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. 

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.

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.

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.

MY FUCKING BABY????

♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️