Thursday, November 11, 2010

Ghost Life: Part I

A novella, or short story, in a series of installments.

Part I: The feast of Stephen.
  Drafted again.  Another fucking relative.  And no occasion for false consolation.  None of this, “he died in his sleep”, “sure, he didn’t suffer”, or “he had a quare long life, sure” – none of that.  Dominic died slowly, from leukaemia, and he suffered, by fuck did he suffer.  He was only forty seven, the poor fucker, only forty seven, and he’d spent most of that in jail with loyalist psychos because of a string of armed robberies.  His wife, Auntie Margo, had been eighteen years his senior, but her vivacity had prevented this from being a barrier to their fling, and marriage.  That was only two years ago.  Now she looked frazzled, washed out, almost deader than he was.  Most of their marriage had been spent with him being diagnosed, then going through a series of treatments, each of which seemed to logarithmically accelerate his degeneration.  They had clung on to the dwindling odds of remission until the poor bastard expired his last puff of air.  And there were a lot of people who had once called him all the sleekit bastards and scums of the earth under the sun now commending his memory to their pint glasses.


Tuesday, November 9, 2010

There's nothing worse...

...than potboilers that don't boil the pot.

Jennifer Preston vs the world



Jennifer Preston vs the world

  Ah’m walkin back and forth, fumin, fuckin stormin ah am, fuckin stampin my boots into that floor ay... ah... some fuckin velvet or shite.  I’d like to bounce thir heids aff ay that floor, stamp aw over their fuckin skulls until the inners all shite oot all over the fuckin floor, then call the inmates in for scran.  Aye, inmates, that’s what we are.

  Back up.  Right.  Three thirty, ah report for detention.  Mrs Kerr, the widowed RE teacher, looks at me pityingly as I come in, but ah’m no givin her any hard luck story. 

The Misandrist

The Misandrist

I.
  Now I know what the shrill, hysterical, PC uber alles brigade will say.  You’ll say, between mouthfuls of gender studies argot, that the latest hefty, meaty tome from my desk is nothing but a swollen tribute to my manhood.  Bollocks, my friend.  I might be offended if it wasn’t so obvious that you have difficulty with the ironic mode.  My purpose is to see through the hypocrisy, and to help other people see through the hypocrisy, by lighting up the bleakness with laughter.  I’m not some monstrous phallocrat trying to reassert the mores of an antiquated male supremacy, or whatever ludicrous Bond villain goal you’ve attributed to me.  You can get those silly ideas right out of your pretty little head.  


Friday, November 5, 2010

Wesley explains

Wesley explains.

  Fuckin, you know how it is like.  Fuckin miserable, dawmp day in Belfawst.  What’s fuckin new?  Sweat clingin tae us like shite tae a fuckin blanket.  Soon as ah got up, ah had a shawr, wore mah clean tracksuit n gold chains like, threw on the oul spice.  But ah’m still sticky as fuck.  My head’s like a big fuckin pizza left out in the sun.  It’ll be them amphetamines.  Ah have tae get off that shite fir a while, like.  Fuckin pulse is hummin in mah skull, like, n I could fair panel the first bawstard that gives us any lip.  Couldn eat breakfast either, an nigh ah’m fuckin starvin, n sweatin buckets n ah’ve gottae go down the school and pick up the wee man.  Maureen’s supposed to be doin it, but she’s cryin sick.  Aye she’s sick alright, sick in the head, n she’s got another thing comin if she thinks I’ve got time to be doin her fuckin chores.  I’m s’posed to be collectin.  Fuckin... some people... take the pish.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Malice.

Malice: a short story.

"This is how the rumour mill starts: A young man known by the cognomen, "Beaker", is beaten to death less than ten yards from my front door, turning the spot, just by a lamp-post, into a permanent floral shrine. His mother, father, his brothers and one baby sister all gather around this spot and read aloud the messages left with the floral condolences. Messages asking why, how, and when would it all stop. Another victim of the cycle of violence and hatred between the divided communities of you know where. Already, before the blood dries on the tarmac, he's canonised, he has the status of "victim", he is a candidate for beatitude. What was supposed to be a "punishment beating" for some disloyalty to the Loyalist cause turned into the manslaughter of Barry William Smith, twenty-one, the gawky, bare-forked offspring of Colin and Roberta Smith. A cycle of whispered canard and humming gossip is set off that sees half-believed stories bruited by workmates and school children, a rash of heated words which connote more than they denote transmitted through the pubs and playgrounds, the two most famous vectors for such derangement. Somehow, a series of rumours that were otherwise impossible to credit are hi-jacked by some malicious, calculating soul and transmuted into common coinage. I, it is said, am in part responsible for the boy's death.