Kerrigan Kerrigan

• Kairo Byrne, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2018

The train rattles along as it always has - or- or-
Mac’s memory isn’t the same as it used to be. Or maybe it is, maybe it’s just always been a bit rubbish.
He’s sitting on the floor, gravity holding him to the train’s cool ground, as neon lights flicker in the windows. He can barely see the sky from where he is. All he gets are glimpses of black and blue and pink.
Mac closes his eyes and tries to remember. He tries so hard, but it’s always when you’re not thinking about it that you remember, isn’t it? Like a dream, the knowledge floods him from his head to his toes.
Mac Kerrigan is thirteen. Is he still thirteen? He was born in Manchester, England. He has a wave of brown hair that flops in his eyes when the train turns, sometimes. But, if the gravity really is that heavy, why doesn’t it weigh on his hair?
The gravity is almost psychologically affecting him, as if it’s not real, and maybe he just needs to get over himself. That’s what his dad always used to say.
“Get over it, Mac,” he can almost hear the cigarette-rasp, “Stop being such a girl.”
The fake-real gravity pressures his chest and his arms and legs and head, crucifying him on the floor like some kind of pitiful, urban Christ. And the train rattles, like it does- or- or-
How long has he been here? He doesn’t know. Maybe he’s dead.
He decides he likes that idea, that he’s dead, because it’s the only one that makes sense. Why can’t he get up? Why can’t he do what everyone else does? Sometimes people get on the train, though it doesn’t seem to stop - they just stride through the doors, and they look like they belong, and they step over him and glance at their watches like he’s not even there. Is it so much to ask, to get off this train? This train that passes through wherever they’re passing through.
Kerrigan, Kerrigan-
Sometimes he likes to imagine the train is chugging along among the stars. Maybe it’s not a train, maybe it’s a spaceship. Yes, that’s what it is, a spaceship, and he’s dead.
Maybe this is what life is really like. Maybe Mac has reached enlightenment, and everyone else is having a mass hallucination about soccer games and coffee and taxes.
Mac wants to know. He needs knowledge like he needs air, like he needs-
Water. Oh, water - he hasn’t had that for- for-
How long has he been here?
He feels like he’s in a movie. One of those artsy ones his Mum used to watch on the telly after Doctor Who, the ones that didn’t make any sense to him. They made sense to her, though, clearly - she’d nod and hum at them whenever something particularly weird happened.
Mac wants to curl into a ball. Mac wants to see his Mum again.
“Kerrigan,” he begins to fall asleep, “Kerrigan.”