The Whore-Mother by Shaun Herron

left and locked the door.
    â€œThey’re gonta kill us,” McCartin whimpered from the floor.
    â€œYes,” McManus said.
    â€œWhat for?” It was a desperate little cry.
    â€œIt would take me all day to tell you.”
    â€œI was afeared she was gonta cut my thing off,” he said. “Thons a terrible woman.” Then he said pathetically, “I’m starvin.”
    They starved for two more days, in two more houses and with eight more men. The boy’s head was covered with bald patches from some of which the scalp also had been torn. The next day they were taken back to the Markets. McManus had been beaten every day. McCartin’s face was pulp. The child no longer cried. He seemed to McManus to have stolen away into a voluntary coma. Sometimes he started in his semiconscious stupor and mumbled something. Twice McManus heard, “Ma ... Ma ... mammy,” and just before they were moved for the last time, “I wisht I was dead.” So did McManus.
    Back in the Markets the regimen was eased. But when they arrived and were taken upstairs the faces of cold and lurking hysteria were even more explicit. Three men came upstairs behind them. It was a slow climb. McManus had to shoulder the boy to the top. The men behind watched his struggle in satisfied silence.
    They were met on the landing by a small lean youth who in his middle-class mind McManus would formerly have called a corner-bay—a hanger-about at street corners. In the face the hysteria was hot, and silently screeching. He let McCartin pass, stood aside a little for McManus and said, “Stop where y’are.”
    â€œThat’ll do, Shamus,” one of the men on the stairs said stiffly.
    â€œIt was my brother’s face you kicked in, y’traitor cunt,” the small man said. It came out like air escaping from a tire.
    McManus was standing sideways to him, weak and light-headedly alert. He knew from the man’s stance what he was going to do, and when he swung at his belly, McManus shifted slightly and the knuckles grazed his stomach but the uncontrolled savagery of the swing took the man with it. He teetered on the top step, and dangled.
    McManus was past restraint. He kicked the suspended and slowly moving stomach and the man went out, spread, and fell on the stairs on his back. McManus jumped, both feet high and together, and landed on the extended belly below him. With his hands tied behind his back he could do nothing to save himself and went crashing forward onto the two men immediately below. The man behind them took the burden of bodies and crashed backwards. They were heaped at the bottom of the stairs, McManus on top.
    Yet there was no more violence. They unscrambled, lifted the man from the stairs, and over his screams one of them said to McManus, “You broke his fuckin back.”
    â€œI hope so.” He went up to the bedroom alone while they attended to their comrade who was taken away. Then the men brought food and untied them. When McManus had eaten, a man they had not seen before cleansed their cut faces and bathed their bleeding wrists. The man who did this was well dressed, he had pale long hands and knew what he was doing. He had to feed McCartin. He went away when he had finished with them. He didn’t speak all the time he was with them. But he didn’t at any time betray shock or offense at their condition. The other three men treated him with deference.
    The day that followed was a healing day. Their food was good. McCartin escaped into almost constant sleep. McManus announced that he had diarrhea and was allowed to go to the water closet when he said he needed to.
    He had a soft lead pencil. What he needed was paper and he couldn’t ask for it. Toilet paper was his only alternative and there was none in the water closet. There was a box nailed to the wall with cut-up squares of the Irish News in it. On this, during frequent visits to the water closet, he