Rob Doyle - Here Are the Young Men

After some time I flung down my joypad and said: ‘Fuck this, let’s play something else.’

He didn’t respond at first, still fused with the game, the screen. ‘Hah?’ he eventually said, turning around. I had stood up and walked to the window, pulling aside the curtain and looking out over grey suburban nothing. You could see the girls’ school across the road. Kearney had boasted before of how he liked to wank while looking out at the girls, even though it was a primary school and the oldest of them no more than eleven or twelve. I didn’t know if he was making it up.

Kearney changed the techno CD for one that sounded exactly the same, then started rolling another joint.

‘Guess what?’ he said as he twisted the end of the finished spliff.

‘What?’

‘Can ye keep a secret?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Don’t just say “yeah”. Can ye seriously keep a secret? If I tell ye this, ye can’t tell anyone, okay?’

‘What is it? Yeah, okay.’

I took the spliff from Kearney, getting curious.

He paused for dramatic effect. ‘I killed someone,’ he said.

Stoned, I burst into laughter. ‘Fuck off,’ I said, ashing out the window. ‘Don’t give me that bollocks. Ye didn’t kill anyone. Who did ye kill?’

‘Seriously, I did, I killed someone.’ He grinned, dispelling any notion that he was offering a confession.

‘Okay, who did ye kill, then?’ I said, making it obvious I was only humouring him.

‘I murdered this old wino in town. Have ye ever seen the oul lad who sits in that lane in Temple Bar, just off Dame Street? Ye know, the one in behind the Hot Chick?’

‘Oh yeah.’ I pictured the laneway, but not the tramp.

‘The oul lad in there, do ye know him? He’s always in the same spot, total wino, like.’

‘Yeah, I think I know the one ye mean,’ I said, stoned and lazy, to hurry things along. Town was full of alcos and tramps. How was I to know which one Kearney was on about?

‘Well, go into town then, and go down the lane to his place, ye know that doorway he always sits in. And tell me what ye find there. I’ll tell you what ye’ll find: fuck all.’

‘Yeah, deadly,’ I said. I wasn’t in the mood to indulge Kearney — the image of him riding an eager Jen kept intruding on my mind, more so as my stone deepened. I wanted to butcher him. I decided that I’d fuck Kearney up. I didn’t know how, but I would do it. Meanwhile, I said, ‘Fair play to ye, ye killed him. How did ye do it, then?’

‘Ye don’t believe me. But I did. I poisoned his drink. He’s not there any more. I’ve been in to check a few times. The fucker’s dead.’

He sounded triumphant. I began to consider that, just possibly, he wasn’t making it up. ‘Wait, so tell me: you’re sayin ye went into town and put poison in this guy’s drink, and now he’s dead?’

‘No, I brought the drink in meself, with the poison already in it. Rat poison. I gave him a few cans first, to get his trust and make sure his judgment was cloudy, then I gave him the poisoned bottle of wine. Not that I had to do that: the fucker would’ve drunk a carton of AIDS piss if I’d told him there was a shot of whiskey mixed in.’

‘And then he died?’

‘I’m fairly sure he did, yeah. I didn’t stick around to see it happen, it would’ve been too dodgy. But he was gone the next day.’

I said nothing. I puffed on the joint and watched him. ‘Jesus,’ I said, experimentally.

Kearney laughed. ‘Now don’t say a fuckin thing, okay?’

I kept looking at him. Suddenly I felt way too stoned.

‘I mean it. Don’t say a word. Jesus, it was some rush, though. Nobody’s goin to give a fuck. Who cares if some old wino is off the streets? People would be delighted if someone wiped out all the alcos and junkies and all the rest of them.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well I do know. At the very least, nobody gives a fuck. So I’m goin to do it again. I’m goin to kill a junkie.’

I stared, amazed that this was the conversation we were having. I tried to read Kearney’s face for signs of a joke. I could decipher nothing. I said, ‘Are ye serious, Kearney?’

‘Yeah. I’m serious.’

Abruptly, I shook my head. I exhaled smoke, waved a hand and said, ‘Cop on, Kearney. You’re talkin bollocks. Ye didn’t kill anyone. But leave it before ye really do go off and do something stupid.’

The words sounded unnatural in my mouth, like they only belonged on telly or in films.

‘It’s a buzz like ye wouldn’t believe,’ said Kearney. ‘I’m telling ye. Ye don’t have to believe me. I’m goin to kill a junkie scumbag. They’re better off dead. They are dead. Dawn of the Dead , it’s like, when ye see them in town. I’m doin it in a few days, after I get the plan sorted out. Stall it in with me.’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Why not? Ye don’t have to do anything, just come along for the craic. Look, let me just show ye how easy it is. We don’t actually have to do anything. If ye think it’s goin too far, I’ll stop and that’ll be that. It’ll be more of a recon mission, just to show ye. Alright?’

I wanted to say something, say no, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak. What was this magnetism Kearney had, this weird new power? I felt like I should go along with it, even if only to impress him. For some reason, that was important now. But also there was the excitement, the wanting to see how far it could go, how deranged it could get.

While I was wavering, Kearney said again, ‘Stall it. I’m tellin ye, it’s only a bit of a buzz. Ye don’t have to do anything. We don’t actually have to, like, execute him. We can go right to the very edge and stop there, if ye want to stop there. I just want to show ye what it’s like. I’m tellin ye, the buzz is like nothing ye’ve done before.’

We were silent for a few moments. Then I said, ‘Alright. Fair enough. I’ll stall it in. Just to see. I know you’re talkin rubbish, though.’

Satisfied, Kearney turned back to Kill-Tech: Obliteration , picking up the joypad from the carpet. I looked out the window again, over at the darkening red-brick walls and fences of the girls’ school, and the rows of houses and chimneys behind it, sullen and identical.

Problems with Reality: Rez is on Drugs and they’re Messing with his Head!

In his rare moments of lucidity, Rez saw that the medication the doctors had put him on, the way it affected his outlook, was yet another falsity, an airbrush job on the true face of things.

He liked how the drugs made him feel, though: warm, satisfied, oblivious. This must be what it’s like to be a junkie or a cow, he thought dozily, sitting at home bathed in the amiable glow of the TV, his mother hovering ever-near, watching him even when it seemed she wasn’t. Or it was as if he was enlightened, like the Buddhist monks he read about, as if he had attained a state of pure acceptance of the world. The medication made everything benign, friendly; it rendered all the razor-blade thoughts that cut into Rez’s in-growing brain soft as butter. In fact, he didn’t think very much on the medication at all. He was content to sit there in the softly lit living room, passively hearing the anxious whispers and murmurs of his parents, sister and brother.

Days passed. Rez convalesced, if that was what you could call his state of drug-zapped torpor. Nourishing meals were prepared for him at regular hours. Films were rented, books bought and a PlayStation 2 borrowed from one of Michael’s friends, all for Rez’s amusement. I should have done this sooner, he told himself during one of the intervals of clarity that briefly appeared, only to be swallowed up again by the dreamy water-world of Xanax and diazepam, annulling all sardonic thought, all humour in general. The medicated world was a humourless one, like a totalitarian state. But Rez didn’t mind; he accepted everything. Everybody’s happy nowadays, he thought wryly, when he was capable of wryness and bothered enough to think.