The Troubles by The Troubles (epub)

Author:The Troubles (epub)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Naomi Marchand
Published: 2016-07-31T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 26: Ni mar a shiltear a bhitear. (Things aren’t as they seem)

Alastar Taggart…December 12th 1971, two weeks until Christmas.

A bedraggled Bobby Sands had slammed on the front door, vibrating the thin windowpane, which barely hid the souls within from the ghouls outside, clamoring loudly for me to accompany him to Malvern Street in the chiefly Protestant Shankill Road area. ‘’Alastar get the hell down here!’’ He had desperately crowed from the stoop into the still dawn as I had pulled up my stiff blue jeans over taught angular hips glancing at the clock that irritatingly chimed in the center of the sparsely decorated wall. It had been barely 6 am. I had hurried down the upstairs hallway passing by my sibling’s two conjoined bedrooms while the assaulting pounding wakened two out of the six inhabitants in our house. The sleeping quarters embodied a strong aroma of pubescent male musk and feminine perfume, which collided with the humid dampness the declining walls, could barely contain.

“I’ve got the door. Don’t ya worry and go back to sleep!’’

“Alastar, do ya think it’s Quinn?’’ asked our sister, Talulla. Quinn had been absent for a week and a half and all inhabitants were equally distressed and all anxiously awaiting news of him.

“I hope it is. He might be hurt, ya never know, but I promise ya, if this is not him, I’m to bring him home!’’ My little sister’s sleepy, clouded eyes tried their best to bestow belief in my hollow sounding words, but in the climate of the day, her fear stared stiff back at me. “Why don’t ya make Da a pot of tea, Talulla?’’ As she turned away, I caught a glimpse of the rush of tears that were threatening to pour down her porcelain, pale cheek.

“Do ya think I came down the Lagan in a bubble, Alastar?’’ Before I could proceed to comfort our youngest sister, Bobby Sands made his unsolicited entry into our home and seized my navy jacket, which was draped over the staircase, and then he gripped my wrist with talon-like strength.

“Damn it, Alastar. We must go! He’s there… it’s yer brother!” He hissed, spitting through gritted teeth and as noiselessly as we could, we left my childhood home, in all appearances for the last time and stepped into the gray dawn.

‘FENIAN SCUM’ were the scrawled words carved crudely across the naked, bony torso of our mutilated fifteen-year-old brother. His face was so beaten and blackened that he only was recognized and identified by the simple gold watch he had worn proudly, a reminder and heirloom from my Father of more prosperous times, the gift a glimpse into our humble childhood. Indicative, was that his clothing was stripped, but the precious valuable gold left on his dainty wrist as an ambiguous message. He was clearly murdered for his religion and all else of his physical being, disposable, as the sadistic graffiti on his bare skin was designed to imply, he was the scum to be eradicated. The

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