Church Group

by Michael Brightside

  * * *

  We stopped in the middle of a white industrial estate. The morning frost had got in early, while the sun was looking the other way. Cars lined every bit of road as far as you could see, unusual for an industrial estate at this time of a Saturday night.

  We followed the people with beer cans as they led us to a massive abandoned fire station. A time weathered sign out front revealed what the building was once used for. The steel fencing surrounding it, ringed with ‘DEMOLITION WARNING - NO ENTRY’ signs confirmed that this place was just an echo of its former life. The building it seemed was to have one last party thrown in its honour before it was lost to history. A fitting end for something that had undoubtedly saved many lives.

  A steel door that had been pulled from its hinges led into what looked like a concrete storage building. The walls were bare brick and it reminded me of a bigger version of the garage I slept in. The whole place resonated with the sound of banging trance at a volume that took away your ability to think. The trademark lights of a well organised night went off all around us, shading the few hundred or so people in there in an ever-changing hue. It was a good party, you could feel it as soon as you walked in; from the hot smell of sweat and chemical excess, to the hoards of strangers reaching for the sky. I was coming up too hard to stay in one place though. We had walked into one building out of many, we had a whole night to dance and we’d settled in the first room. The music would be playing in here at least until the sun came up again, so we weren’t going to miss anything. Al and I promised we’d return and went off to explore.

  Back out through the broken door, we walked past the main building of the fire station; it still had its red painted roller door at the front. Peering through the small square windows in the red door confirmed nothing had been left behind- sadly no fire engines to play with. Past that however was another big concrete box, like the first one we’d been in. We hurried in the door to escape the cold.

  This was something else. We could so easily have stopped at the first building and stayed there but instead we’d discovered a land of techno music. The sound had a harder edge. This room was worth staying for.

  In the corner away from all the sound equipment was an old white Ford Sierra that the fire brigade had used to practice on. The roof and glass had been cut off to rescue the life-size dummies that had somehow become trapped in there. Two intoxicated strangers took their place in the front seats. I nodded to the one in the driver’s seat and he gestured for us to get into the back.

  “This is better,” Al sighed, finally allowing himself to properly relax. You could see the pills had hit him hard, more of those blue speckled smiley face pills that were so prevalent. They had a habit of taking forever before you felt anything, then sneaking up on you and blowing your socks off when you dropped a second one, making you wish you’d been more patient.

  Looking out over the bonnet from the back seats of the car, you could watch the whole night unfurl before you. The lights and speakers were facing straight at us from that opposite corner, and we were in the best place for sound. I half shut my eyes and gave myself to the experience.

  “This is epic Lu. You properly up yet?” Al asked me through a visibly tightened jaw.

  “Yeah mate, I am now. And we’ve got the best fucking seats in the house!”

  Al smiled, “Too right.”

  “You know Kyle and Louise have split up? I saw him the other day, he seemed pretty gutted.”

  “He’ll be alright, they obviously weren’t meant to be,” Al replied. “Anyway. Lu man. You remember I was telling you about my uncle?”

  “Which one?” I asked. I knew full well who he meant but I knew he wanted to tell me. I wasn’t going to ruin it for him and waited for the South Africa story again.

  “The one in South Africa. Did I tell you he had a massive rubber tree plantation out there?”

  “I think you might have mentioned it mate. Why, what were you thinking?” I knew what he was thinking. His uncle owned a farm the size of a town. It got bigger every time he told me about it.

  “When I said we could go out there for a free holiday any time we want, we just have to pay for flights. Well I’ve had an idea.” His teeth were chattering now from the drugs. Like watching someone yawn I felt mine start to go too.

  “Right?”

  “It’s massive mate. Like the size of a whole town. Surrounded all the way by a twelve foot high electric fence.” I’d heard that before too, only last time it was ten feet tall.

  “Yeah?”

  “Promise me you won’t tell anyone, you’re the first person I’ve told.” Al was excited now, you could see he’d wanted to tell someone for ages. I nodded. I was glad he’d chosen me. “We’re going to throw a rave there Lu. It’s gonna be the biggest rave in history.”

  “What about the police Al?” I said. The British police are quick to shut these things down, I couldn’t imagine the South African police were anything but worse.

  “Nah mate that’s the whole point of having it there. The police won’t be able to get in when the electric fence is on. My uncle has to go round every morning removing burnt dead people from it after they’ve tried to break in during the night.”

  “What about when we eventually have to leave though mate? Won’t the police just get us then?”

  “Shit. I hadn’t thought about that....we’ll have to helicopter everyone to-and-from the airport.” His eyes lit up again as he swiftly resolved that minor hitch. The logistics of transporting the tens or even hundreds of thousands of people from the airport to this remote farm swirled in my head. A few at a time by helicopter would mean thousands of trips. Even landing enough people at the airport in the first place would be impossible. Plus, there couldn’t be any chance of his uncle actually going along with something like this in the first place. There wasn’t a single aspect of this plan that was do-able. I couldn’t tell him that though, not with a smile like that on his face. I smiled back and nodded in pretend agreement and thanked fuck when the bloke in the driver’s seat took Al’s attention away by passing him a spliff.

  Al’s face twisted with disgust as he inhaled the free drugs deep into his lungs. It must have been strong, Al could smoke anything. I watched as he took another two painful drags on the thing and passed it to me. Holding it to my lips I breathed the smoke in as deeply as I could. My eyes watered as I fought the urge to cough. It didn’t taste like any weed I’d had before. I took a couple more drags to make sure then passed it back to our driver.

  Sitting back into my half of the rear seat I felt its cold fabric warm and envelope me. Gravity took a hold of me and sucked me down into the chair that had taken on the solidity of a giant melted marshmallow. If I didn’t have this soft buffer beneath me I was sure I would sink straight into the concrete of the floor. My mind focused on the music and it became louder, the bass tunnelling right through me. The multi-coloured lasers on sentry duty either side of where the DJs played, shot past the car like the neon lights of a modern day city. Thick red, green, and blue lines of vibrant and bright. I looked out over the rear of the car and watched as they splashed up the concrete walls and hung there for a second, before fading out of my slow-motion eyes. Putting my arm outside the car I could feel the bass line of the techno soundtrack accompanying us pushing against my hand; it was as though the wind was carrying the sound. The tempo of the music increased, and as it did the rate we passed these neon lights did too. I recognised the city from television, lights spinning and swirling while blurring. It was Tokyo, and we were driving though it at a staggering speed.

  “Tell George to slow down!” Al shouted at the passenger in the front, leaning into his ear to make sure he’d heard him.

  “Calm down mate, we’re not even moving. Are you alright?” the bloke replied. Fuck. We weren’t even moving. The only way this car was going anywhere was if we pushed it. For a moment there I too could have sworn we’d been driving.

  “That was some good shit, didn’t know wh
at was going on for a bit,” Al winked at him to let him know there were no hard feelings.

  “Brown,” the bloke said through a pair of smiling lips. His mate sniggered behind the wheel.

  Brown. Heroin. He’d had the shit bit right.

  “What did he say?” I whispered in Al’s ear.

  “Brown Lu,” he nodded as he replied. I’d heard what the bloke had said, I was just hoping somehow that I was wrong.

  A fucking heroin spliff. Cheers lads. Maybe something you should tell people before you give to them.

  We made our excuses and went back to the trance room. James and George were so immersed in the rave they hadn’t even noticed we were gone. We stuck close by them for rest of the night, after telling them there was nothing else to see.

  Al and I never spoke about the accidental heroin incident. I never told anyone. It was a difficult thing to drop into a conversation.

  If We Lived Together We’d Both Be Dead in a Year

  April 2001.

  The following Monday when I returned from work, I picked up an eight pack from the shop and headed round to check on Al.

  We went to the park at the end of his road. Well not so much a park as a triangle of grass with a handful of trees in it. Still, it was somewhere we could get away to.

  “You recovered from Saturday night yet Al you prick?”

  He laughed which should have made me expect a positive reply. I knew he was still suffering though, he looked like a bag of shit.

  “Beginning to feel normal mate, still not quite right. Totally worth it though.”

  “What time did you get up Sunday? Did you even get up Sunday?”

  “Yeah I had to get up early to meet Louise at lunch.” His face suddenly dropped.

  “Louise?”

  “Shit Lu, don’t tell Kyle mate, promise me you won’t tell Kyle.” It was obvious he hadn’t intended to tell me; he probably hadn’t intended to tell anyone. I already wished I didn’t know.

  “How long have you two been seeing each other?”

  “Not long mate, a couple of weeks if that. Since after her and Kyle split up. I had nothing to do with them breaking up I swear.”

  “Is it serious?”

  “No idea, it’s still too early to tell. I like her a lot though.”

  “Did you like her when they were together?”

  “I guess so,” Al said. I wasn’t sure how that sat with me; the idea that he might have been hoping they’d split up all along, just so he could get in there.

  He looked me square in the eyes. “Promise me you won’t tell him Lu. He’ll go fucking ballistic!”

  “Alright mate, I promise. You know he’s probably going to find out somehow anyway.”

  “I know that mate.” Al gulped down the last of his beer and tossed the empty can in a hedge before opening another. “I’m thinking the longer it’s been before he finds out the better. You know, that way he’ll have had more time to get over the breakup.”

  “I’m not sure that’s how it works Al,” I said. “It might make it worse the fact that you’ve been hiding it from him.”

  He gave me a look of resignation. “Would you tell Kyle though? If it was you?”

  “Probably not mate to be honest.” I considered the implications of getting on the wrong side of a bloke the size of a nightclub bouncer. “But then I probably wouldn’t have done it in the first place.”

  I regretted those self-righteous words the moment they left my lips and he knew it. Probably from the way I turned my face to the floor to avoid his eyes and started plucking the spring’s damp grass with my fingers.

  “Change of subject how’s things with you?” Al asked.

  I paused before replying while I reflected on the part of my life that didn’t revolve around parties and having fun.

  “Alright mate, if you don’t count living in that shit hole.”

  “Is your dad still walking round carrying his bible, preaching at your mum?”

  “When he’s not hiding in his room drinking beer,” I said. “Anyway I think he’s over it now, he only did it twice and both times were in the same weekend.”

  “What are you gonna do?”

  “About what?”

  “What do you mean about what? About your dad mate, he might need to talk to someone if he’s walking round quoting bible verses at people. Before you know it he’ll be in the town centre holding a sign that says ‘The End Is Nigh’ and shouting at people in the street.”

  “You know Al, I can actually imagine my dad doing something like that. That would be funny as fuck to go and watch, people would all be trying not to make eye contact with him and that.”

  “Where do you think he’d do it? Like Carlton or something? It wouldn’t be worth him doing it in the village.”

  “It would have to be in the village mate, that would be the best thing about it! Imagine if he did it in the bus shelter opposite the shop, stood there preaching at people. All the old women waiting for the bus would have to go to the next bus stop up the road. They’d all get soaking wet when it rained,” I laughed.

  “How’s everyone else finding it?”

  “I can’t tell with my mum, she seems to be taking the whole divorce thing quite hard. Dean’s trying not to let it get to him and Jack’s too young to realise what’s going on. I’m just trying to stay out of it all; I can’t wait for the day when I can afford my own place.”

  “You mean our own place Lu. Mash up towers!”

  I smiled politely at the suggestion of us living in the same house. “If we lived together we’d both be dead in a year mate,” I told him.

  “Be worth it though,” Al replied. “Would be an epic fucking year!”

  I Told You Not To Give Me Them Fish Finger Eyes!

  July 2001.

  My parents had gone on holiday taking Dean and Jack with them; in what was probably a last ditch attempt to salvage their marriage, although they never said as much. As it would have meant spending my eighteenth birthday stuck with my parents in poxy Spain I refused to go. Instead I invited Al, Kyle and James round and we ended up sat in a circle, on my parents’ lounge floor, high on E and sharing a collective nothingness. We were having a nice Friday night until out of the blue I heard James say, “You alright dude?”

  I turned to him and he was looking at Kyle.

  “Stop it!” Kyle shouted.

  “I’m not doing anything,” James replied.

  “You are, I can see you doing it.”

  “What’s up with you Kyle?” I asked tentatively.

  “Look at what he’s doing with his eyes,” Kyle said.

  I looked. He didn’t seem to be doing anything with them, aside from using them to see. James had a sullen expression on his face.

  “Can’t see anything mate.”

  “You’re fucking in on it as well then, look at him making his eyes shake on purpose trying to freak me out. I’m not having it. Stop fucking doing it.”

  Perpetually chilled out James looked at me and dejectedly shrugged his shoulders. He was in the same state as the rest of us; so fucked he could barely maintain basic motor skills, let alone make his eyes shake on purpose. Then he looked back at Kyle and said, “I swear dude, I wouldn’t do that to freak you out.”

  “That’s it, I told you not to give me them fish finger eyes!” Kyle shouted as he stood up.

  I jumped up with him and ushered him outside. “Come on mate,” I said, “let’s go have a fag.”

  Once in the back garden I tried to talk him down, whilst not making eye contact with him in case he tripped out again and thought I was playing tricks on him as well. It was easy to tell what was wrong with him, he still wasn’t over Louise. That combined with the drugs had sent him over the edge.

  After a couple of minutes Al came out into the back garden alone. “James is alright now Kyle, he’s promised not to do it anymore.”

  (I later found out that James hadn’t actually admitted to Al that he’d been doing anything to wind Kyle u
p, but Al thought that by saying that he had it would calm things down. It didn’t).

  “So he’ll admit it to you but not to me. I went to school with the prick, and he won’t even admit it to me.” Every word spoken seemed to lay another brick in the invisible wall between them. Kyle tried to storm past us to get in the house where James still was. “I’m not fucking having it, he’s only fucking doing it to me.”

  In a moment I had one of those fantastically brilliant ideas that you always hope will come to you when you most need it. “Take Kyle down the side of the house for five minutes Al,” I said, “I’m going to get something.”

  In the garage, under my bed, was a strobe light that I sometimes took to James’s flat; normally when we had a big night planned. Never when Kyle was there though, it wouldn’t be fair, seeing as he was epileptic. I plugged the light in and placed it in the corner of the room facing the door. Then, once I’d made sure Kyle was still down the side of the house, I rescued James and smuggled him into the garage. Then I turned the strobe light on.

  “Did I hear James talking in there?!” Was the first I knew that Kyle had come back into the garden.

  He flung the door open in a rage, ready to storm in but the strobe light stopped him in his tracks. He patted the pockets of his jacket down looking fruitlessly for the fake Ray-Ban sunglasses that had become his trademark at raves. “You fucking wankers!” he screamed at us through the quickly closed doorway. “Is this what its come to?”

  Al squeezed past him and into safety.

  “I told you dude I weren’t even doing that eye thing!” James shouted through the doorway.

  “You’re lying bruv, you told Al you were doing it. I’ll sit out here all night if I have to,” Kyle said. “Sorry about this Lu, about James ruining your birthday.”

  “That’s what you’ll have to do then,” Al said as he put my stereo on in the background. I forget what tape it was, probably something with an amen break. “Have fun.”

  “I will,” Kyle replied. “With all the pills.”

  Bollocks. Double triple super-bollocks! Kyle had all the pills because he’d been the one to pick them up this time; my bloke Rick had been dry.

  “Come on Kyle mate, we paid for our share of them,” Al said.

  “You can have them.”

  “Sweet.”

  “Not you. James can have them, if he comes out here.”

  “Yeah and then what are you going to do to James?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” Kyle said. “I’m just going to stab him, then right before he dies give him a blood transfusion. So I can stab him again.”

  “I’m not being stabbed just so you two can get a pill.”

  “Alright, yeah that was a bit harsh,” Kyle said. “Lu?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Have you still got your motorbike?”

  “It’s in the front of the garage Kyle.”

  “Does it still start?”

  “Probably, yeah.”

  “You and Al hold James down while I run over his head and you can have the pills.”

  Al seemed to consider it for a moment. “No deal mate. Are you not cold out there?”

  “Freezing. But like I said, I’ll wait out here all night.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather be in here in the warm?”

  I nudged Al. “We can’t let him in mate.”

  “If I come in James has to sit outside.”

  “Not happening!” James shouted.

  “He has to go outside and he still doesn’t get any pills. You two do though.”

  Al leaned over to James. “Go on mate, for me and Lu.”

  James turned to me. “Go on mate,” I said, “do it for the team.”

  We sent James out through the old front door of the garage before turning the strobe off and letting Kyle in through the side. James then took a seat on the white plastic garden chair Kyle had been sitting on, moving it to the side so Kyle couldn’t see him from where he was sitting next to us on my bed.

  “It’s proper freezing out here!”

  I pulled the second duvet off my bed and handed it to James. He wrapped himself up in it like a caterpillar. Yet again he’d decided to come out in shorts.

  “There’s your two Al,” Kyle said. “And yours Lu. James you’re getting fuck all cos you won’t even admit what you did.”

  “Alright dude I’m sorry.”

  “Nah bollocks. It’s too late now, you should have admitted it earlier.”

  I had two more hours of this childish bickering; before I could get the four of us in the garage together. Even then I don’t think Kyle had actually forgiven James, most likely he was too buzzing to argue any more. At one point while Kyle was taking a piss in the garden, Al whispered in my ear, “Don’t ever let him find out about me and Louise. If he’s this bad with James and James hasn’t even done anything, he’ll fucking kill me.”

  I wish Al hadn’t said anything to me; I spent the rest of night unable to think of anything else. It’s only ever harder to join in conversations when there’s something you know you mustn’t say.