Each school morning, if the weather was fine, young Micky Riordan would leave his shoes at the door of the house and take off walking in his bare feet. This behaviour had always been a thing for Micky. Ever since he was a tot. Whatever it was about the bare earth, he just couldn’t seem to get enough. He loved that raw sensation it gave to the soft part of his soles and the way the friction made the skin just that little bit tougher each time.
“Everybody should be out walking in their bare feet.” he said one morning on his way to school. “It’s the only way to live. Even if you step on glass. What does it matter. Your foot will be sore for a while, sure, but you’ll get over it.”
The whole practice was utterly effortless for Micky. Each day, if he could, he would walk to school in his bare feet and home again that evening in his bare feet. All this against the pleading will of his dear mother. The boy didn’t care. He went out walking whenever he wanted, often without a jacket, in the hail, the rain and oftentimes the snow, simply because there was “Never anything else like it.”
Micky, at fifteen years old, had this real mature, real foreign ability of being able to enjoy his own company no matter where he went. The boy would take off by himself, often without food in his belly, just to spend a few quiet days wandering around the diocese. No phone, no nothing. It would just be himself, his two bare feet, a get-go attitude and whatever bag he had at the time draped neatly across his scrawny little back.
“As they say in the movies.” Micky said, trotting off into the distance. “There sure is nothing like the open road.”
By request of his mother Jane, Micky always had to have a pair of good shoes with him, even if he never used them. She’d pack the shoes in herself too, deep down into his bag and would make sure that no silly protest was made about it. Mother knew well, even in her old age, that the business of adventure was a treacherous beast at the best of times – even if it was local. “Don’t ever be caught with your feet out and your trousers down.” she’d be saying to the boy. “It’s a recipe for disaster, Micky. Absolute disaster. The shoes, I promise, will be your saving grace one day and I’ll be the luckier for it. You’ll thank me later, son.” she said, kissing the boy on the forehead. “You will, pet.”
“Oh alright.”
The next morning, shortly after 8am, as the sun gently seeped in under the blinds, Micky was abruptly woken by the strong smell of burning eggs which had wafted up the stairs and into his room. He knew his mother liked to cook. Especially eggs. And yes – she would often burn them. But this honk travelled with a different kind of persistence. For young Micky, it was on another level entirely. The boy sat up in the bed and wiping the snots out of his eyes, he called after his mother, the love of his life:
“Mam?”…”Mam?”…”Mam?”
The boy waited for a reply and got nothing. Like anyone else, he’d start to worry.
“Yes, dear.” came a gleeful voice from the kitchen. “What is it?”
Relieved beyond words to hear his mother speak, Micky got up out of bed, found some basic clothes and wrangled his lanky arms into a t-shirt too small for him.
“What are you doing down there?” he asked, stretching his neck around the frame of the door. “There’s an awful, and I mean awful, smell of burning.”
Micky could hear his mom laughing now in the kitchen.
“Oh that’s just your breakfast luv.” she said. “I know you’re heading out today for a while and the last thing I want is for you to be gone gallivanting again on an empty stomach. Quick.” she said, chirpy as ever. “You best come down. It’s almost ready.”
In a mad dash, Micky set off down the stairs like a child at Christmas and sat for hours with his mother eating breakfast, just the two of them. The sun outside had heat in it now. Big heat. Like it was the middle of summer. And however burnt they may have smelled, Micky told his mother at the table that the eggs were utterly delicious, probably the best he has ever had. And after that she stood up, gave him a big kiss and before Micky knew it, he was out the door and on his way.
“You’ll see me when you see me, mother.” he said, shouting over his shoulder. “Be safe and know that I will always love you.”
“Don’t be saying things like that.” she said, tearing up. “You’d swear this was goodbye forever.”
“Don’t worry.” said the boy, skipping out onto the road. “I’m not going to go far. In fact, you might even be able to smell me sometimes if the wind is on our side. Anyways, that’s me. Toodle-pip.”
And off he went.
By 2pm that afternoon, Micky had travelled several miles from the front door of his house, whistling the tunes he loved and in his bare feet. Today, of all days, was perfect barefoot weather. The ground was dry and noticeably smoother than usual. Even the grassy patches, whenever he’d step on them to avoid oncoming traffic, had a lovely silken quality and this was something he hadn’t much felt before in his life.
Like a fluffy rug it was. Or sometimes a silken carpet.
Walking down a small boreen road, heading towards the lake, Micky said to himself “Well my oh my, this is all new to me. The sun up there must be casting magical spells down onto this earth of ours and I’m the one lucky enough to be reaping all the benefits. This is exactly what I like.” he said. “A sun like this can put great strength into a person’s bones there’s no doubt about it. The summer suns are good, yes, but often too brash for my liking. They are too much one way and not enough the other. No balance. This sun here is dialled in. For me, she is just perfect.”
A few metres further down the road, Micky saw a beautiful brown cow stick its head out through an old gate, like she was saying hello. And seeing as it was on his way, he said he’d stop in and give the old girl a good scratching, right where cows usually like it – on the hard bone between the eyes.
“Good morning Betsy?” he said to the cow. “You remember me don’t you? Me and you do have great chats when I come this way, don’t we? The best chats. Out of all the cows I do talk to in this area, guess what.” he said, leaning in closer. “You are, by far, my favourite.”
That’s when Micky noticed something strange happening with the cow. All of a sudden she had gone very limp and very heavy – like she had just fallen asleep or something. But, that wasn’t it at all he quickly realised. While feeling around her head, scratching her here and there, Micky’s wee fingers discovered a hole…then another one…and another one…and another one. “Hmm that’s strange.” he thought. “I wonder what they could be. ” You could put your fingers way deep into these holes and you could feel your way around inside and to the touch it was all very weird and gooey. A few more moments of inspection and Micky saw the trouble.
Stab wounds.
Enough of them to beat the band and a lot more than he was able to count. They were under the cow’s neck on the far side these things. Great big gashes. And Micky knew he probably wouldn’t have found them as quick otherwise if he hadn’t gone rooting.
“Oh no. Betsy.” he said, trembling. “What happened to you, luv?”
Micky, under the growing heat of that day, did all he could to get the cow’s head up and out and free from the crossbars of the gate but little did he realise that those big bovine heads can weigh a tonne sometimes. Getting old Betsy out’a there would be a tall task. An almost impossible feat if he were to try and do it by himself…which he was. The boy had blood on his hands now and lots of it. So much blood that whenever he raised up his arm – let’s say he wanted to wave at someone – all he could feel was that slow trickle creeping past his wrists and up into his sleeve.
“Ah jeez. What a rotten sensation. It reminds me of that time I washed those dishes for mam while wearing my school jumper. Only this feels much stranger.”
The cow let out a wheeze then, a real big dirty thing…”Weeeeeaaahhhh”…and it frightened the heck out of Micky. For a split second he thought she was coming back to life, old Betsy, and excited he was at the prospect of such a miracle.
“Wuhu.”
But she wasn’t coming back to life. Not in the slightest. And that would sadden him greatly once he realised. The boy had to stand back a bit and catch his breath. In all his fifteen years of living he had never seen such odd behaviour out of an animal. Alive or dead.
“Jee willickers.” he said, “This is not good. I fear the place I grew up in is no longer the damn place I grew up in. There’s a killer out there tonight.” he said, looking over his shoulder. “I need to be real careful with where I choose to sleep. In a few hours time everything is going to get real cold and real dark. I’ll need to be mindful of my movements.”
Right then, that was the moment Micky hunkered down, ripped open his bag and took out his shoes for the first time: the very ones his mother had packed for him.
“Boy am I glad to see you.” he said, undoing the laces. “Walking around barefoot is one thing, but running barefoot can be a savage form of hell if you are not used to it and guess what, I’m not used to it.” Slipping on the shoes, Micky said “Thankfully today, I won’t be having that problem. No. This just got personal.”
The boy then leaned in and with a tear in his eye he kissed poor cow Betsy on the head, right where she would have liked it, and said: “We’ll get whoever did this to you, luv. We will. I promise.” And off he went down the road. Not walking.
But running.
For the next while Micky headed in one direction, slightly panicked, and didn’t stop unless he had to pee or take a poop. The latter was a rare detail in the boy’s life. Rare – but not uncommon. Running over hills and down new roads, over bridges, and through patches of forest, Micky wondered what kind of insane person would have the gall to go around like that butchering innocent cows in the middle of the day, or even at nighttime for that matter.
“It is simply crazy.”
The cow’s blood had dried in now real good on Micky’s hands. He knew he’d have trouble later on trying to get it all off and out from underneath his fingernails, which is where most of the gunk was.
What a nightmare.
What’s more than that, for his own safety, Micky knew he’d have to try and keep his hands fairly well hidden for as long as possible. They had to stay out of sight and away from the leering eyes of the public until they were squeaky clean again. The village folk might talk otherwise. “They might see me as a murderous pup.” he figured, “And I’ll end up getting falsely shamed right then and there in front of the whole parish by some local dairy farmer: The Great Big Cow Killer. And I can’t be having that.” he said, climbing over a stone wall into a field. “Heaven knows things are stressful enough. Plus, I’d be utterly useless in prison. The boys in there would be throwing me around like a rag doll and enjoying every second of it. Nah.” he said. “I wouldn’t last pissing time.”
The heat was getting to Micky now in a real unpleasant way. Sweat was pouring out from under his thick hair and it was running down his forehead into his eyes and it stung. He had wanted to go to the lake anyway. Going there now only made more sense what with the predicament he had found himself in. It was only five or so kilometres away so if he ran at a decent enough pace, he figured he would get there in jig time and maybe before dark he could set up a shelter and hatch a crafty plan of retribution for himself. A scheme which would both excite and scare him in equal measure. He was fifteen and had never done anything like this before. The only time he had ever gone on the hunt for a murderer was in his dreams and, even there, the whole palaver frightened him into a cold sweat. He knew right away it would be something he might not be very good at, and now, as he ran, with his little heart pounding inside his chest, the whole thing suddenly became almost too harsh a reality for him. Eventually, the poor boy Micky wouldn’t be able to contain his sadness any longer and so when he finally got himself to the lake, after he had washed the blood off his hands, he would make a point of washing his face and his hair too and that way, if anyone was cheeky enough to ask, he could say very easily that he was “Happy out.” or “Only in swimming.”
The following morning, when the sun rose shortly after 7am, young Micky was found with his throat sliced and hanged upside down from a tree not far from that very lake. A morning jogger found him, a young woman, and she said he was strung up by the ankles wearing real brown shoes that were once white and these things, she said “Had no laces either.” and apparently she had found that detail very strange.
Turns out the creature Micky was hell bent on hunting had actively been hunting him too and was in fact many steps ahead in that he always stayed behind.
When the local media got hold of the news, the radio, the papers, the manipulative journalists, they jumped on it without delay. Like dogs they were with a big juicy bone, and it wasn’t long before the headlines were out on the shelves (front page), and on the airwaves. They read the following:
Local Boy Lived and Died For Adventure.
The Butchered Boy.
Tragedy At Lake.
And, the most controversial one of all which simply said – A World Turned Upside down.
“Sorry kid.” said the monster, when it was all done. “You are just too lively for my liking. I know if I let you live, you’ll end up ruining me at some point and I can’t be having that. Kudos to you though, you were tough to catch. Your big heart wasn’t your friend on this occasion. Far from it. Good thing is…it won’t rain today. You like the sun, right? Lucky you. Oh and yeah, I took the laces out of your shoes because I might be needing them down the line on my own adventure. Who the hell knows. Anyway….Adiós.”
The whole parish fell apart over young Micky’s death, of course they did, but like anything else, it wasn’t long at all before he was forgotten about and everything had gone back to normal. Even in death, long after Micky had been cremated, it became apparent (through pictures) that young Micky had only ever managed to get some of the bloody gunk out from underneath his fingernails. A simple wash in a strange lake was simply no good for a tough job like that.
“He tried so hard.” said the coroner to Micky’s mother two months after the fact. “He must have been in there for hours just scrubbing and scrubbing. Or maybe he was just enjoying himself. Having a bath in the hot springs that do occasionally show up there. That’s when we suspect he was jumped. Either way, the poor boy simply wasn’t paying attention and that is exactly when these goons tend to strike. Once again.” he said, grabbing Jane’s hand. “I am very sorry for your loss. Maybe another man will come into your life sometime soon and give you a new son. That way the pain won’t hurt so bad. Your mind will be too busy to think about it. Anyways.” he said. “What’s fifteen years at the end of the day, eh? In the grand scheme of things, it’s practically nothing.”
Jane laughed quietly at the man and said:
“And how are your kids doing this weather, sir?”
“Oh.” said the coroner, dropping his head. “I don’t have any kids. Me? I’m free and single and that’s the way I’ll stay.”
“Yeah.” she said. “I thought that was the case.”
That’s when Jane closed the door on the man, leaving him stumped entirely. Borderline speechless. But in the end, it needs to be said – she didn’t do it out of venom. Or anger. And get this, she wasn’t even crying.
It’s just…her eggs were burning.
