Rickie O’Neill is a writer, actor, director and musician originally from Claremorris, Mayo, currently residing in Dublin. 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 first anthology under the same name titled ALIVE ALL NIGHT, which can be purchased from Rickie/Fionnain directly by emailing: saltedstrings@gmail.com

THE DARABONT

By Rickie O’Neill

The hotel was a four hundred year old structure built during hard times and in the middle of nowhere. It was nowhere then. And according to the locals it is nowhere now.

“The Darabont.” they’d say. “It is what it is. People still stay here. Right in the middle of summer. Usually the night before they take the Long Road into the Village. And those folks, kids usually, yeah, we don’t see much of them ever again after that. Whatever happens to them. Probably swayed by too much temptation.”

This kind of grim reality, where people and children and young adults go missing, was an all too frequent occurrence for The Darabont. All too frequent, yes, but never a problem.

Never ‘Their Problem.’

Even with a mysterious stigma like that hanging over its head, the hotel would still be close to fully booked up every single night. There were managers involved, and chefs, flashy doormen, and whorish looking receptionists. Here at The Darabont, there was enough business going around all of the time that actual staff could be employed, rotated, and paid a solid wage every second week.

“We like to feed our clients well.” says the executive manager Raul. “They get good beef. Well regarded beef and yeah, I guess fairly decent seafood too. It’s fresh enough once you cook the shit out’a it.”

“It’s all about the sauce.” says the chef. “You put enough nice tasting sauce on anything, your own shoe for example, and I guarantee people will be flocking in to eat it. And if it’s nice enough, they’ll be coming back to you like slaves long after the fact, smacking their lips and asking for more.” He says “I know how it works.”

“He does know.”

“I watch it happen every day.” he says, running a spatula down his fat back and scratching. “In my experience, people are like feral sheep. Also, on a totally separate note, I do a ferocious Shepherd’s Pie. I’m telling you.” he says. “That stuff is the best, and I mean the best, second hand mince you’ll ever put into your gob. That’s why they call me The Guru.”

At the beginning of last year, sometime around January, a special film crew reached out to the hotel with a ‘Special Inquiry’. They would take the old-fashioned route and send in a letter. A very nice handwritten letter addressed specifically to one Raul J. Hernandez. The night porter came across it first at the end of his shift while he was waiting to hand everything over to the morning guy who was late again. Scrubbing lazily through the letters with one eye half open, the night man spotted a strange-looking envelope made out directly to his boss Raul. With everything sealed and beautifully presented, he said to himself “Well, this must be serious.”

Later that morning, when Raul finally opened the letter, he was surprised, and a little elated, to see that it read the following:

“To whom it concerns at The Darabont. We are a film production crew from nowhere near your area. There are three of us. One director. One cameraman. And a guy on sound. Over the past few weeks, there have been instances where your establishment has come up in conversation among our house staff. These instances in all were very peculiar anecdotes. None of which were particularly flattering or even very engaging. That being said. . .something seemed to stick in the end. With us. Something we can’t quite put our bloody fingers on. And now, here we are, like grovelling children, asking if you would ever wish to participate in a hot fifteen minute segment filmed by us? Something we can tastefully produce for you, where you’ll have a free platform to explain yourselves at The Darabont. We require no money from you whatsoever and no accommodation. Consider this a passion project for us and free advertising for you (not that you need it). All we would need is three days of your time to come in and film at the hotel. We would also like to interview your staff, see what they have to say, provided they are not frightened by all the lights and big cameras. When complete, the piece will eventually air on local television with the hope of going national soon after.

That is all I have to say for now.

Let me know and thanks.

Ben (Director)”

“My goodness.” said Raul, after he had finished reading the letter, scrunching it in his hand. “These people want to make me, sorry us, famous. I am so overjoyed I can barely hold in my excitement.” Jumping up and down, he said “Tonight, I must celebrate like an absolute raving lunatic in this hotel’s only bar, and maybe, just maybe, if I sling enough money at our receptionist, she might think about sleeping with me for a few hours in the Bridal Suite upstairs coz Lord knows I am due a good rogering.”

Raul was excited now. Real excited. In just a half second he seemed to drop all his typical adult tendencies for the boisterous enthusiasm of a child. There was a glow on his face now, a spring in his step, and a kind shimmer exuding from each of his eyes. In that moment, it was clear; the man had everything he had ever wanted.

Joy and excitement.

But still, it wouldn’t change the fact of who he really was, a sweaty fifty-something year old Spaniard with a bald head and a flabby belly that would hang all too often out over the waistband of his trousers.

One woman is famous for saying that “He was about as attractive as a fucking boil.” She said “Raul has a face like a scabby heel or better yet, a blistered foot. If that man ever wanted to sex me up, he would have to be paying me a lot, and I mean a lot of money just for me to even consider it.” Remembering all of this, Raul could hardly wait to prove her, and the naysayers, wrong.

Shortly afterwards, Raul would slip the same letter deep into his jacket pocket and make a beeline for his office. In this pursuit, privacy was key. He had to go somewhere quiet.

Real quiet.

Where he could lock the door and peacefully read the thing again without any interruption. To do that, he would have to scramble himself through the place undetected, see if he could get through the lobby without any interference and up one of the backstairs. Scanning the room, he knew how difficult it would be to execute, especially so early in the day when there were people flooding in from all sides.

Going this way and that.

Looking for something particular.

Like every other morning, the breakfast buffet had started to get hit hard. Bodies were somehow appearing all at once, out of nowhere, and them all after the same thing. FOOD. Thirty people at least, of all sizes, moping about like sloths, with empty plates and trays in their hands, just waiting to be served.

Anxiety seeping out of their heads.

You could feel it.

And the slight irateness.

Because hanging around like that for sustenance, average sustenance, is a basic universal nightmare and everyone knows it.

In the end, getting to the office upstairs would take Raul the guts of six minutes. Of course, he ran into issues along the way much to his displeasure. Everything from a waitress complaining about her tips (how she had wanted more), to cranky residents of all ages, saying:

“Raul, there’s an oil leak.”

“Raul, we have a broken toilet.”

“There’s an odd looking man outside on the lawn.”

Raul, doing his best to falsely acknowledge every dilemma, was halfway up the stairs, almost home and dry, when the head bar-woman intercepted him. She was a fiery Latina called Maria. Early thirties and naturally busty. “Raul.” she said, getting right into his face. “I’ve been looking all over for your Jew ass.”

“Please. What is it now?”

“I have officially had enough of Terry MacWhatshisface, with his constant racial slurs and sickening sexual advances.”

“Qué?”

“He needs to keep his grimy little hands to himself.” she said, driving a pointed finger into Raul’s chest. “He’s nothing but a Down syndrome maintenance man. Ok? And I do not, for the last fucking time, want his babies.”

Raul laughed nervously at the situation, so visibly anxious now that even the small act of having to listen to someone complain had caused thick drops of sweat to fall from the tip of his chin onto the floor.

“I’ll take care of it Maria darling.” he said, trying to slink his stumpy legs up the stairs. “Don’t a worry. Don’t a worry.”

Once in his office, Raul immediately locked the door, sat behind his desk and re-read the letter from the film crew. He’d take his time with it on this occasion only because he sort’a could. Going through each word and sentence at a much slower pace. Concentration so steely now, and so focused, you’d swear the man couldn’t read much at all.

“This is my ticket to a better life.” he said, squeezing the paper excitedly in his hand. “If I present myself properly to these creatives, people will see the work I do here and immediately want to hire me elsewhere. Hopefully somewhere abroad. Yes. Where the weather is good, wine sweet, and groceries somewhat affordable.”

Raul was up from the desk now, pacing back and over through his tattered office like a man at odds with something. His greasy face looked a lot less settled. It was all contorted. All scrunched up from an invisible stress that seemed to be eating him up from the inside out.

“What about everyone else?” he then thought. “Dammit. Everybody else is going to want a piece of this action too, aren’t they? At the end of the day, they are just as hungry and just as slimy as I am. We are all the bloody same around here.” He said “Whatever happens with this film crew, I need to make it so that I am the hero, ME, Raul J. Hernandez, and everyone else, the villain. Through that lens, I must appear as a God. I need people to watch and comment solely on me. They must feel the energy and passion I exude through the screen. I want them applauding me, Raul Hernandez, when the final credits finally roll up. The minds of the people must be blown away by my immense charm and inexhaustible capabilities within this sector. After a few days of that, I reckon I’ll be snapped up by a huge conglomerate and whisked away to a better part of the world where I’ll eventually earn myself an absolute fortune. At last, I’ll be able to buy some of the most expensive carpets and rugs the world has to offer.”

An hour passed. Two hours passed. And Raul was still there dancing around his office like a locked up ape, wrecking his head with demented thoughts and potential schemes – anything at all that might help with the creation of some elaborate lie or conniving plan. Like a slimy politician, he’d have to shuffle some things about and maybe, afterwards, he could sack off a few people starting with the non-English speaking cleaners. He’d delve into his diary, a.k.a the big green book, just to see how feasible it might be to move about a few schedules or even omit them altogether. Certain doors would have to remain locked, always, or else be labelled as ‘PROHIBITED’ in certain parts of the hotel. For this stroke to work, Raul would simply take the keys away for his own ‘personal use’, that’s what he would tell people. That way he could come and go as he pleased.

In the office now, a red faced Raul was pacing around the floor like a man possessed. The pageantry of all this scheming, the excitement of it, and the lies, had over time made him relentlessly giddy – like a buck goat. And whenever that joy subsided, a dark fear was quick to take its place, and poor Raul would worry that whatever brains he had left might come shooting out the top of his head.

“The whole thing must be about ME.” he said, blinking down at the carpet. “And ONLY ME.” He said “In this, I need to come across as the ultimate Tour De Force, so that I can forever be immortalised as a true giant of the industry. A titan. Someone who had always been an undeniable leader of the people. Yes.” he said. “Yes. Yes. Yes.”

At 9:28am, right when Raul thought he had everything finally figured out for himself, a large dark figure kicked open his office door, said “see you”, stuck out his arm and shot him square between the eyes with a perfectly silent gun.

The papers will happily say it was a “Brief affair.” and “Probably painless for the man who’d slump to the ground in a heap but, in the end, what could he do?”

For the perp, well, it wasn’t easy either – for he must have spent the guts of two whole minutes, maybe it was three minutes, trying to recover the letter from the dead Spaniard’s hand.

When he finally got it free, he quickly disappeared himself, like some ghost, back into the ether and that was that.

No thanks, no nothing.

Just. . .Poof.

Forty-one minutes pass by and Raul J. Hernandez is found dead, stinking to the heavens and face down in a thick pool of his own blood. When the emergency services finally got to him much later on, they thought he was resting just on a dark brown carpet and nothing more. The two medics, both female, would laugh at this misunderstanding for five whole minutes straight, slapping their knees and grabbing their bellies, before finally taking him away in a large cumbersome body bag. One made out of cheap leather.

The following morning at breakfast, when the staff learned of the tragedy and the grim details surrounding it – they didn’t laugh and they didn’t gasp. All they could say was:

“Yeah. Welcome to The Darabont.”