Delighted to have my flash fiction published in The Irish Times
you can be read here below or on the link below
MY HANDS shook while my mind raced with thoughts. I tried so hard to slow down, to give myself time to take just one thought and follow it through – it seemed almost impossible.
My mother had offered to stay over but I said no. I didn’t want anyone else telling me that I had to let go, release this grief. How unhealthy it would be for me, for Jamie, if I kept holding on to it so tightly. Nobody understood that this ball of grief was all I had left of them – if I let it go, I would have nothing. The little clock chimed 5am. I had to go to the hospital to collect Jamie today, to bring him back to this house. This hollow shell of a house, too quiet with just my voice trying to fill the rooms.
It was the last thing I felt like doing but I thought if I put up the Christmas decorations somehow the house might feel like home again, at least to him. My eyes burned and my throat twisted and tightened yesterday when he said, “I’m going to write to Santa again Mum, there’s still time, I’m going to tell him I don’t need the remote controlled jeep or the surprise, instead just bring Daddy and Laura back home to us.”
My hands shook a little more, black shadows flickering on pale walls, while I fiddled with the tape on the box. Was it really a year ago that I smoothed that tape to close over the lid and protect all our precious Christmas baubles for one more year?
I took another decoration out but this time the tremor in my hands was too much. I watched as my snow globe world rolled from my grasp onto the floor, across the boards, the snow fluttering wildly now. The hands on the miniature clock tower inside spun backwards, back through time, unwound the memories of other Christmases in this house. The tiny group of singers, their gently sculpted faces all red lips. Their bobble hats, twirled uncontrollably across the floor, buried in the deluge of snow, until the globe crashed hard against the marble fireplace and shattered into tiny pieces. Did they hear the sound of glass breaking? Had he turned his head to look back and see her body hanging limply in her baby seat? Did he hear Jamie scream, did he see his eyes opened wide with fear? Had he taken that drink when I asked him not to, when I phoned him? Had he driven too fast because I annoyed him by ringing and asking him not to have a drink especially with the kids in the car?
I fell to my knees and picked through the shards of glass, I lifted the tiny figures, held them to my lips, held them in my hands. The tiny figures lay perfectly still across my white, bleeding palms. The tears began to fall.
Never know how much I love you
By Doreen Duffy
In a small dusty street theatre in Cairo, Raj Romero sat in the dressing room, his white turban with its ruby red jewel dropping onto his forehead pristine. He was carefully brushing through Lola’s lustrous dark curls with her ivory handled hairbrush, all the time talking to her and making sure she was comfortable. Her slender hand placed beside the stem of a half-filled glass of red wine, the light bulbs surrounding the mirror, one of which hadn’t worked for years, partially illuminated Lola’s heavily made-up face.
It was to be the last show of the day, but it was to be much more than that for them and Raj wanted Lola to look her absolute best. He had spent the last of his hard-earned money on a fabulous sequinned red dress, which he thought clung perfectly to every curve of Lola’s exquisite body. He complimented her over and over again, telling her he was still in awe of her beauty. He knew she felt a little too old for him but as he constantly reminded her, he had never known such happiness until he found her.
Raj smiled at Lola. She was so beautiful.
“Come over here”, he said and brought her to the full-length mirror to show her how truly fabulous she looked. As he looked at her smiling up at him, he thought of the first time he had seen her. He had been for some years working a steady run in the theatre in Cairo when on one of his nights off he saw Lola. He knew immediately she would be the love of his life. Lola was everything he had ever dreamt of. At that time, she was working as part of a low-rate comedy act in a carnival. He thought that first night he saw her that she made the stage her own, she was mesmerising, her dulcet tones sliding over the words of ‘Fever’. He waited for his opportunity and when he got his chance went to speak to the carnival owner and putting in an offer, he paid a lot of money to be able to take Lola to work with him.
There was a
sharp knock on the door and a voice shouted,
“Five
minutes Mr Romero”.
“Five minutes”, he whispered to Lola holding
her close,
“to the
best show they’ve ever seen”.
He went
over his plan again with Lola and encouraged her to give the performance of a
lifetime. As they prepared to take the
stage he let his mind drift over his life with his true love. Things couldn’t have been better; he had
everything with Lola. His life had
totally transformed. He felt like a
confident and self-assured man with Lola at his side but as the years rolled by
and the wonders of moving pictures stole the audience from the small theatres,
Raj became despondent. The theatre owner
was constantly harping on at him to put more variety into their act. He said the patrons were bored with the
monotony and missed the many voices and puppets he used years ago.
Raj’s mind was tortured. He couldn’t
understand how the audience weren’t as in love as he was and happy to watch
Lola sing night after night. She was so
wonderful and he still thought after all these years that together the show
they put on was fantastic. He thought
long and hard about what he should do.
He had come to his decision. He
couldn’t bear this life for them anymore and he knew it was time for them to
exit this stage. He travelled by bus to
a nearby town and in the apothecary there he purchased his lethal dose, but he
couldn’t leave his darling Lola behind and made sure to buy enough for two.
They sat together in
their dressing room after the last call, and he held her cold hard painted
wooden hand The ventriloquist and the dummy slipped into un-consciousness.
“You can sit here beside Seán Molloy,” she said.
When the nun left, I pushed my teeth out over my bottom lip and stuck my two fingers up at him. He turned a lovely bright shade of red and hid his face in his books for the rest of the day...
Thank you so much to Aoife Carberry for the above. It was wonderful to receive the Deirdre Purcell Cup for the Maria Edgeworth Literary Flash Fiction Competition.
My piece 'The Beautiful Girls' can be read on the link here below
The Beautiful Girls
My daughter is being
bullied at school, by ‘the beautiful girls,’ can you believe it, that’s the
only way she could describe them, ‘the beautiful girls.’ I did go to the school; don’t get me wrong I
have tried everything. She didn’t want
me to go.
It’ll only make things worse,” she said.
I’ve left her, as pale as the cloth that
binds her wrists, her face barely visible above the duvet. Her hair draped across one side.
We went to have it cut last summer, to a
friend of a friend, someone else recommended us to. They said she’d listen to us and do what we
wanted. They were right. She did listen, carefully and she took time
to do what we asked.
“If you could just shape it here, and here
and layer it, so it will fall over this one side of her face and almost cover
her eye, just where the scars are worst.”
And she did, and she took
her time and was so gentle, sweeping the long dark curtain of hair between
expert fingers, her scissors a rhythmic sound in the otherwise silent room.
I was afraid to look and I was afraid not
to, so I stared, tried to melt my warmth and love into my daughter, held her
worried gaze in that brown eye, mirrored it.
When she was finished, the hairdresser, we were satisfied. We both wanted her to leave though so we could properly look ourselves. Weigh up the result, see would it cover the worst of the damaged face, enough that she could go to the new secondary school, try to blend in.
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My Flash Fiction piece 'Seeing Things' published in the Burning Bush 2 online literary magazine can be read here or on the link below
https://issuu.com/burningbush2/docs/burning_bush_2__issue_6
I'd been on the bus for over an hour. The smell of tightly packed people wafted up into the small spaces. The man in front of me, I'd thought he was asleep; he had been so still, lifted his arm swiftly and with nails ingrained with black, knuckles curved, he smoothed the hair at the back beneath his hat. My elbow rigid against the rubber seal tensed. I cupped my hand over my forehead. It felt hot. I could hear my watch ticking. He turned; his head held low until with thick fingers he pinched hard the felt, shoved back the brim to reveal a layer of sweat above familiar watery veined eyes that bore into me. Bile rose, it burned.
I wished again that I hadn't gone to see that'Medium' last night. She didn't see my mother but there was a man.
"He's wearing a trilby, he's nodding towards you."
She said he had a slow leg. I already knew. I remembered the feeling when would hear the drag of his slow leg across the boards in my room. I tried not to think. I knew he could read my mind now in this place between life and death. Tell-tale letters absorbed by old walls bound together in black and white, strangled words escaped, gasping for air amongst the bodies of oblivious faceless passengers.
The bus trundled up along the quays, the river Liffey black like a slick of nylon wound its way tightly around my neck.
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My Flash Fiction piece 'Sweet Justice' published in Brilliant Flash Fiction online literary magazine can be read here or on the link below
https://brilliantflashfictionmag.wordpress.com/archives/
As I stared through the windscreen at the black shining road getting sucked beneath the fast moving car, the hedgerows rushing alongside in their applause, I wasn't sure if I was right to have taken this lift.
The driver was animated, chatting incessantly.
I allowed my mind to switch off, saying "mmm" and "Oh really." I stared out the window where rain used the glass as a runway to speed down and rest a moment in the rubber seal at the bottom.
I'd been hitching for over two hours. Nobody wanted to give lifts these days. My hands were freezing from holding the cardboard sign and water was pouring off my rain jacket and rucksack. It was great to be in the warmth of the car.
Rain was coming in sheets and the wipers were unable to cope. I thought he should take it slower and said as much.
He laughed. "You can put yourself back on the road with your sign."
I reached for my rucksack and pulled out my knife. Throwing my entire body weight behind it, I lunged in and out of his side. When he was still, I grabbed my knife and climbed out of the car. I went under the trees and cleaned my face and hands as best I could.
A driver stopped and offered me a lift. She was a nice woman all motherly, tutting about what a bad evening it was to be hitching a lift. I snuggled down in the passenger seat, weary.
She offered me one of her sweets.
The sort of sweets I hate.
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