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
A COLLEGE PROJECT
By Rickie O’Neill
“Tick, tock, tick, tock”
says the clock on the wall,
this thing oh so rare,
probably best of them all.
It’s sat on the wall,
ticking all of the day,
just pleading with kids who
know not how to play.
* * * *
That morning, the young student was dropped off at the big black gates by her mother. Her two soft hands, they were shaking the whole drive up and if you had asked her, she would say that it was probably the longest nine and a half minutes of her life. To make matters even worse, the iced latte she had been drinking had started to spill out of the cup and onto her lap, putting her into a right spin entirely.
“Ah for crying out loud.” she said. “Look at the state of my tights. They are brand new.”
“No need to worry.” said the mother. “At the end of the day, she’s just a woman. And you are a woman. I guarantee you will have loads to talk about.”
“Great.” the girl replied. “What the hell am I supposed to say? So Martha, how exactly did you kill your husband and what sensation did you feel afterwards when you were butchering him up in front of your dog?”
The mother smiled and said “Well you could open with that. For sure you could. That’s a dinger.”
The young girl braced herself, wiped the hair out of her face and set her hand down on the door handle, ready to open it.
“If this bitch kills me today and sells my organs, you better be the first in line to buy the damn things back, ok?”
“Can I haggle for them?” the mother asked.
The girl sat back in the seat, laughed a bit, then said –
“Ok. Fine. You can haggle ya tight bitch.”
“Ha.”
“Just be quick about it, yeah? Get in and get out. No stalling. Kill her with Dad’s pickaxe or something if you have to. It’s hanging up in the shed there I think, behind all the jackets and stuff.”
“I know where the pickaxe is, luv.” said the mother. “Lord knows I’ve often thought about using it myself.”
The girl scoffed.
“I don’t care what you say. Dad is a good man. He is. You just give him too hard a time sometimes.”
The mother forced a smile and dropped her head.
“I know I do.”
“The same man could well be fixing to use it on your fat ass too when you least expect it. So don’t drop your guard, ok? He’s a lovely, lovely man.” she went on. “But he just might kill you if you keep pushing him.”
The mother’s jaw dropped. She couldn’t help but laugh.
“Look at you.” she said, reaching over and opening the car door. “For a tiny little sixteen-year-old you’re quite the impossible fucker, aren’t you? Now.” she said, and she kicked her only daughter out of the car onto the pavement. “Ask the big questions, ok? And remember, don’t be scared. You’ll do great. I’ll be back to get you around six or so. We can grab a burger or something.”
The girl would smile at this from the ground. At last, she thought, something nice to look forward to with mum.
“Provided you’re not dead by then.”
And just like that, before the girl knew it, her mother had disappeared over the horizon, leaving her stranded and alone, like some randy tramp, at the side of the road only a few miles from her own house. But because she was only sixteen, she thought she might as well have been on Mars or something.
Or lost in a Penneys.
Stuck in the middle of Leitrim, or worse, in County fucking Mayo.
“Shit.” she said, fixing the bag up onto her back and looking up into the sky. “Don’t think I’ve ever been down around here before. It’s so quiet. Almost too quiet.”
In the locality, everybody knew that the house in question wasn’t a house at all. It was a falling apart mansion and stupidly eyesore(ish). The kind of place, perched on a hill, where you’d expect to find The Addams Family knocking about, with lots of dead oak trees, gothic figurines and a huge lawn out front for Uncle Fester that seemed to stretch itself around the side and deep into the back.
“Why the fuck did I choose this lady as my subject?” the girl said to herself, pushing open the gate and taking her first step onto the property. “In hindsight, I should’ve gone with the damn vet when I had the chance. Cutting off a dog’s ball-bag seems far more appealing now than having to deal with this Jeffrey Dahmer wannabe. Anyways.” she said. “I still can’t get over how up for it she was. Up for, you know, meeting me and that. I don’t think I have ever seen enthusiasm like it before in my life. Kind’a cute not gonna lie. Also, I’m fucking starving. I’d murder a chicken fillet roll right now so I would. Yeah.” she said, smacking her lips. “A big, dirty chicken fillet roll would be the absolute business.
That or a laksa.”
After closing the gate, the girl shuffled her way up the long drive, and with loose stones crunching beneath her feet, she watched the house as it got bigger and bigger and bigger the closer she got. According to one encyclopaedia she had read, the place had been built sometime in 1592 by a young group of runaway architects. Together, it took them six full years of gruelling work just to erect the outer frame, another year to paint it, and a final four after that just to finish decorating the inside until fully furnished.
“That’s a savage eleven-year slog for those children.” said the book. “What’s more is that each young worker also had a bounty on their head at the time. One bounty each or eight in total. Found alive, and they’d be hanged by their scrawny necks. Found dead, and they’d simply be cut up like butter, and fed to the piggies for breakfast. Simple.”
“How frickin spooky.” the girl thought. “To think that this monstrosity was put together under those terms. By these anomalies who had no other choice but to run for their little lives, and stay running, for fear they’d ever get caught, or fed to the pigs or publicly strung up. How terrible.”
A short time after that, as she carefully made her way up to the house, a slow and festering smell of shit started to fill the air. It arrived like a bomb onto the scene, practically out of nowhere, instantly wilting away the four black flowers that sat along the wall and three pink roses. The girl backed away fast and would make a lot of fuss by stomping her feet and flapping her hands. But no matter how hard she fought it, she just couldn’t stop the whiff from getting up into her speckled little nostrils.
“This isn’t the pong of anything living.” she thought, clenching her nose. “This is the smell of decay. It’s the smell of rot. Gone off chicken or worse, a dead feckin body. Suffering Jesus.” she said. “Whatever the hell it is, it would knock out a frickin donkey.”
Closing in on the house, the girl knew this waft was unexplainably rank, dangerous and almost too much to be dealing with so early in the day. She wanted to get away from it, fast. Real fast. In fact, in those final moments, all she wanted to do was go back home to her family, put on some jammies, eat a Pop-Tart and jump into bed where no bad thing could ever get her. “But sadly.” she said. “That can’t happen today. I’m here now. And I will do this. Yes I will. For me. Even if it kills me.”
INSIDE THE HOUSE, for the first few minutes, the girl busied herself with reading a dusty wooden plaque that hung on the wall in the foyer. It was like a rhyme this thing. Or an old poem. Something almost sweet, but written for a child.
When she was finished, she carefully stood back, pressed a finger against her lips, and asked “Erm, did you write this?”
“No I didn’t.” said the woman, shuffling up beside her. “It came with the house.”
“It’s beautiful, eh? And kind’a scary.”
The old woman laughed, and when she did, you could hear the loose phlegm gurgling like stew in her throat.
“Every-damn-thing is scary.” she said. “People are scary. Dogs are scary. Cats are scary. Ferrets are cute, yes, but they are scary. Parrots as well. Even something as simple as a potato. Or a cucumber. Yep. All bloody scary.”
At that, the old woman wiped her hook-like nose off her sleeve, thought about what she should say next and kept on talking.
“It’s only a piece of writing.” she said, patting the girl’s shoulder. “It won’t jump out and bite you in the arse. It’s not going to suddenly spring off the wall and rip your nose off. It’s just a piece of writing, honey. Alright? Now, follow me into the kitchen. We’ll sit, have some tea, maybe a biscuit or two, and you can ask me whatever the hell you want. Actually, something tells me you’re going to like my stories.”
“Oh.” said the girl, in a quiet, nervous voice. “Why do you say that?”
The woman stopped, slowly turned around, and smiling right into the girl’s eyes, she said –
“Because all redheads do.”