teeth. I feel its dead claws scratching,…