by Donal Ryan
The only thing pissing me off now is that little Nuala bitch. Like, if you saw her, the way she stomps around, acting like she owns the place. I caught her rotten the other week, hissing into a child’s face. Just eat it, just eat it, just eat it, she was saying in a vicious little whisper, with a spoon of food pushed up against the kid’s closed mouth. Jesus, she has a poisonous little temper on her. I pulled her on it and she was as bold as brass about it. What, she said, what am I meant to do? She wouldn’t bloody eat her bloody lunch. Are we meant to let them get malnourished? I told her to never do it again and I was making a note of it and she wanted to know where was the note going to be kept, could she have a copy of the note, what was it going to say, who else was going to see it … For a finish I had to say, look, there’ll be no note this time, but don’t dream of being nasty to a child like that again. So she bested me. Jesus, she makes my blood boil. She had some comment up on her Facebook page one Sunday night a few months ago about going to work the next day, and my friend Liz saw it, something like OMG, sooo hung over, have to go wiping shitty arses all day tomorrow, and she must have gotten nervous because Liz says she took it down again straight away. I’ve been checking all their Facebooks regularly ever since. They all know well, but they can’t very well start blocking me now. Little witches.
WHEN DENIS was really quiet he still went off in his van every day. I didn’t ask him where he was going. He was checking things out, he said. One day I asked him to put in some extra sockets in the kitchen and the nursery and he huffed and puffed and ummed and aahed about it. Can you imagine that? Oh, I said, Jesus, sorry, I thought you’d be delighted with the work! I was bitchy, I admit. Denis can be wicked when he wants. His father was a horrible bollocks; I’d say he gave Denis an awful time growing up. But wait till I tell you, that little bitch flounced in for her break and smoked a fag right outside the patio door, right beside where Denis was putting in a socket and I swear to God I saw the dirty prick looking up along her legs with his tongue hanging out like a dog on heat. And she wearing a little denim mini, which I specifically told her not to wear in work. Oh, it’s so hot, she goes. Can I not just wear it this week? I also specifically told her not to be smoking fags on her break – one or two of the posh mummies have noses for smoke like bloodhounds. But she reckons she has some kind of right to smoke fags as well as everything else. I’ll tell you what she has no right to do, though: wag her little arse in my husband’s face!
You know the way when you start going with someone first, and you don’t really mind if there’s a bit of a smell off them sometimes? Like, I used to think Den’s BO was sexy, because it meant he’d been doing physical work and was strong and manly. There’s something about that, like, it’s scientifically proven that women are attracted to men’s body odours when they’re in the first flushes of fancying a fella. But I’ll tell you one thing – it soon wears off. Sweat is fine when it’s fresh, on lovely hard muscle, but when it’s dripping off a big flabby man-boob or dried into a filthy T-shirt it’s a different thing altogether. When BO is just there because someone would rather sit on their arse watching soccer matches than have a two-minute shower, it’s just repulsive. Although I suppose it was a bit lousy how I reacted the last time Denis tried it on with me. Get your big sweaty arse away from me. That was a bit harsh, thinking about it. He looked really hurt. He went off downstairs and put on the telly and watched his Sopranos DVDs for hours. I wonder if he cried? I think he thinks he’s a bit like Tony Soprano.
I HAD a dream one night last week. Denis took Nuala for a spin in his van. I saw him stopping at the end of the cul-de-sac for her. I followed them down the road. I caught up with them in the car park outside the church. I crept up to the window of the van and looked in and they were in the back. She was straddling him with her little denim mini bunched up around her middle. The van doors were locked. I was shouting and screaming and slapping my open hands against the glass. It was like I wasn’t there; they just stayed doing it. I could see right up Denis’s hairy nose. He was lying on his back. He raised his head and looked straight at me and smiled. She turned around and smiled as well. Her teeth were small and sharp. The door suddenly gave way and I realized I had a hose in my hand. The hose streamed fire. I pointed it at them and they caught fire. I pushed the door closed and listened to them burning and screaming. When I woke up and realized I was dreaming I didn’t feel that sick relief that usually accompanies waking from a horrible dream. I actually felt a bit disappointed. Jesus. What kind of a weird bitch am I?
Lloyd
I KIND OF thought actually that Trevor was gone completely mental when he called up here a few weeks ago. Like, why would he not text or email or Facebook? What’s with all the reality, I thought. Does he not know he’s a million times cooler in virtual form? God, he’s misshapen. He wanted me to help him to kidnap a kid. I thought he was pitching something to me, some concept or something, some angle to keep the Dryffids guessing in Warlock Universe – like the thing he thought of last year where we hacked into their harems and stole all their girls (and boys in Ming’s case) and totally screwed up the spec of all their sex slaves and made them into fat animal-headed creatures and wiped out millions of their cred points. But he wanted me to actually swipe a living child with him: he was going deep undercover as a goddamn Montessori teacher in some nursery or something and all I was meant to have to do was drive up, he’d hand over the kid and I’d keep him for like, a night or some shit.
Mom was here like three weeks ago. I let her in this time. She saw my bong. I watched her for ages while she glanced at it, again and again. I knew she knew what it was. She was alive in the sixties, for fuck’s sake. I hadn’t left it out on purpose, but this apartment is so goddamn small that shit just piles up everywhere and you lose your ergonomic perspective. The bong was torturing her. I saw beads of sweat lining themselves up along the skin between her nose and her upper lip. What’s that part of the body called? I can never remember. I started to really enjoy myself as her initial discomfort turned to pain and the pain wrote its signature across her stupid face. And I wondered what part of her was in me. Then I remembered. Every part. As she left she said please, Lloyd, please … and I said what, Mom? Please what? And I raised my eyebrows and half-smiled in a mock pleasantness that I know for a fact creeps her right out. Creeps me right out.
Just take care. I … I …
And she turned and scurried away, like a little white mouse, down the communal stairs and back to her terrified, dipsomaniac life.
MY DAD fucked off when I was a kid. I think he just couldn’t stand to look at her any more. I remember the last time I ever saw him. He looked different, wearing a T-shirt and jeans and a jacket with the collar turned up. I remember thinking he looked really cool. He kissed me on the top of my head and said love you, kiddo. I didn’t say anything back, just stood looking at him from the hallway, wondering why my mother was taking giant breaths and covering her face with one hand while pulling at my dad’s arm with the other. Mom told me some bullshit story about how he had to go and do important work for the government to fix the hole in the ozone layer. I made myself believe that for years, until I overheard her on the phone to one of her mental-case friends, talking about him. He’d had another kid with another woman. A boy. I started to grind my teeth that night, and didn’t stop for years, till finally I ground through to a nerve and the pain made me pass out.
I know now that all that shit was a series of tests I’d set myself. I think I failed some of them, that’s why I’m still groping around in the dark.
I DREAMT I killed the kid. That kind of fucked things up, I can tell you. And not in the way you might think. I didn’t mean it; I only wanted to see how far I’d go before I made myself sick and stopped. Then I woke up and the kid was standing up looking at me over the edge of the travel cot with his big scared eyes and I shouted thank fuck and frightened the crap out of him, literally. But being a solipsist, I know the danger of crossing boundaries in the dream dimens
ion. It’s a dream precedent; I know now it’s an actual possibility. It’s something my inner warrior wants to do and is not able to, being bound by the strictures of this false human reality. I still won’t allow myself to be fully immersed in the truth: I am alone in the universe; the universe is created by me and for me and nothing exists outside of my consciousness. I have to explore the edges of myself. I have to learn more before I can break through the barrier. I have to not care about the feelings I ascribe to my creations. Why did I do this to myself, cripple myself with conscience? It must have some meaning, the fact that I worry about doing certain things, when I know that nothing has any consequence outside of me. It’s another test I’ve set myself, obviously. But I don’t know how to pass it – am I overcoming an obstacle by giving in to my urges to destroy, or by resisting them? What do I want from myself? Why am I so unknowable?
Having killed the kid in my dream bugs me, no matter what way I think about it. Now I don’t know what to do. Opacity has trumped clarity again. These tests, these tests. Trevor has some meaning – he must be like a behaviour modifier or something. Obviously he’s an integral part of me. He’s an impulse, an instinct, a fight or flight mechanism. Him giving me this kid is me showing myself something. Maybe I should just ask straight out. I’ve always tried to stay icy cool around Trevor, though. I don’t think he knows he doesn’t really exist as an entity independent of me. Actually I’m sure of it. I need him to feel inferior to and fearful of me. I think that’s how I’m supposed to make all my creations feel. It’s easier with Mom. But then I’ve been working on her for longer. Solipsism isn’t as easy as it might seem. It’s difficult living in a universe with a population of one. But you already know this, being me.
I remember when I told Trevor I’d decided to be a solipsist. He laughed like a fat, retarded duck. He honked at me. Wow, he said, that’s like a really good excuse to give yourself for not having a job. I disgusted myself by suddenly dropping my cloak of aloof superiority and becoming defensive. I can’t help the economy, I said, in a pathetic, loser voice. Pardon, the bastard said, with glee in his eyes, you can’t help the economy? But didn’t you create the fucking economy, being a solipsist? And then he started to do his honking laugh again and I slapped him in his fat face. The tears that sprang immediately to his eyes fascinated me. I hurt him; I hurt myself. I felt my cheek sting later. This battle I’m having with Trevor is obviously some inner conflict, some breaking-down-building-up process of growing and strengthening, like a muscle being worked out. It has to be damaged to develop.
So, now I have this kid, who is wrecking my gaff. I’ve put myself in this position, that’s obvious; I just have to figure out why. The kid is kind of cute. Dylan is his name. He keeps saying Mama and Gaga and crying and pointing, and the only thing that shuts him up is showing him things. Like, I have to pick him up and point at stuff and say look, Dylan, look at the stereo, look, Dylan, look at the cooker, look, Dylan, look at the fucking sofa. The kid loves looking at shit. I’m getting a bit pissed over this whole situation. Like, I could go down for this. I’d be in the news and everything. Sometimes I forget the solipsism thing and start believing myself to be vulnerable to outside forces. They’re really inside forces; the things I’m afraid of are the weak parts of myself that I have to deal with. When I feel no fear, I’ll have completed my journey. Then I’ll become the being I was meant to be. I’m not sure what my true form is. I won’t discover that until I’ve slain every demon.
Rory
THIS SUMMER WAS shaping up great and all. We had the World Cup to look forward to – it’s nearly easier to watch when we’re not in it – the weather was looking half-decent there around May and late June, and Bobby was making shapes towards going out on his own doing insulation and all that environmental shite that everyone says is going to be the saving of us all. He rang me to come up and all one evening and I gave a hand stacking blocks of an ash tree he’d cut the evening before and he told me all about it while we worked. I like that way of talking, so you haven’t to be nodding and agreeing and trying to hold a person’s eye. It gives you room to stop and think; the work fills the silence between words. I went home delighted off my head. I even told the mother and father about it. The mother got all dramatic like she always does and started saying how she’d say a novena for the plans and thank God for Bobby Mahon and the father agreed away and he said begod tis the likes of Bobby will put paid to this auld downturn and isn’t he a solid sight to God altogether and if anyone could get something like that off the ground and running it was Bobby and stick with Bobby and by the end of the night I nearly hated Bobby and wondered why in the name of all that’s holy I’d opened my big fat mouth about it at all. Still though, at least they were happy for a while.
Then Bobby went pure solid apeshit. That whole thing about him doing the dirt on Triona with Seanie’s wan was all bullshit, but that was the start of all the madness. I reckon it was that crazy-looking auld bint that lives in the only other house in that estate that’s lived in that started all that auld talk. She was forever eyeballing him going in and out doing them jobs for Seanie’s wan. We didn’t even know she was Seanie’s wan till it was too late. The weird bollocks never told us nothing about her. He can be an awful oddball sometimes. But Bobby, though, if Angelina Jolie gave him the come-on he’d leave her hanging. He’s like a fucking priest, so he is. Well, a priest that’s married to a flaker. Then he upped and murdered his auld fella. I didn’t know should I go up near him after he got out on bail. I never rang him yet or anything. What would I say? Howya Bobby, sorry you killed your auld fella? Maybe he didn’t, in fairness. Jim Gildea came on him below with a length of timber in his hand though by all accounts, and the auld boy stone dead with his head smashed in. Bobby rang Jim and all to come down. Like he wanted to go down or something. He was a bad yoke, Bobby’s da, a real twisted old fucker. Bobby must have finally had enough of his shit.
Whatever about that, I’m left high and dry now, without a hope of getting anything local, so my London plans are kind of back on and the mother and father are going around with two pusses on them like I was after telling them I have brain cancer or something. Every bollocks is going around cribbing about the country being fucked. It’d wear you out, so it would. The country’s fucked, the country’s fucked, the country’s fucked; the same bollockses that were going around cribbing that the whole country was gone mad for money a few years ago. They do be below in the shop, standing in miserable little circles, comparing hardships. I’d love to tell them all they’re a pack of miserable wankers only they’re the same pricks I’ll be looking for a job off of if things pick up or London doesn’t work out, which it’s looking like it won’t, in fairness, on account of the auld fella going around like he’s going having a stroke over it, saying them Olympics contracts is all stitched up, there’ll be no Irish boys taken on off the boat no more, and the mother crying onto her rosary beads while she says novena after novena. Jaysus. How could I leave them like that?
I WISH I had an imagination, and more balls. I’ve thought about this – I think a lot more these days than I used to – and I reckon some are born to follow others. Like, Bobby is well able to think out all that stuff about going out on his own with the insulation thing and go off and talk to fellas about it and give in business plans to the enterprise crowd and look for money off of the Credit Union and all. I could do all them things too, only I haven’t that thing that he has in him that makes all that stuff easy and makes people believe he can do it. It’s a mix of imagination, balls, confidence and something else that I can’t put words on. Something that makes you know he was born to give orders, not take them. It never looked right to see Pokey sitting on the chair in between the window and the desk and Bobby looking across at him with his back to the door. Pokey always made sure the chair facing the desk was smaller than his as well. He done his best to try and shrink Bobby and show who was boss. We all knew he was afraid of his shite of Bobby. Pokey was only boss because of h
is auld fella handing him over the whole works. It’s Pokey should’ve had the bad auld yoke of a father and Bobby that was born with the silver spoon. Or would Bobby have turned out to be a sneaky little prick like Pokey then? God only knows how it works.
Sometimes thinking about things can balls you right up, though. I was inside in town the other day, looking at a poster for a gig in the Warehouse. A little flaker came up beside me and asked to know was I going. She had a tidy little pair of tits on her and short black hair and too much make-up on her eyes but I kind of like that, and I knew straight away without checking that she’d have a lovely arse and I managed to talk back to her no problem, probably because I hadn’t been thinking about what I was going to say for five hours before I said it. I had a Pixies T-shirt on me and she told me she loved them and I looked a bit like Black Francis. What, I asked her, because I’m fat? And she went pure red and said no, no, Jesus, I meant your hair and stuff, oh God … And I felt like a prick for embarrassing her like that and I said I was only messing and asked her did she see them in ’04 and she said she was in the Phoenix Park and the Point and I said I was too and it turns out we were right near each other both times and after about three minutes I was starting to panic that this was going to be the highest point of my whole life, this random conversation with an accidental pretty girl on a dirty street while I waited to sign on. Here, she said, I have to go, I have an interview for a shitty job, call me out your number. And she sent me a text right there and then: Holly is all it said. So I know her name and I have her number and she likes the Pixies and before she walked off she said text me if you’re at it and I said, like a dopey bollocks, at what? And she laughed and said the gig you fool and walked off laughing softly and I was right, she had a lovely arse.