FIRST PLACE WINNER
in the Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2025!
Nuala O’Connor described this wonderful story as ‘… a word-perfect gallop through the highs and lows of a post-Leaving Cert trip, and the swift transition from irresponsible child to semi-responsible adult-in-training. Great imagery and dialogue.’
Listen to Gary reading his winning story:
This morning, Magaluf
‘Close the door, Degsy, will ye?’ I shout. ‘The head’s hanging off me.’
No reply from your side of the apartment.
Outside, a recycling truck empties a bottle bank into a smashed glass mountain. Its erratic tune fights a distant siren’s wail. And shouting. There’s always someone shouting. The sun screams through the crepe-paper blind in the bedroom, hauling my mind into the ache of morning.
My phone is dead and time is molten. It could be five o’clock, could be ten. That’s what we came for. To escape routine, to reset before college.
We ignore the thought that this is the end of something. Forget how you hated me for studying on Friday nights, like I was breaking some childhood promise, trying to screw you over, leave you behind.
‘Degs! The balcony door!’
I burrow my head between the mattress and pillow, annoyed now, my brain marinated in beer. I pick at my index fingernail until it breaks.
We agreed on Day One of the holiday: whoever’s on the futon should pull the curtains and close the sliding door. It was you who came up with the house rules. You got all domestic after winning the toss to sleep in the bedroom.
You, the lad who says he’s moving out of home if he gets into UCC, but doesn’t bin his pizza boxes, can’t operate a washing machine. You’ll be taking a Lidl bag of boxer shorts and Spanish ants back to your mam’s house on Saturday.
Yesterday evening
A slip of paper slid under the door, a written warning from the Recepción. You read it to the group in the style of a lispy Spanish town crier with a few drinks on him.
‘Señores,
Atención: no music after 10pm.
Your travel company has received notificación.’
The teachers used to threaten to tell our mams at the first echo of laughter in the school corridors. Now the hotel has ratted us out to the holiday rep and threatened to evict us.
Last night was our fourth night of seven and you were half-joking about sleeping on the beach. No thanks. I turned off the tunes, suggested we drink in one of the other rooms. We have three between the eight of us. They’ve only had verbal warnings, nothing in writing.
The lads replaced the silenced dance music with their hand-clapping rendition of Freed From Desire while you folded the warning into a paper plane. Then you set it on fire, launched it into the night from the ninth floor, watched the flame burn out.
The sun-scalded Welsh girls on the balcony next door joined the chorus of N-na n-na n-nas.
When you scored Nia from Bangor on the first night, you left me small-talking to her bored-looking friend. I got nowhere, as usual. Nia was acne-stippled and quick-witted and keen as a Sambuca shot. None of that mattered. You would have shifted anything just to tick it off your list. Been avoiding the Welsh neighbours ever since.
You ducked back inside, angled the cap of a San Miguel against the table, chopped it with the heel of your hand, drank deep. Another chip in the table, the security deposit written off days ago.
This morning
The room is as still as a summer windsock. Cans and take-away boxes decorate the white-tiled floors. Sounds like there’s a fight outside.
I lie here wondering whether you were happy for me on Results Day. You’d arrived at my door with a fresh buzz cut and warm scones your mam had made to busy away her anxiety.
‘Suppose you’re delighted with yourself,’ you said. ‘Fair fucks.’
‘Cheers Degs,’ I said, afraid to ask how you’d done. ‘Want tea?’
I felt more relief than joy. Got about twenty points over what I’ll probably need for Law in UCD, although I won’t know for sure until the college offers land at lunchtime.
That’s if today is Wednesday. I'm ninety percent sure it is.
My world has slipped steadily out of focus since we counted up our points last Friday, as though an optician has been gradually overcorrecting my vision to the point of headache.
With the mystery gone out of the Leaving Cert results, we had a few quiet cans in your house. Then a few in the pub and a few more at a house party thrown by some lad we’d ignored for six years of school. I was in danger of catching sobriety the next morning until you put a pint in front of me in the airport bar. We’d waved goodbye to our parents, angst-shook by the idea of us flying out of sight for a week. Swear to God they’d been more relaxed on Results Day, our futures swinging in the breeze.
From then on, days and nights have been a shapeless blur of cans and shots and smoke and suntan lotions. The only handle I have on time is that every other night I get to sleep in the bedroom.
Yesterday evening, after your Town Crier performance
Did we ever have a proper row before? All I’d said was that a ‘quiet night in’ might be a nice change of pace, then back to destroying ourselves on Wednesday after the college offers.
‘We don’t want to get thrown out,’ I said, my shoulders offering a slouched apology.
I hadn’t got it in me to brave the nightclubs again, with the peach schnapps and failed chat-up lines, the broken sleep and thirsty mornings.
‘We’ve done three nights straight,’ I said. ‘And the nights began at lunchtime.’
You lost it. Called me a sad gimp, said I was boring. I told you to relax, asked if you were worried about college, said I was sure you'd get a place somewhere.
Bad move.
‘Thinks he’s Einstein, this prick,’ you said. ‘Just cos he fluked a distinction in Junior Cert maths.’
The laughs from the gang reminded me they were more your mates than mine. They only tolerate me because you and I grew up next door to one another.
‘Give it over,’ I said, but your engines were revved.
‘Pities me trying to scrape into college while he’s collecting his fucken scholarship medal!’
‘Chip on your shoulder, Degs.’
It was the lack of conviction in my voice that lost me the room. Maybe the room was always lost. Their bodies leaned away from me.
‘What did you say to me?’ Your face was in mine, dead-eyed, as if ready to bite down on my lip until blood flooded your chin.
I don’t know which of the lads put the hand on your shoulder: ‘Chill Degsy, it’s cool, it’s cool.’ I was too busy pretending not to be afraid.
You read the room, no appetite to sour a big night.
‘I’m messing, lads! God’s sake ‒ take the joke! C’mere to me, you.’ And you hugged me and thumped my back and we all laughed, and I suppose it was fine again. But we were definitely going on the town and this time you had the hunger on you.
‘Tequila for the road!’
We marched down the strip swigging petrol-blue cocktails from plastic cups, you setting the pace, your long legs tanned since Day Two. Stopped to chat up girls from Belfast, sang rebel songs at Sheffield lads who refused to get remotely aggro about it.
The bars all had the same music and drinking games, same smell of perfume, sweat and vapes. You danced and sang like the night would last forever. I just needed to get through the week, collect stories to tell in the local pub, and then get busy with college.
In the meantime, shots. Limbo under a glittery pole, win a shot. Sing a karaoke song, win a shot. Down five shots in a row, win a fucking shot.
‘Might take a year out,’ you roared into the ear of a student nurse from Manorhamilton. ‘It’s overrated, college. I’m more into health and fitness, career-wise, y’know?’
When you went AWOL, I reckoned you’d scored. Then you reappeared with pupils like buttons, full of the joys for the hour until your eyes began to dim. I took you outside, envious of your lust for risk, and annoyed by the burden of your intoxication. You hugged me, told me to lighten up, called me man, while I grilled you about what you’d taken and where you got it.
‘It’s alright, Degsy, just tell me. Do we need the hospital or–’
‘I need a piss and a hug, man, that’s all. And a big fat dirty sleep.’
You leaned over the knee-high wall of a dry fountain in the heart of the old square. They stopped the water to avoid drownings; now it just gathers sand and sick.
Impatience was brewing in the group. They wanted you dragged up so we could push on to the next bar. The lads were exchanging Leaving Cert results and college hopes with a crowd from Mallow who were heading to The Twisted Shamrock, happy to fold us into the mix.
But you looked worse in the karaoke lights, even after a pint of water. You slumped onto a table, spilled someone’s bottle of Breezer and sparked a bout of pushing and shoving, until we were all outside, motion sick, standing still in our sticky t-shirts.
The gang said I was ‘sound’ for taking you off their hands. Made sense for me to be the one to get you home. Your roommate, classmate. Used to say best mate, but we both know we’ve been drifting. In primary school, we were the same, inseparable. Secondary, you got popular, got girls, got stoned. This past year, while I was panicking about exams, you were pub-crawling around our three-pub town, living your best life.
You were a mess on the slow walk back to the hotel.
‘I love you,’ you said. ‘Brothers since the minute we met, yeah?’
You cried in the lift, said your mother will be in bits if you don’t get Arts in Cork. Said you were afraid you’d end up dropping out, and you wanted to be a personal trainer.
‘Don’t forget me after the holiday, when you’re off in UCD.’
‘I won’t forget anyone.’
‘Don’t go getting fancy new Law friends,’ you said. ‘I’m your fucken friends.’
I told you we’d talk tomorrow, which must mean we’ll talk today.
‘You’re a sound man, man. Sound man.’
This morning
I’m swinging between sickness and starvation, an acidic emptiness in my stomach. Chances of getting back to sleep: nil.
I’m shouting into the void, my eyes closed.
‘Degs, will we eat?’
You’re either asleep or can’t hear me for the racket outside. Sirens, raised voices. I sit up on the edge of the bed, drain the last beads of water from a plastic cup, and bring myself to an unsteady stand. Hold it there for a minute, tell myself I’m alright, not going to puke, just need water and plain food.
A phone rings. Can’t be mine, mine’s dead.
I shuffle into the kitchen. On the table, a vibrating screen lit with the word MAM. Your Mam. I can’t answer it.
‘Degs, are you in the jacks? Your mam’s ringing …’
Bathroom door’s open, but you’re not there.
The phone falls silent. I pick it up, tap in your birthdate and see a rake of WhatsApps.
➢ Fair play Derek, love Auntie B
➢ Good luck in Cork Degs ye langer! am I sayin that right?
➢ Congrats ‒ knew you had it in you love Mam [heart]
Footsteps pound up the corridor. A fist batters the door.
‘Who is it?’ I shout.
There’s screeching from the Welsh gang’s balcony, a string of Oh-my-Christs!
Out through the open doors, into a sheet of sunlight, the hot tiles sting the soles of my bare feet.
‘Hey guys.’ I nod at the girls, clear my throat. ‘What’s the story?’
Nia, through her hands. ‘There’s someone down there!’
Gary Finnegan's fiction has appeared in Litro, The London Magazine, Howl, Ropes, and The Irish Independent. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and was selected for the Freedom to Write Award in 2024 by PEN/Ireland & The John Hewitt Society. Gary has an MA in creative writing and is working on a novel.
I'd read a book by this author.
This was such a tragic ending.