King of the Estate

The glow from the dashboard lit up the underside of his face, painting it a Ghost Train palette of green and shadow. Hunched over the steering wheel as if the windscreen was a newspaper he was squinting to read, he nodded his head in time to the music, mouthing the lyrics to himself. He looked up at the flats towering over the dual carriageway like canyon sides. People said it was shit round here; they said that people were shit round here. “Fuck ‘em,” he thought. “We’re all just blood, bones, shit and piss. At least I know what I am and what I’m not. I’m not sat in a semi watching soaps, scratching my arse and wishing it was Christmas so I'd get a blow job off the wife.” He smiled at the thought and pushed the accelerator.


Intercede

In the still and empty scream of 1:00 a.m. he’d cradle his tumbler with both hands. “Nora Kirwan, intercede for me. Paul Barry, Francis Louis Reagan, Patsy Dowd, Jim Feeney, John Fallon; intercede for me.” A convocation of the dead by one too sick of seeking forgiveness in whiskey.


Orange

She said she wanted to taste an orange and remember times before war and cancer changed everything. Taking the train to Hull, we bought one from a sailor. She was dead when we got back. Halving the dark rose blood-orange, we felt it weep down our chins.