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.

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.