The Doll's House

He thought about tossing little Susie out onto the main road, excess baggage and all that, but fuck it, she was only young. Once in the mayhem of the busy streets, with other drunks filling the pavements, there were as many taxis as there were eejits. It was easy to shove Susie into one. No doubt tomorrow morning everything would be a blur to her. If not, then maybe she’d pick up a dose of the morning-after pill. He didn’t give a fuck either way.

Stevie could have gone back to Neary’s. The bouncers would have let him in. But right then he was glad of the long walk back to his flat, giving his head time to clear. He could hear the waves bashing onto the shoreline along Sandymount strand. The road was empty except for him and one other important night-walker.

He would have recognised Clodagh Hamilton anywhere. Stevie had seen her before, but had kept his distance. Tonight he did so again. In Dublin, familiar faces had a habit of reappearing, especially when their owners lived in close proximity to one another.

She had felt like a ghost from his past, with her wild ginger hair. Tonight, her hair was partly tucked beneath her coat collar. As she sheltered herself from the chill, the full moon of a clear sky looked down on the two of them, hovering like a large white ball.





The Grand Canal


It’s just me and him now in our own personal cocoon, two lone men. And somehow I can’t shake the notion that I always knew this moment would come. A glimpse of destiny set in the darkness of your mind, taking hold long before you quantify its existence. He was always a slimy bastard, deep down or any other way you’d think about him. A leopard can’t change its spots, or can’t be bothered. I’ll leave that judgement to others. I made up my own mind a long time ago. There are some things you know in the gut from the very beginning. It wasn’t only that false smile of his, plastered across his face, like a George Clooney lookalike, or his inclination to talk too much. It was more the way he managed to win people over, those who should have known better, and those without the wherewithal to see past the veneer. Until, that is, they became one of the unlucky ones, and saw him for the mother-fucker he really was.

The wild grasses on the canal bank are wavering, and so too is my train of thought, wild and unknowing. As if this whole thing is bigger than me now and, like the tall grasses, I’m trying to make sense of it within some erroneous dance. My mood keeps changing, a swinging pendulum, sharp at the edge, cutting away at me. At times it all seems crystal clear. At other times things get mixed up. Until the anger takes hold.

There isn’t a sinner out walking now. I roll down the car window, gasping at the chill outside. A mist has built up on the glass, and I see my younger self silently fingering the word ‘scream’ on a fogged bathroom mirror. The cold air cuts into my thoughts, cold and crisp, like an awakening. It’s moved faster than I thought, swift, clear, sometimes without doubt, and now almost too easy.

His head is bent in the passenger seat. I can no longer see his eyes, but the blood is oozing from his chest. He lost consciousness with the final thrust of the knife. Perhaps better that way. The fucker always talked too much.

It’s time, and every part of me knows it.

I stare at the windows of homes dotted along either side of the canal. They, too, are closed off, just like me and my silent passenger. Without thinking, I look up at the sky. I imagine driving off a cliff edge, ending it all. But that would be too easy. That would be the action of a coward. I’m a lot of things, but I’m not a coward. I have a job to do, a clear, definitive pathway of unfinished business, a stain that cannot be removed until every part and everyone involved, including dearest Clodagh, is history.

I feel my mind drift again, taking in this oasis of calm within the madness. Some of the stars are now fading, holding on for their last moments before going into hiding again. People in this city seldom look up at the sky. They see the streets as the beginning and end of everything. But the stars are there for a reason, and I’m not talking rubbish about guiding us. I’m talking the whole bloody universe out there, far bigger than we know, and right about now I’m also thinking, I hope someone bigger than me knows that what I’m about to do should have been done a long time back. It was destined from the moment I first saw that gleaming set of pearly whites.

A couple of hours ago, I had stood watching him. Part of me wondered why he didn’t know what I was about to do. Why nobody knew. The thought had felt huge, pressing. Surely people should know these things.

I had felt the adrenalin rise, my heart beating fast, remembering the swift movement of the panther – his silent shadow as he stalks his prey. My eyes locked in that same fixed stare, as my blood curled, knife in hand and foot to ground, an ancient soundless lethal shift, the call of the wild, moved me closer as I waited for my time to pounce.





Mervin Road