Shift

by Mia Gallagher

  Blackhorse, says the lady on the speaker, and the easterneuro reaches for his bag, Leap Card sweaty against his palm. The ginger’s eyes swerve, find the seat he’s about to empty.

  Magpie’s mouth is bone-dry. I taste the salt thirst of her dread—

  Oh, woman, you will be mine.

  And come myself awake.

  ‘Ah!’ yelps everyone, even the bitches, as outside the Camac bursts its banks. I ride it, powering through the young saplings lining the towpath at the top lock, and flood into the canal. Magpie’s eyes are open. Does she see me?

  A lithe flash in wetsuit black, straddling the foaming waters under the bridge.

  Does it matter? I see her.

  The doors chime. The easterneuro sits back down. ‘Wrong stop,’ he says, but no one is listening. Magpie has a finger in her mouth. Teeth against bone. The tram slicks away from Stad Capall Dubh to curve up the Naas Road. The bitches lunge forward, all gabble again. I tense, I dive, back into little Camac’s depths, under her bed into the spiderweb fractures of the water table. Around my throat, something glints.

  At the terminus, she dismounts, sticking close to the large woman with the Afro. I’m looking on from a height, sucked from the mouth of Camac’s sister Poddle into rain vapour by an unseasonal swatch of hot air. The bitches cluster, scramble, unleash. They’re heading for the Square, their usual spot: ground floor entrance, Tesco.

  Magpie gnaws at her finger. I smell the thoughts as they glitch, clusterfucking the pathways in her most unusual brain. They say she has no insight, a byproduct of her blahdiblah, but even with the medload it’s not all upstairs for dancing with Magpie. She knows well as anyone what’s safe to do.

  The House, with its secure door.

  Its secure door. Its tedious telly, its ohnonothinglike-Magpie headcase Housemates, its aren’twealldoinggreat arm-patting nurses, its yetagainthesameoldboring shite.

  The long walk there, ten minutes up the avenue.

  Darkness and rain. Alone, exposed—

  My turf. My balls twinge.

  The leader of the pack stops, looks back.

  Magpie’s finger leaves her mouth. She lunges after the Afrohair and hurries across the tracks in her shadow, clunky and awkward, making for the other entrance, the one the bitches never use.

  Oh, the faith you small-minded beings place in the camouflage of crowds.

  Don’t suggest I am leading her there. Quite the converse: if I had my limited wits about me, I would stop and consider, because such places rarely lend themselves to my kind. But I am gagging for it. What’s a chase without a challenge? And I’m a cocky fuck, long where it matters but short on memory, blinded my own gorgeousness, the conviction that if I want a ride, she’ll want it too, my lady of the desperado pheromones. So I fall as rain, swoosh as puddles towards the nearest drain, slide down gravity’s pipe and squeeze, through a hairline fissure, into the centre’s concrete foundations.

  It wasn’t always like this. Once, long ago, after the move, one of them, the ginger, was nice to her. Called her Missus, asked her if she wanted help across the road. When Magpie said no, the ginger switched. Full of compliments, finding her weak spot, pressing hard. I like your coat, Missus. Very stylish. Where d’ya get it? Your hair’s a lovely colour. Is that real? Later, the questions expanded: did she have the time, a light, a couple of euro for the bus. They would have a laugh. You’re great craic, Missus. Her guard lowered. Nice kids, she thought. Little pal, she would think when the ginger, Redser, crossed her mind, because – that’s what we are, Missus, pals, yeah? – the bitch had said so herself. She can’t remember when it turned. The ginger starting to call her names, sly invective over the traffic. The others joining in, laughter and whistling. Words she could parse but not hear. Then they crossed. Clustering up behind her. Jabs and digs. A shove. Nails in her skin. Tugs at her tangle of crazy-coloured hair. That night, on her way back from the library, a shock as the bag got pulled. She didn’t pull back. A choice. Her fingers flapped, useless, as the girls shook it out, all her precious stuff tumbling to the footpath. Mags, picture books, make-up, notebooks, her very photoID self.

  Fuckers.

  The word comes up from nowhere. She stops, halfway down the make-up aisle in Boots.

  ‘Fuckers,’ she says aloud.

  Under the concrete foundations – unh – I stiffen and jolt.

  The whitecoat at the med counter glances over. Doubletake, then a smile. Lovely smile, full of teeth, full of pity.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  Magpie smiles back, bland and sweet. The same one she gives to her rellies – Poor little Maggie – at the insufferable family parties.

  The pearly fangs waver.

  I begin to hurry.

  I come up against dead ends, blocked plugholes, air-pockets. Foam gathers at my mouth. My watery teeth begin to gnash. I am backed up now, blue-balled. Around my neck, my bridle gathers mass, link by link. Can I feel it? Hardly. I lie. Not at all. Do you lot ever sense your own source of life, or power? All I feel is need, and her, its maker.

  She’s itching, from the inside out. The place is off, and so is she. The coloured lights she normally likes so much are hurting her head. The sounds too: that smarmy yapping of the man on the tannoy, the different musics tempo-clashing beyond the red end of the spectrum. The electronic crackling through the air, so loud she can’t even hear the little kids asking Why? as they trail after their mothers, though here, they never ask a Why like a question. Too dazed under the tinny buzz. Here, everyone’s—

  a word she loved in school

  —unmoored.

  She clings to the shadows near the casino and watches them, a mass of plankton drifting up the travellators, drifting down. Pushing buggies, pushing trolleys, catching their breath on leather sofas and blondwood benches, stretching like catapult elastic past Dealz and Jackie’s only to fling back again, seduced by the eternal promise of the special offer. On basement level, she can see others, lonely little sealice prowling the empty lots. Underneath them – though she can’t see this – the water nexus of the Tamhlacht plague-pit, and me, bucking and scraping for a way out.

  That finger’s between her teeth again. Her throat is aching. The thirst is worse now, killing her. She’d murder for a Coke, but on this level it’s all fastfoods, and much as she appreciates their warm grease chomp, cosy-cosy, dancing days again afterthepubbeforetheclub, she’s not so off that she’ll risk queuing in their white glare, a big obvious look-at-me sirencalling through the wide windows.

  ‘Fuck you!’

  A laugh. Two lads, skin pure Americano-no-milk, hurtle out of the casino. She shrinks back, but they’re so constrained by their own youth and vigour she doesn’t even flicker on their peripheral. She’s just Crazy Old White static; formless. My heart rips. Woman, you need someone who will see beyond that. The lads begin a mock-fight, their arms flailing like bishops’ maces. She ducks between them, then—

  Dearie me.

  Realises she is out in the open. A flicker of ginger hair, coming up the travellator. Dread washes her mouth again, seasoned with a vinegary undertone I have no word for that sends hardening shivers down my watery cock.

  stupid stupid stupid

  When she does that—

  Oh, woman, you are mine.

  I find a conduit. I ooze towards it. I’m in.

  She edges back to Boots, fast as the meds allow. White coat looks over. Out. Dunnes. Not a soul. Out again.

  Past the glassesplace, keyplace, candyplace. Her breath is shortening, her lungs aching. Another flicker of ginger. Now the pack is on the same level as her; across the chasm, beyond the white sails, sucking shakes from toxicplastic Mingles beakers, laughing.

  She swerves, her arm thumping into a button on the wall. The lift opens with a ting.

  They look up, across.

  She shifts back, bumps into glass. Her eyes dart around.

  And—

  Ah, I sigh, as her vision snags on a place that’s new to the routewa
ys of her complex perception, and up from the soggy underground of the Tallaght marshes, carried on the travellator by mist and sweat and tears and cum and blood and eyeballs and the black stuff deep in bones and the yellow stuff crusting on the hidden corners of clothes, and all the other juices that flow through close-pressed human tissue, because where there’s water, there’s a way, I canter, her drop-dead gorgeous answer to prayer.

  She has backed herself up into the doorway of an empty unit. The door is closed but there’s no Closed notice. A lazy patch of water seeps out from under it, as if a cleaner knocked over a bucket inside and forgot to mop up. No name above the doorway, no shutters. No shutters on the windows either, just themselves, misty with half-dried Windolene. Behind the mist an ancient sign. Don’t fall in, we need the business. Three exclamation points, like it’s a joke. Under the sign a glass ball, swirling with colour.

  Alluring. Another word she loved. It made her see things, but not in the bad way. It evoked. That is what good words do, Maggie, her teacher used to say. They make you think of other things. So: this fisher’s ball in a window. Evoking bright feathers and glinting metal bending under river water. Her father, wandering Duncan, on the canal bank. The fishing rod. Slick as a whip, laughing through the air. The trout he caught for supper, greedy mouths sucking for the hook. The other small fish too small to have names, sucking at the trouts’ bellies. Her hand in his, sticky with the dregs of ice-cream.

  See that, Magpie?

  A plume of white foam leaping from the lock. Flaming mane, wild tail; full of life.

  That’s a kelpie.

  Her fingers extract, reach to touch.

  Ah-ah, Magpie. He’s a cocky wee lad, and handsome, but your waterhorse is not like other horsies. He can bite.

  She seizes the handle.

  It gives and, with a click, the door opens. I seep under its frame, across the puddle, and lead her into a place of failing light.

  The sounds outside have disappeared, sinking under a blanket of silence. The smeary windows are portholes, the world behind them a bright blur. A tap is dripping somewhere, or maybe a burst pipe, she thinks, or the rain. Her eyes adjust. She makes out the fuzzy edge of a countertop, covered in dust so thick it’s filth. Old posters are stuck to the back wall, peeling at the corners. She can’t see what’s on them, but gets a sense of her father’s homeland. Tumbling water, lochs and mountains. She steps forward. Her foot touches something.

  Ah, I sigh, and flow myself along the wet lino into the ragged pile on the ground.

  She freezes. I give her space, stay still. Hear her neurons spark, connecting as I take on the shape of my guise.

  I am a man, she sees, but one that’s in a fair state. Covered in torn rags and smelling of river-weeds, with long dark hair matted in dreads. I am lying on the floor, on a heap of useless crap. I appear to be asleep. I feel the headline labels swizzle through her mind. Vagrant. Migrant. Mendicant.

  Mendicant. The fuck? I open an eye.

  She jerks back, but doesn’t run.

  We take each other in.

  I shake my head, let the dreads lift. I know her well enough to tell she has a weakness for men with wild hair. I turn my whirling eyes fluid and soft, let my nostrils flicker, my skin quiver. A hint of vulnerability can work wonders with the chicas. I stay prone, but edge my elbows back, artfully dislodging the rags so she can get an eyeful of my bareness, and prop myself up on my arms. Makes the biceps look good. Strong. Knotted ropes over a grooved and scar-pocked six-pack. But with the legs a bit arseways, she can see I’m no threat.

  Her stare softens, slides down my legs to my feet. Oh, dirty girl. You know not what you do. I hear her father’s voice.

  Know how to tell a kelpie from a real horse, Magpie?

  Uh-uh.

  Its hoofs.

  I let my breathing match hers, shallow, as if I’m afraid.

  My guise clarifies in the mirror of her pupils. I’m youngish, she sees, not old, but not young either. On my collarbone glistens my bridle, a medallion dangling from silver links. Nice touch, I think, watching her pores flare. My bones angled under the skin in a way she hasn’t seen before, and my skin itself most strange. A deep colour, green-blue. I am – I have to credit myself – damnfucking handsome. She must know now she wants me, even if she didn’t before.

  She pulls her jacket tighter around her belly.

  Fuck him with his looks, she thinks.

  And oh, I groan, for in her arrogance she has made herself nineteen again, pale and lush and irresistible in the moonlight.

  I snort, hardening. My chest moves. My bridle gleams. Her face changes and I smell her need, rank as rivermulch. I hoist myself up, scrabble to a sort of standing. My legs are shaking, their muscles twitching, a newborn foal’s. I tilt my head, exert my glamour. She steps to me, and – hah! – she is fluid as a mermaid. We stand, body-to-body. A molecule of space between us. I smell the mud of her sweat. She lifts a finger, her left pinky. It’s a nub, two joints shorter than the others. The heat off her skin is unholy. I shudder, my edges splintering. She stops.

  Thoughts fight in her face.

  Yes No

  Oh fuck.

  Are those arms, she is thinking. Or—

  Yes, Magpie, they are. Shaking as they bear my weight on the counter.

  Are those feet, she is thinking. Or—

  Yes, Magpie. Bare. Look. They have no—

  And I invoke him again: wandering Duncan, the useless, adored father.

  Kelpie’s hoofs, Magpie, are always the wrong way round.

  She staggers then, flooding. Her father and mother early on, kissing, fumbling. You are so. I will always. The things people say to each other on soaps. I’ve never. Only you. I need. And dancing, a boy with yellow hair, sex more than once, and it’s mushing now, the years held in her mind, so I can’t tell if this was the dancing days before her beautiful neurochemistry began its journey beyond the norms of quotidian balance, or, naughty Magpie, the tricky self-medicating times when she was sure she could manage on her own, and oh, she could, and oh, that sex wasn’t bad, not bad, not bad at all—

  Her teeth lunge for a straw that isn’t there; her pinky shoots up, clamps in. Her throat is a bone funnel, her eyes itching pebbles.

  ‘You know me now,’ I say. I let my words be what they are, bubbles in the underwatery silence between us. She watches them rise, up to the infinite heights of the empty unit’s surface, and the look on her face makes me almost come again, like I did waking from the canal. I hold back. It’s an effort.

  ‘Let’s get out of here.’ I offer her my hand. A gentlemanly gesture. ‘I’ll take you for the ride of a lifetime. You’ll never think of that fella with the yellowy hair again. Stupid bastard.’

  Her face softens. Her hand approaches mine, then drops to the springy place between my not-right legs. She grabs.

  I hear myself giggle, a shocking whinny, high and weak. No, woman, I should say. Not here, I should say. Or something equally masterful, for in my dumb watery awareness I know it’s risky here, not enough in my element, not enough wet to do it the way I do it. But I’m a creature of action, not great with words at the best of times, and—

  there’s puddles here, she’s whispering, and dripping taps and coiling wires

  and

  take me, she’s whispering

  —and her mouth is lowering to mine, and that smell, her breath, her ageing body, I want, I will, I open my gnashers to suck her air.

  She stops.

  Laughter?

  I look up. Vague pink shapes have gathered outside, their foreheads and palms pressing clammy patches of zombie-black against the window. A stink rises in Magpie: smell of old rivers, sweet underland flowings dirtied by shit and chemi-dump. Smell of her brain. Smell of fear. She gags.

  Fuckers.

  Look, I should say. Ignore them, I should say. Just— Keep— I’ll sort them if—

  Sweetheart, I should say.

  her weak spot

  Beautiful la
dy of my lonely nights, woman of the majestic arse and queenly tits, sweet little fanny that I love to lose myself in, clever Magpie, brilliant Magpie, most superior Magpie—

  But she’s too busy looking around, looking around, looking around to hide.

  And: Ah, ah, ah, I groan, furious, because this is bollocks, not how it works, do the usual thing, the same old thing, fuck that, no, and I send my frustration through my cold skin into her blood. She stumbles. I grab her wrist in my knife-and-hook barbed fist. She pulls, but I’m too strong. I reach for her throat, the throbbing pulse. I hate to do it like this, no finesse, but my cock can only take so much teasing, and I know no means yes, I know she wants me, and now – ah – she knows that too, her gaze sagging, her fingertips wilting against the links of my bridle, and—

  ‘There!’ Redser’s voice.

  The bitches’ eyes have broken through.

  Magpie’s irises sharpen. Two points of light, gleaming silver.

  Fuck, I think.

  And: Fuck, I scream, pulling back too late as she yanks at the bridle, using the rusty edge of my own index finger to slice the chain free from my neck.

  In all fables, there comes a point. The porridge eaten, the granny’s door knocked, the key turned in the bluebeard’s door.

  The handsome kelpie tricked, his glamour broken by the maiden – or vice versa.

  The point of any fable, Maggie, said her English teacher in school twenty-five years earlier, when she was seventeen and doing her Leaving, eighteen months before the chemical coding she got from wandering Duncan’s sister and his mother before that and a great-uncle before then and you name it back to the start began carving those interesting new paths in her brain, is to make you think.

  The point of a tale is to offer up an alternative vision of reality.

  Discuss these statements, with reference to the text.

  The point of the telling is a compass, she wrote. Here sweetheart, find your way.

  Sprinkles of glass caught in a net.

  Rags and cloths. A grill. A tarp. Knotted ropes. A bundle of fish-hooks. A gutting knife. Six Dutch Gold empties, dented and bashed. A rusting angler’s rod.