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. 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
AND NOT ONE OF US THE SAME
By Rickie O’Neill
Right after the six o’clock news, that’s when I gave my youngest godson, Alex, the soundest advice he could ever hope to get in his life. “Me lad.” I says to him, and I grabbed him by the shoulders and sat him down on my lap. “Never, ever, ok, never, ever, follow anyone down into a basement, alright?”
“Ok, Gerry.” he said. “I won’t do that.”
“You know what you do instead?”
“What?”
“You always lure. I promise, you’ll have a lot more fun that way.”
The poor fucking child. He was shook to hear words like that come out’a my mouth. But, hey, I started laughing almost immediately, of course I did, only because it’s one of the best jokes ever.
It’s actually one of my own too, would you believe?
And ok, I suppose, erm yeah, looking back I probably shouldn’t have premiered it during the afters of a wee girl’s christening but hey, it was getting late at that point. Alright? People were finally starting to let loose a little, have some fun for themselves. The occasion was being treated as an occasion and honestly I could’ve kissed the bloke who ordered the first drink after me because –
What a legend.
BUT, even with that, I noticed that a lot of heads had started to bounce out early. Heading home they were, the dry pricks, to get their “beauty sleep”. Those crucial eight hours just so they can wake up semi-fresh and cobble together a few fucking mangey sandwiches for the kids, me bollox.
“Responsibilities I think it’s called.”
And here’s me, the absolute party starter, six pints of Guinness deep into the evening and looking forward to the night. “Wuhu”. Six creamy pints in along with four large glasses of double neat vodkas. YES.
They don’t call me the life and soul of the party for nothing you know. At almost fifty years of age, you can be sure everyone already knows it.
Actually that reminds me of a story from about three year ago. I was at a do up the country with a few friends, and this thing, yeah, it was way up now so it was. Way, way up the country. . .almost near England. . .and it a feckin funeral no less. A funeral for a child no older than six I’d say.
God love her.
Anyways, that morning I knew straight away when I was leaving the house that this would be a messy affair. A real dirty shindig. Not just for me (what did I care) but, you know, for everyone involved – the family and that. And I knew getting into the car, shortly after 9, that I wouldn’t be longing to go to another too soon after I had this one safely under my belt.
Not a fucking hope.
And I remember the rain so I do. Yes, the rain. How it got heavier and heavier, and heavier, the more north I went. This for me, and I’m not a religious man, was an immediate and frightening display of something evil. An unwarranted game of theatre, I felt, from the heavens, the great heavens above, which had now fully, and I mean fully, opened.
It was like the Gods were trying to communicate with me and only me as I drove through that particular batch of abandoned countryside. Here they were, the fuckers, trying to beat me down, rusting up my Lexus, doing everything they possibly could to maybe change my mind on a few things or even soften me out altogether.
At least that’s what I felt.
And that bloody bout of rain I tell you, it lingered on for the whole day so it did, making everything, yes, ten times worse. And on top of all that, I knew well when I got there, whenever I landed at the church, that I’d have fuck all room to manoeuvre when it came to comedy. I’d have to holster the jokes and all the rest of it or best case scenario, I’d pick my moments wisely. The last part of that journey up was brutal though. I was scared so I was, real scared, out of my skin, and wrecking my own head with stupid questions like –
“What will I do?” and “What the fuck will I say?”
When I arrived at 12:30pm, I knew I had to find someplace secluded, quick, a little boreen road or something where I could change out of my sweat pants and into my suit. Somewhere close to the church. And yeah if I could park there overnight, even better.
Anyways, that was all grand, I did everything I needed to do, and after the child had been lowered into the ground I went up and I hugged the mother. I hugged her hard so I did and I told her how very sorry I was for her loss, that the child, judging by the pictures, was a lovely little thing entirely and if your man driving the car, that prick, if only he’d been going a little slower, yeah, her life might have been spared but answer me this I says, where are ye going now for the afters coz Lord knows I’d eat a fucking house.
All this going on folks and it still raining.
The meal, it was actually nice I remember. Standard fare and decent enough people. Bacon and cabbage and parsley sauce, with chips and chicken nuggets for all the kids only because that’s what the wee girl had always liked when she was alive. Chicken nuggets and chips with ketchup and mayonnaise on the side in small little pink ramekins. A cute little detail I thought. A real nice homage to a little queen.
So, why am I telling you this story?
Well, honestly, this story has nothing really to do with any of that fluff about food but rather what I stupidly did to the child’s father in the hotel bar after I had my first sip of drink. You see, I’d known this lad from school. He was about my age, and we had lived only down the road from each other now, not even a ten minute walk away. Oftentimes, yeah, I’d meet himself and the missus walking their two dogs down the local park. Nothing overly gracious. A small bit of chit chat here and there, pleasantries, along with the odd joke and whatever else. But there in the bar, after I had finished my first pint of delicious lager, when I saw him, I knew I couldn’t be as sensitive as I was with the mother earlier. That would just come across as odd, however good my intentions were. Odd and a bit gay. And we didn’t want two fucking tragedies in the same day now did we?
No we did not.
Anyways, his name was Karl, and presumably still is Karl, but didn’t I go over to him, with the best of intentions I might add, and I said “Well man” and I sort’a grabbed him around the neck like a school kid and instead of saying ‘sorry for your loss’ or ‘I can’t imagine the pain you must be going through now’, I said to him “You need a feckin break away from all of this dude.”
“What?” he said.
“This here.” I said to him. “This is too much. How are you still standing? I know if I had a child that went out like that I’d have a revolver in my mouth within a couple of seconds and I’d be gone too.”
The poor man was confused by me. Utterly baffled, with tears building up in his eyes. But that didn’t stop me from pushing forward did it? No, did it hell. I had to tell him about my grand master plan.
“Me and you.” I said. “We could go away for a weekend. Get your mind off’a things. Ya know, unwind. Coz Lord knows you need it now more than ever after all that has gone on, you poor bastard.” I said to him then, real seriously, I said “Here, If I booked us, me and you, in for a weekend trip away to Amsterdam, would you come? Would you be up for it? The only reason I’m asking you pal. . .” I said. “is that it might take your mind off of everything for a while and hey, you’d come back home a brand new man and you’ll forever have me to thank for it. For ya know, transforming you.”
I’d stand there like a bollox in suit, chewing his ear, ordering pint after pint after pint, asking if he wanted to get sloshed, for the next half an hour and God bless him for staying calm in that moment and quietly suffering me.
Like a real man.
Even now, if I could pat my own back, I’d say I was glad to have had such foresight earlier in the day, enough cop on to use the main hotel bar instead of the one in the function room which, I might add, was perfectly open and operational.
As a fella says “There might be hope for me yet.”
Of course, in the end, the poor boy politely refused my over the top and more than generous offer of a weekend away with a fella he only half kind’a knew, and I remember thinking at the time –
“How fucking dare you?”
It’s there for you on a plate. How could you say no? And I remember as well, fuck sake, I remember being so pushy and so adamant about it, so over the top, that in the end he would have to refuse my offer again and again and again, the poor bastard, to the point where he’d have to signal at his father in law, a wee hand gesture that said –
“Get me the fuck out of here QUICK.”
And that night, I remember going back to the hotel in a taxi. It was late by that stage. Yeah, real late. Still raining. And your man driving me, the pilot, he was a lovely bloke. Yeah. From Pakistan. Omar I think he was. And I remember crying my eyes out so I do. In front of him. Like a child. Weeping so hard and so violently that I too felt like I had just been bereaved of something special.
And that feeling, those tears, if I may say it, they hung around so they did.
Right into the next day. And the day after that. And, yeah, the day after that.
The Galway Review 