Flash Fiction in Epistolary Form!
Today I am very happy to present an original work of flash fiction by a very distinguished author.
IT’S JUST MURDER!
By Gerry McDonnell
Dear Mother,
Wish you were here. The weather is lovely. I’ve just murdered the family in
the mobile home next to me. They were making a lot of noise at night. When
I went to their door to complain, a foul-mouthed granny told me where to go.
She got it in the gut. Just before she died she looked at me bemused, cocking
her head to one side like a curious dog as she fell to the ground. I left her bony
frame where it lay, the better to frighten the others. I hope her life flashed
before her as they say it does; her filthy, selfish, in-bred life.
The man of the family, so to speak, a sinewy, tattooed, drink-sodden waster,
came to the door. He was nearly black from the sun, the lazy prick, baking in it,
drinking his cans with his ghetto-blaster blaring. It was his mother I’d just shot.
He stared at her limp body lying on the steps.
“What the f***”, he said.
His body jerked back, like a stick insect, a look of terror on his face. I believe
I was standing up to this bully for all those people he made to feel small. He
looked at me with his gob open, his dentures sitting on his tongue. He tried to
smile, as if to say, let’s be friends. I shot him in the mouth. I probably severed
his spinal cord because he collapsed wheezing, like an accordion.
Killing the son was easy and was done in a very appropriate manner. It was
poetic justice really. He tried to climb out a side widow but his obese body got
stuck half way. He was crying and screaming as I pulled down his shorts and
shot him up the ass, as the American’s say, that same ass that mooned at me
on my first day there. He would’ve taken some time to die in excruciating pain,
I imagine.
I read later that they were members of a notorious drug dealing family and
that the crime had all the viciousness of a gangland murder. It could not have
worked out better. Who’d miss them, spreading misery to all and sundry?
I’m sitting in a small cafe, in a little fishing village, further on down the coast,
just to be out of harm’s way, until things die down, so to speak. It’s just a
precaution since I don’t think a judge in the land would convict me. I’m having
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a nice cup of tea and guess what, a sausage sandwich! Of course, not a patch
on yours. Remember the winter days when I used to prevail on you to let me
stay at home from school? I usually succeeded and you used to bring me up a
sausage sandwich in bed. Those were the days!
Will be home soon.
Your loving son, Bartholomew.
PS. It gets better. I got the gun from their mobile home when they were out
drinking the night before, no doubt intimidating people in the local town. I
don’t think I’ll go on a holiday like that again, thrown together with all sorts.
You were right. I’m much too sensitive!
END
Gerry McDonnell (JUNE 2012)
gerry.mcdonnell@ireland.com
Official Biography of Gerry McDonnell
GERRY MC DONNELL was born in 1950 and lives in Dublin. He has had five collections
of poetry published. He has also written for stage, radio and television. His play Making It
Home, a two-hander father and son relationship, was first performed at the Crypt Theatre at
Dublin Castle in 2001. A radio adaptation of this play was broadcast on RTE Radio 1 in 2008
starring the acclaimed Irish actor David Kelly as the father and Mark Lambert as the son.
His play Whose Veins Ran Lightning, based on the life and work of the Irish poet James
Clarence Mangan (1803-1849), was performed at The New Theatre in Dublin in 2003. His
libretto for a chamber opera, The Poet and the Muse, (music by composer John Byrne) also
deals with Mangan. He has written for the Irish television series Fair City.
His interest in Irish Jewry has resulted in the chapbook; Jewish Influences in Ulysses
and a collection of monologues, Mud Island Elegy, in which Jews of 19th century Ireland
speak about their lives from beyond the grave. His stage play Song of Solomon, set on the
Royal canal in Dublin, has a Jewish theme. Mud Island Anthology, concerning ‘ordinary’
Dublin gentiles who lived in the latter half of the 20th century was published by Lapwing
Publications in 2009 and is a companion collection to the ‘Elegy’ poems. His latest collection
of poetry, Ragged Star, was published in 2011.
He is a member of the Irish Playwrights’ and Screenwriters’ Guild and the Irish Writers’
Union.
CONTACT:
gerry.mcdonnell@ireland.com
End of Guest Posts
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