He was a bad bloke. The kind of bloke you should avoid. I was the bartender at the local pub and he came in every night for eight nights. He ordered whiskey. Straight. I served him with a smile but then busied myself with other things. No one in the pub would look at him head on. He had the scent of menace and danger. He was in his forties, muscular, with a hard look. He mostly stared and tapped at his phone. I caught a glance one time. He was playing chess. I never asked him questions.
On the eighth night, my Ma came in. “Alison, I brought you a sandwich for your lunch.” Ma slid a paper sack across the bar. The bloke looked at her. Carefully. Their eyes were locked. Ma eventually looked away, smiled nervously, then hurried out into the icy wind. My Ma was in her sixties. Raven hair with gray streaks. She had a network of wrinkles around her eyes and two hard lines, like brackets, around her mouth. My Ma was a stunner in her day and if you stared at her for a minute her blue eyes became luminous and her youthful beauty began to bloom again.
Ma left and the bloke left ten seconds later. I didn’t think anything of it. I went home around midnight. The door was ajar.
“Ma,” I called out. The house was silent. It didn’t even creak or groan like old houses do. I walked into the kitchen and screamed. Ma was tied to the chair. Her neck was sliced. There was a gag in her mouth. Her fingers were bloody and I could see that her fingernails were gone.
“I’ve been looking for your Ma.” The bloke emerged from the shadows. I couldn’t move. I was a block of ice. The bloke smiled. “I was ordered to kill her. Do you know who your Ma is? Fucking bitch planted a bomb for the IRA back in the day. Killed my boss’s Da. Scores have to be settled. Yeah?” His voice sounded strangely friendly.
I shook my head. It was crazy. My Ma in the IRA? The bloke sensed the question.
“It was a fucking tangled mess back then. Yeah?”
I ran. Out the door and down the quiet, dark street. As I ran, I knew they would track me down and kill me. If someone says the past is in the past…slap them. The past is never over.
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