ST4.11 | "A Short Walk"
NOVEMBER 2026
DOES THIS MASK ACTUALLY CAPTURE MY REVOLUTIONARY SPIRT AS INTENDED?
A couple hundred years ago, a Catholic extremist tried to blow up the House of Lords with stacks of hidden dynamite. Since then, Guy Fawkes has become an icon and a symbol, appearing in legendary graphic novels, pretty okay movies, and on the faces of Internet hackers mocking the rich and powerful. This month, we want stories of the Fawkesian impulse, and so we’re looking for stories of revolutionaries, rebels, agitators, and terrorists. Show us what happens when their good plans go bad, or their bad plans go worse. Give them a noble cause or a despicable one. Show us what happens when the revolution comes and the flag is planted. And then show us whose chest that flag is planted in.
A SHORT WALK
by J.M. Lane
19 March 1983
He told his mother he was going to Dublin for a few bits. She asked what bits, and he said clothes, though he had bought himself a new shirt only the previous week. His father was at the kitchen table, reading the paper.
“Mind your money up there,” his mother said.
“I will.”
“And don’t be coming home at all hours.”
“I won’t.”
His father looked over the newspaper. “What’s wrong with Wexford that you have to go to Dublin for clothes?”
“Nothing. I just fancied a look around.”
“More money than sense, you,” he said, returning to his paper.
Outside, a light mist hung over the town as he walked to the bus station with his hands buried in his wool coat pockets. When the bus arrived, he took a window seat halfway down. The woman across the aisle lit a cigarette, cupping the match against the draught from the open door. She shook it out and dropped it into the little metal ashtray beside her seat.
He turned towards the window, away from the smoke, only to catch the familiar smell of pipe tobacco drifting from somewhere behind him. His father had smoked a pipe at the kitchen table for as long as he could remember. He could still see him sitting there eleven days earlier, reading the very same paper he now held in his hands.
“This gay stuff is unnatural,” his father had said, without looking up.
His mother was at the sink. “What stuff?”
“These fellas up in Dublin. Going into parks and that.” He pushed the newspaper towards her. “Look at the trouble they bring on themselves.”
His mother glanced at the article. “Ara sure, the poor man was killed.”
“Aye, well. There’d be no trouble if they kept themselves to themselves.”
He had been buttering a slice of toast. The knife went through the bread, leaving a hole in the middle. His father turned the page and asked if there was any more tea.
Later, when the house was empty, he took the newspaper from the kitchen table. Now, as the bus pulled out of Wexford, he unfolded it.
Manslaughter Sentences Suspended on Five Youths.
Five youths convicted of the manslaughter of Declan Flynn, 31, who was beaten to death in Fairview Park last September, were allowed to walk free from the Central Criminal Court after receiving suspended sentences on 8 March.
The court heard that the youths had been engaged in a campaign of attacks against homosexual men in the park for several weeks before Mr Flynn’s death.
In a statement to Gardaí, one of the accused admitted that the gang had deliberately sought out homosexuals to assault, declaring: “We were all part of the team to get rid of queers in Fairview Park.”
He stopped reading.
In passing sentence, Mr Justice Seán Gannon stated:
“This could never be regarded as murder.”
All five were permitted to leave the court.
He read the last sentence again. All five. He turned the page back, looking for something he might have missed, but there was nothing.
He folded the paper and looked out the window.
***
He was twenty-six years old and had never told another person that he was gay.
A man called Michael had worked alongside him for nearly six months. They went for pints after work, though he could never decide whether there was more to it. One evening, Michael asked why he never seemed interested in women.
“Wouldn’t be bothered with the trouble.”
Michael laughed and rested a hand on his shoulder. It was nothing, really, but he had lain awake that night remembering it.
Michael left for England not long afterwards. He sent a postcard at Christmas, which he kept in the drawer beside his bed. Sometimes he imagined travelling over and finding the courage to tell him. He never got as far as deciding what Michael might say.
At sixteen, he had believed he would grow out of it.
***
He took out the newspaper again. A small notice announced a march in response to the Declan Flynn sentences. It would begin at Liberty Hall and proceed to Fairview Park. He had read about it several days earlier and decided to go. He had been trying to talk himself out of it ever since.
But the five youths had gone into that park looking for people like him.
He put the newspaper away and watched the road ahead.
***
Busáras was busier than he expected. In the toilets, he stood before a mirror and wet his fingers to straighten the hair flattened against the bus window. He wore his good coat, the one his mother had bought him for Christmas.
When he was younger, he wondered if people could tell just by looking at him. He had watched how he walked and learned not to look at another man for too long.
Outside, he set off along Store Street.
At the next corner, he could see people gathering outside Liberty Hall. There were more than he had expected.
He needed a cup of tea first.
***
The waitress brought his tea in a thick white cup with a chip on the saucer.
There would be journalists at the march. Someone might take his photograph. He pictured his father at the kitchen table the following morning, his pipe in the ashtray, looking at his son standing among a crowd of homosexuals.
He pushed the cup away.
Outside, a church bell began to ring. He called for the bill.
***
At a telephone box, he considered ringing his mother. He could say he wasn’t feeling well and was getting the evening bus home. She would fuss and ask whether he had eaten. He put his hand on the door, then turned away.
The crowd was there, outside Liberty Hall. He stopped beside a wall. He had thought it would be mostly young men, but there were women there too, and older people in ordinary Sunday coats.
He had always imagined that if he met another gay man, he would somehow know. Now he was looking at a crowd of strangers and could not tell one from another. A woman carrying a shopping bag spoke to a man holding a placard, and he moved aside to make room for her. She looked perfectly at ease.
Jesus, what was he doing here?
His heart was hammering. He turned towards Busáras. He could still get a ticket home. He would buy a shirt before leaving. At least then he’d have something to show his mother.
A few yards on, he stopped. The marchers were getting ready to leave.
He took the newspaper from his coat. His father’s tea had left a brown ring beside the headline. He looked at Declan Flynn’s photograph. He could have been anybody. A man he’d passed in the street, or stood beside at the bar.
He remembered what his father had said when the news first broke.
“Sure, what was he doing in a place like that?”
As though it explained the whole business.
His father was a good man in many ways. When he was a boy, his father had spent a Sunday teaching him to ride a bicycle, running behind him until he could keep the thing upright. They had laughed about it for years.
He loved his father. He could imagine the look on his face if he ever found out.
The crowd began to move. He folded the paper, put it into his coat and crossed the road.
***
He caught up with the march as it was leaving Liberty Hall. He stayed a few yards behind the last row, close enough to hear their voices but far enough away that he might still pass for someone going the same way.
A young man carrying a banner glanced over his shoulder.
“You coming with us?”
He stopped. “Ah, yeah. I think so.”
“Give us a hand with this, then.”
He took hold of the loose end. A gust of wind caught the cloth, and he tightened his grip.
A chant began ahead. The young man beside him joined in. He had a Dublin accent and a small silver ring in one ear.
“Where are you from?”
“Wexford.”
“Jesus. You came all the way up for this?”
“Aye, I did.”
“Fair play to you.”
The man gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder and turned back to the march. He kept hold of the banner.
As they made their way towards Fairview, he noticed two men walking side by side, one with his hand resting lightly on the other’s back. The younger man whispered something to his companion, who burst out laughing.
They looked happy together. He found himself smiling.
The man beside him noticed. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing.”
“Must be something.”
He shook his head. The man grinned and went back to chanting.
A few minutes later, he joined in. He was conscious of people watching from the footpaths and kept expecting somebody to shout his name.
Nobody did. He shouted again.
***
By the time they reached Fairview, his feet were sore. People gathered in the park where Declan Flynn had been killed. Speakers addressed the crowd about the sentences and the violence gay people faced. He had never heard anyone speak so openly about being gay.
When the crowd fell silent for Declan Flynn, he bowed his head. Nearby, a man with shaking hands bent down and left a small bunch of flowers on the grass.
He had come to Dublin because a man had been killed. He wished there had been another reason.
***
After the speeches, the man who had given him the banner approached.
“Are you heading back to Wexford tonight?”
“Aye. I’ll get the bus.”
“There’s a few of us going for a pint if you fancy it.”
“I might, actually.”
“Good man.”
The man introduced himself and held out his hand. He gave his own name and shook it. Another man joined them. He was from Cork and knew a pub nearby where they could get a decent pint.
He stayed in the park a little longer after the others made their way towards the gate. The newspaper was still in his pocket. He looked at Declan Flynn’s photograph once more.
His father’s words came back to him.
There’d be no trouble if they kept themselves to themselves.
He had tried. God knows, he had tried.
He folded the paper along its old creases and left it in a litter bin near the park gates.
The others were waiting at the corner.
“Thought we’d lost you,” the man from Cork said.
“No. I’m here.”
They set off together.
There would be questions when he got home. For now, the two men were arguing about whether to stop for chips before going for a pint.
He wondered if the man from Cork had someone at home waiting for him. Perhaps he had a boyfriend. He could ask him.
He almost laughed at the thought.
He hurried to catch up with the man from Cork, who was complaining about the price of drink in Dublin. For the first time, he felt the world was changing, and he was no longer waiting for his real life to begin.
There was a bus home later that evening, but he was in no hurry to catch it.
J.M. LANE (on TikTok @jmlaneofficial) is an Irish writer from Ennis, County Clare. His work has appeared in Ragaire and The Soliloquist. His debut crime novel, Why the Curlew Cries, was published on 31 October 2026. Learn more at https://jmlaneauthor.com/.