Published in: The Dublin Quarterly, Issue 12, Jan – Feb 2008 (fiction), Ireland

They come in the night. In my half-sleep, diving deep but not deep enough. The corridor light is on, my door is open. It’s always open. I want to hear the music. I want to know I’m not alone. But still they come. I can’t stop them. I try, but I flop about in a soupy place. I can still hear the music but I can’t move. I’m pressed down into my body, drowning in my own breath. They always come together. Not one, but two. I smell them first. It starts as a tingle in my mouth, climbs up the back of my nose, a smell like no other. I try to describe it to Mummy but I can’t.

Published in: Quicksilver 1.2, 2009 (fiction), The University of Texas at El Paso, United States

Johnny Noo-noos is coming tonight, coming tonight, Johnny Noo-noos is coming. He won’t forget, he promised, he promised, promised.

Pearl turns the word in her mouth but it won’t go down. She lifts a corner of curtain. The ship isn’t here. Windswept sheep dot the barren hill. The hill stares sullenly over the boreen. Pearl stares back, chewing on her lip. A snake of peat smoke curls up from the main house.
House of sin. That horrible woman and her horrible child. Must pack my handbag. Where’s my handbag? Must pack my handbag.

Published in: Versal Six, Spring 2008 (fiction), Amsterdam, Netherlands

Hard in my mouth. Tearing. Taste of blood metal. I smell salt, my own spit-froth. I’m sweating. She’ll fall off if I don’t stop. I feel her knees through the leather, high up on the skirts. Terrified, she is, pulling hard. I’m bleeding now. I don’t care. I want this. This now. Scrub flying like storm water beneath my hooves, rocks disappearing into sand the faster I go. My hooves do not touch them or the nopal. We are on the edge of the canyon my mother fell into. I watched her fall, legs and eyes and mane and tail a knot of flashing grey and then there was nothing. And then there was a sound. It leapt from canyon wall to canyon wall, and I looked up. A billowing dust cloud swallowed the herd, my father leading. That’s when I learned to run.

Published in: Word Riot, March 2008 (fiction), United States

I was half asleep when I heard Father stumbling about, calling for his breakfast. Then a great noise filled the house. Voices, thumping feet, the sound of glass breaking and wood smashing. The door to my room opened and I knew they had come for me.