Paddy’s Day
Paddy’s Day. Dawning with green eyed malice over unhappy Dublin. The country gripped with the plague fear all gatherings cancelled, gangs of agriculture civil servants roaming the streets armed with rubber truncheons and industrial strength disinfectant. Dousing Mayo accented savages in gallons of evil smelling jeyes fluid, rounding them up in paddy wagons full of domestos and broken glass. Holding camps crammed with them in the Phoenix Park, bleating and screaming with pig eyed terror. The Fear stalks the land, but this is St. Patricks day and the city chafes at this oppression. Politicians scuttle from the depths of Leinster house like demented beetles. Clutched in their misshapen claws bundles of spittle-flecked ‘policy documents’. ‘Brits, it was the Brits!’ they screech like addled hatters.
The masses stir from their squalid torpor. ‘No bleedin’ parade! Fook dat’ fooking politicians should do sumthin’ abou’rit.’ ‘Fookin’ culchies, fooooookin’ paraaaade. Fookin’ scyydur down the ‘nal man!’ The politicians sense a disturbance in the farce. They consult the dark tomes of evil lore. They raise demons and discuss the entrails of virgin batchelors from Ballyhaunis.
The lowly catamites wait in the antechambers for the great ones to emerge. The Twelve, the Chosen, the Kabinet. Something stirs in the fetid blackness, the underlings chitter and giggle at its approach. A blast of unholy air, the cold stench of corpse breath, stillborn babies womb cold, brimstone, bulmers and the devils farts. A figure; hunched, flaccid, pig-goblin eyes blazing, anorak hood plastered to his face with gristle and entrails. ‘Heheheheehe de great auld wans have spoken’ He raises his arms, the fallen surge forward gabbling and drooling, slurping at the ordure oozing from the great ones pants. ‘What do they say massster?’ they chant. ‘Dey say..fookin hell no paraaade!’ Roars Bertie, for it is he. ‘Dey say fookin hell no parade and de fookin’ cuntry’ll bleedin’ be atin’ shite off the walls buy Lent’
The minions fall back wailing at this horrifying news, squabbling begins immediately as the bigger bench munchers begin cannibalising their weaker constituency partners. There the mighty Dessie feasts himself on the brains of some poor muck savage TD from Mayo south, behind him the Harney gremlin suffocating great hordes of Finney Gaelers with her distended mammaries. On the floor chattering FF Monkeygoblins begin to circle the witless Independents who goggle and scream in whimpering pant-shitting terror. The hippies are the first to go, bunco booth hypocrites devoured by crack-crazed űber TD’s. Then finally they reach the one they’ve been waiting for, Rae. The vast Kerry madman stands his ground before this raging, squealing horde of goblinmen. He licks his thumbs and hocks great greasy green wads of muck phlegm into his mighty ham hands. ‘C’mon now ye little bollocksavages, now I’ll have ye all’ The hordes scream in delight and descend, twisted fangs dripping poison, mouths issuing cursing hate.
‘Stop dat! Stop dat yis stupid bollixes, stop it!’ The horde pause, Healy Rae half in, half out of several dozen foaming maws. ‘ I wasn’t finished, I also spoke to Him,’ A shocked silence spreads through the hallowed chamber. Then the chanting begins ‘Him, HIM, HIM!’ ‘Yes’ roars Bertie, eyes fevered, bloodshot, ichor streaming from bursted pores. ‘HIM, the Great One, the holy saviour, Shel’ Tig’roth,’ The name like an invocation calms the maddened crowd. Falling to their knees they bleat forgiveness from Bertie and their dark master. ‘Deliver us from this foul pestilence oh great one, once more gift us with the dark spawn of your loins. Fill us with the power of Mammon once again. Banish this plague that stalks our fatted cash cow. Our souls are yours oh great one, hear our prayers, we need the money’ ‘Yessss, yesss’ They chant in unison ‘Weee neeeed the moneeyyy, weeee neeeed the moneeyyy.’
Far to the west of the city Kesey pauses from the administration of ‘justice’ he is delivering to the civil servant in the Hazmet suit who asked him if he would mind using the footbath. He sniffs the air, great nostrils attuned to ‘Bad Shit’ flex and inhale olfactory data. Something was afoot. Menacing vibrations filled the air. They danced just out of reach on the edge of the senses. Releasing the wretched jobsworth who flees in screaming in terror into the grey dawn he gazes out over the city, his city. From this vantage it spread before him, a concrete tumour, belching dark clouds of murky smog over its denizens. Yes something was definitely amiss, he sighed heavily, it may be time to assemble the men. Bad craziness was about to ensue.
But first he must be sure. He glanced up the path ahead of him. It wound upward into the mountain, a mouthful of broken teeth. And there at the summit, squatting ‘pon the hill, a dark, decaying molar of bad wisdom, The Hellfire Club. Kesey hefted his bag of deadly things and continued his ascent. The dawn broke slowly into a grey bruised morning. Thick mottled clouds disgorged a thin gruel of rain onto the unhappy mountain. Down in the hollows where the quiet things sleep old echoes can be heard again. Kesey pauses and listens. He shakes his head, this was bad, very bad. This might take The Gurrier or even, he shuddered, even the other one. Best not to think about it, not until he was sure. Deep within the bag of hate the deadly things stirred. He patted it gently ’soon my little friend, soon.’
On and on he trudged, the morning collapsing limply into a flaccid noon until finally he rounded the last bend and there it stood. Burned and blasted by the Devil himself the shibboleth of fear to generations, a den of vice and infamy, a portal to places of dark terror and now, well a gaff for knacker drinking mostly. It was not uninhabited. Kesey looked on as the gang of shifty eyed, shell suited mutants sidled from the darkness within and glared at him with the fierce ignorant stares of the closely bred. ‘Wha’ da fook jew wan’ yeh bleedin’ fookbag?’ ‘Yeah fook off yeh shitehole!’ ‘No bleedin’ paraaaade!’ ‘Fookin’ scyydur dewn the ‘nal!’ ‘Nyaaaaah yeh fookin’ fat bastard’ ‘Nyaaaaah roide yer ma so I did, up the gicker!’ ‘Up the gicker, up yer ma’s smelly hole, Up ‘er hole!!’
Kesey smiled, Kesey laughed, Kesey threw back his head and roared great whooping guffaws of scorn. The mutants hesitated, not the usual reaction. He ceased laughing and glared at his opponents, his ‘bad’ hand twitched at the grip of the manwhip on his belt. Deep in the folds of the coat with a barely distinguishable hum of latent violence the Voodoo cannon blinked into steathly life. Pressure sensitive pads in the stock read heart rate, blood pressure and extrapolated potential danger levels. Meatdozer. Kesey toyed briefly with the idea of some ultra-violence but dismissed it. He would need all his strength for the ordeal ahead.
Instead he quickly unslung the bag and beckoned the first scumbag to approach. ‘Come, come, look, look, yes that’s it look, look at the precious.’ The knackers cocked their heads with warped curiosity. Could they ‘fook’ it? Could they sell it, screw it, eat it, break it, it was too much. The alpha male approached with a grinning swagger. That strange pigeon-walk limp they do. Head rocketing back and forth on a scrawny neck as they are propelled forward on chicken stalk legs. ‘Fookin’ mad eejit, he’d fookin’ get dis fookers bag, kick de head off him and den roide Jacinta again. Up de hole, fookin slag’. ‘Gis de bag, wha’s in eh?’ ‘Look, look, closer’ The mutie bent over and grabbed the sack from Kesey, it moved sluggishly. He glared at him for a moment, then peered inside.
Far to the east Heinous hears. He pauses from the good work. Something, thought he heard something out there in the aether. Probably nothing. He spots another one, he guns the engine.
North, in the tenements a dark pile of rags stirs. A rat circles warily around this dishevelled mass of filth. The vermin here are well used to this particular denizen of the night, well used to its particular proclivities and know to steer well clear. Unfortunately for this particular rat it’s not clear enough. A claw-like talon snakes out and the rodent is gone. Only the scrunching, gorging sounds of frantic ingestion break the squalid tranquility.
Kesey’s eyes blazed with malevolent glee as the mutants fled over the horizon. He glanced down at the the remains of the alpha male. It was hard to imagine this twitching, babbling creature was once recognisable as a man, at least under the Geneva convention. Bending low, he whispered into the creature’s ear. ‘Did you see the deadly things? He likes you. Yessss he wants to love you’. The alphajunkie’s eyeballs oscillated, catherine wheels of gobbling fear. Gibbering panic is overcome by primeval survival instincts. Stick legs shoot out, scrabbling for momentum, purchase is acquired and down the hill he explodes, a skinny, screaming human pinball, careening with blind terror into tree stumps, potholes and fenceposts. Kesey stares after him, cackling with insane glee. ‘Run you mutant maggots. The Old Ways are too strong for you here. Weak minded fools! Mind the Pooka doesn’t arsefuck yis to death on your way home! G’wan to fuck with ye yeh little bollixes and STAY OFF MY FUCKING MOUNTAIN!’
Now he thought, now the mountain was his. He glanced at the slow moving sack, he surveyed the bleak, terrible shell before him. Christ but this place gave him the shits. Turning he glanced back down the mountain with something approaching regret. But his junkie friend was long gone. Probably fell down a sumphole or was now terrifying families out for a Sunday drive. Gobbling in panic about ‘The Deadly Things’ and ‘The Badman of the mountain’. He sighed ‘ah well, could have done with the company really.’ This place really gave him the shits. How come The Gurrier always avoided having to do all the dirty work. Lazy bastard just turns up after he’s done everything and steals all the glory. That MTV thing was his idea. Still there was always Panama. A dark chuckle escapes from Kesey’s grim frame. ‘Heh, heh, that showed them alright, that showed them all.’
North. Dust motes float in lazy spirals, a small dark stain drys slowly onto the bare boards. The pile of rags lies; inert, silent, uninhabited. It is gone.
East. The big man pauses again. He listens ‘damn it definitely something in the air. No parade. Got the masses all excitable. Cider down the ‘nal and all that.’ He felt a sudden pang of nostalgia for the old days. Then he remembered the old days. Dimly through the haze of rage and hate he remembered Moylo before the change. Quigley before the crystal rubbers. All of them before the dark came. He snarled, he remembered all right, he remembered too much. Medicine The Gurrier would have his medicine. He gunned the engine.
Dail Eireann, dark Eireann. Bowel deep in the black earth Bertie hunkers on his throne of endless wretchery. Fashioned from the scabrous, demon warped souls of dead farmers, publicans and tribunal lawyers it moans pitifully in eternal agony as Bertie vainly shifts his hairy man buttocks searching for a comfortable arse rut. ‘Christ but Haughey had a skinny arse. Can’t yis do anyting about dis. I’ve bin sitting on dis ting fer nearly foive years and it still feels loike I’m shite’in’ bleedin’ razorblades outta me hole. I’ve got an arse on me like de Japanese flag!’ ‘Soo sorry massster’ replies one lickspittle. ‘But the throne requires the sitter to become inured and impervious to the cries of the damned and thus their discomfort’. ‘Yeah, yeah I know dat, sure Charlie slept like a baby on the bleedin’ ting. Ah jaysus even if I had a nice cushion or sumthin’. Celia made me a nice one fer the chrissy but this feckin’ ting keeps atin’ it. Now she tink’s I’m bleedin’ wipin’ me hole with it! Me hole! Can’t we get sumthin’ nicer in here loike a nice three piece from Bargaintown. I know a fella in dere, he’ll gettus a good deal. Celia’s very good at dat sorta ting, we should get her in here, broighten up de place loike.’
The lickspittle gazed on at the blathering idiot savage before him. ‘Jesus. God be with the old days when the auld fella was still in charge. Bestriding that throne like a man possessed dealing out evil and torture to all and sundry. He remembers the day they brought that journo down here, the one who had accidentally stumbled on the plan. The auld fella, the great showman revealed all of its horrific evil to the poor bleating muckraker. And then, as the last flitters of sanity fled from him in giggling screaming fits, Charlie told him, the secret. Ah great days. They’d been picking bits of the poor fella out of the floorboards for weeks but it was all worth it. But now this, this bloodlust for mammon that infested the new breed. No appreciation of evil for evils sake anymore.
Even Albert appreciated that. He was no Charlo and he did spend most of his day atin’ dogfood from that little bowl, and trying to lick his own bollix but at least he appreciated the value of a good flogging. These new fellas just wanted to rub their mickeys in wads of tenners and chant prayers to their ‘New God’. Fuckin’ disgusting if you asked him and he’d seen some things. Latte slurping, pannini gobbling mickeyriders. Tea and a fuckin’ sambo it what it was.’
On the mountain something awoke. A man screamed and screamed.
The Lickspittle looked up from his console. ‘Sir, masster something is going on in the mountains sir.’ ‘Wha’? Dere closed, haven’t we got people up dere?’ ‘Yes a clean up team reported minor disturbances involving the usual subspecies, and one team member was attacked by something big but we thought it was a bear or some Mayo fella.’ ‘And? It wasn’t a Mayo fella? Den what was it?’ ‘Emm we don’t know sir, reports are hazy and garbled. But we know where he was headed.’ ‘Where? Tell me yeh feckin’ eejit!’ The lickspittle paused and took a deep breath. ‘To the mountain sir. To the Hellfire.’ Bertie blanched, a nervous fart burst from his flabby backside, the throne wailed at these new torments. ‘Bollix.’
When the crack squad of black clad government zombie-ninjas descended on the mountain they found little evidence of Kesey’s brief occupation. The Hell-Fire squatted stoically refusing to give up its secrets. The blackened graffitied walls were maybe just a little more charred, and the blasted shell maybe just a little more blasted but whatever dark misdeeds were performed here of their passing there was little evidence. The zombie-ninjas scoured the surrounding countryside for their quarry stumbling tirelessly through the night, dead fish-eyes glowing like lampreys, decaying mouths drooling ceaselessly hungry for manflesh. They found none, well nearly none. They found something though, a wild and gibbering man-thing, a one time alpha-junkie-knacker who screamed and gibbered about ‘the bag of deadly tings’. Found him sunk to his neck in a sumphole half drowned in the bog water. After dragging him out the zombie-ninjas went to work on him. That’s the problem with zombie-ninjas they’re fine for tracking people down with tireless, unstoppable zeal but they then they tend to rend the flesh from the unfortunates bones and devour them alive. A bit of a bugger if some questioning is called for. The zombie-handler a lickspittle named Gormley came upon them munching away and managed to salvage what he could. It wasn’t much but it could talk, sort of and there may have been some semblance of sentience left in there somewhere. If there was Harney and her bum-ferrets would drag it out of the poor bastard.
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To Be Continued…someday