Redolent in the air was the scent of heroin being smoked and shit wafting into the living room from the rectangular hole where there used to be a bathroom door. Crack rock crackled in a hash pipe and someone was doing a line of speed off the round table; the mensa, thought Damien Fogarty. Around this mensa those who floated had a yellowish pallor similar to the paint on the walls between the graffiti. When the front door was smashed in by a single kick, the crackhead was the first to react.“Fuck, lads. What the fuck is this?”A can of Guinness was thrown quickly on the floor and the open window was the escape route. Many, at least those who lived, would recall never having seen a person move so fast and fluidly. But as they clamoured towards the open window, hurley sticks smashed them with a calculated randomness. A blow across the temple left one of them on the ground, blood leaking from their nostrils. His head was later stomped on, but the fire would remove all trace of that. A woman was next to make it out of the window, and she was the owner of the ground floor flat. She didn’t look back. As a young man, the youngest in the group at twenty-three, was beaten about the head with a hammer, Damien Fogarty made his own escape through the smashed front door. As he spilled out onto the street he could see people stopping and gasping at the building. Flames licked the sides of the walls and rose up like some liquid defying gravity. Two men with balaclavas on rushed out and were on the back of an electric bike before the onlookers even had their phones out. Inside, screams like Damien had never heard before rang shrilly into his ears, and a figure emerged engulfed in orange, red, and yellow.
