July 2026

David O’Mahony, Absence

Dad sets me on fire the day after my tenth birthday. At least, I think he does.

“This is a big deal,” he says, head shoved in next to me so tight I can see the creases in his makeup, the sticky peach-white stuff that makes him look normal if you’re not too close. But I know where to see the holes; I know it’s all just to hold the dark and stars in one place. “Don’t screw it up. It’s you and me now your brother’s gone.”

Nobody asks me what I think. I don’t even remember what happened to my brother, just waking up every day and spending a few seconds not knowing who I am, or where I am, or what I am. And the first thing that pops into my head is, How many times has this happened?

“Please, I don’t want to. I don’t want to!”

My hands flail out, and they don’t look like the hands of somebody who’s just turned ten. They’re hairy and swollen. Maybe I’m not ten, even though they keep telling me I am. Still, even when I say it – shout it, even – nobody asks me what I think. Fumbling grey and red hands streaked with foul-smelling ash clunk the cage door shut and wheel me through the curtain to a hum and a huff of voices in the dark, the shuffle of collars as heads turn from one to the other. There’s a chittering and then the air thumps and snaps, like the shaking out of wings.

Happy birthday to me.

Dad’s up front, waving his hands and arms in the way he knows will hold their attention whether they like it or not. The shuffling slows but doesn’t stop. White lights shine in my face and cut right through my hands as I cover my eyes.

They’ve never let me through the curtains, never let me out of my bubble of greasepaint and old newspapers with old photos of people whose names constantly escape me. I think one is my mother, and another must be my brother Peter, but I can’t read the smeared and yellowed words beneath them. Where did Mom go? Somewhere. Somewhere clean. It’s the only word that comes to mind.

The crowd’s waiting, craning forward in their seats. Their clothes are muddy and torn, and their limbs seem disjointed and irregular. Huge, hulking slabs are crammed next to dainty beanpoles that exude elegance. Red and green eyes glitter and spin on smooth, empty faces. They might just as well be those wooden dummies people pose so they can practice their drawing and painting. Don’t look them in the eye, some voice screams down in my guts. They don’t like it when you look them in the eye. How do I know this? My hands twitch and fingers trace shapes in the air: tight circles, lazy ovals. Then they form a pyramid pointing up, and a pyramid pointing down. Above and below, above and below. I’m moving with the cool ease of muscle memory, though I don’t remember ever doing it. Polite murmurs of approval flap around the assembled, as if rules of decorum I don’t understand have been followed. But my mind isn’t clear anyway. They’re going to burn me.

“Burn, burn, burn, burn…”

It’s going around the arena like they’re monks singing the psalms, starting quietly and then rising to a throb. I’m in the middle of a tight circle with a sandy floor. There are lights above and to the side, and the punters are crammed tight in narrow rows of wooden seats that soar above me at angles so sharp I get vertigo just looking at them.

“Burn, burn, burn, burn…”

Somebody’s spinning me around, but the bleachers are moving the other way.

“I’m gonna be sick,” I try to say, “help me, I’m gonna be sick.”

Nobody’s listening. My legs trip over each other, and I fall face first, but instead of the unyielding smack of cage metal or sandy floor I pass right through both and end right way up.

“Burn, burn, burn, burn…”

The kerosene is cold and stinging as it sloshes over my hair, my face, my clothes.

The tent flaps are open. Amber ropes, dirty from long use, hold them back. I could run. I could run. I could run. But there’s nothing but pitch black outside. Not even a shadow, not even a candlelight. We might as well be floating through deep space, adrift without an anchor. Nobody’s watching. Nobody knows we’re here.

Dad’s thumping his chest and chuckling in that sort of ribbing, we’re all in it together sort of way he has when it’s showtime. It’s all words that say nothing and charm that’s all shadow. I’m the only one who can hear the voice under the voice, the stone-cut words he’s hiding. It’s like the stars beneath his painted face – a secret he thinks only he knows. I’ve never heard it up close like this. Never felt it up close. I get it now. They’ll believe anything he says – see anything he tells them to see.

A grainy, crackling memory forces its way through. Hard times, cold times. Empty tents and emptier pockets. Mom’s lying on a cot, sweating, bleeding. Dad’s begging for someone, anyone, to listen. Tears, shouts, fervent prayers in the dark. Then a new show, a new confidence, a new voice entirely. But debts must be paid.

Is that voice why they all see a boy instead of a man? Does he?

How many times have we done this?

I feel, rather than hear, him spark up one of those long tapers they use in church, and with a woomph I stand there, a human candle. It’s still grainy, like I’m in the memory.

I scream, you scream, we all scream, a dozen tiny figures lose their minds and stampede for the tent flaps only to find dad there, velvet red coat thrown open like he’s Bela Lugosi and suddenly twice his height, beating them all back with a sneer and a barking laugh.

They’d thought it was going to be some trick, like a magician on stage dropping through a trap door or catching a bullet in their teeth.

“What’s the matter, folks? Paid for a show, didn’t you? All part of the act, all part of the act.”

And just like that he’s got them, the flighty ones – like spooked sheep he shepherds them back into their seats until they’re so wrapped up in what’s happening they’ve forgotten they even tried to get away.

There’s a smell of burning pork and sulfur, and it’s only as my skin bubbles and pops that I realise it’s coming from me. The crackling memory breaks, but I’m in the same place with a hundred thousand red and green eyes staring at me lustily.

I’m begging myself to cough and puke and scream, but the flames and smoke are down my throat, tearing my nose, in my eyes – how are they still working? What sort of loving God would let a child watch himself burn to death? But it’s a man’s body that’s burning, wearing a man’s pair of boots and a man’s threadbare trousers.

Dad’s laughing and stomping his feet, and then the whole crowd’s baying and clapping and hooting in voices I can’t understand, the cage rattling and shaking as I keel over, knees up to my chest and arms wrapped around them as tight as I can manage. The ground doesn’t welcome me this time.

“Burnburnburnburn,” they shout, hard black souls thumping on sawdust and plywood. 

I’m numb. No, not even numb – if numbness is being deprived of feeling, then I’m deprived of even knowing what feeling is.

Haze and pockmarks dance over my vision, as if my eyes are breaking down and rebuilding themselves half a beat too slow. A dozen red and creviced faces dance around like a dervish, a wall of sound and chatter, and above them, Dad drifts as if carried along by the cloud of their chaos, his open hand reaching down to skim only something he can skim. The makeup melts on his face – no, it melts into his face, like he’s becoming the man he wants everyone to think he is. He leans back, head raised to the sky, and for just a second, he looks normal.

To his right, a haze of gold erupts in midair. Is it a person? An angel? Has an angel come to save me?

It has to be. It has to be.

Then a howl, and a scream, and as the crowd bellows in delight the world goes black and silent… 

…then roars back to life in a freezing blast of cold.

I’m still screaming.

“Oh, get it together.” Dad’s voice is deeper than it’s been in years, like it’s been filled in. “First show’s always the hardest.” How many times has he said this to me?

Every cell sings with pain as my eyes refuse to open until I peel charred flesh away from my eyes. We’re beneath an awning stretched out from one of the trucks; there should be a sun, I think. There should be a sky. Instead, there’s just inky dark above and below.

Pushing myself up from the ground, I laugh and cry out as my whole skin sloughs off with a slumping hiss. I’m lighter than air and just as exposed.

“Great job, lad, great job. You’re a natural, just like your mother. Just–” and he trails off with a grunt, slapping his face so hard the makeup mask begins to slip and he has to pull it back tight. He smiles and his gums are black, shrivelled back from teeth too sharp to show. It’s eating him from the inside, like Mom’s cancer had been eating her.

Squeezing my shoulder, ignoring my yelps as electric pain blasts through me, he nods and wanders off, barking orders at the red and grey-handed workers in the stained white shirts and shredded, greying trousers that must have been uniforms once.

Weren’t the trousers black once? Weren’t they fastened with bright brass buttons?

Didn’t I wear clothes like that too?

I’m on the edge of remembering something, I can feel it bubbling up from the depths, but then one of the ash-stinking workers throws a bundle at me: plain T-shirt, sweatpants, cotton socks fraying at the toes. I can’t make out his face. They all turn away when I look at them, suddenly busy curating minutiae and shaking dusty hair grown down to slumping shoulders.

Dad’s looking at himself in a hand mirror – Mom’s hand mirror, I think. “Yeah,” he says, turning his head from left to right. “Getting there, getting there.” Then a howl, a spit of the words between words, and he slapped at his cheek, pressing a strip of peeling skin back into place until he tears it off and flings it at me. “There weren’t enough of them,” he sobs. “You see? You see? More, I need more.”

He digs a yellowed piece of paper from a pocket that seems to be carved out of his own skin, looks at it, then looks at me, then holds it next to my face. I can’t turn; the pain has me pinned down. Only my eyes can move.

It’s Peter, maybe twenty-five, flanked by Mom and Dad. Dad’s face is normal, lined, scuffed from dust and ash. Mom’s is so faded she’s almost not there at all. If I look long enough, I know she’ll disappear somewhere out of reach. Somewhere safe. Somewhere clean. Where am I? Why am I never in any of the photos?

Dad’s eyes flick from the paper to me and then he crumples forward as he drops it. The black void I’m lying on seems to ripple, like we’re being driven by sail on an invisible wind. The sobs fall to a harsh whisper. Beyond where I can see, a million wings take flight and scatter in every direction like vast murmurations embarking on voyages I can only imagine. Above and below. “More, until we’re all back in one piece. Until we can go visit your mother again. One at a time, one at a time.”

So that night he sets me on fire again.

And again. And again.

The crowd’s growing. But it’s never enough.

I don’t know if it ever will be.

Author biography:

David O’Mahony is a horror and dark fantasy writer from Cork, Ireland. He has had more than 65 stories published or accepted, with his work finding homes with Cloaked, Temple Dark Books, Inkd, Dead Fox Publishing, Graveside Press, Dragon Soul Press, Rogue Planet Press, Dark Holme Publishing, Wicked Shadow Press, Exquisite Death, and others. He has written non-fiction at irishexaminer.com, where he is a columnist. He is the author of two collections – The Ties That Bind (2024) and What Gets Left Behind (2025) – and the forthcoming In the House of Sorrows. Find him at davidomahony.ie or threads.com/david.omahony.