The Bloody Stream

HAS it got me,’ the old bird asked. The skin around her eyes was as thin as tissue and detailed with faint little veins.

‘Yes,’ coughed Sally. Clearing her throat and saying it again. ‘Yes it has. The dampness in your lungs is making it difficult for you to breathe and your body is tired from fighting.’

‘Feckin Corona. So what do we do?’ The old bird asked with a fierce strength in her tone.

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The Lights Spoke

CLASS dismissed, enjoy your weekend children,’ Ms Flannery called out, slamming her duster down on the desk.

A chorus of squeaks from chairs being pushed out erupted from the class and the distinct gleeful chatter that came at the end of every Friday could be heard. Coats were thrown on and as Finn zipped up his schoolbag, he quickly removed the knife and stuck it in his pocket.

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Pool, Lads & Life

THE “Plex” was the first place we all felt grown up. A dingy little arcade made out of a rundown barn towards the counties edge. It was somewhere to go on our own and meet outside of school. This hadn’t happened before really you see. And so on weekends I’d breeze through the house, offering the briefest of goodbyes to my parents, and walked the way a man with purpose walks, out the door to catch the bus. Hell, even taking the bus when not in a uniform felt grown up.

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Stains

RAIN bashed the battered exterior of the little blue fiat as if marbles were being dropped from the coal black sky above; playing the car like a snare drum as it limped up the Dublin Mountains. Shifting in the drivers’ seat, adjusting gear, Gael thought to himself how the word “mountain” never did these rolling rocky hills justice. It was a strong, formidable description which he associated with things along the scale of Kilimanjaro or Everest, geological giants of the globe keeping watch over us all and not the forest and granite dappled mounds that separated the green fields of Wicklow from the Irish capital.

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