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    They Shut Me Up
    They Shut Me Up
    They Shut Me Up
    Ebook115 pages1 hour

    They Shut Me Up

    By Tracey Fahey

    ()

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    About this ebook

    "Life is tough. And then there's The Change...
    A woman, ignored and invisible, starts to discover her voice. But who—or what—is speaking though her?
    Part body-horror, part feminist fiction, They Shut Me Up poses the question: how can we retell historic female narratives?

     

    "In reclaiming the tale of an Irish "witch," Tracy Fahey writes about stories—the ones we tell ourselves and the ones others tell about us. Steeped in Irish history and myth and suffused with women's rage, They Shut Me Up is a luminous recounting of how unearthing the past can liberate us in the present." Lynda E. Rucker (The Moon Will Look Strange, Now It's Dark)    —Lynda E. Rucker (The Moon Will Look Strange, Now It's Dark)

     

    "This is a glorious feminist revisionism of how powerful older women are seen in folklore. Tracy Fahey gives voice to the silenced and it's a battle cry." —Priya Sharma, author of Ormeshadow and Pomegranates.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPS Publishing
    Release dateOct 4, 2023
    ISBN9781786369833
    They Shut Me Up

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      Book preview

      They Shut Me Up - Tracey Fahey

      For Wayne Parkin with love. A constant lighthouse no matter how stormy the sea.

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

      I would like to acknowledge the support of the Kone Foundation for awarding me a Fellowship for 2023. This funded residency in Finland afforded me the opportunity to write most of this novella. Kiitos to the staff and to my fellow residents there. I would also like to acknowledge the support of Clare County Council for their grant award of 2023. Finally, two people to thank especially for their help during the writing process; my talented friend Priya Sharma, for her support and encouragement, and my editor, Marie O'Regan, for her patience and hard work.

      Thanks also to Lynda Rucker for her kindness in reading, and to Megan Taylor, in whose 2022 workshop the idea for this novella was born.

      INTRODUCTION

      TRACY FAHEY IS AN IRISH WRITER WHO LOVES the Gothic (she has a PhD on the Gothic in the visual arts), folklore, and above all, story. Her short fiction has been shortlisted for Best Collection in the British Fantasy Awards twice, and she’s been published in numerous anthologies worldwide. Her nonfiction writing on the Gothic and folklore has appeared in Irish, English, Italian, Dutch and Australian edited collections and is similarly well thought of. In 2022 she was awarded Saari Fellow status for 2023 by the Kone Foundation, Finland.

      I first met Tracy at a FantasyCon in the UK, as most of us who write or edit in the genre do at some point, and we’ve caught up at many conventions since, over the years—either FantasyCon or Edge Lit, or the UK Ghost Story Festival...there are a few. The UK genre scene becomes like a family after a while, familiar faces we see intermittently but are delighted when we do. Where else can we spend days at a time talking about books and films and writing in general, with conversations picking up where they left off, even after an interval of a few years? And over time I’ve come to see and appreciate her unique voice, as I’m sure you will here.

      In They Shut Me Up, Tracy has married her love of folklore with the story of Annie, as she researches Irish women famously accused of wrongdoing on account of their gender—Máire Rua and Colleen Bawn, to name just two—as part of a work project designed to reframe the wrongs of the past and bring light to their histories, even as she learns their lessons about female empowerment and its price. Annie and those around her are vivid and real, and there’s a real empathy here for Annie’s plight, and that of women like her.

      I could say a lot more about They Shut Me Up, but it would reveal too much, and diminish your pleasure discovering it all for the first time. So I’ll shut myself up now, and simply let you enjoy.

      Marie O’Regan

      Derbyshire, 2023

      PROLOGUE

      THIS IS A STORY OF VOICES. Lost ones. Found ones. Revoiced ones.

      Everyone has their own voice; but some are whispers. Others are loud and strident. The more they’re used, the stronger they get. Those voices are fine.

      The quiet ones are a worry. They hide and mumble, stammer and apologise.

      Never say you’re sorry for having a voice.

      We are all a story. We are all the narrators of our own lives. How can you tell your tale if you haven’t discovered your voice? How can you speak your truth if you don’t let your voice rise above a whisper?

      We all deserve to have a voice. And if you don’t feel worthy of it, use it anyway. You owe it to all those who went before you; those whose words were swallowed up by years of exhaustion, sickness, hard work, childbearing. Even those who raised their voices, well, they got talked over; their narratives rewritten by century after century of patriarchal revoicing.

      But they haven’t gone. All those words, lives, voices. Listen carefully and you will hear them. Those voices were drowned out, but they did not disappear. All are still spiralling round us. They whisper in the trickle of streams, they sing in the throats of birds, they breathe in tickles of soft breezes.

      And sometimes, if we’re receptive, they speak directly to us.

      So what are you waiting for?

      You deserve your voice.

      You deserve to be heard.

      Tonight I feel different. Strange.

      I touch my cheek in the darkness; feel the familiar contours of my face. The small, indelible lines over my eyebrows, the silk of my eyelids, the bloom of down on my jawline. Fingers flutter, soft against my neck. Downwards.

      There. My heart beats a flurry of drumrolls.

      Right there, in the soft, boned V at the base of my throat. Pliant but firm, two little mounds curve up against my fingers.

      My breath, suspended. Pulse flutters, a moth in darkness.

      The worst end to the worst day.

      CHAPTER 1

      THE DAY I FIND IT IS A DAY LIKE ANY OTHER.

      I open my eyes. Grey light edging through the filter of faded blinds, the hiss and gurgle of radiators oozing into life. My clothes for today, carefully chosen, are draped on the chair; a collapsed mannequin of myself. I slide back beneath the striped cotton duvet, until I’m submerged, floating in the balmy neverland between sleep and waking. Ten more minutes, then a shower, drying my hair, tea, toast, the chilly walk on icy streets, a crowded bus to the library. My movements, the same as any other day. A clockwork mouse, moving to the metronome of the morning. I trace the stripes of the worn cotton with a meditative finger, their lines dark against the bloom of light. Deep within, a yearning for something, anything, to change.

      It is a day like any other. But it shouldn’t be.

      ––––––––

      Annie, can you get us coffee and biscuits? Meeting Room Two, that’s a doll.

      Annie, sending you over something to proof. I need it back in half an hour.

      Annie, can we get the minutes from yesterday’s meeting?

      The usual chorus of voices; today, shriller than ever. Jane, on the other side of the desk, peers over her monitor. The slow tension of the morning builds into a hard, muscular ache. I rotate my neck; a series of small cracks.

      It’s a relief when most of the workers file out; some meeting about synergies and algorithms and blue-sky strategies, no doubt.

      You okay? Jane looks at me narrowly. She knows, but she’s keeping it to herself. Will we—?

      Jane. Our boss, Philippa, opens a glass door, cranes her head out. Jane Hanley. Meeting Room Three. Now.

      Yeah, right away. Jane smiles a stiff little answer, but her fingers keep typing. Honestly. Her voice is low, resigned. They tell you to do something, then it’s something else that’s more urgent.

      Philippa’s head reappears, crosser now. "When you’re ready. Meeting Room Three."

      Bitch, says Jane, her voice flat. She stands up. I’ll see if I can bring some good biscuits back. It’s our solemn pact with each other.

      My fingers tap-tap-tap, touch-typing without taking in any of the tedious detail I’m reading. Outside the window a branch, sticky with buds, taps the glass. If I squint, the grey sky is tinged with something that might be blue. A wisp of a daydream; a vague desire...

      Philippa, again. Annie, got a minute?

      Coming. I tug at my skirt, straightening the front of my blouse. If there was time I’d bolt to the Ladies and make sure I looked presentable, but I can hear the impatience in Philippa’s voice. Instead I squint at my shadowy self in the glass door and

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