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Mrs. Pygott had gotten the impression that the reason Etain was never to be found staring at the clock and cursing its dreamy languor was that she didn’t like to be reminded that she would soon be returning home.
Sometimes, one of the presenters would be “bold.” Loud. Disobedient. Argumentative. Overly inquisitive. And the other presenter would remind them, sometimes severely, sometimes nervously, sometimes more in sorrow than in anger, that if they didn’t behave, Puckeen would be cross and come out of his box.
She realized with a jolt of dark amusement that the nation’s taxpayers had been funding a decades-long practical joke on their own children, who spent hours watching a program whose main character had never appeared, and would never appear.
Kate had, to all intents and purposes, killed her mother. Etain looked forward hopefully to the day when she could do the same.
Whoa okay so I'm only midway through the book, but going back to this and seeing the clever foreshadowing in this sentence is kinda mindblowing
She loved him, she realized with a start. Which was why she hadn’t done the honorable thing and cut him loose.
Say what now ?
She knew all these people but she couldn’t work up the nerve to talk to them. She had an irrational fear that no one would remember who she was.
He reached for the door handle to escape and her hand shot out and grabbed his wrist. She gazed into his eyes. “No, Barry. ‘Yeah.’” Realization slowly dawned. “You mean … yeah?” “Yeah.” “Yeah?” “Yeah.” “You…” His voice was cracking. “You will?” “Yeah.” And she was laughing and crying at the same time. “Yeah. I will. I will. I will, yeah.”
Aw most awkwardly yet cute proposal acceptation ever
That had been good. That had been so good. It wasn’t supposed to be that good, the first time, was it? The first time was, she had heard from reliable sources, usually a mortifying damp squib.
Lmao
Oh Jesus. Tell me I didn’t just trade my virginity for a fucking watch.
LOLOL Let's hope not
And the more she gazed at the ring, the more dislike turned to appreciation, and then to love.
“He thinks you think he’s an eejit.” “He is an eejit,” she laughed.
Haha this makes me think of SPN's Bobby Singer
Kate and Mairéad were as different as two people could be, except in one respect. They both held their grudges like misers held their gold, close to the chest and never to be traded or given away.
Like any city-dweller newly alone in the dark countryside, Etain realized that she suddenly believed in ghosts.
She had been drugged by exhaustion. Overdosed on static. She was high on rain.
The ring on her finger, so loose at the start of her journey, was tight now. That couldn’t be right. Her finger hadn’t grown bigger. The ring could not have shrunk. And yet she could feel it biting into her flesh and bone like a rat. How was that possible?
There is plenty of room in the back seat. Scare the dog away and carry it to the car, Etain. Carry it to the car, Etain. It’s not right to leave it there. It’s not right. Think of his family. Think of his friends. Put your friend in the back.
WTHwould she think it a good idea to move a freaken body? what if he died of unnatural causes? That would be tampering with a crime scene.
Now, as she searched for a stone, it was only for want of a brick. She would quite happily kill this dog, and sleep soundly every night after.
And now there were more of them. Dogs emerging from the shadows at all sides. Border collies and terriers. Spaniels and hounds. All advancing, hackles raised, teeth bared. There were dozens of them.
What in the world...
It didn’t matter that neither Feidhlim nor his neighbors could remember the details of his great-grandfather’s transgression. Memory was ephemeral. Hatred was a rock.
He had stayed awake in the kitchen until the pale hours tuning his radio to the far edges of the band, listening for whispered offers in the static. Until at last, he had received the call from the Man in Dublin. He did not know his name, of course, and never would.
The next night they had knelt in front of the television and professed fealty to the Station. The rings had arrived in the post in blank envelopes, delivered by someone who was seen by no one. Large silver things, bulky and intricately detailed. They both wore them now, at all times. Symbols of allegiance. Badges of ownership. All this had occurred without speaking with another human being face-to-face.
“Who’s your one?” she said, indicating the guest room. “Dunno,” he mumbled. “One of theirs. She has the…” He gestured to the ring on his finger.
Denial would sound false, admission would be weakness. So he said nothing.
He briefly considered saying a prayer, and then dismissed the idea as ludicrous. Like putting on sunscreen before stepping into a furnace.
He could vaguely make out a head, and shoulders. But it was like looking at a copy of a copy of an old photograph of a ghost in mist. Several removes from something obscured that might not even be there in the first place. But it was there. Feidhlim knew it was there.
A brief, fleeting, and thoroughly unwelcome thought flashed through her mind, telling her to take the ring off. It died, quickly, silently, and un-mourned. She couldn’t take the ring off. She was getting married. And besides, it fit perfectly now. It fit perfectly. It was perfect. Everything was perfect.
The farmer stood in the farmyard, black as coal against the moonlight, smoking a cigarette and staring at nothing. She was dimly aware that there was something wrong about that. But the thought could not find its way in, and ran off.
Um... If the farmer's outside, WTH is his wife doing cuz it ain't him?
There was a second man, lying at the foot of the bed. His face was too far out of the light of the television to be seen. He was wearing a checked flannel blazer and old brown shoes. His hands were large and the nails filthy. She felt that she should know this person, and that it was strange that he was lying at the foot of her bed. But she couldn’t think why.
Yea you know him as dead guy in the road
Before she had even seen the first inch of the tip of a horn she could feel her blood boiling in her head, rivulets pouring out of her nose, and a taste of rancid chicken on her tongue …
She did not have terribly well-developed gaydar but what little she did have was currently chiming merrily. It might just have been wishful thinking. She did a scan. Hair: Good sign. Jewelry: Ambiguous. Makeup: Bad sign. Dress: Bad sign. Doc Martens: Very good sign. Result: Inconclusive. Further testing necessary.
LOL So scientific about it
Suddenly very serious, the buzz-cut girl stood up and took both of Betty’s hands in hers. “Bad acting is lying,” she said. “Good acting is telling the truth.”
Well said
“That’s me. Just spinning around, wondering what side I’m going to land on,” said the girl. “I have no fucking clue what I am. It’s like, I see a cute guy and I’m like ‘yeah, okay’ and I see a cute girl and I’m like ‘yeah, okay.’ But never really any better than ‘okay,’ y’know? It’s like, I’m settling for guys and girls while I’m waiting for something better to come along.”
Her gaze fell on the ring and her eyes widened. She tried to mask it and keep her face neutral but with a sickening lurch in his stomach he realized that she knew what it was. Somehow, she knew.
Nor were they strangers to making deals of flesh and land with Na Daoine Maithe, the Good People, a name utterly wrong in every particular.
Small talk with Father Fitt left you with the feeling that you were holding a dialogue with a tape recording that simply happened to neatly align with your conversation. The words made sense, but the machine did not care.
As he held up the photograph he sensed a … what? A tensing. From the back seat. That was odd.
The guard had not looked at the back seat. This was because the reverend fathers did not wish him to see them and part of the young guard’s mind wished very dearly for the same thing. As long as Father Fitt had not drawn attention to his passengers, the guard was perfectly happy to ignore them.
As he stood trembling by the side of the road, and tried to rebuild in his mind what had just happened, he found only jagged edges and blankness. He felt like his mind had been cut open, and left to bleed to death by the side of the road.
He might have noticed the long streak of white that now ran through her hair. He might have noticed that she looked a good ten years older.
The reverend fathers emerged with the speed of dogs on the hunt. Their shape was roughly human in terms of the number of limbs and the presence of a head and torso. But the movement and arrangement of the joints was closer to the arachnid. They moved across the ground too quickly, with the hideous suddenness of lizards. The faces were as if the most awful, hateful old men in the world, poisoned close to death with spite, had had their visages taken and then smudged by a giant thumb.
he could just about make out the charred body of a woman lying on the kitchen floor and the reverend father squatting over her, eating her stomach.
From his vantage point, Father Fitt watched as a pack of dogs, a great motley, snarling, furious mix of breeds and sizes, appeared where the reverend father had roughly been mere seconds earlier.
So the dogs are alternate forms of these beings?
She knew the farmer was dead and had suffered greatly. And the happiness she felt at this knowledge left a numbness in its wake.
“Samson completely loves Tybalt. Tybalt likes him but doesn’t do relationships” was how Ashling described it, unaware that she was casually stabbing Betty in the chest.
The sight of the whole cast dancing together, perfectly in sync, reaching for the sky, pushing each other away and pulling each other back. Simon Tierney had been right. But for Betty, there was only ever two of them onstage, only two in the whole universe. There was her, and there was Ashling,
Barry would always remember that moment, a sensation of liquid nitrogen being dropped into his stomach.
Now why would someone think they’d been fighting? Maybe they had overheard … Overheard what? After she said yes, they had made love. Why hadn’t he mentioned that before, the Gardaí wanted to know? Because, Barry explained, he had not felt it was any of their fucking business.
Tadhg Mallen had never been called an eejit, and never would be.
Which of the three Gs is this? Patricia asked herself. Grief, guilt, or guile?
