Visions & Revisions: An anthology of new writing by Junior Cycle Teachers [selected extracts]

Neasa McHale
TAKE ME THROUGH YOUR DAY [EXTRACT]
Katie McDermott is a writer and an
English teacher from Co. Meath. She lives
off coffee and writes late into the night. Her
reading tastes see-saw between Speculative
Fiction and Literary Fiction, and she has
a particular obsession with contemporary
Irish writers. Her short stories have been
published in Banshee, Autonomy, and
Literary Orphans, among others. She has
also been longlisted for the Over the Edge
New Writer of the Year prize and the
RTÉ Guide/Penguin Ireland Short Story
Competition. Katie is currently elbow deep
in writing a novel and can be contacted via
her website http://katiemcdermott.com/
A coffee jar of small talk you leave on the kitchen table. Slips of
paper with small talk you’ve collected that you liked really liked
the sound of ... Oh, I must remember that one, you used to say,
then one day you were standing in the shop picking out lotto
numbers with the pen in your hand, putting the line through
the numbers you wanted. With the pen in your hand you wrote
down what the man said ... simple, and he left the shop keeper
with a smile on his face.
Today a woman leans against the wall outside the shop. She
licks her 99 ice cream and then puts the cone down towards her
dog. The dog quickly takes a lick and the cone goes up towards
the woman’s lips again. The woman moves the cone up and
down between the two of the them as she chats to her friend and
when the ice cream is almost all gone she takes the chocolate
flake out of the cone and tells the dog that the flake would make
him sick. So you finish the cone and I’ll have the flake, she says
to the dog. You stare as she drops the cone at her feet beside
the dog. When she finishes the flake she takes a small bottle of
water from her bag and drinks some. When the dog has finished
crunching and chewing the cone he lies down and stretches out
in front of her and licks his lips. He stretches again, and this time
lowers his head and closes his eyes. Before putting the bottle of
water away she takes out a container that looks like a lunch box
and pours water in it for the dog. You reach into your bag and
take out a bottle of hand sanitizer and drench your hands with
the clear liquid and begin to wring your hands together.
Walking up the road, there she is, your neighbour. She’s the
type who would tell you that there is a surprise party for you,
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