The dad is splayed on the couch wearing a scornful expression. He is thinking that his wife’s voice has a piercing quality not dissimilar to that possessed by Percy, his childhood pet parrot. He is also thinking that she is lucky that he is not like his friend Bill who is brewing a possible extra-marital affair.
He holds onto sincerity begrudgingly as if it is a burdensome emotional paperweight.
Josh is watching and waiting. Josh doesn’t like the way his nostrils flare in indignation. He doesn’t like the coarseness of his angry fists.
The social worker wasn’t correct when she labelled him a ‘problem child’. His heart shouldn’t still feel engulfed by the flames of her saccharin disdain.
The mum is not in his line of sight but he can hear her singing a melody that sounds vaguely familiar.
Their mother was one of those people who thought nostalgia alone was enough to fuel a memory.
His size 5 shoe struggles for purchase on the window sill. The atmosphere of the night is composed primarily of his sighs.
The last time Josh saw his sister was seven months ago. Her hands had folded a thin sliver of tissue like origami. Her eyes never left the square even when they stretched into tear-drenched circles. The words ‘won’t be placed as a sibling unit’ had ricocheted off the walls and smacked her out of her childhood.
A fellow resident of his foster home who he once saw eat a serviette had sourced the address. He had smuggled the bounty into his hand as they queued like sardines for sardines. Initially, Josh was sceptical considering the serviette incident but it appears some angels chew with their mouths full.
Josh waits for the moon to loop around the cul-de-sac and gently pries the window open. Her nose makes a ridiculous fizzing noise when she sleeps.
His feet kiss the carpet with fleeting but grateful movements. He does not see the snake of cable for the monitor that has been draped like a hideous umbilical cord behind his sleeping sister. He does not know about the nightmares and the new arms that have mustered comfort. He would not understand the inflection in his sister’s voice as she says ‘thank you, new mum, thank you’. He would not care for her new mindset or the stoniness of its unexplored coral reefs.
The dad’s face is approaching the colour of evening succumbing to night and distorted by anger. He kicks open the door. His left arm is a barrier to keep his wife out. He fires once at a darkly-clad figure. He doesn’t turn on the light. He doesn’t see the shock, the strangulation of the scream, the frown like isobars on a map marring the contours of a war painted face.
Josh feels everything. He feels his youth will be graded as a fail. He feels warm, too warm, like he is lying in a tropical blast of air. He feels his blood flow like an obsequent river. He feels the wrongness of a right hand as it attempts to dam the flow.
‘Damn!’
‘No, no, no!’
‘Damn it, no!’
He feels a flicker of humour tickling his cheeks when he hears his sister say ‘Damn is a swear word, you’re not allowed to swear!’
His sister hears the justification ‘I didn’t know! How could I have known?’
Her howls bulge into a new hinterland of pain. They rise and attract no action. They threaten to pull the room asunder. Her hands are wringing the ironed sheets.
The medics arrive but Josh’s eyes are pearls of beauty journeying to the moon.
Catherine O’Brien is an Irish writer of poems, flash fiction and short stories. She holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in English Language and Literature. Her work has most recently appeared in Comhar, Splonk, Mythic Picnic, Ink Sweat &Tears, Full House Literary, The Gooseberry Pie Literary Magazine, Flash Boulevard, BULL and Bending Genres. She featured on the Wigleaf Top 50 longlist 2024 and has been nominated for Best of the Net and Best Small Fictions (2023). You can find out more about her and her work on X at @abairrud2021.
This is beautifully written! A stunner.