Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
The first time Molly saw a fairy was shortly after 2am on a Saturday morning. She knew the time without needing to consult the clock on the wall—a Paw Patrol themed eyesore hanging on the wall above her little brother’s bed. Precisely, thirty minutes after the pub’s closing time.
Lorcan was sound asleep. Molly listened as her Da kicked off one and then two shoes, before…wait for it…wait…there it is. A scratch. The pitch of that noise varied and you could tell a lot by the sound. Deep and hollow was bum. Sharp and shallow was a stubbly neck. This guessing game never failed to make her giggle and she and her brother would guess the body part based on the sound. She glanced over to share her amusement, and that’s when she saw it.
A small figure, six inches tall, dressed in dark overalls, kneeling beside her brother’s head. The creature was trying to burrow under the pillow.
“Lorcan, LORCAN! Wake up!” Molly flicked on the bedside lamp. The boy’s eyes shot open, shielding them from the light. “Quick. Under your pillow.”
“What?”
“Your pillow, dummy!”
Lorcan turned, shaking his head before an expectant look suddenly dawned on his face. “Two euro! The fairies came! I told—”
“What’s all this shouting about?” Their Da’s head entered the room.
“Daddy, the fairies came!” Lorcan said, triumphantly holding his prize aloft, flashing his gap-toothed smile.
“Back to sleep. You’ll wake your ma.”
Lorcan fell back to sleep instantly, proudly clutching the coin to his chest. For Molly, it took a little longer. She lay in bed staring up at the ceiling, sliding her tongue tip along the top row of her teeth.
*
Weekly inspections of her little brother’s dental care routine proved fruitless. You have to brush harder. Really get in there. Those little baby teeth need to be scrubbed. But it hurts, Molly. Don’t be silly!
Eventually, she had to be content with managing her own mouth, pushing and prodding on the milkies until she felt some wiggle room. However, as luck would have it, about a month later she got a boot in the face during camogie. Ordinarily, Susan Wilkes would have gotten a fat lip for it, but instead, and much to the girl’s surprise, she received a bloodied smile instead.
That night, after their mother had tucked them in, Molly lay in bed and waited. Her tongue tip peeped out the front row now, no longer prisoner, which was both worrying and exciting.
“Molly?”
“What?”
“Do you think trees have feelings?”
She sat up, looked across the dim room at her wide-eyed seven-year old brother who seemed tiny in the bed, huddled under his duvet.
“Sure. Go to sleep.”
“OK, night.”
Four hours later, there is a noise downstairs. A key in the lock. Eyes closed, and deathly still, she battles to control her breathing. The front door opens. One shoe. Molly’s heart begins to race. Two shoes. Scratch. All of a sudden, close to her ear, there’s a faint scurrying sound. As calmly as she can, Molly rolls onto her side. The sound stops briefly, before restarting again. This time, a little louder. A little closer.
Molly feels a tug on the elastic hairband looped around her wrist. She slips the hand slowly under the pillow. The pulling becomes frantic. A final yank pulls her arm out fully. Molly opens her eyes. Standing in front of her, on the edge of the bed—and sweating profusely—is the small creature dressed in a dark uniform, staring right at her. It pauses, holding the tooth in its hands. Dental floss is glued to the tooth and pulled taut against Molly’s wrist. Small beady eyes widen in alarm. The creature drops off the side of the bed, just as she reaches for it. Her hand strikes the bedside lamp, knocking it to the floor. The bulb flashes before breaking.
“Molly, what the hell?” The familiar head enters the room, snapping the light on.
“Where’d it go?”
There’s groans as her brother awakens.
“What are you—?”
“The thing,” she says, struggling to say the words. “The…fairy.”
“Told you they were real,” Lorcan says, before turning over and going back to sleep.
“I can’t be dealing with this. Clean that mess.”
Molly looks down among the broken glass and sees the snapped dental floss. The tooth is gone! In the hallway she hears her father respond to a mumbled question from the other room.
“God only knows. Away with the fairies, them two.”
This story was written for the ambitious creative project, ‘The Weekly Kook’, where I release a brand new short story every week for a year, totalling…yep, you guessed it – 52 stories.
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