Prospects (I)
Psychedelic fantasy folk horror (with bikers). Inspired by the prose of Will Self and the thunder of Robert E Howard.
Featuring lyrics by: Motorhead. Donovan. The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Ozzy and Led Zepplin.
On an iron horse He flies… One hundred and seventy three feet. Exactly falling distance. He hits the shale like a bag of carrion, eyes on the goddess. The perfect silver mirror in the midsummer sky. His only way home.
It seems like some time before the bike falls too. A snatch of reason somewhere in His cortex has Him wonder how He hit the ground first, but this last ditch attempt at executive function is eradicated by the impact of the Harley. It explodes by His head. An eruption of crystal and light. Raining oil, chrome and quartz.
He finds Himself eyeing a gummy clot to the right of his buckled hand. He recognises it as a part of Himself but can’t say which. On an iron horse He flies… He can still hear the music.
He spits free a tooth. The clot begins to wriggle, a hatching pupa, alive with laser-light. On an iron horse He gladly dies… There’s smoke in his nose now. Lingering cigarettes. Smells like summer.
Iron horse His wife, Iron horse His life. His blood begins to dance again. The moon begins to spin.
Smells like yesterday.
There’d been pinball at the transport cafe. Hollywood tie-in. Jaws.
“Jaws 2 was better,” said Bronco.
“Was it fuck?”
“Jaws eats a helicopter.”
He’d ignored Bronco after that. Leaning into the machine. The industrial clatter of pinball wizardry. Smack. Bang. Clackety-clack, right into that gaping maw. Heavy set of gnashers. Bad fish. Everything flashed red for the winner.
Bronco sneered, handing over a note – “Lucky.”
“I’ll buy the butties.”
“Yeah you will.”
Four rashers on white. Brown sauce and red. Milk and two. Lambert and Butler, while Bronco smoked Super-Kings. Old lady fags. He’s always had a touch of the Hilda Odgens.
The A23 was a blizzard of flies. He had His goggles but Bronco made do with a neckerchief, nearly coming off when he took a bluebottle to the eye. But with a duck and a weave, and a boot to steady, the asphalt thundered on south, winding in the horizon with a flash. The ocean lurked blue, beyond the clutter of Brighton beach.
They’d miss the big ride-down of course, but Prospects always went early. To ready the killing fields.
Madeira Drive heaved with meat. Bulldog breeds. The hang-gut heavies with backs like Spam and home-team tattoos. Sucking it in for the honeys; tan-lines and vinegar. Swimsuits and roller skates. Flank cuts and blistered heels.
Cruising to a crawl, He caught Bronco eyeing up the protein, dirty sod, then realised the big man was actually glaring straight past the fleshbait; stink-eyeing some soppy old mod on a fifties Lambretta.
Bronco belched pure diesel and the spiv shat it at first glance. Quiff to the curb. Checking his shine. Bested. Bronco spat, revved his Beeza and they were on up to Kemptown.
The connection was right on time. Lounging by the Volks with a Slazenger holdall, cut denims and flip-flops. Perfect cover amongst the summer swarm.
“Mad Dogs?” He put his smoke out with a twist.
“Witchkings.”
“Oh Aye? Well it’s all there.”
Bronco took a look in the bag.
“We good?”
They traced the coast like heat-seekers. Peacehaven, Newhaven and Seaford led them on to Seven Sisters where they vanished off the East Dean Road down a trail that sunk into a smuggler’s tunnel, then shot from the dark into the hot white space of Scuttler’s Cut.
The locus was scooped from Cretaceous chalk. A wide shingle beach, protected by cave-eaten cliffs, already teeming with Prospects and hang-arounds from the local seven - Angels, Road Rats, Dirt Pistons, Sons of Abbadon, Whitehawk Wheelers and The Snake-Eye Saints. Bronco shot Him a dirty look. He returned an affirmative one; pulling His own ride up inside the shelter of the cliffs, while Bronco hurled into a charge – scattering the mob like shrapnel.
“Witchkings!” A belly roar – the big man slid the Beeza to a stand. A silverback amongst the no-marks. That would all change when the old-timers rolled up but for that long minute, the beast was in heat.
A snaggletoothed kid – Lemon Eye (for his left eye was as crooked as his teeth) took up Bronco’s battle cry and ran in for a tackle. The big man countered, swinging his thighs from the ride, and in one slick move caught Lemon in a headlock, winding the poor lamb into his stinking pit. Devotion articulated as violence.
“You make the pick up?” – Crowthers, the Wheeler’s top Prospect, was talking to Him now.
He slid the Slazenger from His back; held it up high. “Five kilos!” Bronco let Lemon drop to the sand.
Crowthers rolled an eye, “that’s a lot of fungus. Sulphate?”
“It’s all here.”
“Best get it in the pot then.”
He ignored the curl in Crowthers’ lip. Wheelers let their Prospects wear top-rockers, fucking primates, and Crowthers milked it around those without their patches. “After you sweetheart.”
The fire was built. Lemon Eye danced for approval, proud of his pyre of billets and driftwood. Freaky looking munchkin, but the lad’s done good, He clapped him round the stern.
The pot – seventy inches of cast iron – was already half full, “that’s not sea water is it?” He looked to the Wheeler.
“Come on buddy. Course not.”
Buddy? Crowthers pointed to a pair of plastic barrels.
Beyond them, the stage was underway. A framework lashed from scaffold. The generators were still on tumbrels, hitched to a three-cylinder widowmaker. Crowthers followed His eye, “Bigsby give me a lend of it.”
“You can handle a Kawasaki then?” Crowthers ignored Him. Pointed at the pot. “Let’s get the brew on.”
The smell from the Slazenger was all lichen and bluebells. The fungus had been squashed to a tight damp block. It slid into the cauldron like a D-day lander. Then witchbane. Wormwood. And a heavy dash of wizz.
Crowthers pointed to a Jerry Can, “Lemon - get your spark on.”
“Ain’t done yet sunshine.” Bronco produced a litre of Navy. Pouring it over the mushrooms with a wink for the dog. “Get it lit lad.”
“Yes chef.”
They completed the stage together. Summoning its structure under sunshine until it loomed like a Tabernacle. A shrine to the shit kickers. A pagoda. An offering.
By mid-afternoon the generators rumbled and the live wires crackled; tuning up with the band – One, two! A vinyl spun, planetary. Bouncing orisons from the chalk face. I am the god of hellfire, and I bring you…
The fungal decoction bubbled and stewed.
Two more fires were lit in the cave mouth. Two whole pigs prepared on spits.
“Do you think he’ll come?” Lemon fingered idly at his wrist tattoo: the inverted four of The Hanged Man and a numeral, X.
“Every seven years.” He replied.
“You scared?” Lemon asked.
He looked to His own mark: Moon, V. The drummer fired out a roll and span into the jam, slightly behind the disc.
…Now’s your time, burn your mind.
The clergy and the faithful rolled in at dusk. Seven clubs riding as one. Eighty, ninety and more they came. Thunder, gears and fume. The band played them in with a fuzz-box brawl. Blue notes and black, sliding into an uptempo version of an old favourite – when I look out my window, many sights to see…
Each club president got a cheer from the assembly of juniors, but it was the final bike that drew a hush of reverence.
The Saxon Rider pulled his Ironhead ahead of the throng and arced around the bay towards the stage, in a sidecar to his left a figure sat motionless. Wisps of white hair trailed its cowl. Bronco raised a fist (a sword and a VII inked at the wrist joint) while He jostled forward with the crowd; a scrum of denim and boots, each of them straining for a look.
His first glance of the Sage brought to mind roadkill. A buckled crow. Reanimated on the tarmac. It huddled in the ride as if affronted by the daylight. In its lap lay a gas canister, swaddled and precious; the breather snaked up into its hood.
The Ironhead ground to a stop, rock-steady in the shale, and the Saxon silenced the band with a greasepaint salute.
The Sage raised a limb to its maw, sucking deep on the canister, crank gas recirculation. Hungry.
It finally clawed the mask from its mouth, huffing out a cloud of blue vapour. A snarling gasket… an ancient bird, the microphone was presented like a sceptre: its voice sizzled from the static, sexless and raw – “hssss… my poets and pugilists, roughnecks and rubes. Hsss… my mystics and miscreants.”
The mounted bikers replied with a furious rev of engines, Bronco thumped his chest. Lemon Eye looked like he might cry, though it was hard to be sure. He, Himself still heard music – pick up every stitch, out to make it rich.
The Sage took a fresh wheeze of gas and spoke again: “hsssss… eternal brothers of the Midsummer run. Bone breakers, head takers, promise makers. We are the chosen and today we will choose.”
A cheer went up. Curdling on the breeze. He found Crowthers staring at Him with a creep to his eye. The bikers began to dismount and the Road Captains, two for each club, approached the group of juniors. Thickset primarks, tribal insignias.
“Prospects!”
Crowthers took the cue. Pushing Lemon Eye ahead towards the Captains, then rounding on the rest. All colours mixed as one now. Fresh cuts for the slab. Bronco slapped Him on the arm. “Ladies first.” He stepped into the group, the big man on his back, two rabbits running in the ditch. The Prospects were assembled round the fire as the Sage looked on. Thirty two of them. Short odds for each.
The Saxon Rider produced a pack of cards.
…Must be the season of the witch.
A sweep of cloud had smeared the clean blue sky like warpaint. The ocean rumbled below. The Sage took the deck and cast it as one, above their heads, where it plumed into fragments. Each leaf wound its way back down to the sand. All except one.
One card. The card. Caught the atmosphere. Snagged on the miasma. It slunk back to earth like gristle through fat. Easily caught, face down in the Sage’s extended palm.
He felt His skin burn. A course of static in the epidermis. Accumulating in His mark. A wave of tinnitus crackled in His shells.
The Sage held up the card, with a dry rot smile. “The moon is in fifth, hsss, how very appropriate.”
There was a brief pause amongst the men as they digested the proclamation.
He remained motionless. It was Bronco who led the cheer, grabbing at His tattooed wrist and holding up the mark. Tackling Him at the waist, hoisting Him onto his shoulders while the crowd erupted. Seven clubs as one. Roaring for the sabbat.
The band kicked in with a burst of electrostatic and a wild, pulsing stomp while the chant rippled through the men – “Drink! Drink!”
Bronco let him down as a tankard emerged, burnished in engine oil. A captain approached the pot, dunking it then approaching Him. “Drink! Drink!”
The pewter was hot on His lips. The riders fell silent. Watching, waiting and willing Him on through every gulp of brew.
Holding that empty tankard aloft drew another roar. Engines growled. Spin wheeling with the band as they rolled into a new number… been a long time since I rock an’ rolled.
The hot and heavy dose smouldered inside Him; wild fires on the breeze… been a long time since I did the stroll.
Thanks for reading hunchbacks, A.
Ha ha! Oh that's it I'm doing a Wind in the Willows pastiche. With extra weasels and DMT. Thanks so much, have a good day
Mr. Toad’s got nothing on this. That was wild!