Rickie O’Neill is a 35-year-old 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. Last December, Rickie released his first self-published novella called Little Sickos, under the pseudonym Fionnain J McKeon, and in March 2026, he released his anthology under the same name, titled ALIVE ALL NIGHT, which can be purchased from Rickie/Fionnain directly by emailing saltedstrings@gmail.com.
BLACK PUDDIN
By Rickie O’Neill
That Saturday, we were expecting a delivery into the shop at around half past eight in the morning. A new batch of freshly dead pigs. Ten of them to be exact.
Or twelve maybe.
And according to the docket in my hand, they had been reared well in a loving home down the country and slaughtered only over the road from us by our good friend Jimmy Joyce.
Jimmy Joyce, or JJ as he was more formally known, was a real good man for gutting swine and cleaning them up. The man, locally speaking, was a revered legend and would have all the gadgets at hand that made that kind’a graft, not easy – but bearable.
He was a no mess no fuss type’a head, a straight shooter, and a real good friend of my father’s back in the day before he had his fall.
“The piggies would come in, and they’d be squealing.” Dad used to say, throwing an arm over my shoulder. “And ten minutes later, after ould Jimmy got hold of them, they’d leave. . .well – not squealing.”
Standing there outside the shop, on my own, in the pissing rain, I ran my shoe through a mucky puddle in order to pass the time.
And it did just that.
It passed the time.
Watching those ripples do their work on the water was oddly settling. The shimmer they threw over my grey reflection, the way it turned me into a monster for a second. . .I found the whole thing kind’a soothing.
It numbed the senses.
Big time.
And for a moment I forgot it was even raining at all.
It wasn’t long before the big smell then hit my nose. The smell of his arrival. That magical waft, the one I’m well used to, of dead flesh and diesel rumbling up over the hill from the far side, and it made all the more potent by the day’s rain. It was a basic sensation and nothing more. It took you out of yourself, as a boy – it really did – and got you ready for work.
Dirty work.
Jimmy himself was a brute of a man with a bald head, a thick sweaty back and big hairy grey arms. Honestly, under the right light, the man would often look like an ape with alopecia. One that couldn’t stop talking once he got going.
“That’s them all so. . . .” I said to Jimmy, once he had the pork unloaded. “Are we getting the extra two for free?”
Jimmy laughed at me then and went inside into the shop.
“I chopped twelve. .” he said. “And I gutted twelve. So whatever’s there you can have it.”
“Super.”
Jimmy was in scoping out the shop now, slowly, with his head held high and hands in both pockets, clicking his heels as he went. . .like a detective. “Well. . .” he said to me. “Have you anything good going today that I could maybe have later for my tea? I am absolutely ravenous. . .Well.” he goes, giving me the eye. “I will be.”
I answered him back alright with a half smile and a nod. Nothing too thorough. Only because I was getting busy now, and he wasn’t an ‘unfamiliar customer’ to me at this late stage in the game. Simply put, he wasn’t a customer at all. . .Nor was he a stranger.
And a’course. . .like all the good times before. . .he went along with it.
For Jimmy, in this regard especially, things just seemed to come sort’a naturally to him. For as long as I can remember, even as a child, the man had known about some real intimate details – specifically the ins and outs of our own shop and all the folk that had lived here prior.
A strange experience.
From what I could gather, it looked like he had arrived into this world with a different set’a skills entirely. Unmatched capabilities. For whatever reason, he seemed to have this un-teachable gumption about the universe and all the ways one could move through it. He’d see things you wouldn’t see –
way before that,
all while having the sharp and curious snout of a well trained terrier.
“You know well what we have, Jim.” I said to him, slinging the first dead pig over my shoulder. “Take whatever you like. . . .It’s on us today. The fillet steaks, if you don’t mind me saying, are particularly good this week. Delicious with a pinch of salt and butter.”
“You’re a good lad, William. A really good lad. Here.” he said, turning to face me. “Let me help you with that. From what I can remember. . .he’s the heaviest one out’a them all.”
The Galway Review 