In The Forest of Able a host of ghouls were huddling at the back of the caravan of cruelty making its inexorable way forward. The portal was now closed and all of those who willingly followed the spectre in Cain were now in The Forest of Able. The ghouls at the back were feeding off of the bloodied remains that the cutting and shearing machines had made of forest wildlife while the procession was chopping trees and laying tarmac. These ghouls were from a sect called The Monday Club and were noted for their hatred of love, sex and creativity. They specialised in torture and delighted in slowly killing anything that hobgoblins brought back from raids on Eden. They had recently been employed by Anthrax in his Vivvy Section and revelled in their excruciating experiments on captives. They numbered around forty and stood behind twenty or so ogres who were those left defending the rear of the caravan. Suddenly a hissing filled the air and the ghouls looked around in panic. Their bony bodies, bald heads and long jagged fingers twitched and flinched. Their blood-shot eyes and bloodied mouths widened with trepidation. Suddenly red, blue, purple and yellow tendrils of crackling electricity outlined a shape forming in the centre of the ghouls. The shape solidified. Below the waist coiled the multi-coloured scales of a giant, colourful serpent. Above the waist the creature had the appearance of a remarkably tall woman.
She was dressed in the black top hat and red tailed jacket of a circus ring mistress. Her skin was pale and her eyes and hair were as black as pitch. She held a bullwhip in her black gloved hand and was grinning madly. As she spoke a black forked tongue darted this way and that. It was Lamia.
“Ghouls,” she said. “It’ssss time to taste some of your own medicine!” With that she lashed this way and that and electric bolts flew from her bullwhip. Ghouls fell cut and bleeding. Lamia slithered amongst them beating them down with stroke after stroke. Such was the blood lust of the ghouls that instead of attempting any kind of counter-attack they became excited by their own cuts and started tearing each other apart as food with their jagged, pointed teeth. Lamia laughed and pulled a humus and salad kebab out of her pocket. Whilst she and the ghouls ate she addressed them in their final moments of greed. “Ghouls, I would say that it is ill-advised for any biped to lead the life of a carnivore. You could be eating this tasty vegetarian kebab, but look at you. You won’t learn will you?”
As the final ghoul exploded from eating too much too quickly Lamia cracked her bullwhip once more.
There was a flash of bright, white light.
Manifesting now in human form she materialised on Earth. Lamia joined the huge march that was making its way out of Finsbury Park in North London on the 12th April 1997. Lamia was instantly handed a piece of white paper with photocopied photographs of Ministerial leaders. Underneath them was the word “WANKERS.” in big bold lettering. She looked around grinning.
A woman near Lamia stood brandishing a lurid green and yellow water gun. The woman wore green leggings and a shiny silver mini-skirt. She also wore a black crop-top with three small, round metal shields almost covering it. Her face was white with face paint and she had thick black make-up around her eyes. Two silver antennae stuck out above her short, red hair.
Lamia spun around and further surveyed the scene. A red dreaded geeeezar in a black T-shirt and black combat trousers strode past her in red wrap-round shades. Another gentleman with receding green hair and black denim jacket and jeans wandered past with thick black eyeliner circling his mad staring eyes.
Lamia looked around further and noticed a red banner with the words “WAGES FOR HOUSEWORK CAMPAIGN” written on it. Behind that there were a selection of red and black flags being waved in the air and behind them was a banner with “COMMUNIST ACTION. UNITY IN STRUGGLE.” on it in big red letters. There was also a huge red banner with “ENGLISH COLLECTIVE OF PROSTITUTES” on it.
Hundreds of people carried placards with “VICTORY TO THE STRIKERS.” written on them. Hundreds more carried “Socialist Worker’s Party” placards with the same slogan on them. Under these were more words asking the probing question “WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON PRIME MINISTER?” Other Socialist Worker’s Party banners read “FOR OUR UNIONS. FOR A FIGHTBACK. FOR SOCIALISM.” Red and black Anarchist placards were being carried with the words “RESIST TO EXIST” written on them. A huge banner was held high above this plethora of dissident sloganeering. On it were the words “THEY SHALL NOT STAND ALONE.” This particular banner and many of the others was a direct reference to the Dock Workers Strike which had prompted this whole march.
This was a March For Social Justice.
Lamia looked around again. Someone handed her a flyer for “Revoltage”, “Headjam”, “Fear Of Fear” and “Transducer” gigs at The Goldsmith’s Tavern in New Cross in Saaaarrf Eeeeeast Lundun. The flyer seemed familiar to her and she looked around enquiringly. Her face lit up when she found her goal. There in front of her stood Shiva and Bobby Rewind. They were with some mates and it was they who were handing out the flyers.
So there they were, in Finsbury Park, at the beginning of the March For Social Justice. Maid Marion, Robin Hood, Cindy Strange, Sidney Strange, Donald, Slithey, Shiva and Bobby Rewind. Another person had joined them en route and this person was, of course, Kazz Khaos.
Lamia watched them as they put face-crayon designs on each other. Bobby was wearing the purple and blue paisley shirt that Ronnie Twelvetrees had given him. He was also wearing a black flight jacket and his shoulder length black hair skirted his black shades with newsprint along the arms. The newsprint consisted of reports concerning nuclear strike capability in the eighties. He had black jeans on. He also had a black goatee beard at this time. Lastly he was wearing a black bowler hat.
Shiva was wearing the white sleeveless top with the medieval style sun with an ethereal face on the back. Shiva had drawn the image out far more by sowing sequins around it. She had her hair in long black plaits and had all manner of rings and bracelets on. She smiled and drew a multi-coloured Om design on Bobby’s forehead.
“You stay close to me,” Bobby said. “I don’t want to lose you along the way.”
Bobby drew multi-coloured spirals around her cheeks and mouth in the style of a Maori facial tattoo. She also wore Bobby’s royal scott tartan drainpipe trousers and a pair of D.M. boots.
Bobby kissed her and finished the spirals around her eyes.
Kazz was wearing a black leather jacket and a blue sweatshirt with orange teapots all over it. Cindy drew teapots on her cheeks with the crayons. Her shoulder length red hair glistened in the sun as her beaming smile sat comfortably under her bright blue eyes.
Robin Hood drew spirals around her own cheeks and when they were done they moved off with the march.
Lamia followed them out of the Park at a discreet distance as hundreds of thousands of protesters made their way towards Trafalgar Square. The March was an awesome sight.
As she joined the protest Lamia noticed some more of the flags and banners that were on display as a way of communicating people’s beliefs. There was a massive red and black one with huge silver letters that said “ANARCHIST COMMUNIST FEDERATION”.
There was a small child on his father’s shoulders carrying a small flag with the “A” for Anarchy sign on it, only in this case it was an “a” for anarchy owing to the child’s size.
There were a multitude of banners representing trade unions from around the world and a fair few from trade unions in Britain. Each had immense tapestries in golds, greens, reds, purples, yellows, browns and black. Hammers, anvils, pitheads, spinning jennies, trains, boats and planes signified in pictures the dependency society had on working class labour. Union initials were emblazoned in huge fiery letters on every giant banner that went by. The G.M.B., U.N.I.S.O.N., the N.U.T., the Nurses Union, the Miners Union, the Magnet Strikers and, of course, the Merseyside Dock Labourers were all amongst those represented.
Another banner had the initials W.O.W. written on it. These were the women of the waterfront. These were the dockers wives who had shared the picket lines with their husbands just as the miners wives had done in the early Eighties. As with the miner’s wives these women were the backbone of the strike. They were fighting the bosses alongside their partners with the hardest arguments of all. They took no shit. If the Government was prepared to threaten the health of their children then woe betide any bully boy in a uniform that got in their way. They were some of those who shouted the loudest. Their families had worked their arses off for generations and this strike was another example in a long historical list of occasions where the bosses had stabbed whole communities in the back and not acknowledged their debt to the workforce.
It seemed to Bobby that with every consecutive revolutionary ripple that the twentieth century had experienced the Earth had come closer to a day when capitalism would finally be defeated. On marches like this, he could taste the potential for full-scale rebellion like a perfume in the air.
He and Shiva took loads of photos with his single reflex camera. The Union Jill billowed past them. This was a multicoloured psychedelic satirization of the Union Jack. It was basically a Union Jack but instead of the red, white and blue that had symbolised oppression the world over for so long, this was purple, yellow, turquoise, pink, orange, red and mauve. It looked beautiful.
The sun shone brightly and groups of drummers and pipe players replaced the sound of traffic on these Dickensian looking streets. Lamia blinked in the sunlight and embraced the energy being generated by the crowd. She strode behind the Union Jill and looked like the antithesis of John Bull, a figure who was to Britain what Uncle Sam was to the United States. Lamia, dressed in red tailcoat and black top hat, seemed to reassert the female role in the history making process. She started chanting with some of the women of the waterfront....
“THE WORKERS UNITED WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED.
THE WORKERS UNITED WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED.”
Someone with a megaphone shouted “What do we want?” and hundreds replied “The Government out!” Then the megaphonic voice again “When do we want it?” and hundreds shouted “Now!”
“What
do we want?”
“The
Government out!”
“When
do we want it?”
“Now.”
“What
do we want?”
“The
Government out!”
“When
do we want it?”
“Now!”
“They
say Big Mac.
We say fight back!
They say Big Mac.
We say fight back!
Big Mac.
Fight back!
Big Mac.
Fight back!
They say Big Mac.
We say fight back!”
The procession reached Westminster Bridge and the first of the marchers were now within audio range of the Houses of Parliament. Hundreds started chanting "BURN IT DOWN BURN IT DOWN BURN IT DOWN". There was no division here. Here everyone had unity of purpose.
Now the front of the march had reached the Houses of Parliament while the rear was only just leaving Finsbury Park. It was huge. The Government and their media were already reporting it as a march of only a few thousand but the reality showed these figures for the ridiculous lies they were. Bobby had been on the Poll Tax March that led to the famous riot that ended Margaret Thatcher’s career. The March for Social Justice wasn’t quite as big as that but it wasn’t far off. Since the implementation of the Criminal Justice Act some of the more middle of the road organisations were not here. The Act banned demonstrations and protests amongst other things. Nobody on this march gave a shit about a pathetic law like that.
There were as many people on this march as those that attended the Anti-Criminal Justice Act Demonstration and pitched battle with the police in Hyde Park in 1994. Bobby had been there too. In fact Bobby had been on marches and demonstrations every year since 1983.
His first taste of extreme police violence was on the Wapping Picket Line during the Printers Strike in the Mid-Eighties. He’d had some mates who were printers at the time. Bobby had recently moved to Saaaarrff Eeeest Lundun and the Thames Polytechnic Students Union organised a couple of coaches from Woolwich to go and show solidarity with the striking printers.
One of Margaret Thatcher’s mates, Eddie Shah, had bought the printing plant and had immediately made hundreds redundant without any discussion or warning. Thatcher gave him the immediate and total support of the police, the special patrol group and sections of the military dressed as cops. She wanted to crush the Printers Union for good and ensure that a trickle of scab labour kept the printing press going.
Hundreds congregated outside of the printing press to peacefully protest about the treatment of the workforce. Mounted police were ordered to charge at the crowd. There were women, men and children in that crowd as well as many pensioners. The police indiscriminately lashed out with their truncheons and began bashing people over their heads in an unprovoked bloodbath.
When Bobby saw a eleven-year-old boy get whacked over the head he froze in shock. The kid fell to the floor. When the cop who did it leaned over the side of his horse and bashed the kid over the head again and Bobby saw the blood he picked up a half brick and lobbed it at the copper’s head. It stunned the copper as it bounced off of his visor and two print workers had him off of his horse and gave him a good kicking. After that incident Bobby never looked back.
Bobby now had a policy of peaceful protest up until the point where the cops started violence. He was dead against protesters starting violence but he had never seen that in all the years he had been on the front-line of political flash points like this. He had only ever seen organised attempts by the cops to break up peaceful protesters with force and intimidation. When that happened Bobby believed that he had no choice but to defend himself and those around him. It was one of those rare moments in his life where his anger totally overcame his fear of injury. As far as he was concerned this was the dynamic of revolution. Sure once violence started it drew in cops who may have been nowhere near its point of origin. They were the ones you saw on the T.V. going “I never thought the British public could be like this” amid tears of confusion and remorse. WELL WISE UP ARSEHOLES. PEOPLE ARE USUALLY PROTESTING ABOUT SOME MASSIVE INJUSTICE OR GOVERNMENTAL ATROCITY SO IT ISN’T GOING TO TAKE MUCH FOR PROTESTERS TO GET A BIT FUCKING NIGGLED IS IT? The fact was that most cops were too stupid to investigate the reasons behind a particular march or else they just didn’t give a shit. It was just over-time to them. Any that might have had doubts about The Government’s use of the cops against its own public were usually told a load of lies about it merely being a small number of trouble-makers who started the violence. WELL HOW COME NEARLY EVERY KIND OF PERSON UNDER THE FUCKING SUN GOES ON MARCHES THEN AND HOW COME THEY ARE ALL THREATENED BY POLICE VIOLENCE WHEN IT KICKS OFF? IT DOESN’T TAKE A GENIUS TO SEE THAT IN SUCH SHITUATIONS POLICE VIOLENCE IS INDISCRIMINATE.
It got Bobby’s goat all this fuss about organised Anarchist cells and the plans of fringe groups like the S.W.P. The term Anarchist cell made Sidney, Cindy, Donald, Slithey, Robin, Kazz, Shiva, Marion and Bobby laugh so much that they actually started referring to themselves as an anarchist cell. Marion would say “I’m a fucking Anarchist cell I am” and laugh hysterically.
Of course there really were revolutionary parties and the likes of Marion and Bobby were Anarchists but the police always made one big error in their assumptions about how rebellion started. They could never see outside their hierarchical institutionalisation. They could never believe that struggle against The Government’s law was not masterminded by some ruling criminal elite. By their very nature Anarchists didn’t have leaders. On top of this most people who went on demonstrations didn’t necessarily have solid political ideologies. They were there to address a particular problem.
If that problem did not exist they would not have been there. Anarchist cells like Maid Marion couldn’t tell this bigger mass of people how to behave. They didn’t even want to. They were merely joining with others who felt the same way about a particular subject. When there was violence it was sporadic, inspired, unorganised and invariably the result of pressure caused by police anxiety, ignorance, bullying and intimidation.
Some cops were sometimes given speed pills just like the military when they participated in trying to control demonstrations. They were institutionalised in much the same way as the military too. Many couldn’t wait to be in a “warfare” situation. Many regarded this as a high point in their working lives. It excited them. It was less boring to them than dealing with a domestic argument in the street and having to fill in all the paperwork that sort of situation required. They joined the police force for the power and the glamour. They joined because of the lies TV programmes told them about how society was full of villains and the only creature that stood a chance of being truly pure was the one in a blue uniform. What a load of crap. It was a natural extension of all the war films and gung ho bullshit they were brought up with. Most of those in a society saturated by American cultural imperialism had been imbued with the attitude that it was heroic to have a punch up. It was an extension of the law of the gun.
It seemed ironic that the British Empire with its history of totalitarianism in other countries were one of the causes of this decadent strain of behaviour amongst its colonies. It seemed ironic that Britain was one of those empires in history that had sown the seed that grew into the very same Scar Strangled Banger that now kept the law of the gun alive through U.S. culture.
If you added this ethic of machismo and violent confrontation to an individual who may have been brought up with a load of prejudiced beliefs about all manner of subjects ranging from race, sex, sexuality, domestic responsibility and political persuasion then it was no wonder you got volunteers for bully boy gangs in the police force. Gangs like the Tactical Support Group were right bastards if they got their mitts on you.
Most coppers on demonstrations either moaned when they got a scratch {and then whined for paid leave and compensation} or they loved the violence so much they became psychopaths. They got off on the adrenaline rush.
The thing that really let the cops down the most was their lack of interest in the reasons why they were being sent in to intimidate and sometimes attack women, men and children. If asked why they were doing it they invariably said “It’s not my place to say” or “I’m not prepared to discuss it” or “I’m not in a position to comment” or “I’m only doing my job.” This led Bobby to the conclusion that the roles between any two types of uniformed authority were painfully similar. Your uniformed lackey could be a British soldier for the South Africa Company in Mashonaland in 1893, or a British Dragoon Guard dressed as a riot cop attacking miners on a picket line at Armthorpe Colliery in 1984. They’d all commit extreme atrocities if so ordered and if anybody grabbed one of them and asked why they’d all say something along the lines of “I’m only doing my job.” The sick thing was most of them believed this was a good enough excuse.
Bobby saw the paradox between human enlightenment and human irresponsibility on marches such as these. You had it all laid out in front of you like some obvious piece of scientific evidence. The marchers were enlightened and the cops were irresponsible in their lack of interest in the reasons why it was happening. As they approached Westminster Bridge thousands of cops lined the sides of the march and many more were ready on horseback lining the surrounding streets. Bobby always considered it unfair on the horses. Why drag another species into a dispute between two human factions? It was typical of the insensitivity and out-dated modes of thought prevalent in an institution like the police force.
Anyway there you were with a massive group of demonstrators shouting their outrage at a variety of injustices. A massive group of demonstrators playing music, protesting and, at the same time, injecting humour into an otherwise sombre occasion. There were sexually liberated Post Punk New Age Hippies who had the politeness and enthusiasm of a peacenik and the dynamics and street wisdom of a Punk Rocker. They joked, laughed, danced and played but if any bastard dared attack them they would react with extreme violence.
There were wizened political activists who had been involved in this kind of thing since most of the cops present had been a twinkle in their mummy’s and daddy’s eyes. These were the people the cops should be learning from not attacking. There were workers who merely wanted a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. These were generally fucking hard bastards who were fucked off with being treated like third class citizens simply because they couldn’t afford to pay their bills. There were travellers who had been on the road for years and years because they didn’t want their kids to experience their childhood on some run down, violent housing estate. As a price for taking their futures into their own hands they had been perpetually harassed by the police force as part of a Party initiative that had the same underpinnings of ethnic cleansing that the fucking nazis had in their attitude towards gypsies and travellers. This was one of the most insidious angles to the Criminal Justice Act. It made travellers technically illegal. The only reason the cops didn’t round them up when the bill became law was because it would have provoked an immense amount of protesting and dissident outcry. This, though, didn’t stop odd incidents of police brutality towards travelling families and the smashing up of their mobile homes wherever they could get away with it.
There were environmentalists on the march who had had enough of the traffic build up and government stupidity. As far as most involved in the "Reclaim the Streets" movement were concerned they were now fighting against the clock to save the whole planet from some insane genocide which threatened to wipe out many other species as well as their own. As a member of this growing movement Bobby considered it as a human responsibility to save all species from extinction where possible. After all it was the human race that caused the damage in the first fucking place. For Bobby it was all about moral empowerment. Too many people were burying their heads in the sand and saying things like “What can I do? I’m only one person. I’ve got to get up for work in the morning. It’s nothing to do with me.” Etcetera etcetera etcetera Yawn yawn fucking yawn.
“WE MUST ACT NOW BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.” was a phrase that was re-occurring in a growing number of people’s minds from day to day in the latter half of the Twentieth Century. If you tried to discuss that with a riot cop they generally ignored you or said that you were talking a load of bollocks. One thing you could be sure of was that the average riot cop would not be prepared to discuss it on any level for fear of you "indoctrinating" him on behalf of some criminal conspiracy. The cops were the ones who were indoctrinated. Bobby had a mate years before and she had to leave the police force because of the lies they were being told about people like her mates.
HA FUCKING HA. WHAT PRICE COMMUNICATION?
Well maybe the price we’ll pay if we don’t listen to one another will be our extinction. This was why Bobby felt so passionate about it all. It was not a small matter to him.
Basically you had a section of the population who, for whatever reasons, were inspired to collectively air their opinions (not surprising when you consider how difficult it was to air them singularly in a society like this) and there was one obvious difference between them and the cops. No two protesters were dressed exactly the same (unless it was some kind of art statement or something). Where the cops were concerned no two of them were dressed differently (apart from the odd member of the officer class or a specialist like a photographer or paramedic). To Bobby there were obvious biological trends in evidence here. On the one side you had individuality, variety and self-expression and on the other you had absolute uniformity and obedience. On the one hand you had people who were relatively free to look and act within the boundaries of their own personal set of morals and on the other you had people who were told what to wear and think. It seemed to Bobby that uniformed anonymity appeared to resemble a segment of cancerous cells eating into the metabolism of society as a whole. It was as if they threatened to blot out all the multitude of colours and creative body language that existed within the variegated tide of human diversity. It then seemed to Bobby that the interception by this thin blue line of cancer cells was of such small numbers that the chances of them taking over completely were almost non-existent. He was always careful though in reminding himself of the last time in history where this cancer made a full-scale attempt at wiping out human diversity. That time was during the ascendancy of the Third Reich and hardly anyone doubted the necessity of preventing that from happening again.
Shiva put on a pair of oval shades and spun around and soaked up the magnificence of the historic scene around them. They’d noticed John Ozric from the band The Ozric Tentacles in the crowd some moments earlier.
Shiva and Bobby discussed the binding nature of an event like this that so crystallised the facets of cultural representation that had turned out in their support for the things they believed. For Bobby there was rarely a greater political thrill than taking photographs of public outcry with a backdrop of Big Ben and other bastions of British authority. Thousands lined the banks of the Thames as their gradual progression towards Trafalgar Square evoked a feeling of mass opposition to authoritarianism.
A giant red and black banner with the emotive words “INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY FOR FREEDOM AND SOCIALISM” written on it stood proud amongst a sea of other flags.
Many banners encompassed a new trend in Anarchist thinking. They had the usual red and black dualism of revolutionary co-operation and autonomous revolt but, as an amendment to this, they had a flash of green through them to symbolise the pressing need for environmental awareness.
Bobby took a photograph of one group of hard-line Anarchists dressed in black with military peaked caps that offered a pastiche of the sensibility that this was, above all, a confrontation between the forces of authority and the forces of change. Even in their militaristic style of dress no two looked exactly the same. Their flags, in this instance, were simply black, black and black.
Two Punks in front of Shiva and Bobby caught Bobby’s eye as they crossed Westminster Bridge. One, a bloke, had a green Mohawk hair-cut and a variety of anarchist slogans on the back of his leather jacket that wove in and out of a picture of a rising sun over a mass grave-yard with the band names “Conflict” and “Subhumans” stencilled around it. The other was a girl with a red Mohawk haircut. She had a graveyard under the name “Subhumans” on the back of her leather. Underneath that were the words “IF THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM IS THE ANSWER THEN IT MUST BE A STUPID FUCKING QUESTION.”
Sidney Strange walked up to a line of cops when they reached the other side of Westminster Bridge. He stood right in front of them and spun around, put his hands on his hips and grinned a mischievous grin. Bobby took a photo and they both laughed.
The sun shone through the trees and the Houses of Parliament loomed over them like some titanic grave with Big Ben as the gravestone. Bobby turned to Kazz and Cindy....
“One day this building will be owned by the people and will be a massive venue for free gigs and performances.”
Cindy replied “What if that isn’t allowed?”
“Well what do you think the answer to that would be if it were the last haven for a fleeing capitalist government?”
Her and Kazz then started singing in a strangely operatic duet “BURN IT DOWN BURN IT DOWN BURN IT DOWN.”
They bumped into their mate Clairmont Clair with her sister Melaneeee with Clair’s three-year-old daughter Bodicea. They all yipped and screamed their pleasure at having bumped into each other. Clair and Melaneeee were stalwarts of free festival organisation and threw the most extreme parties. As they all passed Parliament itself Bobby noticed a long blue banner with the words “TREES NOT M.P.S.” written across it. Nearby was another giant banner with the words “WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE” on it. This Textile Union banner had the words “NORTH EAST LONDON TEXTILE BRANCH” and underneath that were the words “KUZEY DOGU LONDRA TEXTL SUBESI”. These sentences circled a massive picture of a worker with a hammer about to break the chains around a spherical textile factory.
They noticed a G.M.B. banner with the words “UNITY AS STRENGTH” around two hands shaking in collaboration. There was another with “WALES MILITANT LABOUR” on it and under that were written the words “LLAFUR MILITANT CYMRU”.
In the middle of this immense banner was a picture of the map of Wales with a red flag waving above it. Amongst this were the emotive words “PREPARE FOR STRUGGLE/SEIZE THE TIME”. Near this was a banner with “ROYAL GROUP OF DOCKS SHOP STEWARDS COMMITTEE” with the slogan “ARISE YE WORKERS” underneath. Another banner representing the lineage of Hammersmith trade unions especially caught Shiva and Bobby’s attention seeing as both their families had personal histories around that area.
Bobby then took the definitive photograph of probing social satire. On the eve of a general election he managed to snap a shot of two street entertainers. Both wore the same grey suit. One had a Big Brother (Tory Party Leader) mask on and one had a Molotov Blair Wilson (Labour Party Leader) mask on. They kissed intimately at the base of Big Ben and Bobby captured this most telling of images on Shiva and his single reflex camera. Those around this splendid comment on the lies of our electoral system laughed with glee as so many people’s suspicions were outlined in a piece of theatrical, Situationist and satirical genius.
Folk were climbing statues of British warlords through history and displaying their irreverence in the face of imperial posturing. Shiva and Bobby got out their cowbell, wooden block and beaters and joined in with a group of samba drummers who danced their way towards Trafalgar Square.
As Bobby bashed out a Latino rhythm he heard a roar of approval from behind him and he spun around and noticed two Mohawk agitators who used to help with the organisation of the Deptford Urban Free Festival. These two warrior women were howling with glee as the wash of drumming sent their invigorated hearts into a dementia of rebellion and celebration.
Suddenly there it was.... Trafalgar Square. The central hub of British Babylon. The venue for many a protest and many a riot. No matter how the authorities tried to rewrite history these things were etched deep within the public consciousness. Stories that were passed down from one generation to another exacerbated the desire to make the public’s feelings known here. It swarmed with demonstrators on this warm day in April and there was a party atmosphere in the air.
For years the Government had been clamping down on parties throughout the country so now some of those partygoers were going to have one on the Government’s very doorstep. If nothing else it showed that fringe culture was an unmanageable and irresistible force that no amount of legislation could stop. The revelling nature of the public predated and surpassed government and all of government’s puerile attempts at monopolising the mass consensus of mind and movement.
The spectre began a speech over his personal minister’s monotonous chanting.
“Death to the Egg! Death to the Seed! Death to The Tree Of Life! Death to Eden!”
Suddenly a second note began on top of the one the ministers were repeating. It was solid and as clear as a bell. The spectre stopped his vitriolic outburst and looked around in shock. The ministers were still chanting....
“Land
of hope and glory,
Marching off to war,
With the spectre’s banner,
Going on before.”
The second layer of singing started forming these words....
“Bland
you mope so gory,
Starching cough and gore,
Ditch the spectre’s banner,
Throw it to the floor.”
The ministers began joining in. The spectre started screaming
“No! Stop it you fools!”
They carried on and started swaying this way and that. The spectre shouted out his rage…
“WHO DARES DISTURB ME?”
“WE DO.” came the reply.
With that the ministers all fell to the floor. It was as if the ministers could not carry on without the prompting from these mysterious guests.
“Who is ‘we’?” asked the spectre.
“Us.” said the voice again as one of the flaming torches on the walls flared abruptly. The spectre spun around and stared at the torch. It flared again and this time the flames reached high in the air and formed the shape of a person. It then separated from the torch and gracefully slid down to floor level. The licking flames then became a more pronounced shape and with a sudden gust of wind blew out. In their place stood a most spectacular creature. It was Imresteen the elf and Rosa the dragon as one body. They had decided that they should symbiotically link to make their Magickal access to these dark chambers easier. As a result they spoke with one voice and moved with one body. It was an infrequently used Spell owing to the shock it caused both those involved and those who bore witness to it. Since the elf and the dragon had discovered that only one body could penetrate the spectre’s sorcerous barriers they had decided to risk it. Rosa’s relationship with fire and Imresteen’s hypnotic singing had thus enabled them to gain access to the Brotherhood and then drop them to the floor.
In Abel the ogre dropped the flag with the dollar sign on it and blindly walked on. When Malthus (the Worm of Tory Towers) swooped down to ask the ogre why he had done it the ogre spun around and belted the evil dragon in the eye. Malthus the Worm then reacted by blasting the ogre with a hail of ice that froze the giant to the spot. When Malthus attempted to pick up the flag he found that he had inadvertently frozen that too. As he hoisted it into the air it shattered into a thousand pieces. The worm was furious.
“Who are you?” demanded the spectre back in the chamber in Cain.
“We are Imresteen the elf and Rosa the dragon!”
Indeed they were. Their composite body was about eight-foot tall. Imresteen’s dark face now had faint red scales in tiny patches that followed her cheekbones in beautiful arcing curves.
Imresteen’s hair was now bright red and stuck out from her head in spiky dementia. Her ears were still pointed and her eyes were still green. Albeit the same colour as before they had changed in one respect. They were now reptilian and narrowed to slits every so often. When she spoke a black forked tongue darted this way and that. She still had on a short silver dress that was now tied at the waist with a belt made out of elven silver. She was wearing black boots and her bare arms had red scales in spirals running around them. She wore silver bracelets and a silver necklace that was fashioned in the shape of a long sleeping dragon. Her bare legs also had red scales in spirals around them and her overall physique was slightly more muscular than Imresteen’s had been. The dragon had decided to allow the form of the elf to remain largely unchanged owing to the confined space they were about to enter. The gnomes, at the meeting, had produced a crystal ball and they had ascertained the spectre’s whereabouts. Had he been on a battlement with guards all around him the dragon’s form would have been preferred but this was a small chamber and Rosa wasn’t even sure she would have fitted into it. She could have shrunk herself but said that she felt that that would have been defeating the object of being a fifty foot fire breathing dragon. They all agreed and this was the outcome.
The ministers all stood up and shook themselves down.
“Kill it!” screamed the spectre.
The ministers all ran at the dragon elf. Imresteen and Rosa had agreed on the Marxist principle "Peacefully if we may Forcefully if we must." The dragon elf started singing
“OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHH.”
The ministers all stopped in their tracks and started swaying again. The spectre was incensed with rage.
“Kill it!”
The spectre’s power was enough to urge five of the ten onwards. Five swayed and five rushed towards the singing symbiotic. The eyes on her dragon necklace lit up. Still chanting the elongated mantra that held five of the ministers in a trance the dragon elf took the other five on in combat. She picked up the first minister and held him up above her head. She rested a booted foot on the second one’s chest and shoved him into the others. As they picked themselves up and ran at her again she threw the first minister into them and they fell to the floor. All through this she kept up her mantra which held five ministers in swaying musical appreciation. The second five tried rushing her again. They jumped on her from five directions at once. A heap of hooded attackers now smothered the dragon elf on the floor. The singing stopped and the five listeners fell to the ground. With a loud “EEEEAAUGH.” the dragon elf stood up sharply with her arms outstretched and ministers were flung in as many directions as they had come from. The first five got up off of the floor and rushed her. She kicked three away and got two in headlocks under either arm.
“STOP THIS INSANE VIOLENCE. I HAVE THE STRENGTH OF A DRAGON. I HAVE THE MAGICK OF AN ELF AND DRAGON COMBINED AND I HAVE THE SINGING VOICE OF IMRESTEEN. THE ROSA IN ME WOULD EAT YOU. THE ELF WOULD SING YOU A LULLABY. WHICH IS IT TO BE?”
“Kill it!.” screamed the spectre. The other eight ministers ran at her and she resumed her mantra. Holding the two in strangleholds she quelled the other eight with a louder “OOOOOOOHHH.”
She then picked up the two in her grasp and flung them into the swaying ministers. As they all hit the deck she shouted at the spectre.
“GO BACK TO THE PLANE YOU WERE SUMMONED FROM. YOU CHOOSE NOT TO PEACEFULLY CO-EXIST WITH THE FLORA AND FAUNA IN EDEN. YOU SEEK TO DESTROY IT. GO BACK AND AVOID A DRAGON’S WRATH.”
“Never!” screamed the spectre.
“Very well” said the dragon elf.
“Kill it!” screamed the spectre.
All the ministers and the spectre himself ran at the dragon elf. This time they would certainly have overcome her but for one last card up her proverbial sleeve. With an almighty roar she inflated her lungs almost to bursting point and then blew an immense plume of fire that enveloped the ministers and the spectre.
The blaze of flame cooled only after some twenty seconds. She stopped and the fires dissipated. Where the spectre and his slaves had once stood there was now nothing left but a pile of ash and eleven hooded cloaks.
“Interesting,” said the dragon elf, “Flame proof clothing. They must have anticipated our arrival. I thought they might have put up more of a fight but then it’s typical of a deranged spectre to forget to make his minions and himself flame proof too. That is, of course, if he had the ability to do so.”
With that she became flames herself but kept her humanoid form. She levitated above the level of the torch that she had come from and then slid into its light causing a flaming explosion that then seemed to go backwards and suck itself into the torch which then went out. A second later its modest flame relit and it rejoined the other torches in its role as an instrument of illumination.
The shock waves from the assassination of the spectre and his ministers could be felt all along the caravan of hate that was defoliating Abel. All the spectres who sat in turrets on giant digging machines, tarmac laying machines and incinerating machines instantly exploded in clouds of fiery brilliance. All the engines of destruction ground to a halt and sat still while goblins, ghouls and ogres fought amongst themselves over the causes of their dismay. A contingent of trolls started wandering off into the woods. Some hobgoblins tried to urge them to stay with the excavators. The trolls immediately started a strange chant.
“Bland
you mope so gory,
Starching cough and gore
Ditch the spectre’s banner,
Throw it to the floor.”
The hobgoblins looked dumbfounded as the trolls staggered off into the undergrowth singing their hearts out. Just when the motorway construction convoy was at a peak of confusion they were attacked. Elves jumped out of surrounding trees. Dwarves came hurtling through bushes and glades. Centaurs galloped towards the front of the construction line and met it head on. These three groups appeared in their thousands which matched the numbers in the caravan of hate. Plato the dragon and hundreds of birds and gliding pterosaurs tore into the airborne contingent of motorway builders. They piled into Fomorian toilet seat pilots and respective harpies and vampire hornets. Thirty druids, gathered by Penicillin, attacked the rear of the construction caravan and sprayed goblins and ogres with potions that they fired from personalised pumping devices. Penicillin called them “water-pistols” and said he’d got the idea from a few Earth Tales he’d read.
As a consequence of this offbeat assault goblins and ogres were turned into flowerpots, hat-stands, grandfather clocks, wardrobes and post boxes. A mass of insects, lizards, amphibians and a variety of mammals poured into the arena of battle and sent ogres, goblins and ghouls fleeing in every direction. Sammy the Pixie materialised on top of the biggest excavator and strummed a banjo feverishly as hobgoblins jumped off the vehicle in panic. A large host of goblins tried to make a break for it by climbing trees to the side of the convoy. The trees suddenly disappeared and then rematerialised as the three gnomes who stood laughing maniacally. The thirty or so goblins who had climbed the gnomes suddenly found themselves in a pit in Cain faced with an extremely hungry forty-foot earthworm. The gnomes then blipped back to Able without them.
A host of tyrannosaurs split into twos and threes and gave chase where goblins and ogres ran off into the woods. These dinosaur leviathans had pointed out before the attack that fighting the denizens of Cain was a bit like fighting cancerous cells. If you don’t grab the lot they tend to spread into other areas and carry on debilitating their victim. They therefore decided to take it on themselves to round up as many escapees as they could. The tyrannosaurs had an incredible sense of smell and were pretty confident they could be assured of 100% success.
Suddenly there was a rumbling sound and a huge furrow followed the centaurs in head-on confrontation with the front of the procession of defoliating demons. Whereas the centaurs stopped at the point of contact and began a sustained and savage skirmish with remaining trolls, ogres and goblins the furrow continued under the line of excavators. Suddenly, in the centre of the procession, two diggers were flung into the air scattering goblins like ninepins. The ground erupted in a shower of soil and rock and out of this explosion of subterranean chaos came Aristotle. He reared up and reached over to the first digger that had not been smashed by his entrance. The biggest remaining troll who stood on it pulled out a large club with a spike through it. He swung it at the dragon’s head. The dragon ducked and lunged at the troll. With one almighty gulp he ate the troll, the club, three goblins and the chairs, controls and roof of the excavator itself. He flew high into the air with his eyes tightly shut. He belched and flames blew up into the clouds. He then descended like a meteor and crashed into another vehicle packed with goblins, ghouls and giants. Those that didn’t instantly die scattered in flight from their foe.
Aristotle’s subterranean attack had inadvertently spat Penicillin’s cauldron high into the air. Grimwitz’s cave had been directly under where the procession from Cain had reached when the forces of Eden attacked. As the cauldron reached its highest point before its inevitable descent it seemed to twist as if directing its own path back towards the ground. As a result it fell through the engine of a digger that exploded in a ball of flame. The explosion threw the cauldron through the air a short way and into the arms of a surprised Penicillin.
“A most gymnastic performance my friend!” said the druid as he staggered beneath the weight of his cooking implement.
“Cheers.” replied the cauldron.
The other fifty-foot fire-breathing dragons were on duty guarding The Tree of Life at this point in time. It was argued that the invasion might just be a diversion after all. They couldn’t leave the tree unprotected. They were pretty pissed off that they couldn’t join Aristotle and Plato but their names had been drawn out of a hat the dragons had used to decide who should go.