Bleaksummer - 𝔯𝔬𝔱𝔱𝔢𝔫 ᴀᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ǝɹoɔ

MY FUCKING BABY????

♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️

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.

In another life, Sundays are slow, waking up to peer through fogged windows at the morning frost, warm brew prickling red blotches onto alabaster skin. A white carpet of prickles, succumbing to morning warmth, the scent of expectant snow on the air and the hush of sheets and tangled bodies. They could be unassuming and undone. Nowhere to be. No business to attend to, no one needed them. A law unto themselves, as it should be. 

In another life, the warm glow of Christmas lights is accompanied by hot breath on cold air, cinnamon spices rushing over hot tongue. Mulled wine and laughter. Coins in charity buckets for local rugby teams dressed as Santa Claus, festive cheer given too generously, papercuts from wrapping too many presents and midnight mass, Irish lilt in community buzz, Gavin and Stacey Christmas specials and too many brandys. Still faces scan over joyous children, anxiously awaiting morn, Christmas lists fulfilled. Cerulean gaze watches his wife potter at the stove, pulled away only by the jingling laughter and giddy feet of his daughters, clumsy clambering into his lap. Hands that held them steady, free of the quiver he has become so used to, tremors he is told God has gifted him as punishment for being a cunt. 

In another life, she gets to feel the fattening swell of life in her womb. Of growth. Tiny hands and feet and thick dark curls. The piercing cry they so desperately wanted to get up for in the wee hours. Tiny life. Tiny perfect life. He dreamt of daughters that were every bit their mother. Daughters that would crawl into bed between them after bad dreams, daughters who craved to be held, . He had always wanted daughters, too aware of how most sons he had met had turned out. 

Slow living is what he thinks of, simplicity, of nights sprawled in front of the television, rain on the windows and salty air on long beach walks. Beautiful chaos in blissful weekends, Sunday roasts and teaching his kids to ride a bike. He wished for hard working hands, callouses from honest work, to plunge sore knuckles through morning ice, feel the burn of ice water. Philip liked to be outside, as a wee ‘un had seen himself working with animals, or in farming. It was something just beyond his reach, the promise of another life, of a stronger bond - whispers and dreams that had never come true. Except for one. Her. 

He had her to be grateful for, among all the mess and destruction. He still prayed. Still a god fearing man, adopting the good and forgiving parts of Catholicism at least and he really did recognise the irony seen as he was far beyond saving. He had tried - when he was younger, when the harsh realities of the world they had moved into became apparent, so culturally different from blighty, where hidden putrefaction grew like a mould instead under the banner of conservative catholicism, stringent godliness - to do the right thing. A sort of exchange in his head, for every rotten thing he did, he would attempt an act of good. 

The Magdalene laundries had been a culture shock, and something that twisted his gut, an ugly bleeding wound on the landscape he had come to call home. The cruelty of those nuns, the coldness in their eyes - and the way those girls exhibited fear had been something that still haunted him. Part of his bond with the Sheas was the understanding on both sides, that to better oneself, they could no longer be privy to ugliness and still stick to the status quo. He thought, selfishly perhaps, that if he could save them, it would cancel out what his family had done to their parents. 

Every now and then, he would let himself slip into the life he could’ve had, doing all the things he had been made very aware he was above. His privilege was one built on the sacrifice of others, and in a funny sort of way he felt he should honor them. And so he cleaned, built, grafted - mucked out Blair’s horses and shovelled coal for the fires, donated to church and the local schools. He thought everyone should be humble, even in the face of overblown wealth, on god given rights, on power - and so he enjoyed every second he and Orla spent in those places…putting the fear of god where they thought right, those feckin’ wizened nuns.

His woman was, though he was biased, everything a woman should be. Soft at heart, and giving in nature, a true mother without the children she so deserved. They had had their indiscretions, and been unfortunately cruel to one another - pain did ugly things to people - but their love had never waned and to him that counted for something. 

He still hoped for that other life, and would do everything in his power to give it to her.

Now, he watched her, listening to the turning pages as she read - nimble fingers creeping over the paper's edge. He had things to be doing, but he wanted to watch her, to be kept suspended within the fleeting moments they had at the moment. He had counted down from ten, and told himself five more minutes for over an hour now. The only sound the fire, muffled voices from the television he now only used for noise to pierce the quiet and her, as she moved, existed, breathed life into their home. She would never understand, he suspected, how much he depended on her presence, on how much he truly needed her. Needed her to be there, to be alright, to have the things she deserved. 

She noticed him, then, a smile crackling over her calm visage and she pulled herself upright from her perch, gliding across the room to thread long fingers through his hair, resting at his scalp and without a word, she pulled him to her chest. 

“I know that look.” She knows.

“M’grand, bird. I love you, I do.”

They had moved a long way from exchanging bad for good, the balance had tipped some time ago and he reached desperate claws out to pull it back. He swore it. 

“You need to slow down, love - does too much ill to have a finger in every pie nowadays, some greedy bastard will eat everyone. Remember tha’.” 

Her voice is like bird song and he sinks into her, raising his arms to pull her closer, inhaling her scent. 

In another life.

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 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐨𝐨 𝐦𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐤𝐞𝐞𝐩 𝐡𝐢𝐦 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞.

The world under his feet was shifting at a rate that neglected to allow him to steady himself; and the air, the air was thick, hot. His Aunt Orla had always told him to take a step back.

It came with a sense of looming horror; the realisation that perhaps his world was as small and as insignificant as a snapped neck in hunters mouth - more often than not now, Tadgh Shea was drinking himself unsensible and these waves came more often than he cared to admit. Their family was slipping into something far darker, and he was powerless to stop it – and he was implicit.

Though they were brothers in arms; he and his father had always been different. Mick was graceful; would wring someones neck and somehow find a way to make it look graceful. As if perhaps the victim had slipped into peaceful asunder and he did it with a smile on his face. When Tadgh chose his side, there was still a small part of him that knew his Aunt and Blair would hurt for him if they knew, but equally, the demons in him knew she’d take him back into the fold eventually regardless. When you have everything to gain, Tadgh chose to gamble. What he neglected to realise was Mick relied on his unreliable memory, in his UNHINGED MENTALITY, on the gaps of time that turned black.

Blackness —- Thursday, Rapacity.

Cool palms grasp clammy cheeks, the scent of tobacco and whiskey seeps into his sinuses and the fuzz around him seems to settle. A steady tone cuts through the din and Tadgh begins to refocus; foggy irises seek to piece the splintering around him together and he chokes in air though it feels thick, like tar and coats the inside of his lungs until he splutters, sputum coating chapped lips, he tasted the iron of the blood on his tongue and his pupils dilate. 

Mick stood over him, grasping his face; and he blinked, his father's lips were pressed into a thin line, it had happened again, family meetings gone awry. Part of him knew his father had needed this, the animal within his son.

It happened every now and again; for years now - gaps of time he couldn’t explain, fits of panic that took over like fog rolling over the moorside. A last sharp pat to his face and his dear old twat of a father slid down at his side and patted his knee, his body heat serving to show him how he quivered despite how stifling the bar had become. He liked to think all sides of his family protected him, but they all knew he teetered as ever on the edge of a cliff, and falling off would only spell true madness. It was only Mick that underneath he knew would be the one to give him the final shove.

Little by little the room around him came into focus, and his ears rang. They sat on the dusty wooden floor of an old bar in Rapacity; owned and ran by a fella whom he only knew was in the way of something the elder Shea wanted. His volatility was an asset, he’d tell him. Recounting the way he handled other human beings as if they were made of rags - and yet, it wasn’t in his nature, he didn’t mean to though it was clear something in him needed to. 

Eyes flicker to the man beside him; and he feels his stomach drop as he looks at the damage around him; his conscience kicking in. They were brothers in arms; bound by a collective cause (or so Mickey thought) and slave to their secrets. Broken glass and moaning bodies; a scramble of furniture.

Another empty shell to add to the list of victories - the very kind of victories Orla would berate him for mind. Most of the time he still felt like a little boy; he had no control of himself, of his head. As though his foundations were collapsing in on himself. He was HEAVY. Damned if he did and damned if he didn’t - he had tried to opt for the quiet life, but there was a greed in him that playing the legitimate businessman wouldn’t sate. Tadgh Shea would never be one for a noble cause; he wasn’t as strong as Blair to be able to walk away entirely, his sister had an ethereal nature, much like his aunt, and he knew they would always be better than him. Despite all, he still moved with the ebb and flow of violent delights and added them to his mental anguish afterward. 

𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐬 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐧𝐨𝐰; 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐲𝐩𝐬𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐡𝐢𝐦 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐧.

Long fingers prodded at aching joints, she just didn’t move the way she used to and yet her brain told her she could still rise to the occasion if push came to shove. West end trained, she was, and Darragh had supported her at every juncture, save how much he whinged at the London smog and the hovel of a flat they called home for a few years, a wee one bedroom crammed into a Victorian on the outskirts of Notting Hill. Men like him weren’t destined to be hemmed in, he was forever scratching at the walls and stomping the green of Hampstead Heath, but even that felt like a cattle shed compared with home and it’s vast expanses of nothing. But her, she slotted into the chaos as if it was a second skin, the volume of bodies, stacked on top of one another, the noise - it felt right. Dutifully, he was either front row, or stage door every night, and for his efforts she dug a little deeper into the little life they shared.

He tried, for her, to stay - paying more than they could afford back then to size up once Connor came along, adding a wriggling pink baby in among the sequins and sparkle worked for a time, but even she had to admit trying to raise him in the din, parcelling him up for school on the tube was not the kitsch childhood she had envisioned for her family. 

Oh, but the sickly sweet smell of sweat mixed with perfume, the bruises that mottled her skin - rehearsal after rehearsal, the life was addictive, she adored it, and it her. When they left to go back to Ireland it snuffed a light out in her, swapped spotlights and dance shoes for nappies, homework and toddler classes. 

Saoirse taught children’s ballet classes for a while, in the small town hall, peppered with flyers for mum and baby groups, the local food bank, bin collection days. It wasn’t enough. Instead she felt a rot in her gut, stirring within the hole she couldn’t fill. The only thing that compared was the scent at the crown of her children’s heads. Their innocence, the pure light they emitted felt almost as intoxicating as the warmth of the stage light. Some would say being a mother was the making of you, but for her, she had been made and moulded years ago. Married to the game, and Darragh was aware and all too happy to allow it, but he’d be remiss if he didn’t admit he cherished the time he had her all to himself.

When Blair came back with her airy fairy idea for a new club, it wasn’t crazy enough that it didn’t curl its talons into Saoirse almost immediately. Something she lost sleep over, and sometimes she’d put on the costumes just to feel the scratch of the sequins against pale flesh, relishing in the red welts it drew over her skin. She’d had two children, so the zip strained and her hips pushed at the fabric. Darragh used to watch her, and all at once he’d remember how the stage split those ruby red lips in two, and she’d beam. The notion of being able to have a hand in it all over again had ripped jagged holes in her stony façade, letting light tough parts of her that had gone dark years ago. 

Opening Absinthe re-ignited something in her, a warmth spreading through her, Darragh wasn’t ready to lose her to the city, and so he bankrolled it in Spiriod, and though he hadn’t considered it at the time, he got his wife back immediately, a flurry of red hair and sparkle and all at once they were 20 again, except this time, they were home.