Bleaksummer - 𝔯𝔬𝔱𝔱𝔢𝔫 ᴀᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ǝɹoɔ

3:00AM. THE HOUSE.

Her eyes would never adjust to nightfall, when the world fell quieter, for Orla it was deafening; raucous and torturous - faces that loomed in the dark waiting for her. It was as though a careless seamstress had picked a hole in the fabric of the earth, letting souls spill through the tear, pushing toward her through the ink.

Though tonight was different; it started as a tension headache, a cluster and filled her with a sickness she had only ever experienced once before,just after her husbands’ death - perhaps it was the universe’s way of telling her to stop poking her nose in the afterlife. 

Starting out into the blackness, she wrings her fingers around the glass and drains the amber liquid contained within, a feeble effort perhaps to reduce the mounting pressure in her skull. Lifting her palm to her face, her cheeks hot, she covered her eyes, blocking out the air that surrounded her and she pushed dry thumbs into hollow eye sockets, the dull ache behind the bone elicits a warmth to accompany the shapes that danced in front of her irises and she retreated inside. 

In instances like this, as before, her home offered little comfort for the looming shadows, hissing out of sight like hungry serpents, teeth grazing her ankles as she sat at her desk. Pen to paper, focus on the nib that scraped the paper.

JOURNAL.

My body aches. Fingers ache. It’s coming again, my skin feels as though it’s splitting, shedding to let something else in. My mouth tastes bitter, metallic and...I know I can’t stop it. My family will think Auntie O is falling off her rocker again if it sticks like it did before. Though even this time feels different, darker. It’s suffocating. The beings are louder than usual, more brash, enjoying the haunt as though they know something else is rising too. That perhaps under tonight’s veil they may be able to take what they need from me. 

She’s standing there, I see her - and she’s haunting me. It’s no longer the playful visitation, no, tonight she waltzes to my side and breathes in my ear. I can smell her, it’s seeping into me. This house is no longer looking like my own, either. It aches, as though the walls themselves are weeping and she’s still standing there, blank, tears cutting her ivory skin and I want to reach out and touch her but I can’t. I try but the cold burns my fingers. 

It’s louder now, the walls are breathing, she’s staring through me now, at whatever lurks at my shoulder, her feet rooted to the floor, it’s a slow, soft hush as if time is realigning itself to contain us here. I’ll sit and I’ll watch until it takes over, watch her pass from room to room, waiting, on loop. 

The walls are screaming now, rattling, I’m trying not to be perturbed, I just watch, eyes glazing over as the inevitable waits at the hearthside. I crave her eyes to fall on mine, instead of it, and they do every now and again, but it’s void of anything, I’m just chasing a projection and it’s holding me, I’m as trapped as she is. 

The headache is too much to bear now, pen to paper, pen to paper - it won’t do. The figure is staring at me now, aware I can’t ignore it anymore, it comes nose to nose, opening its mouth to speak though words don’t come out. Instead, she clears her throat, and smiles, a smile that seems to stretch over her jaw, contorting her features and then it sinks like ice into her flesh. 

Orla stretches, though her skin feels stretched, as though she no longer fits in her body. A stretch, she approaches the mirror and pushes manicured fingers into the lines on her face and tuts, her voice is sinking behind the one that spills from parted lips. Orla no longer embodies herself. “Easier to get under your skin nowadays, O, losing your touch. I’m gonna get you ready doll, and we’re going out.”  

Brunette curls are pulled into a low bun, the woman who always looks so small in her own frame now dominates. Heels clack now; against the pavement, having already traded a sloppy blowjob for the taxi fare into the city centre, it was about time Orla Shea went out, the poor woman deserved it, over the years she had dipped in and out of the petite battleaxe, finding her surprisingly easy to suppress. It was still mildly amusing that even after all these years, Orla Shea still exhibited an extraordinary amount of restraint. Taking simple pleasures in ravaging the Catholic guilt that would creep back over her come morning. How could she still believe in God, when the family she was head of took joy in conducting so many ills? 

Perks of the job, perhaps as devil incarnate, forcing humankind to unwind, push and pull their bodies to a limit they had previously found impossible. With Orla, it was about chipping away at that reputation, about exploiting her long buried flaws. She had made a criminal enterprise her art, and she did it under the guise of mother dear. What Orla Shea needed to remember, more than anything, is that she was a fucking shewolf. Death, murder, bloodshed wasn’t something she needed to make her commit, no, that came with the territory. The true conquest was forcing her to unwind, to revel in delicious sin. 

It didn’t take long to find what was needed, taking particular joy in exiting to watch from a distance as colour rose in her alabaster cheeks. How beautiful she looked, fingers curled around the edges of the dresser. Orla was poetic in her climax, watching the diamonds on her fingers glitter as one wrapped into the hair atop her lovers head as it sank between her thighs, the other wound around the cigarette between her lips. 

Those chocolate hues rose to mine, as it registered she was her again, chest heaving, I wave and nod. He can’t hear me, though she can, and though I no longer inhabit her, the sway will be just enough to compel her to remain. “Burn him.” Orla’s eyes narrow, struggling with clawing back her inner sanctum as the cigarette lowered, pressing into the males shoulder, he flinched, though didn’t stop. Amusement came anew as she didn’t move him away, a cackle.

“ Better leave you to it. Till next time, Auntie O.” 

It rattled out of her, knocking on every bone as it left, leaving her with the ripple between her legs and the fingertips that curled roughly around her wrist. 

There’s a light, and it flickers - philip watched his wife circle it, a look of exasperation mottling her face, and yet the image let solemn lips crack open into a smile. Be it that his gut tells him she is his wife, but the commitment says otherwise…or be it the idiocy he finds in watching her struggle rather than her asking for help, it curls the corners of slack maw all the same.

The hallway lightbulb, it was another something he had promised and not gotten around to. He watched her turn it on and off, each glow of the bulb illuminating a new line of frustration. Their house had so many knocks and notches now from a variety of fuckery and now it bore the scars of their life there. In truth, he liked it that way, in every crack lay a memory.

Both of them had the money to fix it and then some, but there was an unspoken understanding that they’d get around to it, the thin veneer of perfection was undone with a closer look, but it was them. It was their space and it illustrated every fight and every make up. Every kiss, every shag - the 𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧 in the oak floor, the creak in a floorboard set free the laughter they forgot about when times felt too tough to bear.

Albeit it was a ‘man’ way to think of things. For his wife, it was merely something else for her to bleet at him for. It ignited the ever present need in her; to nest, and home make, regardless of whether or not there were children present. Their lives had never been any different, even after all this time. It held the ever present guilt that he hadn’t been able to give her children; they both blamed themselves but took care not to dwell.

He watched her ferret from room to room, and knew by now the exact moment she’d snap and call him out for the useless son of a bitch he knew he could be. Philip was his 𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫’𝐬 son, god rest her soul, and there was something in him that loved the banter, the opportunity to rise and fulfil the husband character he so 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲. To prove his point; to make it upto her and force them back into the small box in which they just were : in love with each other and each of their imperfections.

He knew the life they shared wasn’t perfect, it was hardly the shit fairy tales were made of but it suited them.

The smile grew wider over the lines in his face, and he relished in the ache. Philip rubbed grubby mit through the mop of inky locks at his scalp, stubbing out puthering tab end in waiting ashtray. Blair was made for him, and he her.

Crossing one boot over the other, he leant back in his chair, and he watched as his dainty wife shot a look over her shoulder, blonde tendrils tumbling past her shoulder blade, he wanted to 𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐡 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐤𝐢𝐧, he thought.

𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞. Everyone said he used to laugh, and with her, with her there was still some cause to. To cat and mouse, to play house like children would.

Cerulean irises fluttered to the banal on the television, a ticking wheel of some bullshit American dream game show. “Feck me, Shirley, the answers fuckin’ 𝐛𝐥𝐮𝐞.”

It was just enough, a whisper of change in the air and he watched dainty palm make contact with the living room door. Blair crackled, an electricity to their coupling. To be sure, she was on the ceiling now and in probability rules she could have shorted the electrics in the whole house with her temper alone.

His eyes flickered again to meet hers.

“What’s wrong bird?” Door handle met drywall and slotted into the last fight hole it made. Long fingers reached for the next cigarette, running the filter over his lower lip, he lifts struck match to tobacco.

“Are ye’ yankin’ my fuckin’ dick Lip?”

He blinked, raising a playful eyebrow. Shaking the match out, he watches grey smoke meet the blue of his cigarette, curling around one another, and allows himself a moment to dwell on glowing embers.

“And why would I be doin’ that?” He inhaled, slowly, measured, turning his head back towards the tv. “M’ just watchin’ television, love.”

Anger meets television screen as she launches the laundry basket perched on her hip at blue glow. “Catch Phrase?! Ya kiddin’ love- you ain’t watched this with any degree of seriousness ever, n’ Stephen fuckin’ Mulhern turns me stomach the diddy wee cunt.”

She sighed, exasperated, and pottered to the hallway. He pressed his lips together, brimming with adoration for the fire in her, comical that her reactions were always gigantic even in the face of the smallest inconvenience.

This was it. The 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐞 - she’d make to do it herself, teetering delicately on step stool, he watched every curve of her and resigned himself to the fact she’d ruined him for all other women. To be sure - he was more than okay with that.

He sighed, hauling himself up off the chair on which he had sunk. “Baby.”

“Fuck off will ya? I’ll do it myself.”

“Baby.” He moves towards her. “Son of a bitch B, let me do it would ya? You’re gonna fall and snap ye chuffing neck, and then ye'd definitely be no use at all.”

“Philip, I mean it, go away.”

He laughs, a low chuckle; and she blows, swinging for him, but she stumbles, he grasps her hips. And he couldn’t be happier to be right it fills him with a warm glow, same as the one he feels at the crown of his head as flat palm meets it. Still - he clings to wriggling woman.

Slowly, he props her onto her feet on the floor, and moves to twist flickering bulb from its mount. “Let me do it, darlin’, a’ said I would didn’ I?”

She sniffs, resigned, an unexplained smirk on her face. For a second he thinks he’s won, before thumb and forefinger find the heat in the bulb.

“Mother fucker.” He spits and she crumples beside him. Shaking his hand he turns. “You little bitch.”

Laughter breaks and he scowls. “Ya fuckin’ useless with me even now love. Cmon, rinse ya fingers and do it with a rag next time.” She takes his hand in hers and leads him to the sink, tending to the growing redness on his fingertips.

Fuckin’ perfection. P’haps it was time after all these years to make an honest woman of her, neither of them even mentioned it much anymore.

She won, even when she didn’t. His wife. His Blair, she was a force of nature and would outsmart him even in 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡.

𝐛𝐮𝐫𝐧 𝐢𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧, 𝐚𝐧 𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐭.

They knew better. 

Intimacy – their journey to a new recovery had revealed different layers this time, dynamics to their untraditional coupling. They had agreed to stop trying for a while, their bodies both holding evidence of too many failures. Failures of something that should come natural, but didn’t. Perhaps it was a punishment for the lives they were laced into. 

However, of late, she had noticed a small shift, a reversal of roles; nights in which she lay at his side – she the one rattled awake, paranoid for his well being. Medicine induced slumber made stony features soften and she admired, soothed with delicate fingertip trails over clammy flesh. When he did stir, she watched, moved; fluid, pressed to him, skin on skin. Blair basked in newfound vulnerability. The animal in him lay dormant, revealing soft, exposed flesh. 

The two of them were perhaps basking in the release of the pressure they had put on themselves. Too much. Her body betrayed them; and he could appreciate the weight it left on her frame. Words were never enough; gentle touches were no longer enough to soothe. He ached to give her what she so desperately wanted, They were not normal, and perhaps this was just another facet to a conclusion they could both see but wouldn’t meet.

They knew better.

Those shielded oceanic orbs, the discomfort in masculine frame began as a shudder, a nudge –  the way thick lashes attempted to pry open his eyelids, to see who haunted his mind, but his resolve remained weak, eyelids too heavy.  

“No, no….shhh. Shh.”

She would soothe, attempting to lull him back down before pain would tear through broken body – opening wounds he had thought long since healed.

“It’s alright, I’m here – it’s nothing.”

Cool knuckles brushing over set jawline, fingers tangling in his hair.

“It’s me, sweetheart, it’s Blair.”

Visage would loll into the pillow, slow, sluggish breaths marked sleep though his fingers would curl into her flesh. “I love you.” She would whisper. There was a version of them here; somewhere between night and day when they would exhibit tenderness. He’d peer at her through the blackness, reaching for her, rough thumb pad brushing over her lip.

But he’d remember.

Philip propped himself up in bed, the coldness rushed in quickly as with consciousness came memory - he remembered. It had only been a few weeks, and this time, in the aftermath, she appeared to be wearing it better than he. Blair watched as the man that had coiled to her but moments ago, now reached for a cigarette, wordless. 

To many, it was a harmless movement as any, but to her it was another knife in her barren gut. She was the woman that couldn’t sire him a child. It was a paradox, archaic and all at once coveted. She was not, and would not be a natural mother, just as he would not be a natural father. For a couple that when they wanted something they had it; it was this, the most natural of loves, that evaded them. 

The very praxis of her womanhood betrayed them. She should be able to - but she couldn’t. 

He lit the cigarette, slowly, measured. The glow in the blue light the only thing she could find to focus on as his features blurred. 

“Go back to sleep Blair.” He noted cooly.  “I’m here.” 

“Are you?”

He wasn’t.

They knew better. 

Knew better than to think they could hang onto the promise of that tiny life. This path was well trodden; they memorised the steps, knew the way. The path had been lined with flora and fauna, but now, they had walked it too many times - it was lifeless. Dark, dry cracked earth. It never stopped her though, imagining, pink plump joy, the ache in her to hear a cry, to hold tiny hand in hers.

No one told them, how time after time; her body would prepare, swell. How each time she would begin to nest; and he would watch, the ghost in her doorway. It wasn’t something he could fix, nor did he have any right to stop her. 

He knew better.

The bathroom floor had become a cold, stark companion. A reminder that perhaps this wasn’t meant for them. The white tile sullied all too quickly with the evidence of the life they were incapable of hanging onto, coming out in clots - their dirty secret and no one knew. It was never soon enough to tell, never safe enough to say. The soiled linens, mixed with sweat and tears. The hand wringing. The clinging. Then - silence. 

It was a process. Clinical features would be restored. Linens would be replaced. Begin. Again. 

They knew better. 

The last time it had happened, it was he that rose to the guttural sobbing beside him. The warm wetness in the space between them. Blonde ringlets hung matted at the nape of her neck and he reached for her but she flinched. Hands pressed to the growing mass on night gown; she hadn’t had the energy to get herself to the bathroom. To hide. To close herself off as she normally would. This time; he had time to see from the inception what it did to her. Blair was haunted; the vacant look behind glassy eyes filled with tears. 

The way hands stuck to the crimson at her gusset. The light in her was going out. 

Though - this time it had gone far enough for Orla to notice, as she had done when Rose had fallen pregnant with Tadhg’s first. The woman just knew, had predicted ten tiny fingers and toes and a baby girl with raven hair as thick as her mothers - and then all at once, their burden was no longer just theirs. It was a shame that had spilled out; ugly. Unnatural. 

A gaping scar on the knowledge that normalcy would never be there's. A reminder for him that the ring on her finger felt to her like a weight on her, pulling her under. Blair was drowning and he couldn’t stop it, he would never understand. It was not a man's place. Long, unending grief for children that would never be hers, be theirs. It was this stark, staring fact that drove the inevitable wedge between them every single time. 

Grief that twisted itself into something more monstrous. It was easier to be angry at one another for letting another fuck it away. It was easier to cover the problem with another - it was easier to argue about infidelity than to watch the forlorn gazes at other parents with children. To watch expectant mothers gush over the promise of a new start whilst they would be eternally chained to this one. 

This life of gutter crawling, squalor wrapped in diamonds. Deceit. Cheat. Lies. All dipped in nice white powder. 

This was no place for a child.

They should’ve known better.

And yet.

Gold. Who was that guy that touched everything and, ‘ting!’ pure gold? All that money thrown at education and I don’t have the foggiest. I suppose mommy wanted me to have the best, and possibly meet some kids my own age, but honestly I’d have been better being thrown into the local high school, at least then I’d have had a chance at talking to people who are more likely to have a soul. 

I am well aware of my place, and truly, I know I could fall in shit and come out smelling of roses. Most of the time I don’t have to think at all, days upon days of blissful nothing and fuck me, I have no idea why the rest of my family make it look so fucking difficult. Forever jamming their fists into where they can make more of it; green. The thing that makes the world turn on its axis, so they say. Don’t make us any happier though, does it? I’m sure the foundations of this place are built on valium and loud sighs. 

We are, mostly, very stupid, and very far removed. It is wealth you simply cannot dream of, the gap between us and your average joe, middle class with a 401k, 2.5 kids and wife with a Louis Vuitton handbag is actually a fucking chasm. So deep and so wide it could unhinge it’s jaws, and snaffle the Grand Canyon. IT'S NOT REAL. A world of no consequence, no one need grow up, endless fucking frolicking at the bottom of Mary Poppins’ carpet bag with Peter bastard Pan and all of his merry men, or whoever the fuck Disney said. 

We just are. 

True enough, we could do more to help the needy, or…those that are on the breadline, whatever the PC term is now. But our ignorance means our own problems, usually of our own doing are usually far more important. Frivolous, but far more important than the fact you’ve shoved another kid out and can’t afford a grocery shop. The fact that those little colourful tickets designed to look like you aren't completely fucked, the ones you cash in at the foodbank, the proverbial begging bowl, is your life line. Who the fuck do we think we are?

Uncle Philip does an especially good job of knotting himself up to be the King on the funeral pyre of his making. Good businessman, fairly bad human, but so are we all I’d wager. Silly little footnotes stomping around unending halls crying at our fistfuls of cash. He hates it. Recently, he spends most of his time lurking and chain smoking, it almost appears it physically pains him to smile, which is a shame because I remember a time his lips would crack and his laughter would make his whole frame shake. He was, is…warm, he’s just forgotten in all the din of being one of the luckiest motherfuckers on planet earth. 

Our family is odd, though. I see that now, The Sheas are very much new money, it's a dirty term around people like us. This miserable nature hasn’t become engrained in them yet, they are still worker ants, bringing their wares back to the nest, stockpiling wealth for a rainy day. But fuck me, they are like sunshine, and they are just so…well, REAL Their emotions aren’t regulated by having a stick up ones ass, they've just fuckin’ grafted for the world they inhabit. There is a certain levity, to having them around, and they have so much familial turmoil and yet they are simply magic. It’s fascinating. 

I realise sometimes how tone deaf I am when I try to have conversations with them, or, well anyone outside of the Locke family prison. I am coveted, surrounded, and yet none of them fucking listen. I am nobody, not a victim, but a nobody. Just the prize pig, and I must say some of the most heinous shit, because our life is just playtime, and theirs actually means something. 

I am aware how trite I sound, rich kid wants to mean something. What’s wrong with that though? Well, I suppose the sun shines out of my ass, and therefore, I have to work harder to prove not everything of value I am capable of producing was funded entirely by the obscenity of the wealth in my estate. All at once I want to hide and I want to be seen, instead I am balls deep in a stereotype I am incapable of shaking off. How tragic.

ᴅᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ᴛʜɪɴᴋ ɪ'ᴅ ɢɪᴠᴇ ᴜᴘ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴛʜɪꜱ ᴍɪɢʜᴛ'ᴠᴇ ꜱʜᴏᴏᴋ ᴛʜᴇ 𝖑𝖔𝖛𝖊 ꜰʀᴏᴍ ᴍᴇ ᴏʀ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ɪ ᴡᴀꜱ ᴏɴ ᴛʜᴇ 𝖇𝖗𝖎𝖓𝖐? ʜᴏᴡ ᴄᴏᴜʟᴅ ʏᴏᴜ ᴛʜɪɴᴋ, ᴅᴀʀʟɪɴɢ, ɪ'ᴅ 𝖘𝖈𝖆𝖗𝖊 ꜱᴏ ᴇᴀꜱɪʟʏ?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HONEY!!!! 💖🥳

Thank you sm my BABY ♥️♥️♥️