Alrigh’
He casts a fist beside her head, catching the wall blocking her retreat, inches from her face. She’s too terrified to cry, too shocked to call for help. He levels a finger of accusation as he roars, the pointed end of his anger rattling in fury.
No one can hear them. The alleyway is experiencing a sonic flood from the closed doors of the nightclub, subdued, fit to burst.
He has stopped seeing her and she has stopped seeing him.
And so it goes.
*
“Mammy.”
“…”
“Mammy!”
“…”
“Mammy!”
“What do ye want, like? What do ye want!?”
“…”
“You’re roarin’ and shoutin’ at me. What do ye want!?”
“…”
“Stop dat cryin’ righ’ now, or I swear to Jesus…”
“M-mammy.”
“Get up dem stairs, now. Don’t even tink abou’ comin’ back down.”
“I j-just wanted…a h-“
“I’ll kill ‘em one of these days, God help me.”
*
The text comes nearly a year after the sundering of the heart, the wound still fresh and bleeding. He opens the message in bed, joint in hand, the ember tip whipping grey coils at his eyes. His best friend has just killed himself.
It’s 3:17pm on a Sunday. The joint transmutes to a stick of ash in his hands. A group of children holler as they barrel down the street, kicking a football to one another.
It is some time before his heart resurfaces from the void. The sun has dropped from the sky beyond his notice. Texts had come from all corners of town, offering condolences, sadness, queries.
He has read none of them.
The mental suffocation recedes and reality seeps in.
His best friend is dead.
Anger clashes with despair to form an agonising paralysis. He must speak it to someone, discard the weight to another.
He floats out of his bedroom and down the stairs. His mother is not home, but there in the sitting room is the father, almost horizontal, eyes barely meeting the television against the mound of belly.
His father looks to him.
“Grab us a can, will ya? G’lad.”
He is shaking, his eyes welling.
“Well? Go on, will ya? Make yerself useful.”
And then, like a croak. “Da.”
It takes great effort for the father to turn to him.
“Wha’?”
“Tommy’s dead, da.”
“Which Tommy? Our Tommy?”
A tear slashes his cheek.
“Yeah. He’s after hangin’ himself.”
The father sits with it for a moment, embossed in the seat of all occurrence.
“Why’d he go an’ do dat, now? Hah? Bleedin’ fewl,” he says, shaking his head. “Are you alrigh’?”
He quickly erases evidence of the tear.
“Yeah, I’m alrigh’. Just a shock, is all.”
“You’ll be alrigh’. Grab us dat beer, will ya? Get one fer yerself, as well. By Jesus ye’ll need it.”
*
“Alrigh’, bud? What’s de story? You just ou’ of school, are ye?”
“Yeah…did ye beat dat mission in GTA? Shane said ye did and I didn’ believe ‘em.”
“Wha’, de one wit de helicopter? Sure dat was piss, man.”
“Will ye show me next time I’m over?”
“I’m not home at de moment.”
“Whatcha mean?”
“Kicked out, like.”
“…”
“Shane not tell ye?”
“No.”
“It was only fer smokin’ a joint. Be grand.”
“…”
“Ye’ll know when ye smoke one, yerself. It’s class. Where is Shane, anyways?”
“I dunno. He told me he wanted te walk home alone.”
“Did he, now?”
“Yeah.”
“Right, so.”
“…”
“Wha’? What’s up witcha?”
“Are ye both gonna be alrigh’?”
“…”
“Wha’?”
“…Are you some sorta faggot or somethin’?”
“…No.”
“Den don’t be askin’ such stewpid questions, like. Go on, now. Fuck off home.”
*
There was the wake, a bleary affair that distorted all semblance of time and feeling. Every encounter an impressionist’s take.
Tommy could have been sleeping in the casket, a perfect preservation in all ways but the makeup to disguise the porcelain white of dead flesh.
He expects Tommy to sit up whenever his eyes fall on him.
Wake up, wake up, wake up.
But that is not Tommy anymore. It is a shell. He knows this, and yet the love pouring from his heart is molten. He burns for that discarded form, that lifeless doll, his Tommy.
The evening has taken the shape of a spear, and has finally punctured his qualities.
He stands outside with a cigarette in hand, watching the sun melt into the clouds. Silver pools cast golden rays upon the town, and beside that a black cloud rolls in from the ocean. A rainbow comes and goes.
He hears footsteps behind him. Tommy’s mother.
She says nothing for a moment, then draws a cigarette from her purse and gestures to his. He places the flamed end against hers.
They are two black pillars of smoke, bathed in a radiant gold.
“He’d’ve wanted te go swimmin’ today,” the mother says.
He knows this, remembers the absolution given by the cold ocean during a hangover. Tommy’s cure.
“Yeah.”
It is all he can say.
She tosses her cigarette to the ground and crushes it. Her hand finds his shoulder. Their eyes meet.
You are here and he is not.
A quick loving squeeze from her hand and she retreats.
Back to the nothing, the everything. Back to Tommy.
*
“What does god be doin’ up der in de sky?”
“Well he watches over us, doesn’ he?”
“All de time?”
“Yeah. Course he does.”
“…”
“Why, what’s wrong witcha? Someone bullyin’ ye?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
“You won’t tell?”
“I’m his servant. What ye tell me stays with him.”
“Okay.”
“Go on, so.”
“My da hits me when I cry.”
“Does he? And what do ye be cryin’ fer?”
“…”
“Ye can tell me.”
“Cause mam yells at me when I try an’ hug her.”
“Well were ye bein’ bold?”
“No.”
“…”
“I swear.”
“Right, then. I believe ye. And anyway, god knows the truth of it all. If yer mudder and fadder are cross witcha an’ ye aren’t able te talk to dem, ye can always, always talk te god.”
“Will he make me feel better?”
“I’d say it’s up to yerself.”
“Alrigh’.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Right. Off ye go, den.”
*
Death has neutered him. He feels he has suffered his own micro death, a spiritual cancer dropped into the wells of his soul like an oily bath bomb. The weekends are colourless, and the rallying call of mates no longer ignites his heart. Food is a means to an end. The air is water.
He leaves his home every few days to replenish the numbing agents, encouraged to step beyond his door by the last remaining bits of liquor and weed. He is a grey ghost treading back alley paths and dirt roads without a sound, disappearing within the shadows cast by warm homes. His townsfolk are muted blurs that dissolve in his periphery.
A disdain sprouts in the early spring of his hurt. The town has moved on and he is left behind to wallow, and why should he still feel this and not they? He hopes death knocks on the doors of their loved ones and pulls them into its loving embrace, until church bells are replaced by an infinite dirge to wake the broken and cull them to sleep. He is wishing this more than anything when a door opens before him.
The dealer eyebrows are perked.
“Told ye I’d be an hour, man.”
“I’m only fifteen minutes early, sure.”
“Yeah, not finished wit me dinner though, am I?”
“Sorry, like.”
The dealer tuts and throws his head towards the hall.
“C’mon, so. Fuck sake.”
“Sound, man.”
By the stairs is the sitting room and kitchen, the dealer’s partner and their child eating dinner and watching television. He does not look their way.
Up the stairs is the scent of cheap body spray and old home. He hangs on the threshold of the master bedroom while the dealer delves beneath the bed. Eventually his head pops back up.
“The usual, yeah?”
“Yeah. Sound.”
A small plastic baggie lands on the bed before him, the earthen bud of a foreign land wreathed in orange hairs and sticky crystals.
“Ya owe me twenty-five fer de last one, though.”
He rolls his head.
“I had te give it te me ma or she’d crack.”
“So dis on tick, den?”
“Yeah. I get double dis tuesday. I’ll run over after an’ give ye seventy-five.”
“Right, so. I don’t wanna remind ye, either.”
“I’ll be here.”
“Right, go on.” He nods to the baggie. “It’s lemon this time.”
“Ah, cool. Delighted.”
He does not care.
He leaves and heads home, his head kept down beneath a placid sky of off-white. The clouds threaten him with neither rain or sun. It is a hanging limbo from east to west, north to south. He does not look because it is a mirror, and the truth would drive him mad.
*
“So yer givin’ up on it, den?”
“…”
“Well? …answer me.”
“No, ma. I just don’t want te do it anymore. I don’t like it.”
“No. I’ll tell ye what it is, now. Ye’re lazy. Just like yer fadder. Lazy little shit, that’s all ye are.”
“I’m not lazy.”
“Ye’re lazy. And d’ye know wha’? Ye’ll be gettin’ no help off me next time ye’re lookin’ for somethin’.”
“I won’t ask ye, then.”
“Good. I didn’t buy you yer uniform just for ye to give up. And I’ll be fucked if I spend another penny on ye fer anyting else.”
“I didn’t know I wouldn’t like it.”
“Don’t you shout at me! DON’T YOU FUCKIN’ SHOUT AT ME!”
“I’m goin’ over to Tommy’s.”
“Yeah, go on, so! Over to your boyfriend. Don’t fuckin’ come back anytime soon. Lazy little cunt, ye.”
*
It is the middle of the night when his body experiences an acute rejection of reality. It comes moments after sipping cheap American whiskey, supplanting the edge brought on by his high. His PlayStation had offered a safe playing field to work through the intensity of the drugs, and then without consent the mind revolted. A rug was pulled beneath him and the world seemed to tilt.
Now white hands are clasping the desk, his breath ragged, and all reckoning of matter and his relationship to it has ceased. He is a disembodied thought with frayed edges trapped in the flesh of a construct he no longer recognises. The armour once grafted is stripped and has taken parts of him with it. His whole mind is an open wound, raw and incapable of comprehension.
He thinks he is dying, and the feeling of falling backwards refusing to subside.
This is death and he cannot breathe.
“No no no.”
This is death and his heart is a failing engine.
“Ye’re alrigh’, ye’re alrigh’…”
This is death and he will give anything to make it stop.
He makes for the bathroom to splash water on his face. His legs feel like rentals, every step requiring a calculation. Air no longer comes to his lungs of its own accord. It is now a manual affair.
An explosion of mortal dread ignites in his gut and puts his vision in a tail spin. He grips the hallway banister and cries out in fear, shutting his eyes and wrapping his free arm around his head.
“Fuck. Fuck.”
His head is a spinning dreidel balanced on the pin of a needle.
A crack along the base of the stairs becomes his momentary saviour. The feeling persists with high prejudice, yet the stillness of that crack reorients his brain. There is nothing in motion. The body tells different, but there is nothing in motion.
This is a small victory.
He is in the bathroom, bathed in light, surprised to see that his deterioration has not altered him physically. There is a frightening normality to his features in spite of the acid dissolving his mind. Two fingers to the pulse and counting.
This will never end.
He checks his phone.
It has only been two minutes.
He retreats to his bedroom to hide beneath his covers, in the warmth and safety of his self made darkness. He will try to recover his breathing, to make sense of the episode. Rule out an ambulance. It’ll be grand.
It has to be. It has to be.
But the remainder of the night is a failed parley against himself. No quarter is given. He spends hours trying to outrun himself to no avail. The futility slow drips an empathy for the wilful dead, ink blots on the white sheet of thought.
Tommy no longer seemed so selfish.
He is pushing his feet into the bed, pressing his back against the wall to defuse the sensation of falling, but his body is unmoored. He is unmoored in an infinite ocean and he cannot fathom the sight of land. The horror has poisoned him so deeply that a tethering of any kind has become myth.
But the flesh is just that and cannot sustain itself as a vessel pouring a life’s worth of congealed thought. The pool of his consciousness is eternal and will run until the body finds and shuts the valve.
Sleep takes him.
And when he wakes he may find land if he so chooses.
This is death.
*
“Why are ye ringin’ me?”
“When are ye comin’ home?”
“Jesus H. fucking Christ. I told ye not to ring us unless it’s an emergency, didn’t I?”
“…”
“Well? Didn’t I?”
“Mam, I’m scared. I don’t want te be home alone.”
“Ye’re thirteen years of age now. Ye need to cop on.”
“But I keep hearin’ noises around de house, mam.”
“Ah Jesus. He’s cryin’ now. No, I’m not dealin’ wit ‘em tonight. You talk to him.”
“…”
“Hello?”
“Hi da.”
“What’s wrong witcha?”
“I just don’t want te be home alone anymore. I’m scared.”
“But why, though? What’s der te be afraid of in de house?”
“I keep tinkin’ I hear someone downstairs.”
“And did ye check?”
“Yeah.”
“And was der anyone down der?”
“No.”
“And all de doors are locked, aren’t they?”
“Yeah.”
“Well der ye go. Ye’re safe as. We wouldn’t leave ye if we didn’t tink it was safe.”
“…”
“Alrigh’?”
“Alrigh’. When are ye comin’ home, though?”
“I don’t know. Probably another hour.”
“Ye said dat an hour ago.”
“Well it’s like dis…yer mudder and I haven’t gone out in two weeks. We work hard and deserve a bitta time off, don’t ye tink?”
“Yeah.”
“Right den. Good lad. Now I mean it dis time: don’t be ringin’ us unless it’s an emergency. D’ye understand? Otherwise ye’ll be in big trouble.”
“…Alrigh’.”
“And don’t be cryin’. Ye’re the man of de house.”
“Okay.”
“Right. And ye better be in bed and asleep when we get back.”
“I’m in bed already.”
“Right so. Love ye.”
“…”
*
Sobriety has gifted him a new partner. During his half decade of hiding and rediscovering himself, a litter of freshly made women has emerged, unspoiled by the social circles of his past. A whole generation of newly afflicted souls, and he a hardened sherpa willing to guide.
Her name is Aoife. She is relentless in her criticism of the small town norm, evident by her likes and dislikes on tinder. This appeals to his dour outlook on the town that forgot about him and his pain. She was not around for Tommy or any of the minute dramas that have plagued his upbringing. And so she is a fresh perspective to all things, a full white coat on a canvas thick with all spectrums. She is a new world.
They ignore the eight years between them and merge generations. It is a complete unearthing of all that is and all that was, two separate cultures occupying the same space.
She shares tiktoks about mental health. Each video is a baseline of commonly known psychological issues presented by untrained content creators, and yet they are a revelation by comparison to the nothing he’s been familiar with.
There are moments after sex where she’ll conjure a line from a book that speaks to his pain, nourishing the hurt so it may provide a type of sustenance. He has read exactly three books in his life, two of them mandatory assignments in school and nothing he can recall. But now there is a hunger. Words have given shape to his pain, bordered and refitted them to take up less space.
He believes he is doing better.
A confidence blooms within the three years that they are together.
And now she is with child.
Purpose envelopes him. He may unspool the knots of mangled generations and form a clean line. He will be the cautionary tale and raise fences. The squalor of his youth may finally be honed. Compensation in the form of fatherhood.
He may do better.
He may.
*
“When I was yer age, my fadder used te beat de livin’ snot outta me.”
“…”
“And I don’t be hittin’ you, now do I?”
“…”
“Well?”
“No.”
“No. Because I don’t want ye to go through what I had te go through. So ye need to show a little more respect, alrigh’?”
“…”
“Answer me.”
“Alrigh’.”
“Good.”
“…”
“I can’t wait till ye have yer own children. Ye’ll come back to me and say I was right all along.”
“I won’t.”
“Ha! Ye will. Now.”
“…”
“Ye’ll thank me, so ye will.”