The 43rd recipient of the Creatives Grant is PĂĄdraig Ă Meiscill. PĂĄdraig is a writer from Belfast. You can read more of his work on his substack, but below is an short piece from a work in progress.
Eden (from a work in progress) – PĂĄdraig Ă Meiscill
When was it they decided to do this thing?
It was at some point after they danced among the plastic carrier bags and surgical gloves and mussel shells in the lough, after theyâd watched a seagull eat a tampon, maybe between their second and third joint as they dried off, probably after theyâd taken the magic-mushroom-chocolate and had whacked open two cans of porter.
But donât be getting the wrong idea, this wasnât the twisted scheme of drug fiends. The joints were wee tiny things, just enough to take the edge off. The amount of mushroom â ground-up Liberty Caps picked from below a wind turbine where a healing well used to be â in the chocolate was next to nothing, barely enough to give you that faint feeling of static running up your back, nowhere near enough for the black-and-white Big Bang leftovers to eat you all up, and they only nibbled at the bar, cutting the corners of the chunks off with the edges of their front teeth (both of them had chipped front teeth, one on the left, the other on the right); and theyâd barely supped the yellow fizzing froth from off the top of the cans of porter when the idea began to percolate from their brain down into their throats, became noise, formed words, then sentences, then question marks. Angie led the way while Bill behaved all studious.
âWhat do you call them? Data capture centres? What sort of name is that?â
âA perfect one, kiddo. They capture all our ideas, our fantasies, our fetishes, our wants and then they mix them with water, our water, and out of that grow ads that they sell back to us.â âThatâs fucked up. Canât be allowed to stand. Like, weâre running out of water, arenât we?â
âNot here, weâre not. But yeah, in general, the stuff thatâs good enough to drink is going. We canât make new water, what we have is the stuff thatâs always been with us, was here before us. We can only try to clean what weâve already mucked up.â
âAnd theyâre doing this here? Stealing our data and our water and mixing them up together? âThey want to.â
They talked about water while drying off in the street outside Angieâs house â Angie with a towel around her shoulders, dabbing at the faint outline of her ribs with the hard end of it; Bill with a silk scarf around his neck, fingering the dark spot at its middle with one hand while drying his feet with a towel in the other.
Angie lived in a street that used to peel with noise â bang, fight, laugh, scheme, snore â the house used to peel like that too. Two sets of cousins had lived in the same street, it felt like they had their own circus ring, but now the days here were silent except for the rain. Then, and it hadnât stopped raining at all this past year, she would sit and listen to the noise the big out-of-control tumorous drops made as they bounced off the corrugated plastic roofing â yellow stained like an old smokerâs fingers, like Billâs fingers â that covered the patch of back yard, the gloop coming from the buckets plonked under the sagging about-to-give-in ceiling in the backroom, the pitter and splatter off the asphalt in the street. Her Da was on the west coast of Scotland, living in a caravan in Port Patrick right where the cold waves could come up to his shrivelled balls in the morning time when he waded in to wash his knees and greet the day; her three brothers were⌠they were around; her Ma used to talk to dead people but was now one of the dead herself and Angie still hadnât heard a word from her.
Mercifully, the rain was only allowed the day time on its own. At night, Mark two doors down opened up shop, selling horse tranquilisers and skunk and acid, and taxis would come and go from there and the three newly opened Air BnBs towards the avenue. Nearly every night, one or two of Markâs customers would get their houses mixed up and arrive at hers. There was one ballock naked in the street the other night, she hadnât a clue where heâd walked from like that, or where he fled to after sheâd stuck her long cooking fork through the letter box to stop him calling desperately for his doctor through it.
Now, for the few hours of light that were left, it would be silent but for the two of them.
âIt all comes down to water kiddo. The oceans are starting to boil. Sharks are losing their shit, getting angry because they donât know whatâs happening to them.â
âAm I supposed to ask âAre sharks not always angry?â now so you can give me some shit you stole about them really being very chilled?â
Billâs eyes narrowed as he looked up from his small bare feet at Angie, âNo.â
âAye, alright then…â
âAngie, Angie, always so contrary⌠Listen, thereâs a part of Africa, the Sahel they call it, just below the Sahara, where they have none left. No water. Then, when the fuckers come up towards us looking for some, they drown in the Mediterranean. Here, weâre throwing it over big computers to keep them cool.â
Angie looked at her phone while taking the smallest nibble off the chocolate bar, a stray flake filling in for the part of her front tooth that was missing. Tucking her phone into her trainer beside her ankle, she arched her head back over the kitchen chair she was lounging on to look at the stinking clouds above, her hands joined meditatively at her belly button.
âWhereâd you go Bill? Before they came for you.â âWent for a dander kiddo.â
âBilly boy, Billy boy, always so coy,â Angie kept her eyes on the darkening sky, âWe donât have a water shortage here. Arenât going to have one. And data? Fuck, what they gonna sell me with that?â âWhy you want to do it then?ââBored. Plus there must be better things to mix water with.â
Theyâd run into the water at Eden, a hamlet on the road to the boat to Scotland, between Belfast and Larne, not far outside Carrickfergus, stuck in the shadow of the derelict power station on one side and the Norman castle on the other. They clambered over the rock formations and the rusting pipe that ran from the stones below the railway line into the lough. Theyâd emerged from below too as the boat from Cairnryan was making its lazy way in.
Bill had taken them there when Angie had got the aches. Everywhere hurt again, so he said âIâm going to take you to the Garden of Edenâ, and they got into his van and drove out of Belfast along the shore. The Garden of Eden was a cul-de-sac, a cauterised road with a couple of houses and a window cleanerâs ladder left lying by the kerb, and Angie was disgusted, âWhat the fuck you take me here for?â âWait,â was all Bill said as he parked on the corner of the cul-de-sac. They got out and walked up the main road, not another pedestrian in sight, and took a left down Lockharts Lane, rutted and mucky. They passed a house or two where they waited for an XL Bully dog to fly from the drive, but never did, and a former house with just the chimney stack and fire place left standing, on down through a cloud of smoke where an old woman was burning sticks and envelopes and beads and some type of meat out her back⌠âYou looking for somewhere?â she asked of them. âHeading to the lough, sis. Whatâs cooking?â âVenison. My son gets me it. Heâs a hunter. Doesnât taste right if itâs not cooked out in the open air with bills for kindling.â âA woman after my own heart. Whereâs he hunt the deer?â âSecret. Be ready soon if youâre coming back this way.â âFucking wonder woman. Weâre going in for a dip first. Iâll see if I can pick you up something on our way back. Wouldnât be coming empty handed to dinner.â
Tasty capitalist kindling in her hands, the old woman watched them round the bend onto the Old Turn and hit the stink of the waste water plant. They kept going onto Boneybefore, past the faery tree, stopping to finger the multicoloured strings and rings and bracelets hanging off it, and down into the tunnel below the railway track. The water ran by both sides of them. Up and out they emerged onto the strand, where the boat from Cainryan was taking its sweet time coming in and a plane overhead was making its descent into the city airport. On the other side, the frames of the new theme park were emerging from out of the shallow water.
Bill wasted no time in stripping down to nothing but a pair of old football shorts and his silk scarf. âCome on kiddoâŚâ
âYouâre mad. Too sore.â
âSuit yourself.â
She watched his small wiry frame fade towards the water while kicking at rotting wood. She looked at the red frame of the rising roller coaster on the other side of the lough and the rain falling and thought, âfuck itâ. She stripped off, bent to fill both fists with strips of fresh seaweed and ran for the water.
You can read more of PĂĄdraig’s work on his substack.