The Highly "Influenced" Adventures of Mick, Mike, Dan and Pat.

by Daniel Johns

Episode 1: The Infringement

I finished my beer. Tragedy. As if reading my mind, Mick, who was at the bar, looked at me with an enquiring look on his face and took a sip of an imaginary beer. This meant, "do you want another beer?" to which I replied with a hearty thumbs up. The Underground was relatively busy. Seedy characters were everywhere and it wasn't even midnight yet. To my left shaggy Ned, the bartender, was busy picking up an unsuspecting young Asian girl, who was obviously fresh from the boat. His shifty eyes moved from side to side making sure no-one was watching. He probably planned to rape and murder her later and then add a square of her milky white skin to his ever-growing collection. Screams of pain suddenly emerged from the other side of the room as Mark, the "playful" Tongan bouncer landed a few heavy rights into a helpless young girl. She had not been able to produce any identification. After he had thrown her lifeless body out the door, he came over to where I was sitting and proceeded to tell me a joke. Despite its lack of humour, I laughed anyway for the sake of my own safety.

Mick arrived back with my beer and Pat's beer as well as one of his own. Coincidingly two overconfident looking lads approached the pool table we were next to and put three dollars in the coin slot. Their overconfident vibe must have irritated Patrick as well as he jumped out of his seat and exclaimed to the soon to be corpses, "It's our table dick heads!". I bit my tongue. Was I ready for another blood bath? The lads backed down like two children who had just been caught with chewing gum in the classroom. I guessed that was settled then. I didn't feel like playing. My drugs were just beginning to kick in and I played like something demented when I was peaking, so I gave my pool cue to Patrick to play with Mick and lit up another cigarette. Mick introduced himself to the challengers and then procceeded to explain his theory of what one must possess in order to take over the world. The two young lads looked at eachother as if to say "who are these fucking lunatics?".

Mike floated down the stairs, fucked off his tree. Wandering up to the two lads, making strange and incomprehensible arm movements as his eyes bulged from their sockets, he was explaining something about someone that didn't really exist. His tree had been uprooted, unearthed and burnt, and Mike was floating in the smoke. Reality was a long long way away. And it was an experience that was never to be explained fully to any normal, "straight" human; twisted, bent, warped, inverted and, of course, high. Wandering up to the bar, he spent half an hour explaining something inexplicable before realising he'd gone there to get a beer.

"Lightning Crashes" came on. Within seconds, the shifty Ned stormed towards the juke box with an aluminium baseball bat in his hand. I preferred to ignore the question of why there was a baseball bat sitting behind the bar. As he approached the jukebox he glared at it like it had murdered his family and when he finally got within striking distance he did not hold back. There was hatred behind every hit as he threw the baseball bat at the defenseless machine. The song came to an abrupt halt and Ned returned to behind the bar to serve two men dressed as monks. The jukebox layed there. It had been killed. One thing was for certain though; "Lightning Crashes" would never be heard within the confines of the Underground walls ever again, or any other song for that matter.

The pool game continued. Patrick and Mick were losing. They had just sunk the white and their oponents were now on the black. The black was behind the line, however. One of the lads lined up the black, apparently ignoring the rule that one cannot shoot behind the line. Before either Pat or Mick could warn them of this, it was over. The sinker of the black ball extended his right hand to Patrick waiting for his congratulations. I knew what was going to happen next. There was an deadly silence. Then Patrick, with a look that engulfed both anger and confusion picked up a pool cue and broke it accross the poor lad's head. The lad fell to the ground while Patrick continued to belt into him. I sat there wondering how much the lad could take. Screams of "sorry, i didn't know!!!" repeatidly emerged from the lad who was now curled up in the fetal position with his hands over his head. Patrick was cold and relentless and did not want to stop. He picked the lad up and threw him against the wall like he was a rag doll. He then retrieved the other half of the pool cue which was now deadly sharp at the broken end and forced it through the lad's chest. Blood from a burst artery sprayed the interior of the Underground. He would have died fairly quickly, I imagine. There was another silence. The other lad stood there, shocked at what had just occurred. Patrick removed the bloody pool cue from the body and then said calmly, "you can't shoot behind the line". The point had been made. We all finished our beers, got up and left saying goodbye to Mark on our way out.

To be continued....