Rickie O’Neill is a writer, actor, director and musician originally from Claremorris, Mayo, currently residing in Galway. For the past 11 years, Rickie has been a session musician and full-time drummer for the Irish band The Saw Doctors. In 2015 he changed his course slightly and began writing, starting off with short film scripts and poetry (which he still enjoys writing very much to this day). In 2017 he took a keen interest in the short story form and was particularly impacted by how powerful a short story can be as opposed to a long-drawn-out novel. Plus, you finish them quicker. He would love to share his latest short story with you titled “Poor Podgeen Marksman”. Rickie’s writing influences include Anton Checkov, Roald Dahl, George Saunders, Lafcadio Hearn, Mike McCormack, Donal Ryan.

An Old Harbour Town

It can often be taxing, waiting around.
Especially in a harbour place where no one speaks like you do. “A wee dram”
stuff like that, you hear it everywhere, and “Where ye fdrom?” ya know.. Scots talk,
all wrapped up in the abusive tones of an overgrown Geordie, who sits out of place, overly keen for a certain pikey, saying “He’s a fookin thief.”Laying awake at night. Scheming. Hoovering up liquorice cigarettes. Sussing the finer details of a clever pin down. No luck yet though. So on we go, and delight in a laugh.
“You just wait.” he says. “I’ll get the koont”.
A plighted man, our Muzzy; disgruntled, but a thoroughbred eagle, taking us through landscapes far more generous than the ones we have at home. He stopped me then,
his big hand down on me shoulder, and said “Ye diven say that ya little shit, Ireland is a magical place.”
That stayed with me.
“You Celtic boys are all the same.” he says handing me an open tin of freshly rolled cigarettes. It wasn’t even 9 yet. Too early for tobacco. Another hour or so. . . .Maybe. He went off to bed then – Muz – and I went my own way with a roll up in my pocket.
He would speak many times of the similarities but, in this harbour town as I walk, that’s all good and well. Here, in this place, it’s the silence that gets me. Because war is not necessarily about death, but noise.
It sits there, a town isolated, like a freckle between two plumpy breasts. I go on anyways, down the narrow road, wondering what I should be hopeful for, if anything at all.
The town is small and bleak in every direction,
even in the sunshine.
I see a boat. It comes in carefully over the black water as I approach the pier, delighting its audience, the children, me and the passing elders with their canes and their cameras. It’s not long before it’s gone again though, taking with it onboard several stories I’d only love to hear, and people I’d love to meet.
The other few souls about me scarper and like that I’m left idle again, daydreaming into a deep wash of suds and loose fuel that splits like cream on the water’s surface, doing nothing much, traipsing behind, separating: conversations as pointless to me now as trickled water from a tap.
So what do I do? – I throw a stone. I let it ripple. And I watch on as it runs away into the nothingness. My day off and I’m here alone. Standing on a rock. And as surely as I do, it hits me once more – The silence – so I reef back my nose and smell the air. What else? Spiced port and salt, with mild wafts of excrement. A sign perhaps. A glimmer of something hopeful beneath the fading growl of a maritime engine, until it goes again and that’ll be it.
Just me left now.
And the sickening silence of a stand still town. All souls gone. Leaving me tangled up in the echoes of the highland breeze as she gives out like a strict mother in freshness. Again and again. With no sign of easing.
“Stop let ye. Let ye stop.” I say. I Roar It – from the depths of wherever it wants to come from, when all of a sudden a sensation curdles in my gut; that woeful, woeful dread, ripping through me every single time a night is about to fall – so I look up and watch a grey cloud looming its way in over the north west.
I think of rain.
And lots of it.
But there was nothing of the sort.
In fact the whole display shifted the breeze and the noise out of my ears to be fair, and like that, I could hear again; this new silence of a highland place.
But still I wasn’t sure.
When 8 o clock came I walked myself back to my lodgings – hands in the pockets, head down, slow and trodden – another day wasted. “Good night.” I says to the only man I meet. “Good night, lad.” he says back. “You take care. . .”
“Hmph. . . .I’ll try.”
Up the old stairs I go and down past the never ending columns of closed brown doors to number 39 where, once inside, I take off my clothes and look up at the moon – my only light – and mesmerised I was for a moment by the celestial white strands it cast out onto the splaying hills and over the Scottish waters; the still black waters I could almost touch through the glass I was that close, and then I thought “Did I kill someone today while I was out? Or did I steal something belonging to someone?”
I would sweat over these issues for minutes on end, but
“No” was my initial response. . . . .I couldn’t have done. For starters there wasn’t anything to bloody kill or steal around here. . .save myself. . . .and yes it had come up, and
yes I did think about it for a while but it was trumped in the end by the sudden tingle of a man teetering on the edge of some kind of happiness.
In a small town like this.
Where there is less or nothing around.
Suddenly. . . .all of a sudden. . . .I found myself content with the solitude.
By far the most unsatisfied I had ever been in my whole entire life, as I stood totally nude in my warm and amber lit room, thinking to myself “You know something, I might actually never go home . . . . .I might just stay on here forever.” –
but I couldn’t tell anybody,
even though I had wanted to more than anything else.
So I sat back on the bed and lit up a cigarette, – thankful for Muzzy – because liquorice were my favourite.

Farm House In The High

A Little Boy.
Ginger.
I See him.
Pullin and draggin.
Eager for his bike.
As it sits upon a high.
In good contortion. Withering slow.
A Weak Little Boy.
Who struggles in motion.
To pick that dead weight from the earth. A Drenched Kid.
This one.
As he roams.
As he patters.
Going back and forth.
Again and again.
Scratching.
Pointing.
Existing solely.
As an unmercifully ginger.
And.
Just as he does.
To me as I look.
The boy is.
Forever helpless.
Worthless.
He Laughs Once.
I saw it.
A Riviera duckling. On a midnight stream. Then.
He frowns. Lending fairer eyebrows. As if on cue,
To a formidable landslide. A Little Man.
The Boy Of Constant Blush. In my distance.
Appearing sweet. Knowing kind. Chose even then.
To leave the sight of me. But.
Aha.
Its not long before he’s back. With jacket new.
And gloves.
Gloves.
That fit well his young paws. A New Little Boy. Wading through the rain. With good force this time.
An occupied mind.
Determined.
Things to do.
For Father.
All in etiquette.
For Mother.
A Boy Raised Well.
With clear strength of will.
For he pulls.
And pulls,
He drags.
And he grunts.
And now.
Folks.
He has it.
His bike.
I hear him giggle through the pour on my tidy roof. The Bike.
That very one.
Yes, yes.
It’s up and good in both his padded hands.
He tends to it with eye keen,
and an arched back.
He pushes it now.
Slow.
Through the farmyard muck.
Where cows will fade in.
The Straying Beasts.
From a bleak beyond.
To say hello.
Looking to be fed.
He knows though.
‘Hello, hello’
Tis well that they are.
And.
They have had enough.
He won’t give in.
He doesn’t.
And like that.
They turn away.
Only to graze on the dark green lush that’s all around. Sweet givers in.
To the petit-est of bluffs.
And.
In the manner of a so called absent beast.
Just like that.
The same boy.
Turns.
And.
Goes away from me.
Again.
Around a corner.
His exit.
This time.
A Finality.
Adieu mon petit garçon.
So I up and look out my window.
Grey and Wet.
This feeble highland mess.
And marvel only at the deep marks,
He so kindly left after him,
For me.
In the muck.
Muck.
He will no doubt inherit.
Someday.
But here.
In the rain.
His impressions.
His kindness.
Is quickly consumed.
Ate up.
By some savage.
And I watch those prints for seconds as they go. As they go.
Until they are nothing.
But gone.
I Blink Only.
At the simple earth.
Where nothing now had happened.
A strange shift.
As the tropical outer pour.
Keens down.
A ragged rough on my head.
So I Come Away From It All.
And retire to my little nest.
Where an hour later.
I will.
Re-awake myself with a bad dream.
A tough sight.
A loud oul scream.
A Little Boy.
With hair.
Of fair.
Ravaged by wolves.
Ate up rightly.
To the bone.
Not a creep of sound.
Save the rhythmical tick of a spinning wheel. Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
And closer by.
A colourful toy.
In shreds,
upon shreds,
neath the darkest of reds.
Then.
Alight from a house.
Causes me fright.
A flame neath the tail of the savage.
A creaking door.
A Mother in her best night gown. Yelping.
Under the moisture of that nights lightening. Her tear now lost.
Over the stillness of a youth.
And the coming of the winter sun.

Feeding

You disappear into an old berry thorn bush
when all doors are open pulled,
leaving behind a sound comrade

– the half full feeder –

as she, swaying, hangs about
wounded,
in the slight touch of a late evening
breeze,

And you hide away all the while
watching her quiet demise from
behind the safety of a leaf,

and only after the issuance of my retreat,
however long it may take,
do you re – emerge with no white flag to bear,
but with purpose full
to claim it all back,

Swooping about with grace
just as you were meant to,

With rumbling gut,

through the pellet hail, stalks and deadly thorns,

Armed To The Gills.

like miniature spitfires deep in the throws
of some great, small and timeless war.