The Naked Mole Rat’s The Odds-On Favourite But You’re Still In With A Chance
By Gill O'Halloran
Listen to a reading of this story by the author:
You don’t sleep like normal people, having long since danced to the beat of your own circadian drum. You shouldn’t take the pills, but during your longest stretch in Wandsworth they erased the bars, or at least painted them a brighter hue. Now they keep you wired but you need them.
Bedtime, you step out, don the cloak of invisibility; love how your body and mind can waltz unwatched. Creeping home as the sun rises you hear another drum, the thud of your anxious heart. Now what? Different pills to make you sleep? You can’t remember when you last ate breakfast or spoke to someone (apart from Gran), but sloth’s a sin. Do something, Fergus! So here you are, in London Zoo’s Nocturnal House, seeking the elusive comfort of nightfall under a mock-up moon.
The after-dark activists come up to sniff you. You know these endangered guys; they’re your tribe.
The aye-aye is rumoured to bring death if you look at him.
Your dad never looked at you from the day you were born. Age seven, you pistol-pointed your finger at him, and he looked you in the eye, spoiling for a fight. Next day while working on the track, he fell under a train.
The red slender loris creeps up on his prey, freezes in the face of danger.
You used to rob people at cashpoints. Easy! If the police appeared, you’d be head-down, motionless. The pills put paid to that. You’d run, get caught.
The pygmy slow loris has two tongues.
When you open your mouth it’s a can of swear-worms, but when you visit your gran, you sing her ‘Ae Fond Kiss’ before you go.
The naked mole rat rarely gets cancer, is resistant to pain, can live to thirty-two.
You’re not resistant to pain, just resigned. The smoker’s cough that racks you is probably nothing but you should really see a doctor. You’re thirty-one—you got fifty quid on the rat.
The Rondo bushbaby gets its name from its neonate cry.
On bad days, back from seeing Gran, you wail like a newborn. Not for yourself, but who’ll visit your grannie when you’re gone?
The animals disperse. Visitors come and go. You remain. In the dark, you’re bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. You find a broom, sweep the floor. Maybe you could get a job here? You spit on your sleeve and clean the glass, stand back to admire the shine.
At 6 pm the opening door announces the zookeeper’s entry to activate the reverse lighting. He closes the blinds on the normal people’s moon, switches on the nocturama sun. He spots you. You freeze-frame. He circles your underfed form, assessing the risk.
“Can I stay?”
He shrugs, “Ah dinnae ken.”
After you’ve reduced him to tears with a rendition of ‘Ae Fond Kiss,’ filled his pockets with pills, promised not to grass him up and to leave before it re-opens, he leaves you in peace.
You hunker down. Bathed in the midnight sun, your heart’s settled into a 12/8 groove, and your pals are snuggling in the creases of your jacket. The aye-aye wants attention. You won’t look at him, just in case, but you know what it’s like to be feared, to be blamed. You close your eyes, pull him closer.
Gill O’Halloran lives in London where lidos (almost) compensate for the lack of sea. Her poetry book, ‘This Seven-Year-Old Walks Into a Bar’ was in the 2009 Small-Press Poetry Awards’ top 20 individual collections. She has fiction in Bath Flash Fiction Anthologies 2024 and 2025, and in Oxford Flash Fiction’s Transformations Anthology. Other work has appeared online in SmokeLong Quarterly, Trash Cat Lit, Underbelly Press, and Thin Skin. She won first place in the Propelling Pencil Autumn 24 Flash Competition and is Editors’ Choice Award winner for National Flash Fiction Day Anthology 2025.
You can find Gill on BSky at @quickasaflash and on Insta at @gillohal1
Very intriguing and atmospheric!