By Gary Finnegan
First there was a couple who became a family of five before shrinking back to the original pair. They arrived in the 1950s and I was their favourite. We were all younger then, with fewer rings on our trunks. Once time had done its thing – greying the couple’s skin, furrowing their brows – they left for a retirement scheme on the town’s edge.
Next came the man who collected dogs: a wet-nosed black lab, then a fluffy white Maltese. Soon, countless puppies were tearing up my garden. The man fell asleep one summer’s evening; dogs howled until an ambulance arrived. A for sale sign stood on the front lawn for a month, inviting strangers to wander around my home, passing judgement.
In the 1990s, an investor introduced a rotating cast of transient renters. They were my favourites. Never under the illusion that my place was theirs. That lasted thirty years or so, until the investor decided to sell up because the market was good or bad or bullish or something.
There’s a new crowd now. Another couple with busy kids and boxes to unpack. The man’s gloved hand grips a chainsaw ‒ he mutters something about my branches blocking his light.
Gary Finnegan is a writer based in County Kildare, Ireland. He won the Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2025 and received an Arts Council of Ireland Agility Award in 2025. He is the recipient of a Tyrone Guthrie Residency Bursary Award and was selected for the PEN/Ireland Freedom to Write Project 2024. His fiction has appeared in The London Magazine, Litro, Flash Fiction Magazine & The Irish Independent. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize twice (2025). Gary has degrees in physiology and science communication, as well as an MA in creative writing. He is working on a novel and is represented by Ciara McEllin @ Watson Little Ltd., London.
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