‘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.
Read More‘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.
Read More‘Darragh!!!! Get up, I need help up at your Grandfather’s grave.’
Darragh twitched underneath the covers of his bed, the stench from his own body turning his stomach. It had not been twelve hours since he arrived back in Dublin, returning home from years away in Asia. The money had gone and real life beckoned he had supposed. He made good money teaching English in Hanoi, but spent it so fast he hardly got to touch it.
In one clean sweep he pulled the covers off himself and rose up; his lip pulling on the pillow a little, stuck from his own drool.
Read MoreTHE “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.
Read MoreRAIN 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.
Read MoreTHERE was a flat light to the sky that framed seagulls coasting effortlessly from one side of the Liffey to the other. Taking turns, they stopped to perch upon streets lamps to peer and poo on the bustle of people below. Don’t you dare, I thought as I crossed quay road that bordered the south side of the river and onto Grattan bridge, being well accustomed to shite dropping on me out of nowhere.
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