The Intruder Who Played Accordion

    When I was younger, my father and I stood at the edge of Dublin city and gazed at the fence that towered above us. "Whoever crosses the fence is likely an enemy, a hoax, a fake reality," he said, his voice fluttering into the cool air. Even if the mesh crisscrossed over our view of the Irish Sea, and even if there were hundreds of bombs attached to the mesh, he made everything feel moral. Sensible, even. The fence was Ireland's barrier from Europe, our cell wall, our membrane.

   I had often wondered what Europeans looked like. How they'd talk. How they'd sound. In my mind I broke down the fence between us and Europe. My thoughts travelled over the Irish Sea, gliding over the cool, cerulean waves, venturing into the unseen.

   Though I had lived nineteen years on Earth and my mind was still young and malleable, I had never uttered a word to a European. My father had always made sure I stayed in our flat while he arrested the European intruders and took them back to the barracks. He never described what they looked like. They were skulking shadows that danced across my mind, black whirlpools of mystery.

   But the day had finally come. On our nineteenth birthday and after nine years of training, we would have to take our parents’ job. Since Mom left when I was twelve, I could only take my father's job.

   I was about to become a policewoman.

   My father's voice pulled me back to the present. "Annette, you ready?"

   The kitchen materialized around me: cracks ran down walls and our fridge buzzed loudly.

   I searched his blue eyes for consolation. My body was split in two distinct parts; one that wanted to go ahead, and another that didn't. The day had finally come, however, and it was compulsory.

   "I . . . I think I'm ready."

   Nerves entangled with my thoughts, making each tick of the clock a sonorous peal. But soon the clock on the wall dissolved away, and I became the clock instead, thudding, trembling, keeping track of time.

   The tracker on my wrist prickled uncomfortably. It consisted of a circular centerpiece and a strap, much like the bracelets or watches Mom used to own. The only difference was that the circular centerpiece was stamped with a photo of the Irish President, Marianne Auric. Her blonde hair was curled around her face, and she beamed at me. Red marks glowed underneath the circle, it had given me many electric shocks, and I knew there would be more if I messed up the mission.

   Dad leaned against the kitchen's grimy countertop, scrolling through his phone. His wiry glasses were just as thin as his black hair. His hand trembled slightly as he clutched the phone, and his beady eyes read my mission.

   "Here goes," he said, reading a text from his phone. "Your first mission is as follows. Right, so there's a teenage boy playing an . . . accordion on Lynsdale Street."

   "An accordion? Seems a tad strange," I replied. The boy would be European, I knew.

   He continued. "CCTV footage caught him. Rather than have the guards shoot him, we can torture him for information. We need you to lure him in. Bring him to the barracks at Oxley Street. If he puts up a fight, kill him."

   A burst of unknown excitement sputtered like a car's exhaust inside me. It grew and grew until my heart held dazzling skylights and saw children that clung to balloons. But then the fear returned. My European fantasies were not facts, I knew, and eventually the time would come when I had to let them go. Auric’s motto rang in my mind. “Facts are solid, dear Dubliners, but dreams are wisps of unrequited love.” As a result, I never trusted my mind.

   I trusted our fence.

   A smooth gun met my fingertips, and my skin caressed its seductive surface. I became breathless at the thought that my innocent hands could touch the thing that would make me a murderer.

   I looked at Dad. "I will make you proud. I will, Dad. I will."

   I smiled at him. His blue eyes met mine, but they were surrounded by wrinkles of times gone by. Maybe there was fear swirling through them, but I couldn't tell. I didn't blame him for his fear, since the European boy might have a gun.

   He smiled. "You've trained for nine years. At this point, policing is a part of you."

   Facts were safe entities; they might've been rigid and lifeless, but they owned truths. I had nine years under my belt. That fact fuelled me.

   "Well, you better go," he said.

   "Right then, I guess I'll see you . . . later, perhaps?"

   He nodded.

   As I passed the hall's mirror, I caught a glimpse of my reflection, a dark-haired girl on the cusp of nineteen. Her blue eyes were no longer innocent, but those that could lure. Those eyes were mine, and I felt as if they were searching deep inside me, searching for something I could not name.

   When Britain left the EU in 2021, Ireland barricaded itself from Europe. A fence and a lockdown did the job. But I never wanted to be like that, forever cut off from the world.   The fence always soothed me and made me feel safe, but it reminded me of my body. Whenever I looked at myself in the mirror, I felt tied down by my own physicality.

   I descended the stairs, and reached the concrete landing, ignoring the round cameras that watched me. I emerged onto the street. Shops with smashed windowpanes lined the cobblestones; their rusty signs creaked as they swung. The street felt like a hall of mirrors, because as I passed each empty windowpane, my cracked reflection looked back at me, skulking silently through rough shards of glass. I saw myself in the echoingly still employment office, in the homeless woman on the street, in the rusty signposts. Dublin and I were made of the same soul. What happened to Dublin happened to me.

   Dad's voice reminded me of one thing: "When you're on duty, act as if you're just a regular citizen. So look into shops. Become one with the people."

   I gazed at the only yellow-windowed establishment on the street; the employment office. A beacon of broken hope, it was the only place still lit up on my street. Its only door was wide open, letting cool air into its small confines.

   Inside, posters adorned its peeling walls and a glossy desk stood at the side. Mothers clung to the hands of their children as they gazed at the job adverts. Their melancholic symphony of voices wafted through the open door. Children rummaged through their pockets, perhaps looking for sweets or coins or something to hold onto. Something to distract them. Another man, clad in dark overalls, pleaded with the receptionist. "Please? Any construction jobs at all?"

   I moved on quickly, as if window shopping.

   Black streetlamps bent over to greet me with their light. Beyond the end of the street lay a white bridge that sailed to Lynsdale Street.

   A single poster was tacked to a streetlamp. The President of Ireland, Marianne Auric, beamed at me. The poster stayed there, rigid, frozen. Immortal. She draped herself across a chair, blonde hair flowing down her shoulders. Under her heavy eyelids, her blue eyes glittered.

   The street's smashed window panes were kaleidoscopic scatterings of her broken promises. Her invisible hand quietly shut the shop's doors forever, meekly painted over their signs, relished in the raucous roars of a nation. She sat oblivious, on that black chair as she beamed upon the world. "President Marianne Auric – Always With You."

   Notes faintly played.

   Soft, gentle notes, pirouetted through the air, entwined around streetlamps. They came from an instrument I never heard before, but the tone was something I could feel swirl inside me. It was a part of me, and yet it was not, a mystery I already knew the answer to. That tone had a rich and golden sound, and I knew its creator was European.

   This was the moment every police officer spoke of. They said their first mission was often a pivotal moment in their career, the one where they finally intersected with a criminal's life. They said it made them want to protect Ireland even more. But I felt the opposite. I wanted to protect the accordion player.

   Beyond me lay a white bridge that extended over the gushing river. We were never allowed to visit other parts of Dublin, only the sector we lived in. But since the European was on Lynsdale Street, I had to cross the bridge.

   This bridge was always banned; crossing over it led to continual electric shocks, thanks to the tracker.

   The sea of notes flooded my ears, dashing through the breezy air to find me. I closed my eyes, imagining myself in the hot sun, where the notes were like blue crystalline water, gently lapping around me.

   The notes danced around me, fireflies I wanted to hold.

   I might've been on the edge of the city, standing on the center of a bridge, but as I looked down the river, a thousand glittering lights shimmered from the horizon, from the Centre. Marianne and her workers were sure to be partying, surrounded by glimmers of gold. Or maybe they were watching my mission.

   Peeling my eyes from the Centre, I descended the bridge and headed for Lynsdale Street. Soon the notes got louder, and the current washed all over me.

   When I stepped off the bridge, the boy flamed into being. He wore a sad smile, looking down at his accordion as if it were the last thing to save him from a distant memory. He was seventeen or eighteen, I thought, gauging by the youth of his skin. His disheveled hair struck me as beautiful.

   His accordion had a little piano running down the side of it, black keys hovering over white keys. He pressed them gently as he looked to the streetlamps, lost in thought.

   My eyes moved toward him, and I wished I were a femme fatale. The street was empty, but only we two humans shared in the notes his accordion created. As I listened, cosmic blue and lavender splashed the sky. Chinks of yellow light dispersed from the tops of the flats into the cold air. It was only then that I realized I was scattered in everything—the broken windowpanes, the golden light, the aquamarine sky.

   He kept playing, slowly moving the accordion in and out, as the notes formed themselves into vivid memories that danced across the night. I tasted stardust and expansive skies, romantic perfume shops, and clocks that pealed sonorously. My old self condensed into an ember of something bright and new.

   He looked at me and smiled. In that instant, I couldn't care about my past nor where I was going. Life moved and swayed, like a painting that suddenly breathed, its grass swaying and rippling out towards the fringes.

   But the fence was behind him, and in the dark the bombs' lights flashed, forming constellations of red pinpricks that painted fear across the dark.

   Eight years ago, my father had murmured softly to my tear-stained face, "Your mother ran off with a European man.”

   I took the gun from my pocket and pointed it at him.