Gill O’Halloran

You’ve come to retrieve the valuables you left in storage four weeks ago when you were between flats, and the guy behind the desk is a demon. Not someone dressed up for Halloween. A devil.

You don’t believe in demons, must be a migraine aura, best to act like he’s the usual kind of storage assistant, like Un-self-consciouslyBeautifulGothGirl who put your heart alongside your valuables into storage last month, whose photo you took, pretending to capture the pricelist behind her. You’d hoped to see her again today, it’s lonely being new in town.

DemonGuy says don’t I know you, but you ignore him, offer your collection ticket. He says he’s legally obliged to tell you there was an incident last night, someone broke into the lockers, but they didn’t take anything of yours. You make a mental note to double-check your stuff’s all there before you leave but feign outrage. If you could wangle a refund, you could afford that Sony Cyber-Shot you’ve been eyeing up on Amazon for the past week.

DemonGuy says, I can assure you…but you cut him off and say no, not good enough, security’s been compromised, your trust’s been compromised. DemonGuy says it’s not in his power to give refunds, but if you like he can give you this as compensation in kind; he hands you a Nikon Z50. Someone left it on the counter, he’s been unable to trace the owner; it’s yours if you want it. He leans over, fixes you, red eyes blazing, says you’d be well advised to take it. You can’t resist cradling it for a moment, it is a thing of beauty. The power purrs on, you press the playback button. WTF? The images are you, selfies from inside the storage facility, keys in hand, opening lockers and grinning, holding up three gold rings, a Capodimonte statuette of the Madonna, the Nikon camera. The date stamp on the photos is yesterday.

You feel queasy, sweat prickles your brow, you glance at DemonGuy. He makes a zipper action across his mouth. You leave. Fifty strides on, you realise you’re still holding the camera. You stop, consider the possibility that DemonGuy is not dressed up, is not a hallucination, but the prince of demons, Satan himself. You march back, put the Nikon on the counter, tell Satan he can fuck right off, you’re not a burglar nor a thief, you work in Tesco, and you’re reporting him for fencing stolen goods. 

You reach for your wallet to re-present your collection ticket and out of your bag fall three gold rings and a Capodimonte Madonna. Caught red-handed. The statuette falls, smashes. You look back up, catch your blood-eyed shock reflected in Satan’s fire-crimson pupils. 

He smirks. “See, I know you. I’m your bff.”

It’s lonely being new in town. You grin, say, “Hi bff.” 

Your new Nikon’s the best thing ever, there’s a fresh image on playback: the two of you doing zipper mouth, red-eye reduction rendering you both almost human.

Gill’s prompts were: A Storage Facility, a Demon and a Found Camera

She said of the challenge: “The three prompts threw me, but a line from Fontaines D.C. ‘A Hero’s Death’ saved the day – ‘Let your demeanour be your deep down self’. Swap ‘demon’ for ‘demeanour’ and I was off. In the end, it was a riot, the creative constraints giving me room to swing my pen in new directions; I hope it’s as fun to read as it was to write.”

Gill O’ Halloran’s poetry book ‘This Seven Year Old Walks Into a Bar’ was included in the top 20 individual collections of 2009 by the Small Press Poetry Awards. She has run poetry workshops in the health service, for disenfranchised communities, and at local festivals. She has fiction in Bath Flash Fiction Anthology 2024, Trash Cat Lit, Underbelly Press.
Find her on X @poetrypleases and Instagram @gillohal1/

Read more from Gill:

Here on Trash Cat Lit – ‘If it (ain’t) Broke, Don’t Fix it’