Tiny Plays for Ireland

Reaching into the void: Whats in a name.

Reaching into the void: Whats in a name.: Many of my friends belong to motorcycle clubs. They have in some cases provocative names, in others just a simple statement of them being bi...

swampy abyss

the weight of the world, the dejection of a thousand, thousand souls sat on his back, desolation surrounded him. he was in a bad place, the baddest of places, on a rock floating in a swampy abyss of nothingness.

but even in his pit of despair, he was not alone and as he felt the arms wrapped around him tightly the melancholia lifted a little and his breath became less laboured. Each burden; he thought of it, touched it, held it and then let it go. His head rested in the arms, feelings of safety were beginning to return.

He was not yet ready to embark on the ascent of the abyss, he was patient, waiting, healing. One day soon, he would stand, not in his own strength, with the help of the one whose arms now are so snuggly encircling him. Later still those same arms will lift him out and place him on solid ground.

pixilate the mix

millpond surface

bizarre dislocate

choke expire

churning circles

crescendo waves

suffocation

commotion train

walls raise

sapped out

instinct prayer

damm reborn

breathing

raindrops

It was the rain I missed most. Growing up in Ireland you certainly got used to the soft days, the showers, the heavy downpours and torrential rain. I remember one summer; I must have been ten or eleven. It rained every single day for the entire summer holiday, then the first day of term; bright sunshine.

Sitting in the room watching raindrops fall down the window, like an ever changing waterfall, I remember that. The wind, there was always wind, would drive the rain against the window panes. The panes themselves would shudder and moan. They were the old type, two halves and a sash cord to raise them up or down, only one fixing in the middle. Designed to last, designed before house burglary became an occupation for so many, but they did like to groan.

The house was, I remember, fond of talking. Floorboards creaked as you stood on them, doors whined as you opened and then exhaled when closed. Tiles on the roof thought they were in a rock band, pounding rhythms with the rain, thrashing out da-dum,da-dum, da-dum. Presses and cupboards held their own secrets; moths, insects and spiders all vying to be top-dog of whatever press they were in.

Up the creaky stairs and along the corridor was the bathroom. For a young curious lad the bathroom held the most appeal. In the twilight, silverfish roamed the tiled floor, woodlice snuck out of the skirting board and made a dash for the underbelly, the dark side of the bath. Once I counted four different kinds of mould and fungi growing in the damp humid conditions, black mould on the walls, a turquoise growth in the corner of the bath. Under the sink was a platform, hewn from fresh timber for the ‘smallies’ in the house but it had aged and in the clammy dank darkness of the bathroom and had grown orange and yellow curly foils of fungi. My brother, the daft one, wanted to eat them but then he would eat anything; charcoal, turf, the dog’s dinner. He was always so hungry and so painfully thin.

He was the first of our family to die in the 2014 emergency. He had always been sickly and couldn’t cope without medicine. Slowly getting weaker and paler, more ghost than human, his skin translucent. The veins and arteries throbbed slower and slower. There was nothing we could do to stop his death, living in a big old house ten miles from the nearest neighbour, no transportation; we sat with him as he took his final breath.

Dad and I dug a grave for him in the orchard, it was raining and the raindrops were making puddles as fast as we shovelled. Mam wrapped him in curtains and carried him out to the hole that would become his home. It was very sad. Within a year I was the only one left, in the wind, in the rain, in the house that talked. It got less sad, or maybe I was becoming numb to human suffering, maybe that is why I am so good at my job.

I left the house in a misty rain, August 2015, I didn’t lock the door, I wouldn’t be back and there were still a few people living around, in sheds, in ditches, in hedgerows. Let them have a roof that drums and floors that grumble, let them count the fungi. I was done with it, I was done with Ireland. There were no cars visible anymore, when oil stopped coming to our shores people just put their cars away, buses and trains stopped too so you could walk down the middle of the road and no one would run over you, you could walk all the way to Dublin on the railway tracks with no machine ploughing into you.

Walking with no real plan but to get to Cork and then to wherever I could I am amazed that I landed this new role. I sit in the desert, camouflaged and shoot people. It is a lonely occupation, I can go for days without seeing a soul and then, bang, bang, bang three are dead. The bodies get covered in sand just like the raindrops at home helped bury my family.

I miss my old life; I miss the speaking house, the howling North wind. When I allow myself I miss my family, my brothers and sisters, my mam and dad, all interred in the orchard under the watchful eye of the venting house. I wonder if anyone moved in, I will never go back, this is my life now, each week I get a fresh supply of food, drink and bullets, I want for nothing. Looking out of my peephole with nothing but blue sky and shining sun, I can’t help but miss most of all sitting in my room watching the raindrops cascade down the shuddering windows.

jubilee

“Put your money in the pot, there’ll be no worry tomorrow,” Paul half hummed, half sang this little ditty his mam taught him.

“That’s how she taught me,” he thought, “through song.”

“I wish she was here now, to help me get out of this mess.” Paul continued his humming and singing as he walked up the town.

The bank stood at the top of the town, on its own, imposing its power down the rest of the shops and offices. It felt like it was the ruler of the town, Paul shuddered, as he entered, wondering if it had a dungeon like a medieval castle. He was so apprehensive; he really did not want to be here.

“Ah, Mr Healy, come on through, Mike is expecting you,” the friendly cashier, Deirdre, ushered him through to the bank manager’s office.

“Come in, Paul, good to see you. How are things? Take a seat,” Mike Morgan, the exuberant manager rushed each sentence, barely finishing one before getting to the next.

“Deirdre, will you bring tea for two, thank you,” she was dismissed to the menial task

“Now, so Paul, what can we do for you?”

Paul had sat down, sunk into the chair, as if he was in a therapy session rather than the bank. “Mike, Mr Morgan, well…,” he didn’t get to finish as Deirdre arrived with the tea.

“Milk? Sugar? Will you have a biscuit? Mammy made them yesterday, she said people need something nice coming into the bank in these times,” Deirdre spoke so softly he barely heard her. Or was he having some kind of episode? In these times, the words lingered in his head, he saw them going past as if attached to an aeroplane advertising, ‘in these times’

Deirdre had barely left when he collapsed. In a heap, crying, snivelling, he was totally shamed by his emotions but he couldn’t stop it.

“Just breathe, Paul, we have all been there, breathe, it will pass,” oddly the words came from hyped up Mike, no longer looking smugly affable but concern burying deep into his brow.

Paul explained how much trouble he was in, six figured debt, no orders coming in, no way to pay off the staff in redundancy, Sadie and the kids had left him, the house was empty, he’d been selling off the furniture just to live on and pay wages the last few weeks. He had nothing, the car was repossessed and it was only a matter of time before the courts caught up with him.

Mike listened, he was a seasoned listener, for all the bravado, he had heard this tale many times, too many times in the last few weeks. “What would you like to do, if you could?” he asked.

“Give you the keys to everything and disappear, go off some place new, start again, pay off what I owe and get Sadie and kids back. We were poor once, we can do it. Sadie used to iron and mend clothes. I used to make things, tables, chairs. That’s how we started, it was good back then. Oh why did we have to build such a big house? Why did we keep expanding the business. We don’t even make anything anymore, it is all imported.”

Mike stood up and came around the desk, “Paul, I take you at your word, disappear, make it work, make it right. Keys?”

“Really, you’ll do this for me?”

“Yes, but not for you, for your mammy. She taught me a valuable lesson when I was younger. I got into a bit of strife. Owed money to some thugs. Not a lot, but enough that it was never going to end. Your mammy paid it off and she said ‘put your money in the pot and there’ll be no worry tomorrow’. And that is how I have lived my life since. She was a very wise woman was Bridie Healy. I know I can count on you.”

“Thank you, thank you so much, here,” and Paul gave all the keys over, shook Mike’s hand and departed.

He left town that day to seek his life back and never looked back. Sadie and the kids joined him after a few weeks and they got on with it. In time he sent money back to the bank until he got a letter saying ‘paid in full’. They treated themselves to a fish supper that evening and a couple of bottles of beer. Life was simple for them, they smiled more, spoke more and loved more.

Back in the town, Deirdre came into the bank manager’s office, “Mike, that’s three out of how many that have paid you back. The bank knows nothing except the loans are paid off. Why did you do it?”

“Well, let me see, money troubles bring so much sorrow, my dad and his dad, they helped where they could, I guess, I just help where I can. I’m lucky in that I kept my money in the mattress. Never did trust the bank!” and they both laughed.

hautrev

The truth is I am a fraud. I live on the surface in a family with children, with friends, with animals. Underneath the tumultuous world of hautrev is once again sucking me in. I find it hard to keep up my commitments whilst listening to ever increasing wailing and moaning. It's my own fault, I allowed hautrev in after many years without it, loving the feeling of hearing the sounds of other people's lives was comforting at first.

Was it because I was listening for something specific that I heard more, I heard everything. It could drive me insane, I know this, elderfem was very clear on this subject. She wanted me to hide it, harness it and then when the time was right use it for the destruction of the Charter system. It was she who arranged for my journey to Dromdrevc, my art was seen by some minor politabub at her request. Elderfem manipulated the whole deal, none of them saw it, those stupid men with their colours and gowns, none of them saw in me their endworld.

I am searching for more, I am looking for refugees from the wars of concavity, I am looking for my co-conspirators. How did I survive and they didn't? They could be on another planet, wider and wider I fling my mind open trying to catch a phrase, a word that means I have found them.

Hautrev appeared three years ago, I so wish it had come sooner. I have had inklings about certain people, in the media, singers, poets. We were a creative bunch. Piotreya was the inventor, creating vast circuitry, when a new, for earth innovation comes on-line I wonder if she was there. Japan would suit Piotreya, she loved the order in Dromdrevc, she seemed to like the rules, it contained her. Yandryl, sweet, little Yandryl, I read poetry extensively, just to see if I can find him. I imagine him placed in the wrong family on earth, suffering not only for his art but for his size and wit.

They didn't have hautrev, we could all mindspeak, but they couldn't hear thoughts, only the messages intended for them. Elderfem called it an irritation, she called me an irritation, something that had to have a purpose. She consulted with the wirdmal, man of many words, and he found the endworld vision. Elderfem interpreted it as me being the cause for the wars. She was wrong, Pio, Yan and I merely knew they were coming and made plans to escape, using the limited power of concavity.

People were banished from Zylmor using the pod system, Pio tweaked it a little so we went further and we went to specific, very specific places. She explained that the banished arrived on planets as minormals and fems but not as newborns of the species, they were found wandering in wastelands or forests and were questioned extensively. Using her skills she had us arrive as newborns into newborn facilities at appropriate times for the gestation period of the planet's fems. Sounded complicated to me, then, now as I look back on my earth life I am amazed at what she achieved.

My earthmother, the nurturer of my young body, knew I wasn't her baby. I didn't realise this until hautrev came upon me and I read her thoughts. All became clear to me, not matter what I did, she knew. Instinct, she must have had a honed instinct skill in those days, later after years of prescription mindblowing drugs she had little left. Pio had thought of everything except a mother's instincts.

Maybe if I had Pio's brain I could reign in hautrev, look in specific places, use the telecommunications on earth. I can't though and am left with wave after wave of weltschermz, the whole earth seems sad, depressed, dying. Sanity is hard to hold onto when the ebb is rising, I will try one more sweep then get on with my chores for the day.