Or so she reckons.

My Jill won’t let that happen though. She always says we’s as much right to that house as me sister. I grew up there too and just because I had to leave at sixteen to get a job don’t mean I stopped being me mam’s son.

Jill says I should see someone about it but I don’t want to upset mam because she’s not that well. Solicitors cost too much anyway. I’ve seen one before and it’s like leaving the taxi running. Cost me thousands just to sort the bloody neighbours out.

‘Course mam helped us then which is why I know she wouldn’t want to cut me out of what’s mine just because I’m not around as much as Miss Bloody Goody thinks I should.

I mean, we can’t all work around the corner and nip back whenever mam needs her knickers changing, can we not?

Can’t see Jill wanting to even if we did, but mam says life is for living and she’s pleased I got on with me own after all the trouble back in ’78.

That doesn’t mean I don’t love her though. Jill says I just got a different way of showing it. Cleaning and pushing wheelchairs isn’t my sort of thing. More of a handy man, I am. More of a Mr Fixit. Show me a leaky pipe and I’ll have it fixed in no time and won’t charge you much for doing it.

I used to do all sorts for mam. I did.

Happy to help too, until sis said she’d start doing a few things instead. Bet she charges more than I did but what can I do? I won’t take more from my own mam than I have to. That’s on account of me pride.

Sis says I shouldn’t have charged mam in the first place but mam understood and we asked her, once, and she said she did and it was fine and not to worry. It would have been covered by mam’s insurance or pension or something so I don’t know why sis even wanted to change things but she did.

Jill says I shouldn’t let her speak to me like that, and that even the thing about dad’s old books wasn’t half as bad as what sis made it out to be. They’d have been mine one day anyway and it’s not like sis likes that kind of stuff. She’ll have mam’s jewellery or something and why shouldn’t she be happy with that? Nobody sees me complaining about that.

She probably wears it now and that’s ok with me. I’m not the sort of bloke who moans about that. Let her have the jewellery now for all I care.

Jill had a look once and said it was the sort of stuff only sis would like anyway. I wouldn’t stop her wearing it.

It’s not like mam ever gets out to places where she’s chance to wear it ‘though I know sis takes her to church, and some little functions, and that. Not what I’d call fun, even for an old lady but I’m not one to criticise or interfere.

That’s me, though. I live and let live so all I’m asking is that others do the same by me. If I take something that’s going to be mine anyway then where’s the harm in that?

Mam said she’s let bygones be bygones and Jill reckons even me dad would have forgiven me that other thing by now seeing as how I was so young when it happened and who thinks straight when they got hormones and drugs and that in them?

It happened, that’s all.

I said I was sorry and I did my time and I miss him and all that stuff my counsellor helped me say. Why sis can’t just move on, I don’t know.

It’s got nothing to do with her anyway and nothing to do with what me inheritance rights is. She should just keep out of things and be glad I’m not fourteen again.

I’m just trying to help look after mam the best way I can and Jill says I don’t need bitches like her always interfering in my life.

She must run mam’s house like a prison but I reckon my Jill’s right when she says you get what you deserve.

First published on Fictionaut, Monday 16th April

When Billy-o’s Daddy died, by way of a piece of artillery shell which finished the hole his mouth had started, the wind sang with a perfect C through his face until the bombardment stopped and each side picked up their dead and made peace with the mud, once more.

He’d not been the perfect daddy by any measure. Billy-o’s Grandma had heard him call her daughter a perfect c on more than one occasion. Maybe he’d called it her that night she had come home ten minutes too late or maybe Billy-o’s Daddy had thought the time for words was past. Whichever way it had been, the police had given him the choice of prison or war and Billy-o’s Daddy had cleaned his gun and headed out.

That was in the past, and Billy-o’s Grandma barely acknowledged it, let alone dwelt on it. When the news came she had sat Billy-o down and told him his daddy was dead.

“Yer Daddy,” she’d said, chopping onions for soup, “no coming back.”

Billy-o knew what no coming back meant.

“Like ma,” said Billy-o.

“Like ma,” replied Grandma.

Now soup is important but it isn’t everything and Billy-o’s Grandma knew how these things went. She knew her Billy-o wanted a daddy and she knew nothing could bring that fractured man back. So with a sigh and a stir, she went to a cupboard and pulled out a box just four or five inches by one and covered in letters so fine neither a one could read them.

“This was your Daddy’s. He used it to court your ma and he used it to stop your tears.”

Then Grandma went back to the soup on the stove and Billy-o opened the box, took out the harmonica and blew. It was the most awful cacophony and, truth to tell, time didn’t improve it any. But it was a tune Grandma had never heard before and she reckoned she could live with that.

He lived his life

Upon his head

One day he sneezed

And now he’s dead.

words by Dom Conlon, scribbles by Dave Kirkwood.

“You should ask her out, you should.”

I wasn’t so sure. What if she said no?

It was a possibility which only ever seemed to occur to me and the reason why this was the first time I’d ever even got this far in asking anybody out.

“You don’t have to ask her face to face.”

This was good. A phone call, then. I could do it with a phone call. Only… what if she said no?

OK, how’s this: a phone call, not made by me but by a friend? That gave me deniability.

Even better, a phone call made by a friend from another friend’s house.

Without me in the room.

It’s a wonder it didn’t work.

Rejected, we all made our way home. A car passed us as we walked. It was going far too fast. It hit something. It flipped. Its back end reached for the sky before hitting the tarmac and spinning to a stop, some two hundred yards ahead of us.

We didn’t know what to do so we carried on home and trusted other people to reach the crash scene in our place.

Occasionally, I wonder what happened to the girl I didn’t phone, and whether there were any survivors.

I turn out the light and say goodnight.

He calls me back to ask: if he needs me during the night, can he shout out.

Of course, I say, I’ll always be there.

He sleeps through.

In the morning, my parents phone to see how I am.

Some lights never go out.

I have a christmas present, shaped like a wand, which has remained unopened since 1993.

It was for my brother who died that Christmas. I knew he was dying, but even so I bought and wrapped it.

Sometimes I take it out of the drawer and wonder why.

I don’t think I’ll ever open it.

But perhaps, when it no longer matters, my son will.

A day can last as long as you want.

All that’s needed is the ability to listen.

It was the summer of 1978 or maybe it was 1979. I was playing in the woods near my house. It was an adventure before tea time.

Stepping through brambles and over ditches, the air became filled with the floating white seeds of dandelions. It was like leaving Narnia.

I sneaked back out, later that evening, but the air had cleared.

“Make a wish,” he says to his Mummy. “Close your eyes.”

She wishes the three of them could be happy forever.

“Keep your eyes closed.” The words of a four year old. The tone of authority.

He summons me to him with a gesture.

Closer, he indicates.

Then, with both hands he moulds my face into a smile.

There, he mimes, hold it like that.

Fixing his own smile, he instructs his Mummy to open her eyes.

“See,” he says with a wave of his hands, “your wish has come true.”

“We lost another one.”

“Another? Really? Where was it this time?”

Mick pointed in the direction of the ancient oaks that arched above the crumbling crypts. “The medieval quarter. Same place as last week. Same gang, probably.”

A stony silence fell between the pair as Lou considered the situation. “But that means…”

“It does,” said Mick.
“Fuck,” said Lou.
“Yes,” said Mick.
“Shit,” said Lou, “There goes Gabe, then. Damn, what a waste. He was the best of us.”
“Hey!” said Mick.
“Well, ok, second best. Better than me, anyway and I’m still here.”

“You’ll be here until the end of time, you will.” Mick gazed over at medieval quarter. “It’s bad enough that we ended up trapped in these bodies, watching over dead humans; but to be subject to vandalism and, lately, even murder. Well that’s just too much. If this were the old days and I had my sword… Then they’d see a thing or two. I’d soon fire and brimstone and mighty vengeance their asses.”

“Now you’re talking my language, Michael. Still, you should have joined me when you had the chance. Then we wouldn’t be stood here having this conversation.”

Mick continued his surveillance of the medieval quarter. Headstones lay like unpaid soldiers in the aftermath of a riot of flowers. “Lou?”

“Yes Michael?”

“We’re becoming irrelevant, aren’t we?”

“We are indeed, Michael. And, thanks to infinite wisdom and all that jazz, nobody is making any more of us.”

A rabbit bounded on a nearby grave which lay fat with soil. With nothing but dirt to feed upon, the rabbit opted to follow Mick’s unwavering, finger. If you can’t trust an angel, it might have thought, what can you trust? And deep within his rocky bones, the archangel clung to the same faith.

“Lou?”
“Yes Michael?”
“What happens to us? Where do we go when we die?”