Unfiltered

by Sophie White

  Ali couldn’t believe it. Hazel’s whole reputation was staked on this festival. How could she let it crash and burn like this?

  ‘Great that all these fires are raging to light our way,’ she huffed as they made their way to a large clearing. Just then, a feral hun rushed from the darkness and grabbed her wheelie bag from the wheelbarrow.

  ‘Ah sorry, I should’ve mentioned the looters,’ Paul winced.

  Ali parked the wheelbarrow beside a hastily erected tent that seemed to be serving as an ad hoc catering solution. A young girl was rotating speared meat over a small fire and distributing Easy Singles on white bread with mayonnaise to the filthy, hollow-eyed hordes, their singed flower crowns and smeared glitter a sad mockery of the free-spirited Insta-mavens they had been just hours before.

  ‘This is insane. All right, good luck, lads.’ Ali bid them farewell and, exhausted, pushed through the crowds looking for somewhere to sit safely. I just need to find one familiar face in this hellscape. Even Kate would do right now. Ali could smell the meat and, even though she hadn’t eaten since early that morning, it didn’t appeal.

  ‘Where did you get that lamb?’ A shout cut through the darkness.

  ‘I brought it with me.’ Even from across the clearing, Ali could hear the girl’s defensive tone.

  ‘You did to feck,’ the man erupted. ‘I keep my sheep up in the back field and I’m short a lamb and now, here ye are, you Insta ingrates, with fresh lamb.’

  Jaysus, they’re butchering livestock! Ali shook her head. They’ve barely been a day without food and they’ve gone full Lord of the Flies.

  She peered through the darkness to try to make out the farmer. Hazel had said the island was uninhabited so this guy must have got here on his own speed.

  As she stood to see better, a pain deep inside gripped her and wrenched her back to the ground. ‘Fuuu-uuuuck,’ escaped from her mouth.

  She moaned on all fours. Shit, shit, shit.

  The pain at last receded and then … nothing. So weird. She gingerly stood back up feeling more or less fine again. Uh-oh. She didn’t even want to entertain the possibility that labour was starting. Her due date was four weeks away and all the midwives had said she could basically take it that she’d six weeks to go because she’d go over. She glanced at the chaos around her. If there was a worse place to give birth, she couldn’t imagine it. To be on the safe side, she started the timer on her useless phone in case she got another bad pain – she couldn’t bring herself to call it a contraction – and ploughed into the crowd looking for the farmer. She had to get off this godforsaken rock.

  Just then she heard her name.

  ‘Ali? Ali Jones?’ Ali whipped around to see Blake Jordan in denim short shorts and a paisley shirt rushing out of the trees to her right with his hairless Sphynx cat, Julia Roberts, trotting daintily on a diamanté leash beside him.

  ‘Blake.’ She raised her hand and at that moment was crippled by another monstrous pain. ‘Aaaaahhhhh.’ She doubled over just as Blake reached out and caught her arms. She hung off him half crouching, half squatting. ‘Fucking fuuuuuuck.’

  ‘Eh, hun? Are you in—?’

  ‘Nooooooooo,’ Ali cut across him trying to ride out the pain. ‘I’m not, I’m not, I’m not.’ She panted, which seemed to ease the twisting, knifing pain that was radiating from the top of her belly through the small of her back and down to her knees. ‘It’s. Just. Practice. Contractions.’ It was getting hard to speak.

  ‘Really?’ Blake looked doubtful and disgusted in equal measure.

  At last the violent pain seemed to ebb and Ali could straighten up a bit. She checked the time. Only six minutes since the previous one. She tried to shrug the thought away. It’s not happening now. It’s not. No one’s that unlucky, Ali. They said the practice pains could be bad. She reset the timer again to be on the safe side.

  ‘Ali? You dilating, hun?’ Blake said with a smirk, echoing the night at the Glossies WildCard launch when this whole mess had begun.

  ‘No.’ Ali was firm. ‘Definitely not.’

  ‘Good, ’cos I’d say the only worse place to push out a baby would be the deck of the bloody Titanic.’ He pursed his lips.

  Ali opted to ignore that. She felt as if she’d just been returned to her body after that attack of agony. ‘When did you arrive? What the hell happened? Did you see Hazel?’

  ‘Oh no, she was long gone by the time we were abandoned here. Dead to me. Holistic Hoe, more like. Though, I suppose I don’t have the full picture just yet. Word on the dusty track is that the Ezra guy totally screwed her. He was feeding her the same bullshit we all got about how amazing it was all looking and she just never bothered her bleached hole coming out and checking on progress. So, when she landed this morning it was the first time she’d seen this dumpster fire. Appara she did have a look around to see if it was salvageable. I met a girl earlier who said the Caffeine Colonics were the only thing available, but there was an early casualty there – let’s just say running water is an ESSENTIAL component of that treatment and some poor bitch was juiced up but couldn’t get a rinse for love nor money. Not pretty. If we all survive this, the coverage is going to be savage. I’ve been filming everything. I’m going to pitch it as a doc to RTÉ. I’m calling it From WELL to HELL. And Back.’

  ‘Love it!’ Ali leaned closer. ‘Listen, I heard a farmer giving out about someone stealing a lamb from his land. Hazel always said Inis Brí was uninhabited, so he had to have come across by boat. I lost him in the crowd, but we have got to find him and convince him to get us out of here.’

  ‘Thank Jaysus, culchie excellence will save us—’

  ‘Blake?’ Ali grabbed at him, the surging torment having come back. He took her arms again while also managing to hold her at bay. ‘Blaaaaaake.’ The noises coming out of her didn’t sound like she was even making them. She could see Julia Roberts at their feet looking up at her perplexed. ‘Blaaa … aaaa … keee, I feel. Like. My. Ass. Is. Gonna. Ex. Plode.’

  ‘Ali??? Hun???’ Blake sounded scared. ‘These are Margiela, babes.’ He lifted a distressed trainer gingerly. ‘Can I just stand a little further back?’

  ‘Noooooooooo,’ Ali howled and dug her nails into the flesh of his arms.

  ‘NAILS, Aliiiiiiiiiii!!!’ Blake howled with her just as Ali felt an unmistakable crack inside her followed by a gush of fluid. Blake managed to leap clear of the deluge, but Julia Roberts wasn’t so lucky.

  ‘OH my fucking gee, JULIA ROBERTS!’ Blake wailed, scooping up the cat and just as quickly dropping her, as it hit him what she was drenched in.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Ali gasped. The pain had receded but was immediately replaced by abject terror. ‘The baby is coming, Blake.’ How could this be happening?

  ‘Mother of God.’ Blake made the sign of the cross. ‘You and Julia Roberts stay here. I’m going to find someone. Cross your legs or something. Oh God.’

  ‘Please don’t leave me,’ Ali pleaded, feeling the pressure building and radiating down to her knees again but he’d already hurried off. She got on the ground so she wouldn’t fall over. ‘I’m going to shit myself,’ she whimpered to the cat.

  She was far enough from the clearing that none of the festival goers were in danger of tripping over her but, if Blake didn’t get back quick, she felt sure the baby would erupt out of its own accord. I don’t even have a blanket or anti-bac! The pressure was insane, but she couldn’t see what was going on back there. Had she already shit herself? Thank God it was dark. She started to cry between gasping breaths. It was so terrifyingly out of control. Don’t come, baby, don’t come yet. She tried to remember anything she’d ever gleaned from One Born Every Minute, then she thought of the YouTube tutorial Sam had downloaded and sent to her. Please let me have saved it to the phone.

  She waited for the current swell of agony to subside and grabbed her phone. She found the video in her downloads. Birth: Epic How To was the title. It opened on a man.

  ‘Welcome to our Epic How To fo
r giving birth. Step 1: Go to a HOSPITAL.’

  ‘Oh fuck youuuuuuuuu,’ Ali screamed as another contraction took hold.

  ‘If you are watching this while in labour, I cannot urge you enough to go to a hospital.’

  Ali clenched and pounded her fists through the longest contraction so far. ‘AaaAAAAAggghhhh. I need to push. What do I need to do when I wanna push?’ she screamed at the phone.

  Finally, the pain relented but Ali didn’t think she could hold out much longer. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  ‘You can see her too, right? It looks like she’s in labour.’

  With the momentary reprieve between contractions, Ali noticed a small crowd gathered off to her right.

  ‘Yeah, I see her,’ whispered one of the crowd. ‘I thought I was hallucinating from the Easy Singles – my system’s not up to processed food. But she is there. Can you see the cat too?’

  ‘Oh c’mon,’ Ali hissed through clenched teeth, more to herself than anyone in particular. She didn’t want anyone near her right now, except a doctor.

  ‘Ali! Ali!’ Blake hurried through the crowd, phone out and filming. ‘I found Sean Óg – he’s the farmer.’

  ‘Oh thank God!’ Ali cried as another contraction reared up. Now whatever else happened, here was an adult with some scrap of common sense. She dug once more into the earth and howled. The crowd to the right had started up a supportive chant of ‘This pussy be yankin’, this pussy be yankin’.’ Which was weirdly working for Ali. She couldn’t hold back now: the contraction seemed to have taken over and she found she was pushing whether she wanted to or not.

  ‘Right, let’s get her to one of the caravans – they’re just through these trees,’ Sean Óg instructed Blake. Between them they carried her, and Ali didn’t even have the will to worry about what state she was in south of the equator. She was still in their arms when the next contraction hit. She squirmed and moaned but Blake and Sean Óg held fast. They hustled her through the narrow door of the caravan and set her on the floor of the living room area.

  Blake ran to the door and screamed into the crowd, who’d jogged with them from the clearing, ‘Anyone out there have towels, water, anti-bac gel, Jesus, anything clean?’ he implored. ‘Even a tarpaulin, bring it back here. We’re havin’ a baby.’

  The crowd cheered, clearly into the biblical turn proceedings had taken.

  ‘Oh yeah, for God’s sake get the tarpaulin, protect this divine carpet,’ Ali managed to scoff right before another wall of pain hit her. ‘I have to puuuuuush.’ She gave Sean Óg a pleading look.

  ‘Yeah, we’ll get you set, on all fours, good girl.’ He patted her flank, then Ali saw him grab two ropes he had slung over his shoulder.

  ‘What are they?’ Blake had returned, camera out and capturing everything. Ali, meanwhile, was shoving her knickers off, relieved they were black. Small mercies.

  ‘What? My calving ropes?’ He held them up for inspection. A red rope and a blue rope with adjustable loops on the end. ‘They’re for pulling the calf out, by its legs, like.’

  Ali couldn’t even summon words by this point, so she reached up and grabbed one of Blake’s arms and one of Sean Óg’s and bore down as hard as she could. The contractions now seemed to be working with her. Building and receding like waves, each one crashed with the force she needed to push.

  Suddenly she felt an unmistakable release and peered down past the bump and between her legs.

  ‘Its head,’ she screamed. ‘Whaaaaa! It’s turning. What the—? It’s looking at me!’

  Sean Óg started to rush to the back of her but Ali instinctively reached down, just as another contraction helped ease the rest of the baby out into her arms.

  ‘Oh my God, wild. Ali, that was WILD.’ Blake turned the camera to himself. ‘What I’ve just experienced’ – he was breathless – ‘that was the most EXTRA thing I’ve ever seen.’

  Ali had no idea what she was doing but she put the baby, who was turning from purple to livid red just like in One Born Every Minute, against her chest and wrapped them together in her hoody. Euphoric, she could barely grasp what had just happened. She felt as if she was off her face as she instructed Sean Óg to tie off the cord and cut it once it went white, with Blake filming and providing commentary all the way along.

  ‘It looks like a unicorn’s mickey.’ Blake peered over Sean Óg’s shoulder as he hacked at the umbilical cord with a Stanley knife.

  Ali laughed dreamily. ‘Just keep my nips out of shot, please.’

  ‘Seriously.’ Blake was blinking away tears of emotion. ‘We could make a mint on this as a reality show, Ali!!! Three huns and a baby. This is a pilot no one could pass on. Sean Óg has real charisma and you’ve been doing very well of late,’ he told Ali generously.

  Sean Óg took off his cap and leaned down to scoop up the placenta. ‘Is it a boy or is it a girl, then?’ he asked, cradling the afterbirth tenderly.

  Ali peered down at the impossibly tiny baby flopped on her breast.

  She had a cap of dark hair like Sam’s and she’d be called Millie for Miles, but Ali had brought her into the world with her own bare hands and she knew all they would ever need was each other.

  Afterbirth

  4 weeks later

  The Big Short: How Bots and a group of digital anarchists calling themselves The EYES have caused chaos in the Influencer Economy

  Shelly finally opened the article on the fifth or sixth time she was sent it. Amy had sent it, Hazel had sent it, Ali, Amanda. Even her dad had sent it from the other side of the bench they were both sitting on waiting for Shelly’s name to be called.

  ‘What do you think of that hacker crowd, then?’ Jim shook his head while Shelly scrolled and Dash, her rosy new baby, sucked on the bottle she was managing to administer one-handed. It was Dan’s first Friday taking Georgie to the apartment he was renting in Grand Canal, just south of the city centre, and they had both agreed it would be best for Georgie to go on her own for her first stay at Daddy’s new home. Dash would go soon too but it was most important for Georgie to settle into the new arrangement before adding a baby to the mix.

  The story had broken the previous week and Shelly had done her level best to avoid it. Instagram was reeling in the wake of an elaborate hack that had been years in the making. In a complex cyber heist, a small group of digital anarchists who go by the name of The EYES had infiltrated the company’s systems and populated the app with bots. The fallout would be catastrophic to SHELLY. Amy predicted brands would be scrapping their influencer budgets and not renewing contracts as the picture came further into focus.

  ‘A depressing end to a strange chapter in human evolution,’ the article continued. ‘Like Narcissus himself, we became enthralled by our own reflections, the influencers playing to an audience that potentially wasn’t really there.’

  Shelly glanced up to check that Dash was still sucking contentedly. Jim would take him when Shelly was called. Her dad was a real baby guy and it was lovely seeing him spend so much time with Dash.

  ‘Users and brands alike have professed to feeling betrayed by the revelations. “I was broadcasting intimate moments 24/7 – was anyone even watching?” one influencer, who wished to remain anonymous, told the Guardian.

  ‘Influencers and indeed the ordinary users are likely to struggle to find meaning, at least during this adjustment period,’ advised psychologist Dr Meghan Bryce. ‘Many have been essentially performing their lives for years and now, there is a danger of them becoming depressed or disillusioned.’

  Shelly X’d out of the article to a voicenote from Hazel. She pressed Play and put the phone to her ear, careful not to disturb Dash.

  ‘Shelly. How are you? It was lovely catching up last week. How’s little Dash getting on? I’m just messaging to wish you luck with Polly’s hearing. You know I’d be there with you, but the hacks would absolutely savage me. Also, some of the legal aspects of the W Y N D fiasco are unfortunately still far from resolved – motherfucking Consumer Rights people will
dine out on this for ever, never mind all the civil suits. Anyway, good luck today. I know it’s all been a bit mad with the Insta revelations but I’m proposing a little Insta-mum morning next weekend. For mums recovering from this Insta trauma. I think we need to all pull together. Eleven a.m. on Saturday, kiddies welcome. Maybe we can get them to show us how to monetise TikTok.’ She laughed as the voicenote ended.

  Shelly contemplated this oddly muted new Hazel. She sounded cowed by the events of the previous month. She’d been pilloried for the W Y N D debacle. Ezra had embezzled a frankly terrifying sum of money from her. He had funnelled every single ticket sale and brand endorsement fee into his own account and fled. Tens of thousands Hazel thought she’d been paying to contractors to create the festival were now bankrolling his exile. He had come so highly recommended, had shown her pictures updating her on how the build was coming and she’d never thought to question it or go and see for herself. Now her only source of income appeared to be completely collapsing. The only upside in all the mayhem for Hazel was that she’d managed to dodge being exposed by Jenny’s Under the Influence podcast. Jenny had been heavily criticised for her coverage of Polly’s breakdown and Under the Influence had disappeared from iTunes and Spotify. It was a small mercy but one Hazel was nonetheless grateful for. ‘I couldn’t take another scandal at this point,’ she’d confided over coffee the week before. ‘Not with my whole business imploding.’

  Shelly, on the other hand, felt oddly relieved. She leaned down to brush her lips against Dash’s velvety little cheek; she was shattered but free.

  Free from the yoke of the phone, free from the anxiety over exposing her life and family, and free to make a fresh start. She was meeting a new agent after the hearing and, while she was nervous – the woman repped only the most respected talent in the country – she was determined to impress her. It was just a preliminary chat. Dash was still so tiny, she wouldn’t be rushing back to auditions straight away, but she wanted to lay the groundwork. It was time to move on from Durty Aul’ Town and push beyond her comfort zone. Ironically, it was Ali who had inspired her with My So-Called Best Life. Seeing her take that risk, be vulnerable and put something new into the world: that was something Shelly had once loved about acting before she’d begun going through the motions as Imelda and acting the part of herself 24/7.