Tag Archives: adolescence

Shooter Flash: “A Vigil” by Billy Craven

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Four women had been found dead in a house in one of the new estates. You probably heard the story. It was pretty tragic. At first, I had been kind of excited if you want to know the truth. I thought maybe there was a serial killer in our town, something to liven up the summer, you know. But it was nothing as Hollywood as that. The truth was far more simple, and more depressing. Turns out, they’d starved themselves to death. Three sisters and their aunt. They were old, I think the youngest was forty something. They did it for God apparently. Some debt they felt they had to pay. No great political or righteous cause, just their own private deal with their maker. 

Anyway, it really bummed me out. I was going through a sort of aloof phase. While my friends were playing football on the green, I was going for long walks through the estates with my headphones on, listening to Nick Drake, my eyes on the ground in front of me, that sort of thing. I guess I thought I was pretty profound. The trouble with being aloof though, is it only really works if people notice you’re doing it. No one seemed to notice me whether I was around or not. So no one was going to say, “who’s that guy? He’s so aloof”. I guess I wanted to look mysterious but I just looked like a guy with no friends who wore a hoodie in the summer.

Anyway, I started visiting the house where it happened. There was a lot of blame in the papers, about how the community had let these people down. How this wouldn’t have happened in the old days when people knew their neighbours. I’m not sure I believed that. Plenty of bad stuff happened in the old days too, whether your neighbours knew about it or not. A lot of times they knew well, but did nothing. That seemed worse to me.  When I got to the house it was still pretty grim. I figured there’d be flowers or candles or something, maybe even police tape like in the films, but there was nothing that marked it as any different from the other houses in the estate. 

I just stood there looking at it, thinking about how hard it would have been to starve yourself to death. Some of the sisters had written letters to each other in the house. It was depressing stuff. Dying was taking a lot longer than they’d thought. It’s not an easy thing, to die. I think someone said that. It was months before they were discovered. 

I stared at the empty house, smoking cigarettes meaningfully. I don’t really believe in ghosts or anything like that but I still half expected to see something. Some sort of evidence of their suffering–a shadow in the window or a flickering light, a feeling of hunger or even a shiver down my spine. But there was nothing. The house would have new tenants soon. Someone would just move in and clean the stains and bleach the ghosts away. It all seemed so futile.

Still, I kept going back, night after night, to continue my vigil and it killed me that there was nobody else there. But then I guess I wasn’t surprised. They weren’t exactly sociable and I don’t think they had any surviving family. I mean if I lived next to four religious whack jobs I probably wouldn’t have given them the time of day either. But that was while they were alive. I figured now that they were dead they were owed some sort of recognition from the neighbourhood. There needed to be some sort of memorial. It made me angry to think the papers were right. Nobody had cared for them in life and now nobody cared for them in death. So I kept going back. I felt a sort of defiant determination to acknowledge them even if the town had already moved on.

It must have been on the fifth night that the next door neighbour came out and asked me what I was doing. I’d brought some flowers and laid them on the pillar, kind of ceremonially, real sombre like. He wasn’t too pleased when I told him why I was there and he moved me along pretty quickly. He was a bit of an asshole if you want to know the truth. One of those big hairy guys who likes intimidating kids. He was probably a bouncer or something. I’m not really much of a fighter so I just kept saying it was a misunderstanding and backing away. Eventually, after calling me a lot of pretty rude things, and threatening me with all sorts if I showed up there again, he went back inside. 

See, if you really want to know the truth of it, it turned out I was at the wrong house. The women lived another road over. Yeah, I felt pretty stupid then as you can imagine. Anyway, I headed to the actual house and sure enough there were piles of flowers and candles and little prayer cards and stuff. A lot of people had paid their respects. They probably felt guilty for being crappy neighbours. I put my flowers on the pile, they were cheap ones to be honest, and then I walked away. I didn’t even bother looking at the house really. It wasn’t like there was anything to see. The following evening I met up with my friends on the green and we kicked a ball around for a couple of hours. 

No one asked where I’d been. 

*

Billy Craven is a teacher living in Dublin, Ireland. He has previously had short stories and poetry published in a variety of magazines including The Caterpillar, Ram Eye Press, Ember and Paper Lanterns. 

Shooter Flash: “Sink or Swim, or Both” by Billy Craven

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I saw her from the balcony of our hotel room. She was swimming lengths of the pool with expert strokes, legs and arms working easily, causing barely a ripple. I decided to forego my sullen teenage brooding for a while and make my way poolside.

As I approached, her beauty was even more apparent: tanned skin, lithe body, flowing black hair. I became painfully aware of my pale, skinny torso and unruly mop, but hoped our proximity in age and the general boredom of a resort miles from anywhere might afford me a chance.

Flip-flopping my way around the edge of the pool to the deep end, without pause or ceremony and trying desperately not to look in her direction, I cannonballed into the water. I sank to the bottom where I kicked up and out of the depths with flailing arms and eyes squeezed shut. I stole a glance in her direction but she paid me no heed. She swam one more length before exiting the pool and returning inside. The cannonball had missed its mark. 

Treading water in the deep end I realised that any potential for summer romance was going to take a little more finesse on my part. This was a sophisticated girl who would not be won over by immature splashing. My course of action was clear: I would have to learn to dive. 

I spent that morning perfecting my dive as disinterested tourists drinking watered-down mojitos reddened in the sun. My efforts from the pool’s edge were not too bad, and despite nostrils full of chlorinated water I found a method that I was happy with. But I was under no illusions. I knew what was required to woo the sweet siren of my dreams. 

I eyed the diving board with a mixture of determination and dread. 

The following morning the object of my infatuation was again swimming effortlessly in the pool while the other revellers were still battling for space at the buffet, devouring sausages that didn’t quite taste right.

I watched her from the safety of my balcony, pining away, planning our future together, composing breathless love letters . . .

After she vacated the pool I made my way downstairs. I had a rough idea of the mechanics of a dive but the additional three-foot height of the diving board threw me off completely. My efforts were embarrassing. I belly flopped painfully until my body was red and sore and my skin felt like it might split apart if I continued to subject it to such torture. But, as Huey Lewis had informed me that summer, the power of love is a curious thing, and again and again I hauled myself out of the pool and back onto the diving board until I was eventually called away by my parents. (The power of love unfortunately did not extend to avoiding day trips to ruined temples.)

The mornings were my own and once my Love had left the pool I would go down to work on my dive. My dad began calling me Greg Louganis and my mother eyed me with suspicion, but I was undeterred. After five mornings my technique, while far from impressive, was certainly passable. I sprang up and out from the board, my biceps tight to my ears and my hands stretching out in front. My legs pressed firmly together and I had learned to time my body tilt so that I entered the water smoothly and straight. I would then proceed to swim a length of the pool underwater before emerging breathless and gasping for air at the far end. I spent another day or two practicing my breath control until I managed to swim a length underwater with a degree of comfort. 

After a week, I was ready. 

Following a night of jitters and absurdly complex fantasies I made my way to the pool early the next morning. I watched her lower herself into the water, breaststroking once or twice before transitioning into front crawl and swimming away. I took up my position on the edge of the diving board, breathing deeply as my heart pounded away in my chest.

I waited until she had swum two lengths, knowing she would customarily take a short break at this point at the far end of the pool. Once she had stopped and turned I seized my moment. 

The dive was flawless, perhaps the best I had managed all week. It caused barely a ripple and I swam strongly and steadily beneath the water towards the far end of the pool. Having touched the wall, with the most casual expression I could muster I stood up in the shallow end and smiled in her direction. Except it was no longer her direction. She was off again, swimming towards the deep end in her perfectly languid style. 

Seeing little alternative I hauled myself out of the pool and returned to the diving board where, again, I performed a perfect dive and swam to the far end. But to no avail. She was either deliberately ignoring me or remained unimpressed. Five dives later and I was feeling defeated. Mercifully, my dad appeared and told me to go and get ready; there were two-thousand-year-old ruins that couldn’t be kept waiting. 

The next few mornings played out in a similar fashion until it was finally time to go home and I was left baffled as to how she had failed to fall in love with me. My progress from cannonball splat to expert dive was a hero’s journey to be proud of, yet I had failed to win the girl. 

She was all I could think about for the rest of the summer and I wished I’d learned her name so I could yearn after something more tangible, but she was destined to remain a mystery.

After all, it had never occurred to me to actually speak to her.

* 

Billy Craven is a teacher living in Dublin, Ireland. He has previously had short stories and poetry published in a variety of magazines including The Caterpillar, Ram Eye Press, Ember and Paper Lanterns.