Illustration by Maeve Breathnach

This story is part of TN2’s ongoing flash fiction series, which aims to give a platform to exciting new writers from Trinity. If you would like your fiction to be considered for publication, simply submit it to literature@tn2magazine.ie along with your name and a one-sentence bio.

It was down by the burn – the old house. His grandmother had been born there, so Morris reckoned it older than anyone alive, for he knew of no-one older than his granny. Sheltered by the ground’s natural cusp, it was further obscured by the leafy roof of trees which grew up around it, making it almost invisible to the unsuspecting stranger. Morris noticed how today when someone built a house, they’d put it right there by the road, showing it off to everybody who’d pass by. He remembered Miss Flynn talking about when people built the first towns, how they’d looked for places nearby water or protected by the hills. He imagined them, his forebearers, marking out this spot, weighing up its usefulness, thinking how they’d bend its shape to their human need.

     The old house had been empty for a while. When he was little, a man had lived there, a cousin who’d come back from America with nowhere else to go. Great-aunty Katherine had been there then, but when she died it was just the cousin. He used to walk to the crossroads every day to get a lift to work, but then he began to sleep too long in the morning so that the man who’d lift him used to have to come and wake him too. After a few months of this he died as well. The old house being too messy for the wake, it was held in Morris’ home, just across the field. It wasn’t the usual Father John who said the rosary but another priest, a stranger with a funny voice like it was dancing. He didn’t want to stay long and rushed out after the prayers, refusing whiskey or even tea. When the cousin was buried, it was outside the graveyard, beside the wall. When Morris asked his mother why this was, he was told to shush and not to ask anymore questions like that. 

     It not being in use by the family, they’d tried to rent the place out, but no-one would have it. Soon it wasn’t much more than a ruin – like it knew it wasn’t wanted and gave up being a house. It was about this time that the soldiers arrived. They built a big tower on the hill, so big that they could watch over all the people like they were ants and at night Morris couldn’t sleep because the helicopters were so loud, thrumming up above all the time. Though told not to, Morris used to pretend he was like the soldiers, marching about the place with a big bag on his back and aiming his gun, jumping over ditches and barging his way through hedges.

     One day when they were out on patrol, the soldiers saw him and stopped to give him sweets and chewing gum and one of them let him try on his cap. When he went home after this and told his ma, she clapped him round the ear and said that he was a stupid boy and what he had done was very dangerous. That he should never speak to them again and that if he seen them he was to come straight home, but not to run, lest they thought he had good reason to. But the soldiers never did talk to him again, and they started going less and less by ground, instead hopping from place to place by air. This was because some of them had died, and they grew afraid of the local people then.

     He would pretend the old house was his fort, his private castle where he alone was king and commander. Other boys would join him, and they’d run up and down the rickety stairs, ducking for cover in the huge fireplace and behind broken furniture as they fought off their invisible enemy. One day when they were doing this a floorboard snapped and they saw that underneath – like buried treasure – was a great steel box. Working together, they hauled it from the ground. When it was opened, the contents shone – long gleaming strings of ammunition, woven together like tribal necklaces in a museum. They ran the lead through their fingers, the cool metal falling through their hands like golden coins. The afternoon was spent searching for more precious items, tearing up wooden panels and ransacking cupboards. They uncovered four rifles and laid them proudly in the corner like spears.

     ‘These things are dangerous. They could come for us and kill us if they knew,’ said one boy warily, the world-wisest of them all. Deliberations were held and it was decided that, as he lived closest, Morris should go home and fetch his father. When he saw the hoard, the older man began to fret, strutting back and forth across the damaged floor. He sent Morris’ friends away and told them not to say a word to anyone, not to tell a living soul of what they’d seen. That night, muted arguments soured the atmosphere of the kitchen and Morris was put to bed early and reassured that this was not his fault. But he could not sleep, and through the wall he heard the mumbled anxious voice of his father on the phone to the police.

     The next morning they waited for the arrival of the armoured cars, those dark spectres of the roads. But no-one came. For days, there were no soldiers, no helicopters buzzing in the sky, and not a policeman to be seen. A week went by. Soon the boys resumed their war-games, running frantic once again about the fields. But as they played, Morris couldn’t help imagining the weapons, those dull-black fetishes of death, resting idle in the abandoned house. The itch of curiosity was too much for him and he snuck out in the night to lay his eyes again upon their sharp and threatening angles.

     The trap was sprung. Convinced they’d got their man, the darkened crowd of soldiers closed ranks around the limp and bleeding corpse. His termination was a triumph and their well-earned compensation for what they and their brothers had endured at the hands of the Fenian savage.