Mr Rooney

The short story that inspired the novel I am currently writing.

It all started with Mr Rooney.

Until recently, I worked retail at a run-down shopping centre in Dublin. It was not a glamorous life. The building was a bleak relic from a bygone era, a place where dreams went to die. Most of the units stood vacant, a discarded mannequin in the window telling the tale of what once was. The shop I worked in was a peculiar spot that couldn’t decide on an identity. It landed somewhere between a health food shop and doomsday prepper fodder. Organic vegetables, vibrant with colour, alongside rows of canned food, unappetising in their indistinguishable greyness.

I liked it just fine. Sure, minimum wage customer service work was never my childhood dream, but it was fine. It paid for my food and gave me a vague sense of purpose. What more could a girl ask for, right?

Granted, over time, the constant barrage of rudeness by strangers became a little grating. After a few years, it unleashed a sort of rage demon within my soul that could only be tamed with detailed fantasies of their gruesome and embarrassing deaths. I know it’s odd. We all have coping mechanisms that get us through the workday. This was mine. Maybe I wouldn’t have indulged in these fantasies had I known what would happen. Had I known that they would start coming true.

That brings us to Mr Rooney. He was a pompous, sleeveless sweater-wearing grump who seemed to derive ultimate gratification from berating weary staff. It always went down the same way, practised down to an art form. His shoulders would tense as soon as he arrived in the shop. We’d watch, breath bated, as he strolled pointedly around the store. His hands clasped tightly behind his back, he peered at each product over his nose-perched spectacles. First, he’d stop sharp in his stride. Then he’d remove his glasses, wiping them pedantically whilst looking around, hunting for his victim. Finally, a whisper of a smirk danced across his lips as he nestled his glasses back onto the dent in his nose ridge. “Hem hem,” the first throat clear was in the highest pitch. If no one appeared by his side in a matter of seconds, the second throat-clearing came. It was lower, slower, and more deliberate.

“Heeeem, heeeem.”

Eventually, a terrified staff member would scurry towards him, bracing for ridicule, and his tirade would begin. What started as a complaint about a minor discrepancy that had ruffled his feathers soon crescendoed into a long-winded, deep-cutting personal attack that left stronger souls than mine scrambled in a heap.

That fateful day, it was a banana. An admittedly very bruised banana. Some might call it a baking banana. I saw the glasses glint as he removed them from his nose. I looked around helplessly. There was no one else around. My stomach twisted like a cork on an expensive bottle of wine, mauled by a corkscrew.

I am not a confident woman. I’ve been described in many ways - meek, invisible, unsettlingly awkward - but never confident. This, unfortunately, made me a prime target for Mr Rooney’s chastisement. It began as usual. I hurried to his side after his first throat clear, hoping that might buy me a few brownie points. Naive thinking on my part.

“Young Madame,” he sneered with an undertone of delirium in his voice, “Do you see anything wrong with that banana?” I said nothing, instead shuffling and whimpering, pathetically bashful.

He began to ramp up.

“It’s funny, I thought bananas were supposed to be yellow. Clearly, I’m an idiot. Do you think I’m an idiot?” My palms became disturbingly sweaty as I shook my head.

And, he was off. He ranted on for a rather impressive seven minutes, until he had to stop on account of his heart rate monitor’s out-of-control beeping. By the end of it, his eyes were bulging. Spit had gathered and hardened around the corners of his mouth. He was gleeful. A job well done, he was probably thinking.

I know it shouldn’t have bothered me. I should have just let it roll off my back. But it did, and I couldn’t.

As I watched him stroll out of the shop, I pictured a shiny red Land Rover speeding around the corner, mounting the curb and knocking Mr Rooney off his feet. I envisioned his glasses shimmering in a rapidly growing pool of blood, no longer a prop for my torment. I imagined his splayed out fingers twitching as he took his last breath, the re-moisturised spit around his mouth drooling down his cheek, his mean eyes glazed over.

Again, I must reiterate that I never expected this to come true.

I gaped in transfixed disbelief as a red Land Rover sped around the corner. Watched in awe as it barreled towards a temporarily paralysed Mr Rooney. I had to bite my lip to contain my wondrous smile as his glasses hurtled through the air. People rushed to help him. I didn’t move. I couldn’t. My thoughts ran marathons around my head, trying to make sense of what I’d just witnessed, crying out for an explanation - a trick of the light, a coincidence, or perhaps a dream?

I watched his fingers desperately twitching and knew it in the depths of my guts that this was my doing. I braced for waves of guilt, fear, even a sense of malaise. They never came. Instead, a surge of ecstasy rippled through my toes, rushed up my legs, and overtook my whole body. I swear I was hovering off the ground, buoyant at the prospect of having been granted Godly powers.

The rapturous glee did not leave me for that whole day. It tingled my fingers as the ambulance arrived. It swelled my heart as I watched the paramedics’ desperate, futile efforts in resuscitation. It came home with me, as questions filled my mind. Was this a once-off? A temporary gift of righteousness for a most deserving pest? Or was this my new reality? A vigilante, hungry for justice, emerging from the shadows? I lumbered up the stiflingly stuffy staircase towards my apartment and concluded that certainty comes through investigation. And so, the experiments began.

My first subject arrived the following day. She was a toffee-nosed nightmare, a woman who peaked in school. Kitted in what were surely her teenage daughter’s clothes, she spoke as though invisible fingers were clamping her nose shut. It was difficult to read her expressions through the comically large, dark-lensed sunglasses that covered most of her face. A brand name I’d never heard of was embossed in gaudy golden letters on the frames. I’m certain they cost a small fortune, and am equally sure that they were covering an eyelift or some other attempt at “youthification”.

I know I sound judgmental. It’s not her external traits that bring out this side of me. I’m really quite accepting. It’s the simple fact that she treated me no better than she would an unwelcome roach in her southern European timeshare.

Her request was simple; she asked me to point her towards our cosmetics section. My response was equally straightforward. I informed her that we had no such section. The sliver of cheek and forehead not covered by sunglasses reddened rapidly to a furious maroon. She became unreasonable. Belligerently repeating her request as if searching for a password that would grant her access to a secret section of the shop. One reserved only for those who displayed relentless persistence.

As she was my first subject, I kept my patience rather admirably. Though it started dwindling after I repeated for the hundredth time, “We only sell food here, I’m afraid,” still maintaining my sickly sweet customer service lilt. Her lips formed a tight pout. She showered me in menthol-flavoured spit whilst remarking, “A plain girl like you should really invest in some make-up. I don’t imagine you’re attracting many men with that face of yours.”

That comment sealed her fate. There was really no need for it. The fact that her gibe danced very close to the truth made it sting all the more. As I used my sleeve to dab her spit off my face, I set my mind free to roam. I watched from a distance as she tutted her way out of the shop, pausing outside to spark a cigarette. My plan was simple. The restaurant two floors above was halfway through some very noisy renovation. I was familiar with the clumsy kitchen porter whom I’d seen struggling to transport a new refrigerator to the third floor that morning. The events unfolded quickly. Her flame sparked. She tilted her head back slightly as she inhaled the minty smoke. I saw the fridge falling from the sky, averting my eyes in time to avoid watching her buckle under the weight of it. I am slightly ashamed to say that the thrill of karmic satisfaction was overwhelming - in a good way.

Things spiralled from there. I wouldn’t say I got carried away, necessarily. A more objective observer may beg to differ.