Rickie O’Neill is a writer, actor, director and musician originally from Claremorris, Mayo, currently residing in Galway. For the past 13 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. Rickie’s writing influences include Anton Checkov, Roald Dahl, George Saunders, Lafcadio Hearn, Chuck Palahniuk, Anthony Bourdain, Mike McCormack & Donal Ryan. Rickie recently released his first self pullshed novella called Little Sickos, under the pseudonym Fionnain J McKeon. It has received rave reviews and can be purchased from Rickie directly by emailing saltedstrings@gmail.com.
Midnight Fever Talk
By Rickie O’Neill
“Every time” writes Victor in his diary. “every God forsaken time, I go to open the window in my bloody room, the skylight, I knock my head off’a something. It happened to me this evening so it did. I felt it, that dull and sharp pain, again, and about four other separate times prior to that, throughout the day, when I wasn’t paying much attention.
“Bing. Bang. Bong. Boosh” – coz apparently that’s the sound my head makes off’a things.
You see, in this room here; that last room there on the top floor – the room I was given because I had no frickin choice – where the bed creaks murder but rent is sort’a half cheap. Well
In That Room
the walls, all frickin five of them, are the most pristine cut of white you’ve ever seen. They are spotless these things, I’m telling you, reflective during the summer, and as they sit, in their truest form, are almost totally curved or rounded at the top – right where the wally part stops and roofy bit begins. Or as I like to call it
The Cursed Sweet Spot.
They cave inward too, these things. Like teeth. Did I mention that? That they can move about. They DO move about. Fuckers. Pulsating. Sloping low. To an almost sickening degree.
Suffocating.
Where, all the time, you feel like you’re about to be swallowed up alive by some giant fish in your own bleedin home.
Can you imagine?
Having your ‘already doomed’ little fate sealed in just a half second. Just to become the first meal of the day for this little fish fella – Derek. And just like that – Boom – you become reluctant sustenance for a sentient being.
Another one.
You are breakfast all of a sudden.
An over easy egg at best,
or whatever the aquatic equivalent of ‘over easy’ is; as he chomps you down, Derek, nom nom nom, without care or question, only happy to be fed.
Then, hours later, maybe, when he’s ready to digest, and miles away near St.Barts, you become poop. Nothing else. Your whole life and worth gone in an instant. Flash like. So that you can be cast out as excrement faster than you were consumed. Perpetual talk. Just as God himself intended. But
IT’S A SCIENCE, they say.
Who says it’s a science?
They do, I said – (That’s the rational part of my head kicking in now)
Ok fair enough.
And they still call it that apparently: Science and engineering.
Science and engineering?
Yes I said. And some other word I can’t remember right now only because “Parameters Really Do Matter” according to this gainfully employed foreman. In this instance they are, in his words “vital for structural awareness and integrity. So.” he says. “You might have to ‘duck down’ or ‘mind yourself’ when moving about up there. Do you understand?”
“Alight” I says. “I get ya”
Mickleen Dowd, the stumpy bachelor tradesman, would finish the conversation by saying to me “You seem like a smart enough lad, you’ll be grand I reckon. Yeah you’ll be grand” and just like that, whatever happened, whatever HE did – I somehow liked him even more.
“Here Mickleen.” I says back. “You scut. Take this. Some of my father’s money. Take it. Take it. Take it. You do good jobs, alright, and good jobs ‘done good’, need to be rewarded. So here.” I says to him – “Take it. You’ve earned it all. And I won’t take no for an answer. Now Git. Before I have a word with your Mother.”
In my head, this was funny and would surely make the man chuckle. And very soon, I thought, ha-ha, there’d be two of us chucklin. I had wanted to show this fella – Mickleen “Whats his face” – just how razor sharp I was for my age. How razor sharp I could be. And with that, afterwards, perhaps I’d gain a bit of respect or make a new friend. Spark a bit of curiosity in him as to how on earth I could possibly, and so easily, get my grubby little fat hands on so much of my father’s money at once.
Mickleen will see this now, I thought, as an impressive piece of awareness. A fantastic act. Saying that “the fat kid did good.” And I Victor, as quick as lightening, would become one of the coolest freakin heads he has ever met during his colourful decade long stint as an underpaid tradesman. WUHU. And in the streets, people will forever sing
Hail King Victor. Hail king Victor.
I said to myself: He’ll be going around town now, Mickleen, to all his friends and relations, talking about me and this hilarious incident. Praising me for it. Calling me this and that. A hero. A pioneer. Saying to his buddies
“That big fat fucker. You do know him. You do. Your man who took a chance. The funny one. The hefty Mullins lad who, without question, said all the money was his, when in actual fact it all belonged to his ould lad. Ha. Can you believe that?”
Genius.
And they’ll all be on the edge of their seats for the lot of it so they will, his pals – pints in hand, no interval, smoking red marlboros; listening to his version of My Story, as he parades my great name about the place. Making me famous.
“Victor Mullins.” he’d say. “The Boy Wonder. Forever keeping us dead beat adult men satiated with the humour we love. All Hail King Victor”
All Hail King Vic.
“Thanks very much” I vaguely hear him say to me. “You’re very good, you’re very good”
Needless to say, I was crashed back to earth fairly lively by this unsolicited graciousness. My two ears sprung up, like starved hares in a field – Ping-Poing, and in that moment (dull and all as it was), I found myself wondering why this half strange man was thanking me so much. Twice to be exact.
Hmmmm?
It was him going “You’re very good, you’re very good.” that got me. It seemed odd. Real odd. Almost a little unnecessary.
Call it whatever you want (a lapse in consciousness or something paranormal) but, next thing I knew, when I looked down, the money was nowhere to be seen. Gone it was, from my hand.
Poof!
My trusted ‘Self Servicer’, trembling as it was, was clutching onto air now, thin air, not a juicy wad of crisp fifties like it had been. And looking down I thought to myself
“Well that’s not right. Hmmm? That’s not right at all”
The crafty tradesman, I soon figured, during my outlandish musings, must’ve swiped it – the dust. The Fucker. In fact, I’m sure that’s exactly what he did. Through no fault of his own. Because, in his defence, the man had only gone and done what I stupidly fucking told him to do, which was to take it.
“God Dammit Victor.” he writes, scribbling through gritted teeth. “Why did you have to say anything at all?”
He took you at your word, assuming it was sound, your god forsaken word, and all the bleedin coin while he was at it.
YOINK.
Like a snake.
And off he went then, away from us – this ghost – in his dilapidated Astra van, honking his horn, laughing, shouting “Thanks”, and hitting the dash with his fist like he had just won the lotto. And I stood there alone – what else could I do? – a mere child, almost glad for him in the end,
the fact that I could help,
as he vanished – him and his spluttering engine – into the murky haze of whatever day that was.
“All the best now” I says to him, knowing full well the oul lad would have me castrated for doing this. “All the best and take care” – And a’course, scared for my life, I ran back inside.
My mother, Henrietta – the calm one – often said I should be proud of myself because “Isn’t it a damn bed for you at the end of the day?” Swirling a finger at me, she’d say “Isn’t it a bed for you, and a roof, all rolled up into one, like a sweet.” Calling it “a right little cozy little nest.” and that “heat rises.”
Because of this, with the room looking the way it did; all white, and curvy, and cheap, and roofy – Yet Mother Approved – one could find it damn near impossible to negotiate the bends, and the depths, those pristine reflective whites, when one was stuck up there in the thick of it.
In other words, you could woeful easily hurt yourself.
From experience, I know this. For I’ve embarked on many’s the false leisurely jaunt, totally naked, around my jolly little lofty paradise, only to find myself, two seconds later (if even),
laid out,
flat on the carpet,
cold,
clutching onto the top of my head,
in a sprawling blood pool,
with spirits crushed and a dwindling boner I can only hope to be able to revive once the pain goes away.
I knew then, in that moment, what the feeling was like. That strange and sick feeling of having eyes on you like that – burning through. Your mother’s eyes that is, from the cosmos, looking down – those dear sweet things – seeing you, through the roof tile, and YOU, her only son, looking like that, the way you do – at your worst – with no underpants, in blood, and a shrivelled up dangler that can only remind her of her husband.
Sadly, as I sit here now, writing this; I can almost hear her giving out to me too. Saying “Get out of there, quick, like a good child.” Telling me to “Find a decent life for myself. Fast. And should I not desire company in the traditional sense, then maybe I could think about getting a dog or something. Or a gerbil.” That I should be the “Creator and the change. Lest I die, Like She DId, under the thumb of someone else.”
“Be Gone.” she’d say, closing off her cloud. “Do it laughing son, with clenched fists. Like that Mickleen fella. Your buddy. And Never Come Back. Or if you’d prefer it, a stóir,
we can wait and see how you feel in the morning?”
Written by: Rickie O’Neill.
The Galway Review 