Folk'd Up Beyond All Recognition (FUBAR)

by Laurence Donaghy

  “Go!” was all he said.

  Only when the front door slammed shut did he allow himself the luxury of breaking down.

  **

  “You’ll be back for my birthday, won’t ye?”

  “Course I will big lad.”

  Linda escorted him out. She was still making a face. “I can’t believe this,” she hissed when they got to the front door, “never heard of an urgent surveying job in my life. And away down there in the backside of nowhere an all. You sure this is gonna be finished in time?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Right,” she nodded, convinced. She kissed him, on the lips. She tasted of home. He left that moisture on his own lips, wondered how long it would take for it to dry away.

  Tony Morrigan walked out his front door and to the car parked outside, sitting in the front passenger’s seat. His wife was at the window to wave him off, but he stared straight ahead down the street. There was a smaller shape beside Linda there too. Waving.

  Waving goodbye.

  “Go,” he croaked.

  “You’re sure-”

  “Please.”

  Dermot Quinn nodded and the car glided away. He said nothing as the man beside him folded into himself, spoke not a word for the next several hundred miles as they drove down motorways and winding roads, through county after county, as the sobs came and they kept coming until all that seemed to be left beside him was the husk of a human being.

  The house that Tony Morrigan was to call home sat squat, a modest little whitewashed cottage with a thatched roof, perched on a hillside deep in Wexford. Not a single other human dwelling existed from horizon to horizon.

  “What will you do?”

  “I don’t know,” Tony replied, as he got out of the car. He turned back. “What about you?”

  “Me?” Dermot shrugged. “I can’t face them alone, Tony. Call me a coward if you want, but it’s true. You were always the blunt end. I think I’ll just keep my head down, get into the lecturing circuit full-time. Not too many of us out there can translate ancient Gaelic. Suppose I could tell a few of the tall tales to kids, try to keep the word alive. My wee niece seems to like them.”

  “Be careful.”

  “You too, mate. And if you need anything…” Dermot trailed off, unable to complete the sentiment, knowing it would sound hollow given the circumstances.

  His friend turned. “Tony, wait,” he called out, unable to stop himself.

  “I’m tired. I want to just get in and…”

  “Look,” Dermot said, “the prophecy doesn’t say you’re separated from him forever. It says you have no contact for ten years. You can come back…”

  “…in ten years time? When he’s twenty? And say what? That I was kidnapped by aliens?” Tony snorted. “He’ll not want me anywhere near him, Dermot. And he’ll be right.”

  “At least you got ten years, Tony,” Dermot said. His face darkened. “My Da left me and my brother when we were still babies. And I don’t think he did it because of some mystic prophecy, either. I think he just couldn’t be fucked. You’ve had ten years to turn Danny into a big, strapping lad. You should be proud of him.”

  “Proud of him?” Tony said, rolling the word on his tongue as though it were something distasteful he wanted to spit out. “Proud doesn’t cover it. He’s my whole world, Dermot. He’s the best thing I’ll ever do on this planet. I love him.”

  He was silent for a few moments.

  “And after today, he’s going to hate me for the rest of his life. That’s what they wanted. That was their price. Give me the son I always wanted, and then make him hate me. God forgive me.”

  He exited the car without another word. Dermot could only watch as his friend walked to the cottage and shut the door behind him. After a few moments of sitting there, hoping vainly that Tony would come rushing back to the car and they’d set off on a desperate gambit to take down Dother and to fuck with the risks, like the day in the hospital car park when this whole fuckin mess had begun.

  No-one appeared.

  He set off down the winding dirt road, beginning the long lonely drive back.

  **

  Belfast, Now

  All things considered, given the events of the last few days, an awkward silence in the car was not something Steve had been anticipating during the journey to Dermot Quinn’s house.

  It was knowing where to begin, really. The memories of his not-life of the past year / past few days – the timescale was like one of those hologram magazine covers that shifted depending on what angle you examined it – were still floating in his mind, bobbing alongside parallel memories of being Danny’s friend, of Ellie being Danny’s girl, of Maggie…

  …actually, upon reflection, an awkward silence was just fine.

  Clearly Ellie hadn’t gotten the memo.

  “Look, um…” she began. “Can we just talk a wee bit, about the last few…”

  Eyes on the road. Eyes on the road. Mind on the road. Mind on the fucking road. La la la. Hum de dum. Wow look at that wee sporty number. Nice. And yer woman over there with the…

  -last night you fucked your best friend’s girlfriend-

  …nice legs…

  …balls. Big, hairy, balls. Well, fuck it. Time to go for broke. What the hell.

  “I don’t think we did anything wrong.”

  “Agreed,” Ellie said instantly.

  YOU FUCKED YOUR BEST FRIEND’S GIRLFRIEND.

  “We were…” he almost hiccupped over the words, felt them catch in his throat and threaten to make him gag they were so ludicrous sounding, “…we were…” he coughed a half-laugh at the absurdity of even having to find a word to say it, “we were…what did the oul doll say? How did she put it? What was the exact word she used? It was a good word.”

  “Bewitched?” Ellie said numbly.

  “Right?”

  “Yep. Hundred percent. Absolutely.”

  YOU FUCKED

  “There’s no way I would ever – if I’d known – it would have been – I mean it goes without…”

  “…without saying! Yes, same here! I mean,” she laughed weakly, “we don’t even probably need to say that do we. It goes. Um. It goes without saying. Like you said.”

  YOUR BEST FRIEND’S

  “Yeah. Yeah, this is it. This is it.”

  GIRLFRIEND.

  Silence fell with an audible thud once more. He wished his mind was as quiet.

  NOT JUST HIS GIRLFRIEND.

  THE MOTHER. OF HIS. CHILD.

  JUST HOW BEWITCHED WERE YOU ANYWAY, STEVIE BOY, EH? YOU HAD YOUR SUSPICIONS DIDN’T YOU EH? NOT SUSPICIOUS ENOUGH NOT TO CLAMBER ON BOARD FOR A QUICK FUMBLE AFTER MATCH OF THE DAY FINISHED, WAS IT?

  He gritted his teeth, realising that his go for broke we done nothing wrong line of reasoning had been hoping to butt heads with her yes we did we should be ashamed rebuttal; that this hadn’t happened had somehow made things worse yet.

  “This is crazy,” he said, ostensibly to her but really as a proclamation to the universe at large.

  “I know,” she sighed.

  He shot a glance across at her as he pulled up to a stop at a set of lights. “Can I be honest?”

  “That’d make a change from the last few minutes, wouldn’t it?” she said, upturned palms pressed into her eyes as if she were trying to force everything they’d seen through the back of her head and banish them forever.

  “I didn’t even really like you.”

  She grunted with amusement, her palms not moving. “No, really? You don’t say.”

  “You’re dour. You’re needy. You’re about as much fun as a kick in the ballix. That’s what I thought about you. Bein honest, I thought Danny coulda done better. I thought he felt obliged to do the big man thing of steppin up cos you two got caught with…with Luke,” he said, his resolve wavering at having to say that name, considering the child’s unknown whereabouts (and a bout of fresh guilt washed through him).

  “Well,” she said, lifting her head from he
r hands and looking at him with one of those unreadable female expressions that seemed to be convey about fourteen emotions simultaneously, “I must say, when you say can I be honest, you really don’t fuck about, do you?”

  He had to bark a laugh at that, to his own amazement. “And then…” he went on, “then this fuckin craziness…and…” he squirmed, “…well…I…I see what he sees in ye. I mean there we were with fuckin Cousin It in the cot…and you still…I mean, ach…fucks sake,” he shook his head in frustration at his own ramblings, “…look, what I’m trying to say is I know now how tough it is and, despite what I just said before, I am tearing myself apart with guilt over what we did, so if we manage to sort all this out…I’ll accept whatever you want to tell Danny.”

  What the hell. Say it. Throw it out there. This is your one chance.

  “If you want to tell him anything, that is.”

  “So if I tell him that I knew something was wrong and didn’t want to – but that you pushed me into it – you’ll back me up?”

  His hands tightened around the wheel. “Yep,” he said, and meant it.

  She looked across at him and from what he could tell from a quick sidelong glance, amongst those female emotions raging across her face there was something that looked suspiciously – amazingly – like admiration.

  “Alright,” she said amenably, “you’ve been honest with me, so I’ll be honest with you. I didn’t like you either. You undermined me every chance you got. You hadn’t the first fuckin clue what me and Danny were like when the front door hit ye on the hole but you didn’t seem to give a shit – you were like his mistress, only without the sex; reminding him every chance you got what a wonderful time he was missing out on because of the fuckin shrew he was stuck with. And that pissed me off, Steve. That pissed me off somethin fuckin royal, let me tell ya.”

  “That’s not-” he began in protest.

  “Let me finish,” she overrode him, holding up a hand. “I thought that was it, that was your game, because I thought you hadn’t a mature fuckin bone in your entire body. I thought you were a man-child and I thought you needed to grow up; there was Danny trying to cope with all this responsibility and doin pretty well, all things considered, and then there was you, capering around him like the fuckin court jester.”

  He absorbed this. “So glad I let you finish.”

  “You haven’t yet. I know this was all some…some fantasy world we’ve been, somehow, livin in these last few days or so, you and me with a baby between us. But I saw you with…with Aaron. He may have been a…I don’t know what the fuck he was,” she said with a heartfelt shiver, “but we didn’t know that until tonight.”

  “You saw me with him?” Steve echoed incredulously. “I was a fuck up from start to finish. Don’t patronise me by tellin me otherwise.”

  “I wasn’t gonna.”

  “Oh. Well,” he said, licking his lips, forcing a cough. “…good.”

  The GPS said there was less than a mile to go. If only there was a fantasy world they could create for him where he owned a rocket car. Anything to make this journey end.

  “You were a complete fuckup,” she went on. “But it bothered you to be, Steve. You saw you weren’t cuttin it and it got to you. You tried. And if you’d asked me once upon a time what you’d have done faced with responsibility I’d have said you’d have run a mile and not thought twice about doin so. I was wrong. So maybe all that act around Danny wasn’t you playin the serpent. Maybe there was a bit of jealousy in there.”

  They stopped at a set of lights. He put the handbrake on with unnecessary force, something that wasn’t lost on Ellie. She looked at him quizzically and out it came.

  “You’re not wrong. About me. Not being…I don’t know. Mature. Ready.”

  “Steve, Aaron might not have-”

  “Will you just shut up for a minute, okay?” he said, not unkindly. “I’m not talkin about Rosemary’s fuckin baby. You’re right. You thought if I was ever faced up with real responsibility, I’d run a mile. Well, I was. And I did.”

  Ellie’s mouth opened and closed. “Steve, you’ve lost me,” she admitted.

  “Maggie got pregnant.”

  Ellie’s eyes went so big and round when he said this that he half-expected nearby motes of dust to begin orbiting them. She started to say something and then stopped. The traffic at the lights ahead began to move. Steve released the handbrake and pulled away. They were close now. Only a few streets left. Absurdly, where a few minutes ago he’d have cheerfully donated a big toe to the Get Me Out Of This Conversation telethon, now he found a small part of himself was wishing he could have more time. He’d never spoken of this to anyone, not even Danny.

  “I’m sorry,” Ellie said softly.

  “Don’t be,” he replied evenly, angry at himself for feeling a pricking pressure in his eyes.

  “She…lost it?”

  “No,” he said. “No, she didn’t lose it. She just didn’t keep it.”

  “Oh Steve,” Ellie said, and he didn’t dare look at her now, because there was a tremor in her voice as she spoke, a tremor that he knew would be transmitted to him if he looked over and saw her eyes shining. There wasn’t time. Things were far too fucked up right now to begin dealing with all of that mess.

  “Look,” he said harshly, “what does it fuckin matter anyway? This is all so fuckin impossible. I’m still expectin to wake up in my bed any minute now. I dropped a bit of acid in my Queens days. Never had a trip this fucked up. Hope springs eternal though eh?”

  “Steve…”

  “Ellie, forget it,” he said as firmly as he dared, slamming the door firmly shut on the conversation. “Are we here yet?”

  She pointed ahead. “Yeah, this is the street. It’s up here. Last house on the r…on the right…what’s…is there a party or…”

  The house was surrounded by people. Actually, shapes would have been more accurate. They stood three deep on the lawn. As Steve craned to look, he swore it looked as if some were…on the roof? He and Ellie exchanged a glance as the car continued to progress up the street, now only a few doors away.

  “Do I stop? Do we drive on? What?”

  “Drive on,” she said urgently. “We’ll try the bac…look out!”

  He threw the wheel into a desperate spin and slammed the brakes, but too late. The car whirled. There was a flash of something whipping across his vision, something thick, prehensile…

  Glass shattered. The car flipped. Sparks flew.

  The world…went away.

  **

  One week earlier

  “Rumours?” Mr Black frowned. He shrugged. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Michael. Perhaps you’d care to elaborate.”

  Michael Quinn glared at the immaculately-dressed man sat across the desk. The chair he was sitting in was so luxurious he felt sure at any moment it was about to swallow him whole and cause nary a ripple in its meticulously-oiled leather exterior; and it was the poor cousin next to the one in which Mr Black sat. He was a rich man himself, but he’d never seen an office like this – never seen a building like this, come to that. Lircom Tower stood out in the Belfast skyline like some glorious mistake, a piece of a jigsaw plopped into the wrong box.

  “No-one plays the market like you do,” Michael returned. “We all have our little hunches and feelings. We all make deals. But in – what? – almost twenty years of trading, you’ve never once put a foot wrong. Never seen a company go belly up. Never had your investors lose confidence. Never failed to back a piece of tech that goes stellar.”

  Mr Black shrugged. “I wasn’t aware that sound business sense equalled witchcraft, Michael.”

  “What are you still doing here?” Michael shot back. “Where’d you come in the rich list last year? Sixth?”

  “Fifth,” the correction was immediate.

  “And here you are, balls-deep in Ireland and hardly a toe anywhere else on the planet.”

  “Ireland is my home.”

  “That’s not the
way a tycoon thinks.”

  “Clearly, it’s the way this one does. Now,” Mr Black went on, neatly cutting off Michael’s next query with a hand gesture and a look, “I granted you this meeting despite having several pressing engagements, Michael. Is there something I can do for you?”

  Knocking back the remainder of the 100-quid-a-bottle whiskey he’d been poured by his host not ten minutes ago, Michael Quinn took his life in his hands.

  “I know everything,” he said.

  Mr Black’s eyes widened. “Really,” was all he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Your fiscal performance last quarter would seem to suggest otherwise. FormorTech is down twenty-eight percent, if I’m not mistaken? Hardly indicative of an omniscient hand at its tiller…” Mr Black checked his watch and clucked in irritation, “…now if you’ll excuse me…”

  “Dother.”

  The air temperature in the room seemed to drop by about ten degrees. About to stand up and show him out only a few seconds earlier, Mr Black froze mid-rise, his eyes settling on Michael. The only sound in the penthouse office was the soft hummmm of electronics. Michael swallowed through a throat that seemed moisture-resistant.

  Mr Black sat down.

  “Michael,” he said, with a look of concern, “what makes you say a thing like that?”

  Michael Quinn shivered to hear the undercurrent of regret that shaded his words.

  “It’s your name, isn’t it?”

  Dother’s eyes flashed. Normally this was simply a colourful turn of phrase to signify that some degree of reaction had passed across the other’s expression. Not in this case. He actually saw the man’s eyes flash with an inner light.

  Christ in heaven, Michael thought with sudden, terrifying clarity. He’s really isn’t human. What am I playing with…

  “Naming is power, Mr Quinn,” Dother said softly. “My…people…have a fractious relationship with those who bandy our names about without due discourse for what it might entail. Be cautious. Now I shall ask you some questions, and just so we understand each other, when I say ask, that implies a certain level of choice on your part as to whether you answer. I say ask out of courtesy and a sense of hospitality and respect, and not entirely out of a sense of truthfulness.”