The following is an excerpt from All Them Dogs by Djamel White. He is an Irish writer and editor living in Dublin. He earned an MFA in creative writing from University College Dublin and was fiction editor for the inaugural issue of the literary and art journal Profiles.
All Them Dogs follows Tony Ward, who returns to Dublin after five years in exile in England, hoping to rebuild his place in the city’s criminal underworld after murdering a rival gang member. When he begins working for Flute Walsh, the enforcer of a local crime boss and a boy from his past, Tony finds himself drawn to him in ways he never expected. It is now available from Riverhead.
I had a John Player Blue and milkless tea with about eight sugars for breakfast. My stomach was in knots, fingers all shaky. And that feeling of doom you wake up with, it comes out of nowhere. It’s like
shell‑shock every time. I felt like the sole survivor of a tragedy I couldn’t remember. The tea and the smoke didn’t help the stomach, but I needed something to stop the shakes. It’d be a day of trade‑offs. I was a hag sat at the table, my left nostril was whistling through the cack caked up the walls of it. I could hear the low hum of Kenny’s voice coming from upstairs. Lizzie usually woke him up by jumping on the bed.
I’d had a useless few hours’ sleep and woke up to the lump in the mattress and the fear of God when I remembered I was sleeping on a gun. Shot up out of the bed then, just in time for the skag to kick in and send me onto the floor. I hadn’t checked the clip for rounds or made sure the safety was on when I’d stashed it. I wouldn’t have had a fucking clue how to anyway, not without watching a YouTube video first. It was still in its paper bag and all. I’d crawled into bed not even thinking about it. Now I needed to get that thing out of here.
Kenny barged into the kitchen, barefoot and untrimmed, wearing only his boxers and a white cotton vest. Lizzie thundered in behind him in her school tracksuit.
“You’re up early,” said Kenny. He started doing out two bowls of Coco Pops on the counter. He gave the milk a sniff before he poured it over and then the two of them were with me at the table. I looked at the brown mulch floating in both their bowls and felt sick.
“Barely slept,” I said. The chair screeched against the tiles as I stood up.
“You around this evening to bring me and Liz to boxing after school?”
I groaned. “I dunno where I’ll be, I’m not hanging around here all day.” Although the state of me, I might have to. I started toward the door.
“Well, come back and get us. That was the deal.” “What if I’m busy?”
I heard him turn his chair around. “Well, don’t be. We need you.”
I showed him the back of my hand without turning on my way out into the hall. He could be a bitter cunt about last night all he wanted. Once back in my room I locked the door, took the paper bag with the gun in it out from under the mattress, and put it on the bedside locker for now. I climbed back into the bed, face down on the pillow. I didn’t sleep. The memory of Flute’s fingers sent signals up the highways of my nervous system, like there was a gap forming between the two. I tried not to think about any of yesterday, but one thing stood out that had to be dealt with.
I heard Lizzie leave for school. Now where could I stash this poxy gun? My ma’s crossed my mind, but Archie was there. I knew well enough, stuff as red‑hot as these, they couldn’t go unguarded. They needed to be watched, usually by someone who under no account would ever be raided by the Guards. Someone who couldn’t afford to say no. I rolled over on my back and tried to gather the energy.
Kenny was in his usual spot skinning up in the sitting room. He called out to me as I was about to leave, the bag of gun stuffed down the back of my trackies. I made sure to keep my front facing him as I came around the sitting‑room door.
“Do you want to go into town or something, if you’re not doing anything?” he said.
“And do what?”
“I dunno. Get an Eddie Rockets, float around.” “Get an Eddie Rockets and f
loat around?” “Yeah.”
I looked at him, in his favorite dip of the couch he made with his own fat arse. Me old pal just wanting to kick it, eat chicken tenders, shoot the breeze.
“What are you, sixteen?” I said. “I’ve shit to do.” His face dropped back to the joint he was making.
“Don’t forget about later,” he said. I didn’t answer. I stepped backward through the door and grabbed my parka from the banister. The wind started slapping me around the minute I went out the front door. I held my breath for want of screaming into the air at it. The fucking weather of all things sending me snapping. I needed to keep a cool head right now. I hopped in the Opel and drove the short distance to that lovely little private estate from yesterday.
I parked around the corner this time and strolled up with the packet down the front of my jocks where my coat hid the bulge. I couldn’t even keep my hood up with the wind, blinking away tears almost like it was telling me to just turn around. My hole. I was committed to it now.
I knocked on the front door and when your one Gemma answered, this time she wasn’t holding the youngone. The size of the scowl she gave me. She might think it made things easier for her to get fresh with me, not having the little one there, but it sure as fuck made it easier for me too.
“I have it,” she almost spat. I gave her the biggest, most shit‑eating grin I could manage. My lips stung.
“That’s a good start. Let us in there, love, would you?” I didn’t wait for an answer. She hopped back as I stepped forward. I slammed the door behind me to shut out the howling wind.
“Wait here, I’ll get it.” She was doing her best, God love her.
“I’ll go make myself comfortable,” I said, sauntering toward the
kitchen. The brown paper bag chaffed against my skin. She made a noise as if to say something, decided against it, and went up the stairs. She’d replaced the vase I’d flung from the counter already. I took a seat on one of the spinny stools at the breakfast bar. The package dug
into the space between my thigh and my left bollock.
Gemma came through the door. Her eyes were hanging out of her. “Where’s the little one today?” I said cheerfully.
“As if I’d tell you that.”
She slapped a load of cash onto the countertop.
“That’s all of it. You make sure that Darren gets every cent.”
I spun the stool and yanked the lever underneath; it lowered until I was eyeline with the counter. I peered at the pile of money and then I pumped the stool back up slowly to full height. Then I took the money and started counting. Licking my thumb for each note. Making a show of it while she stood there all tense.
“You’re not to be making demands of me now, Gemma,” I said, folding the money over and putting it into the inside pocket of my coat. This much would please Flute anyway. I got a little crawl across the back of my neck when I pictured handing it to him. “But see, there’s actually been a bit more interest added. Given the time that’s elapsed.”
“You little bastard. You tell me this now.”
“Ah now. I’m sure we can come to another sort of arrangement.”
She looked like she was about to be sick. She gripped the other side of the counter with one hand.
“What,” she said through her teeth, “could you possibly want?”
I took the paper bag out of my jocks and put it on the counter. She looked down her nose at it. Her nostrils twitched.
“What is it?” Like the shape of it wasn’t right there in the bag.
“That doesn’t matter. Just need you to keep it nice and safe for me. Out of reach of the little one. Somewhere you can grab it in a pinch though.”
She reached out and touched the bag. Felt the shape of the gun. Her eyes popped. She tore her hand away like it had bit her.
“For fuck’s sake!” she screamed. “Absolutely not.”
“Ah, don’t be dramatic,” I said. “I’m only asking you to keep it safe for me.”
“I can’t, you can’t expect me to—”
“You’re in my bad books already, Gemma.”
She said nothing. She stood there trying to steady her breathing, tears starting to well.
“I want it put away now,” I said, “before I get out of here.” “Is it loaded?”
“Do you want to find out?”
I saw a dark thought flash across her face. I leaned forward, knowing right well what she was thinking.
“What dya think would happen if you used it on me?” I said lowly. “Where would you put me? Would you chop me up? Bury me? Pray to God that no one comes looking in the last place I said I’d be? Be rational now, love. You’re a good person, I’m sure you want this all put behind you.”
Her breathing was wet and mucousy. She turned and looked out the window into her back garden, and then back at me.
“It can go in the shed. When you need it, you can hop the wall and get it. You don’t need to come in here again.”
“I don’t give a rat’s where you put it so long as you have it for me when I want it. Does anyone be in the shed?”
“My daughter’s da comes around to cut the grass.”
I looked out at the garden. The grass wasn’t in need of a trim. “You better hope he doesn’t shoot you then,” I said, smiling all
wide. “Give me your phone.”
She gave it over. I put my number in. Then I took my own phone out and made her give me hers.
“That number, yeah? It’s me you contact. Nobody else. Not Flute, me.”
“Who’s Flute?” she said. Her whole top lip was slick with snot. “Stop crying. You’re a smart girl, aren’t you? You’re not going to let anything go wrong.”
She shook her head. I gave her back her phone. I tried to sniff clear my left nostril.
“You haven’t got any Sudafed or anything?”
She just looked at me with tears streaming down her face.
I made my own way out of the gaff, her standing there staring at that package, terrified to touch it, wondering what fresh hell she was after landing herself in.
Excerpted from ALL THEM DOGS by Djamel White. Copyright © 2026 by Djamel White. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.