Long Fingers Prodded At Aching Joints, She Just Didn’t Move The Way She Used To And Yet Her Brain Told

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.

He could still remember the first time he saw her, fuckin’ statue of a woman - perfect, she was. A mop of blonde ringlets atop biblical features and he knew, in the moment her eyes et his that he wanted to pick at all of her loose ends, unfurl her as if he were a kitten clawing at the soft fibres of a ball of wool, to be the making of her and her undoing. Truly, Tadgh wanted to own her, to crawl inside the soft folds of her flesh and pull her inside out. 

What Tadgh hadn’t accounted for, was the mouth on her. A crass, uncouth American girl. A diamond in the rough with none of the sensibilities he would expect of someone who looked the way she did. He found himself needing her, for a time, she made the voices in his head shut the fuck up, and the first time he’d had her he was sure he’d heard the goddamn angels sing. This creature in his bed was far beyond what the scrappy gypsy lad had thought he’d been destined for, and he’d met her before his finances were something to chase. 

She was loyal and as vicious as a fuckin’ chihuahua, and she had him wrapped around her finger, they grew in power together. For a couple that appeared to have everything, it pleased them to play silly games, each pushing the other to their limits, enjoying the chaos they left around them. Faithful, though they weren’t, it did something to him to watch her in the throes of passion with others, smashed flesh and writhing bodies - it always begun well, until the rising mould of jealousy put rancid taste on his tongue, and the events had seen him put more than one innocent head through a window, all to reclaim her and fuck on the funeral pyre. Nothing rattled them. Nothing at all, nothing until - she told him with eyes full of bewilderment, that she was pregnant. 

Those tiny fingers and toes, his Violet, it was inconceivable to a man like him that he had been blessed with something so perfect. Sure as shit convinced him love wasn’t in his vocabulary until he had held her. A creature as heavenly as her mother, and for her he swore he’d serve them on his knees until he perished. A nuclear family, they weren’t, but they were as close as he could muster to perfection.

So it was sods law after all these years of marriage she’d decided she loved pussy, too. He wouldn’t divorce her, though, no, divorce wasn’t in his vocabulary and that little mousey headed little bint would come to learn that no matter how close she’d think she was getting, Rose knew where her bread was buttered, and understood as much as he, that they were property of the other one and on more than one occasion he’d had to unfurl clenched fists when he’d seen them together; I will not hit a woman. He had some morals, after all. Rose toyed with him and he was a dog for her. To him, it was just another game, to her, it was the beginning of something new, a tingling she didn’t yet quite understand.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HONEY!!!! 💖🥳

Thank you sm my BABY ♥️♥️♥️

I tilt my head, there is something about being here nowadays that makes my skin itch, as if it should come away from me in parched, dry sheets, a snake shedding its layers. This used to be mine, and now it mocks me. I always did think it stuck out too far, too high, almost too regal of a skeleton for the disease it housed. All I see when I look at this fuckin’ building, is failure. Failure of a marriage, or failure of the chance at one and all its trimmings so to say. 

Respected though he was, or feared, choose how you spin it, I still know him for what he was, is and had been to me all those years. How different things were, when they met, the Locke siblings were no more than blithering idiots trying to make a go of it after their maw and paw snuffed it. 

I hate comin’ here, he’s so different nowadays. We became so poisonous to one another, I could sit here and play the victim, course I could, but it wouldn’t be honest. I ain’t the kinda girl to sink into the wall flowers and act small and unassuming. I could, and do hold my own. He could be a fuckin’ bastard, towards the end. I knew he wanted out, but he just wouldn’t say it, and part of me wanted to prolong the inevitable, cling to the power I had left. Already balls deep in her. Fillin’ her belly with the baby I wanted. I won’t say it’s karma one hasn’t stuck, but ya know. 

I fuckin’ hated her then, because I thought she’d won. Miss Fuckin’ Sunshine. She had him, and she’d won, and I may as well have been screaming into the void cause every fucker just accepted it. We had been married since we were nineteen, all those years just gone. I prayed for the first time in my life, but there ain’t no-one up there that gives half a damn, and I also mildly considered the smooth metal of a shot gun bringing me peace. God wasn’t listenin’, and I figure that he don’t listen to folk like us. People that sink into the dirt and swim in it like dogs, writhing in their ruin. In fact, the only one of us that probably has any kinda ongoing conversation with the big man upstairs and maintains any kinda kinship is Sean is, orla’s crackpot lad. Too teeming with guilt to accept this cess pool for what it is. 

I don’t hate her now, cause i see the life she leads, and the loss she wears on her gullet like a boulder. Blair shea is the victim i didn’t ever want to be. I often imagined what it would be like to crawl up inside her, feel the soft pink wetness of her innards and just get him to look at me the way he sees blair, just once. 

Instead all i see is his face, twisted and cocky, cigarette ever perched at the end of yellowed fingers. I nipped the end off of one, lobbing a vase as hard as I could. I just wanted to hurt him. It was vapid, blind regret, lip didn’t even flinch, just accepted the onslaught with the same stony resolve he always had, peered at his finger as droplets of vermillion sank into the thick carpet between his toes. “Fuckin’ big now are ye?” he hadn’t so much as brushed past me. Violent though he was, to his credit, i was the banshee he had tried to tame all these years. A fuckin’ toddler stampin’ her feet as i’d always done. Fat lotta good it did me. 

When that man was done, he was done, just wouldn’t say it if it killed him. Preferred to get on his soapbox after the fact. He only ever turned on me once, rattling my skull into the closet door until my ears rang. I cant really remember why, only that i’d poked and prodded too much, but as soon as he’d grabbed me, his fingers melted to a quiver and he let go. Too ashamed to continue the conversation he had walked out. Never touched her though; never would.

Shouldn’t have followed him and yet, i found myself nose to nose, bent over his desk as he bowed his head, pupils sinking into the words he couldn’t absorb on the papers in front of him. Quietly, and all too calmly, he dropped a heavy palm on top of mine, the hot metal of his wedding band as he removed himself again said all it needed to. 

I’d been a cunt, we had been. Now it was all gone and he was different somehow, he glowed. We had settled over the years, i didn’t hate any of them. Turned out once you’d been married that long, you ceased to have an opinion at all. Years of toil, reduced to the unofficial alimony check he still delivered every month. Loyal as a labrador that man, it’s not the money, i can do without it. But we always have a coffee, and manage to laugh at the idiocy in our marriage, and i know there’s a heart beatin’ in that tin chest. We’re different folks when we’re with the person we’re meant to be with. 

I do wonder though, what he’d do, if he knew most nights i still slept under this roof. I do wonder how he’d alter if he knew his brother was the one keepin’ me warm at night nowadays. That was difference I suppose, one of them would lay down and die for the other, dermot, however, only loves dermot.

ooc: I can’t concentrate because I get to see Robbie Williams on Saturday and it’s making all my 12 year old girl dreams come true as a 31 year old woman. Will I cry? Probably. He is EXACTLY who he thinks he is and I love that for him.

“M’ tired.”

Her voice is small, and sinks into the ripples of the surf in front of them, syllables sticking to the chill in the breeze. The sun sinking below the waves, throwing splotches of pink and orange into the tide. Saoirse and Darragh had run to the edge of Spiriod, tensions in camp Shea were bubbling over and they needed respite, or out all together, but the closer they got to the edge of town, the wearier their limbs became. Leaving them with the next best thing; the coast. 

“I know love.” He sniffed, the scent of sticky sweet doughnuts wafted over and his stomach rumbled. They had come all this way and just sat. Sat, and talked. The quiet Shea needed a break too sometimes. Peeping at him through salty tendrils of hair, plaited sloppily at her breast, she studied him, Derry was weathered as the cliffs overshadowing the bay, lines set into his face peppered with the dying embers of the auburn in his facial hair, it had all been snuffed out. It suited him, age, getting older, a mop of white hair at furrowed brow. Though she supposed neither of them could say they were wiser or better off for it. For all the troubles they were determined to turn their backs on, the need to help their family seemed to be the thing pulling them under. Part of them wanted to go back to being the kids in the caravan park, a town girl on the wrong side of the tracks. Her parents had fuckin’ despaired at the time, but they just didn’t see what she did, and he hadn’t failed her yet. They got off that site, and as the business grew, so did their fortune.

The tide was coming in, salty blue trickling closer and closer to sandy toes. Saoirse found herself making bets with the water, daring it to slip under her and soak the fabric of their clothes. Wash away a multitude of stresses, pull it from their pores and yet, as she looked back to her right, her husband had shuffled further back and was smiling at her, hand outstretched. 

Irises tracked the length of his arm and she reached for it, allowing him to pull her closer. The smell of stale beer on his breath and the aftershave she had bought him for Christmas last year; cinnamon, vanilla, bourbon sat in the crook of his neck. The warmth of his skin and the scent of it was home to her. Not where they were. He had given her everything, a home, a platform to have a career, beautiful children. His family were different, not all of them - steadfast as they were to protect their own, they had no desire to cut the cord, only to drink themselves deeper into wonderland - but it wasn’t wonderland at all, and none of them were Alice. Instead they were ensnared in a cocaine powdered trap and the more they wriggled, the deeper the teeth sank. It puzzled her, putting things on the line in the name of wealth and perpetual success. Sure, they did it as a team, won and lost together, lived and died by the Shea name, but sitting on the outside, she could see the toll it had taken over the years, the lost opportunities, the missed connections, any honest passions. Anything they had was tangled within the brambles Michael had grown around himself. 

Far be it past her to say, but it was too far gone for them to release them - best they could do she supposed was to chop them off at the ankle, bloodied and alive than risk watching them be mauled one by one by the stark reality of this life they had woven. Win or lose. 

Darragh would be the one to tell the tale at the end of it all, she had no doubt, and whilst his moral compass flickered from time to time, he had never lost sight of the simple pleasures and achievements the rest of his kin had. 

Long finger wandered into the breeze to tap the end of his nose, beet red in the fading sunlight. “Doughnut Mr. Shea?” He caught the end of her finger between his teeth and let it go to replace with a kiss. 

“Ye spoil me, Mrs Shea.” 

“Don’t forget it.”

There they sat, on a cool sand, faces smothered in powder kisses. Sticky and indulgent they pulled at a grease stained bag for beige wonderment. Enjoying sweet treats as a child would. Gulls whirring near by as if vultures looking for their carcass. Flat yellow feet pattering wanting prints in the sand, getting deeper with each pace. Everything deserved minute indulgence from time to time, and so she stood, scattering sugar crumbs among the birds, wings catching the wind to land, beady eyes not meeting hers for even a second as beaks picked at gooey dessert. 

Grinning widely, she turned to Darragh and her heart sank, his blue eyes nestled in his phone. It wasn’t like him, to be sure, but as his eyes scanned mystery text, she too felt the pull, the itch in her feet to return home to duty. To pop the bubble. 

Just then she shivered, and phone screen went dark, birds flew away. 

“We’d better go, love.” He murmured, the disappointment evident on his slumped shoulders, sticky hands thrust into the sand he shook it off as he stood as if a snake shedding skin. His features had darkened but he reached for her, as he always did and planted a kiss at her temple - cinnamon, vanilla, bourbon. He would always be hers, first and foremost, before any other familial duty. 

“Mick’s had Absinthe done over, a warnin’ m’ guessin’.”