Glastafari

There was nothing like a full-scale riot, topped off with a short burst of machine gun fire to get those soaking figures up. Glastonbury Dead leapt by 5 rating points in a night to a very commanding 48 share; an increase of 25 million soakers in one Drako day. No actual murders yet, but plenty of broken bones, cuts and bruises and a growing sense of total hopelessness. Though, the show’s creator, Larr, had been dismayed to see those alien costumes surface once again and ruin what was promising to be an intriguing torture and execution session of some kind of holy man inside the police compound.

But without any proper wanton slaughter, it was all beginning to feel like the early stages of an election night broadcast; everyone waiting around for the first proper body count to be declared. The trouble was that, without a mass media to crank up the fear factor, to focus the minds and exaggerate the flash points, people were generally being nice to one another. Because away from media manipulation, people generally are nice to one another when they find themselves living under difficult circumstances. Especially festival people.

But for our TV hot-shot, Larr, what was of a more pressing concern, was the sudden appearance of humans so close to the Tor-Vision Centre itself; far too close. And a creeping realisation that perhaps the Big Brother ‘Gore Den’ had a weak spot in its design. The enigmatic summit of Glastonbury Tor had long since commanded legendary status, becoming a place where the veil between this world and another more mysterious and hidden realm is at its thinnest. For Larr, that veil was about to become far too thin for comfort.

* * * * *

As the apparent chosen one, Daryl the Dealer had been the only person so far to see beyond that veil. Of course, when it came to dealing, he had known from day one that prison was a major occupational hazard. But no amount of illicit careers advice could foresee imprisonment inside a major tourist attraction, sharing your cramped and damp confinement with a dead yank stand-up.

Whilst initially informative, Bill Hick’s prison yard whisper had become downright irritating after a while. Daryl got the gist. He didn’t need the history of the entire Universe, or to hear about all those landmarks in alien broadcasting. So what if there’d been hit shows like ‘The Tar Pit’ or ‘Famous Last words’. Alien shit was no different to human shit really; no different to dog fighting or badger baiting, or even boxing.

Hicks had tried to connect with Daryl through a number of funny stories about LSD and weed. But Daryl didn’t care for druggy anecdotes. When it came to drug-taking, he just sold the trips, he wasn’t in the slightest bit interested in seeing your holiday snaps.

But Hick’s rogue messenger routine had created more than a little consternation throughout the constellation. He’d broken a number of major Pleiadian rules - sneaking out of Planet Happy Clappy without clearance, trying to convince some low life bottom feeder that he’s ‘the chosen one’, and basically interfering with that entire sweet chaotic, confused, constantly revolving and evolving mess that people like to call human destiny. That was a huge NO NO.

To Hicks though, the Pleiadian hands-off approach was simply nuts. Why, when every other Lizard Fucker and Creepy Crawly in the Galaxy had been messing with human destiny forever, couldn’t the blue rinse brigade just get off their cross-trainers for one minute and actually do something useful? Prang a saucer or two, or smack a Drako over the head with a chunky crystal?

He was running out of time. He’d told Daryl all he knew about the Drakos and their sinister show, but with minutes to go before they no doubt found a way to drag his sorry ass back to Planet Happy Clappy, there was perhaps just time to give his cell mate one last soggy roll up of prison-yard wisdom.

“Never forget that the world is like a ride in an amusement park,” Hicks began, recycling bits of what has now become a famous internet meme. “Okay, so this is a pretty fucked up ride. But when you choose to go on it, you think it’s real because that’s how powerful our minds are.”

“What the fuck is he going on about now?” thought Daryl, his head beginning to rush like a busted squat party faucet.

“But the ride goes up and down, around and around,” Hicks continued, sounding more and more enthusiastic. “It has thrills and chills, and it’s very brightly coloured, and it’s very loud, and it’s fun for a while.. But many people have been on the ride a long time..”

“Tell me about it,” thought Daryl, who’d made a career out of being a kind of one-man amusement park himself. Always just around the corner with all your favourite rides and plenty of screaming hands in the air heart pumping nausea to keep you occupied for hours.

“..and they begin to wonder, “Hey, is this real, or is this just a ride?“” said Hicks. “And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and say, “Hey, don’t worry, don’t be afraid ever, because this is just a ride.“”

Hick’s voice suddenly tailed off, as if his particular ride had come shuddering to a disappointing halt. “And we.. Kill those people.”

In his time Daryl had witnessed the dawning of an awful lot of cold realisation; euphoric rush and sweet harmony turning to deepest regret and self-loathing on a chemical knife-edge. Whatever this yank dude was on, it actually left a bitter after taste in the mind of the listener.

“I’ve got a lot invested in this ride,” spat Hicks, suddenly sounding more like a Rothschild & Sons banker. “Shut him up!”

“Yeah, shut him up!” Daryl agreed. The dead yank was clearly losing it.

“Look at my furrows of worry! Look at my big bank account! And my family! This has to be real,” said Hicks, crashing down around Daryl’s ear like a Log Ride. His voice suddenly becoming a lot calmer, like the gentle lap lapping of a Victorian boating lake in mid July.

“It’s just a ride,” he whispered. “But we always kill the good guys who try and tell us that. You ever notice that? And let the demons run amok.”

As Hick’s ‘chosen one’, the only guy to have so far peeped behind that heavy Gray curtain of pain and suffering, Daryl figured that the stand-up had to be referring to him specifically. Leaving aside the fact that the position of Good Guy seems to end badly for anyone who takes it on, the sad truth was that the only time anyone had ever referred to him as one of ‘the good guys’ was when he’d laid on a free sample or two, and that had only been to encourage more business. On the battlefield of good versus evil, Daryl knew what side he was on. It was he who provided the chemical inducement for some poor sod to throw himself off the top floor of a squatted building or drown in their own vomit beside a 20k rig of hardcore gaba.

“But it doesn’t matter, because it’s just a ride,” Hicks reasoned. His voice suddenly becoming much more than a mere whisper inside Daryl’s waxy shell like. “And we can change it any time we want.”

Daryl had often been in drugged up situations where he had felt that someone could read his thoughts, and it was beginning to feel that way with this yank dude. Something Hicks’ army of fans had often said when praising the stand-up’s insight.

“Hey Bill,” they’d often say. “You really read my mind on that whole Iraq fiasco.”

But this was no paranoia, Hicks actually was now messing with the inner workings of Daryl’s brain. He was riding along neural pathways, delving into childhood trauma and secrets, opening shoe boxes and peering under mattresses, gently soothing away all that pain and regret with a cold compress of verbal kiss it betters; basically doing this huge number on Daryl’s head.

“It’s only a choice,” Hicks purred like a self-improvement meditation. “No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money.”

No effort? No work? No savings? Daryl winced. That was him! No effort at all in selling poison to troubled strangers. No work that didn’t destroy entire families. No savings, just plenty of drownings in a sea of debt and despondency; his alien chemicals racing along blood streams, conquering and controlling human destiny. His actions were no better than those being carried out on the other side of that freaky fissure. It is only when you hold up a clean set of clothes in the mirror, that you realise just how shabby you’ve allowed yourself to become.

And so, in those few moments before the gates finally closed on the last astral back to the Seven Sisters, in the womb-like core of Glastonbury Tor, there was a breakthrough of sorts; Bill Hicks somehow managing to latch on to the back of Daryl’s ride and begin to spin his life around like a rusty carousel, to encourage him to face up to his own individual demons, and recognise a fundamental choice..

“..a simple choice, right now, between fear and love,” said Hicks, hearing that final call, and checking in his baggage.

* * * * *

“There, you see,” said Spike, nodding towards the twitching climbing rope that ran between his fists. “It’s pulling. Grab the end.”

They’d thrown a line down Wesley’s newly discovered hole and sent up another flare. Soon joined by Team B - Dr Suzie Meyer, and PC’s Wilson and Stevens. Everyone was hopeful that this puncture wound in the side of the Tor was their way out, a tunnel under God’s windscreen to the outside world. But way down below, in the murky depths, someone, or something, had taken up the slack and seemed to be climbing up towards them.

“Serious tugging for sure,” Wesley agreed, seizing the rope. “I wonder what’s vexing the flex.”

Good question, thought Sasha Lush, sensing the breakthrough she’d been looking for. Not only a tunnel, but a mystery someone emerging from it to lead them all to safety. Hopefully some hunky search and rescue guy, his bulky package framed and accentuated by the tightest harness. This was history in the making; Glastonbury’s Great Escape.

But Daryl the Dealer was no Steve McQueen, and the only bulky package that he’d had framed, was the three kilos of skunk that the Thanet Drug Squad had apparently been keeping tabs on for some time. Now, that HAD been a great escape.

The rope was now tugging like crazy. Tortuous grunts and groans could now be heard coming up from the depths, as if the ground itself was giving birth, with Spike and Wesley and PC’s Wilson and Stevens weighing in to the delivery like a crew of burly rope midwifes.

Sasha Lush was again wondering just what kind of show she was making. It had gone from Entertainment and Pop Culture, to News and Current Affairs, to Disaster Search and Rescue, to Adventure and The Outdoors, to Mystery and The Unexplained, to Weird Science, and back to Search and Rescue once again; with loads of graphic and disturbing scenes and sexual swear words dispersed throughout. Surely no scheduler in television history could find a comfortable slot for that lot?

“Nearly there,” said Spike, as Roy, the Channel 4 cameraman, rushed forward to capture the moment. His presenter left in no doubt that this extraordinary historic event was destined for about a billion hits on Youtube, and to become every bit as iconic as the fall of the Berlin wall or that time Nicki Minaj’s ‘Fake Butt’ exploded on stage.

They could now see the head emerging, a shocking tangle of dirty hair, an entire city’s worth of tiny parasites. Most certainly not the Mat Damon search and rescue type that Lush had hoped for.

“Thank fucking Christ!” huffed Daryl the Dealer, clawing desperately at the edge of the pit, Mother Earth’s umbilical cord wrapped round his waist. A huge Parental Guidance certificate now slapped across the arse end of one of the most memorable deliveries in News and Current Affairs history.

Daryl had taken Hick’s advice to get out of Dodge, feeling his way back along the Duke of Somerset’s long abandoned bling tunnel towards the point where he’d started his subterranean adventure, some thirty plus feet beneath the surface. By a stroke of sheer luck, his groping about in the dark had uncovered a rope, a find so unexpected that he had doubted at first whether that was indeed the right spot. But he’d taken Lady Luck up on her generous offer of freedom and given it all he had, scrambling towards the sickly bruised cloak that passed for daylight up above. Up he went, scratching, heaving, scuffing and grunting his way, inch by painful inch.

“Would you mind coming up again?” asked Sasha Lush, needing far less adult content to have any chance of nailing that all-important tea-time slot.

Entombed he may have been for many hours, but Daryl could still spot the tiniest imperceptible dusting of coke around a journo’s nostril sill.

“Please,” Lush pleaded. “Just that last bit. Without the swearing this time.”

“Never mind all that!” growled Spike, still trying to recover from Daryl’s long and painful delivery. It was obvious that this filthy stranger wasn’t part of the St John’s Ambulance.

“Who the fuck are you?” he inquired. “And what the fuck were you doing down there?”

Thousands of metres they may have been away from the festival perimeter, and way outside a security guard’s jurisdiction, but Spike couldn’t help but feel suspicious at finding someone tunnelling out of somewhere. Daryl looked the type. Scruffy. Foul mouthed. Druggy. With obviously no money, ticket, or wrist band.

“Explain yourself?” he demanded.

Daryl looked up at him. Even if he could have found the right words to tell his story, something about Spike’s attitude and uniform stopped him. He’d hung out with a lot of despicable scumbags in his time, each with their own particular evil plot to take over someone or something, but he’d never once blabbed a word about it to either the cops or wannabe cops like Spike. Especially with the TV sniffing around.

“Are you okay?” asked Dr Meyer, offering Daryl some water. Bothered by Spike’s hostile attitude. She’d had a lot of exposure to security guard aggression over the years. Spike could so easily have been one of those Day-Glo jacketed meatheads who helped trash ancient woodland in places like Newbury.

“You look like you’ve been through the wars,” she smiled.

“Thanks,” Daryl smiled his nicotine yellow smile, sucking on Dr Meyer’s water bottle like some new-born crusty. It was the first smidgeon of kindness that he’d received for a very long time.

“Hello..” Came a voice from down the hill.

Everyone looked round. They’d been so busy dragging Daryl out of the ground, that no-one had noticed this strange group of newcomers arriving down below. Four people. Two apparently dressed in wet suits, one guy who looked like he had been shat on from a dirty great height, plus the reincarnation of Jesus Christ himself.

Our four refugees had been slowly picking their way across the morass in the direction of the Tor, and things had been looking pretty hopeful for a while. There was clearly a huddle of cops towards the top of the hill. Someone in a white boiler suit. Yards of mountain rescue rope being coiled up. And a camera crew on hand to record the moment. From a distance everything seemed efficient and focused.

“It looks like everything is going to work out fine,” Earnest had said.

But as they had got nearer, it had all begun to look a little low key. Not so much the full-scale rescue operation as hoped, with ambulances and fire-engines, and large teams of rescuers preparing to set off, but rather a bunch of people crowding round the one spot, looking like they were trying to rescue someone’s car keys from a drain.

“Hello,” Earnest called out again, keen to find out what was going on. “Are you here to save us?”

“Oh shit!” said Wesley, figuring that when Jesus turns up asking to be saved, then you really must have problems.

Sasha Lush certainly did.

“Try and keep him out of shot,” she whispered to her cameraman, pointing towards Earnest, who had begun climbing up the hill towards them.

Daryl the Dealer had begun to wonder if all those subterranean goings on had been an hallucination. He was now free-basing nervous and physical exhaustion cut with plenty of sleep deprivation. The most uncomfortable natural high on the market. Everything seemed massively trippy. Had he really seen the landscape around Worthy Farm tear along the dotted line? Had he really been punched in the face twice by some bad-ass thin air? Had he really been swallowed up by a major tourist attraction, and seen alien beings cueing up shots of mayhem for some intergalactic Big Brother show? Had he really had a long since dead American stand-up whisper sour somethings in his ear? And.. Was that really Jesus coming up the hill towards him dragging a cross? He desperately needed to sleep.

The truth is everybody had a problem. Time was running out. They’d all stumbled and trudged for hours to get to this point, and all they really had to show for their efforts was this moody looking hole in the ground, and a moody looking crusty who couldn’t string two words together, apparently the only glimmer of hope in an otherwise extremely desperate situation.

* * * * *