ECSTASY. LSD AND AMPHETAMINES. FREEZING FOG AND PISSED ON DOGS,
NAZI IN AMUSEMENT ARCADES AND DRIPPING TITS
copyright 2001 by Doctor Beard
It was a few days before Christmas and I had come across several pink pills from an associate in Nottingham. The word was these things were good. Laced with LSD and amphetamines and incredibly strong. "Take half at a time" I was told or the come up could be too much, especially for people who weren't regular pill users, which I wasn't thank you very much. No sir, not me. Life is to short to be caught up in a habit like that. I have too much to do to waste my time in clubs tranced out every weekend. Besides there is the sedation factor of these things and most other drugs for that matter to get to grips with. When the mind expansion just becomes how you should feel every Saturday night, then the drugs definitely don't work. No, this is not the way. Well not for me anyhow. Keep these fowl habits for true expansion, the tool to get things done. Whatever those things are nowadays I don't always know, but as long as it keeps me seeing things the way I always do then it must be working.
Bum out to become more focused in the real world. Jesus jumping Christ, there it is. Or as good as you're going to get from the likes of me on this cold, dark and stoned Sunday evening in the year of our lord 2001 as Jello Biafra and Mojo Nixon blast out of the speakers not one metre from my head.
I had four pills wrapped up in cellophane that had been hidden in my sock draw for the about a month waiting for the right person to visit. Then I got the call. Kathleen Maddox was coming round at one p.m. this very afternoon. Kathleen was actually a man in his early twenties. He was cursed by his evil father who gave him a girls name thinking it would make a true man of him, a classic case of the my name is Sue syndrome. After school Kathleen had drifted from one dead end job to another, never being able to afford to change his name by Depol and end the continuous abuse and beatings from the school kids and co-workers he associated with.
The day was grey and cold. I was living in Belper, deep in the Derbyshire hills, the gateway to the peak district. A small town that, like many others in the area, was slowly dying after Margaret Thatcher saw the end of England's coal industry. There was one large hosiery factory where most people now worked for sickeningly poor wages. I had worked there too for nearly two years and it almost sent me over the edge. Working a three-shift system is like Russian roulette. When you mess with sleep patterns that much it is just a matter of time before you get the loaded chamber.
Kathleen and myself sat huddled in front of the gas fire in the two hundred-year-old stone, terraced cottage. We smoked and killed time as the first two halves of Pink Cadillac pills slowly dissolved in a dark hole in our stomachs and eased open those nerve endings somewhere deep in the brain.
The small beige room with dark wooden beamed ceiling was full of smoke. We closed the curtains to avoid any unwanted intrusions from the path directly outside the window. The last thing we needed to see was the drunk from two doors down leering in the window with his Venom T-shirt and scraggy biker jacket on. What if he wanted to come round? Would he want to play Slayer and White Snake like he did religiously every Saturday lunch time before he headed off to the pub?
We sat and watched "The Lost Highway", then as we became aware of the pills working we switched to some music. I think some of it was Motorbass, but I couldn't be sure. It was all very electronic with loads of high hat and gut wrenching bass, which was an absolute miracle coming from my worthless excuse of a sound system. Well a combination of maximum volume level without distortion and to how far we could push it before the neighbours complained. After all I was a professional artist now, working in the booming computer game industry, where the money and cocaine flies free with the wind. And yes, many people do sit and look at porn all day.
The room filled with a warm, friendly glow and Aztec patterns began to spin across the uneven walls. We decided to eat the rest of the Ecstasy. Then we took turns to go to the toilet and empty ourselves of impurities. Great shits on that freezing evening in Belper, the home of Tracy Shaw.
Kathleen and myself sat watching the Television spill blood, Bill Pullman and Rammstein into the living room carpet. Jesus, I thought, that's gonna be a bastard to get out. I was sat on the floor with four rolled joints and two lay on the Led Zeppelin album cover half made. Kathleen was pacing the room like a trapped rat. He was thinking intensely about something. I watched him for a minute pulling at his lip and stroking his grade one skinhead.
Then I had a thought. "I've got an idea." I said.
"What?"
"Let's go for a walk."
"What now?"
"Yeah, why not. We always used to. Why not now?"
"Well, I guess so."
"Come on we're in the middle of nowhere. What the hell could go wrong?"
"You're right. Let's go."
"Okay, but just let me make sure I've got enough joints rolled for the journey."
"Yeah, and I'll just grab a another tea." Kathleen had quit drinking alcohol along time ago.
"Okay, and I need beer and..."
We fumbled around like that for the next twenty minutes then in a state of the hysterics because my next-door neighbour was a police officer, we hit the streets. The passageway out onto the road turned and warped out of shape and faces began to appear on the dark walls. Then we were in the street. This was Derbyshire. The gateway to the Peak District and head quarters to the ‘Peak Practice' film crew. It also boasted a massive heroin problem in teenagers and it was a prominent area for extreme right wing organisations. The English headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan was only ten miles up the road and the local National Front offices were not far away either.
The air was thick with freezing fog. You couldn't see ten metres in front of you. The air glowed orange from the streetlights and sent our senses spinning in all directions.
"Oh, I don't know about this Doc. I can't see a goddamn thing." said Kathleen.
I said something like "Don't worry, we've been through worse than this." And with that I was already heading up Parkside to the crest of the hill and down into town and whatever primeval horrors it would throw at us.
Kathleen caught up and I pulled out a joint to smoke. I saw an alleyway to the left at the top of the hill. We cut down the steep incline of cobbled pathways and high stone walls to the car park below and I lit the joint. We crossed the car park and ended in a grassy field heading towards what sounded like running water. Kathleen kept looking behind. But I was also sure I could hear something too. Voices, or shouting, coming from behind us, maybe down in town I thought. But no, this seemed close. I couldn't trust my eyes as the pills had really started to kick in. The extreme cold may have had something to do with it. It was around minus two Celsius and the fog hung even thicker over this wet frozen field of waist high grass making it impossible to see anything. Everywhere I looked I thought I could see things moving about in the darkness. People, animal's, things that I couldn't even work out what the hell they were. I turned around to see where Kathleen was, trying to ignore these terrible creatures that darted into dark holes and waited to pounce on our unsuspecting arses. Kathleen was still watching the path where we had come from. We could just about see the glow from the streetlight in the car park even though it was only thirty metres away.
"What's the matter, man?" I said.
"Oh nothing, just covering the rear... You know."
Yes sir. Indeed I did know. I could feel it too. A nasty feeling of paranoia slithered up my spine and I went violently cold. I kept having sensations of being extremely straight for about a second then a massive rush that made me bear down on my teeth and I would start hallucinating heavily. There were definitely things in the air in front of me now. Strange shapes, humanoid beasts, Aztec patterns and strange writing. Vast trails of blue and white light rolled up the hill that was somewhere in front of us. I headed on further into this thick electric pea soup.
We came to a small stone bridge with what looked like old plumbing for handrails. The sound of a rushing stream filled our ears. I felt hypnotised by the sound and fell oblivious to everything for quite sometime.
When I came round Kathleen was pulling on the sleeve of my jacket and I had started bobbing in time with the movement.
"What is it?" I said.
"I think there is someone coming."
"Where?" I looked around. I couldn't see a thing, but I could hear something. Voices in the distance. Then to the right of the bridge, about fifteen metres away I saw a dog's shape running through the long grass. It seemed really clear, I could make out the dog quite well. It was a Golden Labrador or Golden Retriever or some breed like that. I could see it had a large stick in its mouth. It turned and ran back from where it had come from, where now stood a guy, must be the owner I thought.
"Wait a minute," I said, "I can see someone."
"Where?"
"Over there." I pointed to the dog as it ran back to the man in a beige hunting jacket, checked shorts and sneakers. How the hell can that guy be out here in goddamn shorts? I thought, I was wrapped up in two jumpers and an Army surplus jacket with two pairs of socks and thermal long johns under my jeans.
"I don't see him, man." Kathleen said.
The man grappled with the stick in the dog's mouth and played around with the dog for a minute. It was quite a heart-warming sight, a great British tradition. A playful owner and his pet, in the fields having fun on a freezing, foggy December evening. That's one thing about England I have not got used to in the thirty-one years I have lived here. In wintertime it gets dark around four p.m. That's the middle of the afternoon for Christ's sake. No sir, this was never for me. I am more inclined to the searing heat of a four p.m. sun on some deserted beach, sun stoned and drinking warm beer. I seem to be side-tracking here, but this not unusual for a heavily drunk and stoned situation fuelled by 'Mama told me not to come' by Three Dog Night.
Indeed. Mama told me not to come. That's what I could have done with at this time. Just plain happy watching this somewhat strange guy in a cream coat and beach hat playing with his dog.
Wait a minute what was he doing? He was moving funny. No, don't stare I thought, it's rude to stare at the impaired. But he was already unzipping his fly and pulling a long limp penis that looked more like a latex hose than real flesh. The dog sat in front of him, tail wagging, and tongue hanging out the side of his mouth, panting and breathing steam. It seemed like the dog knew what was coming and welcomed it with open happy jaws. Suddenly there was more steam, a lot more steam and the dogs head seemed to be splattered with hot liquid. Drenched in human urine and the sick fucker was enjoying it. He flapped his tail ecstatically and lapped the air as his owner wiggled and contorted his body continuing to urinate on his pet. He was pissing on his dog, this is insane. Wait a minute did I just say that?
"Say what?"
"That guy is pissing on his dog." I said.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
I looked around, lost for a moment. What the hell was I doing? I could feel cold sweat running down my back. I looked back at the piss owner and his dog. They were still there! Jesus Christ! This wasn't a hallucination? Was this strange contorted body in golf clothes really relieving himself on his pet?
He shook the last drops from his end, looked straight at me and smiled.
"Oh shit, he's seen us!"
"Who?"
The dog owner put on a hard hat with a light on the front and turned to a dim light glowing behind him. He reached down opening a small door and a yellowish light illuminated the whole field. The dog was gone and the guy stepped into what looked like a small mine filled with oil lamp light and closed the door behind him.
"No. It's okay, he's gone into that mine over there...What the hell am I talking about, there are no mines over there. That's a goddamn car park."
"But what about the dog?" shrieked Kathleen.
"Nevermind. We should get moving. Out here we're sitting ducks. We should keep moving, less chance of contact with the natives. Jesus Christ, I can hear voices everywhere...Is that someone behind that tree, over there."
We stumbled on for a few more minutes, the path was getting steep. Wait a minute. There was no path. We must have left it somewhere between here and the bridge. Kathleen was a few metres ahead and turned to see me stood looking completely confused trying to stand on a hillside that wouldn't stop moving.
"I think we could be lost." I said, then span round for what seemed a few times and fell on the wet ground.
I lay there for sometime. I could hear Kathleen thinking and feel him walking round me. He was muttering something. Then he said, " I think we should head that way."
He headed off into the grey fog and I finally managed to stand up and started to follow him.
We wandered through the never-ending blankness, sometimes stumbling over rocks, branches and various items of rubbish. I lit a joint and we smoked it, still walking in the same direction. The joint was good, it warmed us. I suddenly realised how wet my coat was.
Then, in the distance I could make out a faint glow. As we got closer the glow got brighter and redder until I could make out a redbrick alleyway.
"No way. How did you know this was here." I said, "You lead us straight to this place."
Kathleen just laughed and threw the end of the joint into a bush as he walked into the alleyway.
We came out at the top end of town.
"I've lived here three and a half years and not once have I noticed this alleyway." I said.
"Why, where are we?" Asked Kathleen.
"The top end of town. My house is only five minutes round the corner. Come on."
We headed up the hill passing a brightly-lit amusement arcade. It always looked to me like a good place to score for smack, but tonight it glowed with reds and yellows and blues, a real touch of Las Vegas in the outer reaches of Derbyshire on this cold and wet December evening.
"Come on, let's go in." Said Kathleen.
"Yeah? You want to?"
"Yeah, I can feel it could be a good one. Lets just take a look and see."
Indeed. A good one. Kathleen was a hopeless slot machine addict. He told me he loved all the flashing numbers and sounds as you get closer and closer to the jackpot, " not unlike coming up on an E." he said.
And it is in these flashing lights and rising gut wrenching sounds that Kathleen believes is the catalyst of the addiction. A strobing pattern and noises specifically designed to cause physical and mental reactions that act like a drug on the user, causing cold turkey like symptoms when you don't gamble. An interesting thought, stranger things have happened. But when it comes down to it I don't get it. Hunter S. Thompson once said "learn to enjoy losing." A good philosophy I always thought. But wasting every penny I have, slamming them into a slot machine, whooping and flashing at me? No thank you kindly, if I want to waste hard earned cash then there is only one true way. Get fired up on Mescal and acid then let yourself loose on the capital city with enough dope to drag you out of any serious heart failure situations.
So we headed into the Amusement arcade with all its flashing lights and electronic whooping noises. I felt like we were entering a ‘Happy Days' scene as I followed Kathleen in. He clocked each slot machine as he walked past them, checking what position the reels were on and how high the jackpot was up to.
Finally he stopped at one machine right next to the door where the arcade owner stood. He watched both of us closely.
"Evening." I said after a few uncomfortable seconds.
"Evening."
Could this guy register that I was completely off my head? Was it showing in my eyes? Do something quick, before you fall over.
"Okay." I said.
"What?" He snapped.
"What, what?"
"You said okay, but I didn't say anything."
"Nevermind ." I was looking for something to do. I saw a video game to my left. It was another Tekken clone, a hand to hand combat fighting game.
"Ah, I'll have a go on this." I said and I slammed twenty pence into the coin slot.
The arcade owner stepped back in his office, I could feel a relieved sweat running over me. Thank God I didn't have to talk to him I thought, who knows what horrors I might have laid on the poor bastard.
Maybe start telling him about organo-phosphates in our food supply, a chemical originally designed as tear gas at Porton Down after the Second World War. Or maybe start babbling about how I warned everyone that the Labour government are on the inside what the Conservatives are on the outside and how we only have ourselves to blame when everything goes wrong. Words that still stand true today nearly five years later as it looks like the Conservative are ready to regain power after five years of Tony Blair's idiotic control of the Country.
How would this burly ex-biker with long black hair, handle it? Probably not good, no one likes a smart arse. No, this won't do, just play the game, and ignore everything that is going on around you. Just concentrate on kicking this computer chip's arse.
It took a few goes to get the hang of it, but after three or four twenty pence's I was starting to get somewhere. I must have started getting over zealous with the machine because the arcade owner came out of his office again. He was smoking a cigarette now. A real cheap brand too, like ‘Black Cat' or something.
"Like games do ya?" He finally said after constantly staring at me for several minutes.
"Yeah. They're alright I guess."
He fell silent again.
"Well," I added after several punches and one special move that I had no idea how I done it, "I guess I should like them, that's my job."
"What?" he said.
"Computer games. That's what I do. I'm an artist you see."
"Oh, is that right?"
"Yes sir. And you should see the shit I see."
"What do you mean?" he said.
I finished playing and turned to him. I went to pull a joint out and smoke it but after a moments thought I decided this would be a bad move. So I went for the other pocket and pulled out a cigarette.
"Well," I said as I lit it, "you know all that you've been hearing in the news about how computer games are corrupting children's minds?"
"Yeah, I heard something about that."
"Well it's true."
"Bullshit!"
I held up my hand, "I swear on my daughters life, man."
"Seriously? You're not kidding either are you?"
"No sir. I wouldn't joke about things like that."
"But how? How can a computer game corrupt kids minds."
"Hell, in all kinds of ways. We can put specific sounds into the games that affect the human brain without the person even knowing it. I know of one guy deliberately put sounds into one game that gave everyone a headache."
"No shit?"
"No Shit. That same guy even came up with a sound that could make anyone who heard it loose all control of his or her sphincters. Imagine that, hundreds of children simultaneously shitting themselves whilst playing Tomb Raider. And we put pornographic images into the games too. Images that flash up for just one frame. Just long enough for a human subconscious to register it."
"And you do this too?" The owner was getting angry, I could sense it.
"I have to, it's my job. Orders come down from the bosses. Shit, I don't want to hurt anyone's heads, but if I don't do as they say then I'll lose my job and I've got a daughter to look after and support, remember."
"Holy shit. Does anyone else know about this?"
"Not many people, mostly people in the industry and they're the same as me. They can't say anything for fear of losing their jobs. Shit, I shouldn't have told you. If this gets out I'm done for."
He lit another cigarette and inhaled heavily, " Fuck, this is bad." He said blowing out a lung full of smoke.
Time to leave I thought, as two nasty looking fat, middle-aged skinheads walked into the amusement arcade.
I headed over to Kathleen and said we should go as things were getting heavy. The two skinheads were watching me as they ploughed an endless supply of coins into a machine at the end of the room and kept turning to talk to each other. It was obvious that I was the point of conversation.
"Come on man, I think we should head off." I said again.
"Just a minute, I'm nearly there I can feel it." said Kathleen without taking his eyes off the machine.
I turned to see large black swastikas flashing on the machine the two skinheads stood at and I could hear recordings of Hitler's speeches coming from that end of the room. One of the skinheads walked towards me. Oh shit I thought, here it comes. The verbal confrontation then Wham! The next thing you are on the floor bleeding while a size ten steel toe capped boot pounds your head into the ground. I then realised I had seen this piece of evil white shit before. Six years before in fact, on the streets of Normanton in Derby late one spring night. England had just lost to Germany in the World Cup I think it was, or maybe the European. I can't remember, but then I have never been a football follower.
I had been taking a stroll past the local Kebab shop and bumped into a white guy with a skinhead wearing a green shell suit. I turned to say sorry for getting in his way when the first slash opened up a long thin tear on my forehead that missed my eye by millimetres. I put my arm up to defend myself. The second slash cut deep into it. It was only then I realised that I was bleeding quite heavily and what was going on. The third slash ripped through my Gaye Bykers on Acid T-shirt* and cut into my right side. I kicked attacker with the Stanley knife in the balls. He fell straight to the ground. I followed through with a left kick straight under his jaw and sent him flailing back. There was blood everywhere, people were coming out of the Kebab shop to see what was going on. I ran holding the wound on my side trying to slow the bleeding until I got home, my right eye had filled with blood. It turned out on examination of myself in the grotty blue bathroom, in the house where I lived at that time, that the wounds weren't as deep as I first feared. I was half expecting to see my small intestine popping out of the hole in my right abdomen. The wounds were quite deep, the wound on my arm had cut into the muscle and there was a lot of blood, but I figured I could fix myself up. No reason to call out a doctor and certainly no reason to call out the cops. Fuck no. I have never called on their help, not since trying to have a barbecue in a public playing field and we were all arrested for attempted arson.
* Gaye Bikers on Acid were a Grebo rock band from the late 1980s to 1990s in the same era as Pop Will Eat Itself and The Wonderstuff
Indeed, six years had passed since that terrible evening in Derby and here he was again, or at least that was whom I thought I was staring at walking straight towards me. I was sweating badly, heavy head rushes tried to make me pass out but there was no way I was giving up in this situation, hell no. Skinheads hate drug users as much as any other minority. Jesus, they still referred to us as hippies. I didn't even have long hair.
I suddenly became aware of the owner stood next to me. I thought I heard him say, " We got a right one here."
I looked at him. He seemed to have thick black eyeliner on and his hair crawled with worms and maggots. Remain calm I told myself, deal with this head on. Show this rotten dog fucker that you're not scared of him. Pull the first punch, teach this prejudiced scum a lesson.
The skinhead stopped in front of me and said something to the owner. I jumped in headfirst.
" Is there a problem?" I bawled out.
Everything fell silent, even the Hitler chants had stopped. I heard a single coin drop and I thought that was it. Certain death. The skinhead just looked at me as the owner changed the note in his hand for a handful of twenty pence pieces. I felt myself falling backwards, rushing heavily. The skinhead's face changed and turned into a large balding egg. This wasn't the guy who had attacked me. Jesus Christ, what the hell was I doing? This guy had just come over for change and I was about to incite a violent altercation with him.
"Kathleen. We need to go." I shouted. Everyone looked at Kathleen as we left the amusement arcade.
"They're staring at me." Kathleen said as we got outside the arcade on the main road in Belper. Cars raced by. I lit a joint.
"Jesus Christ, you should be used to that by now, you goddamn mutant."
We headed up over the hill back to my house and I told Kathleen what had just happened. When we got back Kathleen had turned white and demanded calm music. I made tea and we headed into the living room full of orange and blue light. We smoked bongs and joints and Brian Eno drifted around a room full of Egyptian hieroglyphics.
I lay on the floor staring at the ceiling for quite some time, watching it roll between the beams like a seashore lapping the struts of a rotten green pier. An area of the sea stopped moving and began to bulge. A swollen, fleshy grey and blue lump. Its surface rippled and became completely solid. It was a tit. Not a big one, no. Just my favourite size, big enough to hold in my hand. And the erect nipple, hard, red and fleshy. It started to stretch. A nipple two inches long. The end began to swell and it turned to liquid, thick and greasy. The nipple stretched down with great speed and touched my nose. I blinked and it had gone.
We must have passed out some time after that because the next thing I remember was a Taxi had turned up for Kathleen and the driver had been hammering on the door for several minutes. Kathleen jumped up,
"Gotta go man."
He grabbed his bag and belongings in a mad hurry, then bolted out the door with a " Very well, jolly good. Phone, Yes. I'll be seeing you."
Then he was gone as quick as he appeared, a true street freak of the late eighties acid frenzy. A Mutant that ate anything that came his way. When I first met Kathleen he asked me if a hundred and fifty acid tabs was too much to do in six months.
"What? You're counting?" I exclaimed.
Good thoughts filled my head of Kathleen Maddox, the Jonnicab. The times he used to come to the flat in Arboretum Square where we sucked up free-base speed and he ended up on the floor hugging a dirty sheepskin rug. Or the time we loaded up on Morphine tablets, Purple meanies we called them. I once spent four days on those damn things drawing a hallucinogenic crucifixion scene in the comic I was working on at the time.
Then the time when Kathleen came to me one morning asking if I could get him a gun. He knew I could. I knew several people who could easily pick something up. One guy I knew always carried a piece on him, a good man nevertheless.
Kathleen told me his grandmother had just been murdered by some piece of shit teenager. I realised the news broadcast I had just seen before Kathleen turned up was about his Grandmother.
An elderly woman had been stabbed to death in the back by a boy no more than fifteen years old.
It later came out in court something along the lines this kid had woke up that terrible morning and decided he was going to kill the first person he met. That first person turned out to be Kathleen's grandmother.
I never got Kathleen that gun though. I enquired just out of curiosity. Two hundred pounds for a revolver, probably a .38 and a full cylinder of ammunition. Jesus Christ I thought, it really is that easy.
But Kathleen had completely lost it, he didn't care about himself anymore. His plan was to blast the fuck out of the kid as he was dragged out of court before he went to prison, well a detention centre was the worst this evil piece of white filth was going to get. As they led him to the armoured van Kathleen would dive out of the crowd of photographers and empty six rounds into the figure hiding under a blanket.
No, this would not do. Kathleen was indeed a great person, full of passion and creativity. This was not the way for him to go out. I felt terrible when I told him I wouldn't get the gun, I couldn't allow him to do it. I felt like I had failed as his friend. But Kathleen said he understood and that was the end of it. Still his rage makes Kathleen part of the man he is today. Which if you ever get the privilege to meet this outstanding example of human endeavour you will see is the heart of a bright shining star. One of a kind. The king of freaks in the freak kingdom.
