From the prompt: "Run for the roses..."
"Joseph"
“So are you ready?” Liam asked, taking a long, slow drag from his cigarette.
Keith wrinkled his nose at the smell. “I am, but erm, us’n’s goin’ after them Prods and Brits...y’don’t think it’s a bit dodgy, neh?”
Shannon gave a bitter laugh. “Everything we do is above ‘dodgy’, O’Connor, it’s bloody dangerous. The point is, it’s absolutely necessary if we want to be free! D’you think them Tudor roses give a fig about you an’ me? No!” He prodded Keith in the chest for emphasis. “You an’ I – all we are to them Prods an’ roses is ‘riff-raff’, no-good, nothin’. Because of what we believe. And we’re so horrible that they have to come kill us.”
Well, we kill them, Keith’s mind said, eerily in the voice of Angelus.
Duffy, the usually grinny and goofy and strange Duffy, turned to Keith with solemn brown eyes. “Aye, O’Connor, if it weren’t for them Prods, you’d still have a ma. Your da wouldn’t be lonely no more.”
Keith bit his lip and looked away. It was a sore spot with him; he’d grown up knowing that Prods had killed his mother.
“So are you ready or not?” Liam asked again.
Keith nodded, jaw set determinedly.
There was a fairly large plot of ground behind the Prod church on Church Street. As the five lads approached they could already see the silhouettes of some Prod boys skulking by a tall elaborate statue marking someone’s grave, a soul long dead, probably lost in this centuries-old war.
Keith clutched the ‘liberated’ bottle of rum, one already stuffed through with a rag fuse, but his mind was gearing itself up for the most work, eyeing spaces of grass where maximum destruction could be achieved.
They stilled as they neared, staying in the shadows.
“That’s Danny Crew,” Shannon whispered. “He’s a fifth-former at St. Patrick’s. And Ronan Ghent, a sixth-former. On the left there, that’s his little brother Brant, a second-former. I dunno t’other lad, the one with Brant. Looks about the same age, though.”
Keith’s heart stopped when Duffy sneezed. Ste clapped a hand over his mouth, but it was too late.
Ronan gave a start. “Who’s there?” he hissed.
Danny nudged him, stepping coolly into the light. “I know you’re out there, Taig dogs. Show yourselves like men, or be the cowards you know you are.”
Liam slid out of the shadows. “Hello, Danny.”
Danny let out a mocking laugh. “Well, if it isn’t the Fab Four from St. Thomas Aquinas. Ste, Duffy, Shannon, I know you three.”
They slunk out of the shadows as well, Keith in their wake.
Ronan called out, “Who’s the new one?”
“I’d ask the same of you,” Liam protested.
“His name’s Joseph,” Danny said.
The shadow at Brant’s side jumped up. “My name’s Joseph O’Connor, son of Jack and Fiona O’Connor, whom you bloody Taigs murdered!”
Keith exploded, “Liar! Lying brat! Jack O’Connor is my father, Fiona my mother, and you Prods shot her down in the street!”
Keith stared at the little boy suddenly illuminated in the silvery moonlight, the one glaring fiercely up at him from beneath a mop of wine-red hair.
“Joseph?” Keith whispered.
The little boy lunged at him with a screech of ‘Liar!’ when strange voices pierced the night, pounding footsteps coming from all around them.
“Brit soldiers!” someone hissed, and suddenly Keith was sprinting across slick wet grass, towards the barricades. He vaulted over, cursing when he fell into Mrs. Shenahan’s rosebush.
He scrambled free, numb to the burning cuts and scratches, and stumbled across her garden -- earning a yowl from her cat -- heading for home, that face burned into his mind.
Joseph.
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© Agent Duo 2004