Donal Reilly

In the streetscape, the low winter sunlight illuminated the charred remnants clinging to the walls and pathways. The event had etched the shadows of the taken into the stone and cement, doors, and windows. They all served up lifelong reminders of the deceased. Up close, their individual shapes were clearer. A black body shadow speckled with a glittering substance. The new government focused its cleaning efforts on removing the sparkly elements, hoping to paint over the charred appearance. Removal, to date, remains impossible.

Sundays were now spent counting people who might have been good neighbours before it all happened. Finbar Buckley spied through the window, his breath periodically fogging the single pane of glass. He had trained his eyes to avoid the Remnants. The bells of the nearby church rang out, signalling to him. He counted them as they passed by. Today he got to fifteen, and that had taken around thirty minutes.

Two more than the last day.

This was his fourth house in fifteen months. A large Georgian home in South Dublin. He’s smashed down doors or windows in daylight or nighttime. It made no difference. No one was around to witness this previous criminal act and if they were, they never cared enough to intervene. The grid was still reliable in this part of the city. Four hours of electricity five days a week. The other two spent shivering in candlelight.

He looked out over the deserted square, a weak excuse for coffee in hand, and waited. The house still felt alien to him. Among his possessions now were several boxes of books, a few stolen vinyl records, and his clothes. He packed up the abandoned clothes from the wardrobes and those scattered around the bedroom floors and dropped them into the empty garden next door. They were still there. Rain sodden one week, crisp with frost and ice the next. In time, they turned sun-bleached, green, and mossy.

For the first month, he smoked in every room, except the drawing room. Finbar had tipped ash over desks, and beds, and on the staircase steps. He’d grown irritated with the house. He tempted it to fight back against him, to let him know it was not his, and he didn’t belong there. A short walk along the nearby canal off Portobello road there was a shop attached to a service station, left abandoned. On his first day in his new neighbourhood, he’d smashed in a back window gaining access to the shop. An endless supply of cigarettes. Each morning, he would make his way to the shop to pick up a new pack, taking them one at a time. It was important to maintain rituals.

He stubbed the cigarette end against the windowsill, leaving another scorch mark. In the ornate hallway, he grabbed his one winter coat and slipped it on, pulling the red door closed behind him. He didn’t meet a single person. Everyone left would be in a church. The melodious tune of a pied piper drew them in, like rats.

Finbar breezed by empty homes on empty streets. Apartments with half-drawn blinds, frozen lives left on display in their windows. Tables with settings for dinner, cups left over from their last morning coffee. Bones of animals left to die within those walls, once cherished pets, long since forgotten by anyone left living. There were too many, he’d told himself in those first days and weeks.

He would clamp his hands tight to his ears to drown out the sounds of hungry and desperate cats and dogs mewling and howling long into the night. The sounds stopped at some point. Days or weeks later, he wasn’t sure. He became immune to it all. The new government issued a kill order for street dogs. Food and water were privileges now, and they had to be earned by providing essential services to the new state. “Duty above all else”, was the new motto.

He stopped at the large steel gates of a former mechanic’s yard and glanced quickly around the road. He pried the gates apart, leaving his body just enough space to slip through the chains. In the open yard, abandoned cars lay scattered, their bonnets pointing upward, revealing their rust. Oil stains lingered over the grey cement, creating an image. This image soothed him, as it was something he could conjure in his mind of how it came to be. Car parts leaking, the mechanic’s careless actions, or his apprentice knocking over drums. The Remnant images burnt into the world were something he could neither explain nor look at.

Finbar pulled the food scraps from the inside pocket of his coat, which were wrapped in a handkerchief he’d found in the upstairs bedroom of a previous house last year. He made a quiet single clicking sound with the corner of his mouth, curling his lips upward and to the side. He snapped his fingers. From the edges of the yard behind the vehicles, two dogs stepped forward. Months later, the trust still hadn’t developed. Irreversible damage between dog and man. Finbar alone could not bridge the gap. The dogs growled low and eyed his hand with the loaded hankie as he bent forward to spread the food out on the ground. He stepped backward to the gate, and the dogs advanced to the food with each step he took away from them. Slipping back out the gate, he glanced to watch them snap at each other as they licked hungrily at the ground. As he turned from Gleneally Road onto Rutland Avenue, he peered down the small street at the rows of tiny houses. He spotted his old front door. Flower baskets hung on the red bricked walls outside the door, planter boxes of purple and orange bloomed and spilled outwards over the cement sills. Up close, he could see they were plastic flowers. Nothing that nice could grow here now. Finbar grimaced, refusing to bring his eyes towards the Remnant riddled street. He diverted his gaze back to the house he intended to break into. Their old home together.

Inside, a fire burned in the hearth, protected by a fireguard that he had bought once. They’d been living there a month or two and he decided it was time to light their first fire in their new home. Finbar walked into the kitchen. A soup pot sat atop the stove, its contents still hot. Finbar peered into the liquid and pushed some of it around, noting the ingredients. He tasted some and spat it out over the counter. He always hated his fusion food. The press under the sink held a large plastic bowl, and he filled it with water from the sink tap. The fast torrent of brown and white bubbles drenched his skin and clothes as it spilled into the bowl. He turned the tap off and made his way carefully back to the fireplace, where he tipped the entire contents in over the warm embers. The sizzle and smoke sent plumes outwards and upwards in a dizzying display. Grey smoke turning rapidly into white, water pouring and pooling all over the floor. He smiled for a moment, and then the smile vanished.

This is what he was talking about. Why do you do things like that?

Finbar grabbed some towels from the bathroom under the stairs and was on his hands and knees sopping up black water puddles when the key turned in the lock and the front door clicked open.

Frankie stood open-mouthed just inside the living room. His bright blue eyes surveying the scene unfolding in front of him. His clothes were immaculate, as always. He never left their home without checking himself in the round hallway mirror. His yellow beanie snuggled his ears and stopped shy of the clean shaven skin on his face and neck, the colour changing to a darker shade there. The coat was one he’d picked a few birthdays before and Finbar had picked up on a rushed shopping trip on his way home from work. The jeans and boots were all colour coordinated. Back in the day, Frankie would hold a fresh bunch of flowers in one arm and a tote draping from the other stuffed with lovely, vibrant food from M&S. Today, his arms were cold and empty. The smell that filled the room with his arrival was the heady scent of incense from the church. It burned night and day now. No longer reserved for a funeral mass or perhaps as a signal of the ongoing eternal grief for those gone and those left behind. He kept the coat buttoned. The oranges and yellows swirled around the darker brown tones as he swept past Finbar and into the kitchen.

‘What the actual fuck…’ He muttered something out of earshot to Finbar and came back to the doorway between the rooms. ‘You can’t keep breaking in here. Jesus, I can’t keep doing this. I’m exhausted. You exhaust me!’ His hands flailed around in the air, by his sides and back into the air again. When he was at his most angry, Frankie looked like his own mother. Her Nigerian accent stressing her emotions to a point where her family would forget to take her seriously and begin laughing at her. She, too, would cave and join in their revelry. Her own frustration lapsing with every chuckle. Finbar smiled at the memory, forgetting where he was in time and space.

‘Fuck you and stop smiling.’ Frankie said, his voice trembling.

Finbar kept his head down and kept mopping the black water with the sodden towel. He was just pushing puddles all over the wooden floors.

‘Sorry.’ He whispered to the room.

‘You’re not sorry.’ He stopped himself. There seemed like there was more he was about to say. Instead he sighed, wiped his forehead, pulling the beanie off and he tossed it towards the couch.

‘I don’t know why I do things like this. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’

Frankie stared at him. Finbar shrank further towards the floor. He slipped his legs out from under him and sat in the water. He felt helpless and looked pitiful. His eyes widened, brimming with tears. He swept the towel to the side and played with the hole in his jumper near the sleeve end. His own clothes were at odds with Frankie’s appearance. His jeans stained with weeks of wiping his hands on them. He wore a simple black jumper, which he wasn’t sure he ever owned, riddled with holes that showed a white cotton t-shirt beneath. He moved his eyes up and around Frankie’s tall frame, stopping and scanning and taking mental snapshots. Every time they did this, it always felt like it was the last time. The fearful thought occurred to him again as he wavered around Frankie’s mid-section. He longed for the smell of his skin pressing against his nose, beating his hand against his chest as they writhed on the floor.

‘No.’ Frankie spoke down at him. His tone was firm and deliberate. ‘Not this time.’

He moved back into the kitchen and returned with more clothes. He flicked the buttons open one by one and placed his coat next to his hat on the couch. Keeping his knees out of the watery mess, he got to work. This was effective, and soon the water was all held in the fabrics piled at the corner of the fireplace. Ash had daubed grey and black streaks across the light oak floors. Frankie turned back to Finbar, who had removed all of his clothing and stood now, naked, above him. A flash of sadness rippled across Frankie’s face and Finbar read the message.

This is sad. You are sad.

Frankie reached up and pressed his hand flat against Finbar’s stomach. A gentle touch that sends a shivering feeling through his body. He tensed his legs and pressed his feet into the floor, curling his toes so as not to waver. Frankie’s eyes found him then. Finbar lost himself in a moment, a memory of their warmer times. Spreading a blanket out across this same floor, the fire burning nearby. Their naked bodies entwined and searching each other like strangers for hidden spots of delight. But the eyes now, though bright as always, were saying something else. Something was different this time. The hand pressing his flesh was not inviting their ill-advised sex since the breakup routine. It was pushing back. It was saying what his words were saying. Enough. No, not this time. Not anymore.

Frankie rose to his feet and fetched the blanket, their blanket, from the back of the couch and draped it over Finbar’s shoulders. Finbar remained motionless. Frankie wrapped the blanket further around covering his front too.

‘I’m not doing this anymore.’ He spoke low as he sat down on the couch. Finbar kept his back to him, unable to turn and face him, to face the rejection.

‘With me, you mean.’ The words were harder than he’d intended, his pride wounded and now he wanted to wound too. ‘Who are you fucking then?’

A slow exhalation filled the space from the couch to his back and Finbar turned then to find Frankie holding his head in his hands, his knees buoying his arms.

‘I am not seeing anyone Fin.’ His resignation was clear.

‘I know you. You need this just as much as I do. You were just as in this all the time we were together and even since we -’ Finbar was jabbing the space between them with his finger edging closer, stretching his arm outwards. Frankie was shaking his head.

‘I’ve changed. I don’t know what else to say or how many more times I can have this same conversation with you.’ He shrugged.

‘What’s changed with you? You seem the same to me.’ Finbar sneered, his lips pursed in an upward angle. Frankie took a deep breath and sat back on the couch, spreading his arms up over his head and then relaxing them again. He stretched his neck from side to side, the thick shoulder muscles bulging from the edges of his shirt. Finbar shuffled with the blanket, wrapping it tighter to his body yet remained standing in the centre of the room.

‘Since it happened. Since the…’ Frankie stopped choosing his words and scanning Finbar’s face all the while. ‘Well, after you left, I became lost. So alone. I didn’t know who or what I was anymore. My family and job were gone.’ He stopped again, but this time Finbar thought it was like he was steeling himself, readying himself for a fight. Frankie scrunched his hands into fists and then released the tension. ‘I needed something, a purpose. The church gave me that. I never thought I’d belong somewhere like that with those people, but they have become my people. I’m less alone when I’m there.’

‘So you don’t want to have sex because you found God, yeah?’

He smiled and tilted his head.

‘No. I just think that in the grand scheme of things, there is a more important way to spend my time. This whole thing has proven how limited our lives are. How it was all taken away from so many in the blink of an eye. I want to spend my time doing something meaningful and helpful. Giving back.’ He rested his hands in his lap and shrugged again, this time slower.

‘Right.’ Finbar nodded, up and down, glancing back and forth to meet Frankie’s eyes. There was something else, he was sure. Something Frankie wanted him to guess at. He wanted Finbar to say the words so that he wouldn’t have to. ‘So you spend your time helping, then? Doing what? Like how are living here still with all the food and the fuel. You don’t have to work or worry about the privileges being earned. How is that possible?’

Frankie wet his lips and rubbed them together.

‘I am working. At the home caring for the kids.’ He refused to meet Finbar’s eyes. Finbar leant in closer and moved his own head from side to side like a snake standing to attention, being led by a charmer.

‘Look at me Frankie.’ He bobbed around again until their eyes locked. ‘I said to you that if you wanted to do that job, I wouldn’t stop you. I supported the idea for God’s sake!’ He raised his arms, the blanket slipping, but he caught it in time.

‘It’s a fine line between support and telling me what I could or could not do. You were suffocating me after. You followed me everywhere. I had no space. It was like I couldn’t breathe!’

Finbar shook his head, unable to follow the sudden zig in the flow of their conversation.

‘I’m going to be a father, Finbar.’

Finbar reeled. His eyes were wide, his jaw open and slack. As quick before, his world had shifted and altered around him again just as fast. Images flashed in his mind, Frankie and the child playing on the floor where he stood. The room brimming with toys, baby clothes strewn over surfaces. Worst of all, the faint hint of perfume in the house and a soft voiced woman calling from the kitchen to tell them dinner was ready.

‘Say something then. Tell me it’s a terrible idea.’

Finbar couldn’t respond. He dropped the blanket, and it fell to his feet, slumped around his toes, warming them for a second.

‘Jesus.’ Frankie said.

Finbar stepped out from the piled fabric and moved to where he had thrown his clothes at the end of the couch. He plucked out underwear and slipped it on. The t-shirt was still inside the jumper and he pulled them over his head in one fluid movement. He kept his hand balanced on the arm of the couch as he placed the inside out sock on his right foot, then the left one.