by David North
She stood on a high hill observing. Solitary ancient figure, gnarly like a lightning-struck oak. Humanoid, as far as one could tell. Definitely bipedal anyway. Roughly seven feet tall. She wore Bill Hickock’s duster; Hank Williams’ Stetson; Lemmy Kilmister’s cowboy boots and John Lennon’s sunglasses. The Stetson was pulled low and the sunglasses hid eyes that had seen too much and knew that they weren’t done with the seeing.
From the valley below a myriad of psychedelic searchlights flashing purple, blue, green, red, sundered the night sky. Laser beams pierced the dark, drawing pictures on the hillside where she stood, sometimes firing right past her head, lighting up the stand of Beech trees behind her. Startled owls. Bewildered badgers. A young fox cowered at her feet, ears back, eyes popping. The ground shook beneath them. Seemed to dance even. Deadly decibels. Cheers, laughter, breaking glass. Oh joy.
She squeezed the trigger in her right hand. The trigger connected to a wire which ran down a two-foot-long shaft and ended in a spring-loaded claw. As she squeezed and released, the claw closed and opened, making a squeaking noise like a mouse caught in a cat’s jaw. In her left hand she held a large black bag.
She set off down the hillside.
She entered the festival site through the main entrance, walking right past the security detail who were overly occupied with a car full of giggling young women. The security men’s fat arses jutted out and twitched from side to side like cows shaking off flies as they leaned on the car’s open windows. A huge Par Can-lit billboard with dead daffodils nailed to each corner declared that this was GLOMAD 1995: Festival of Global Music and Dance. In the dance area frantic bodies bounced and glistened and gurned and spontaneously released ecstatic expressions of pure joy. Relentless rhythmic thunder and lightning cascaded from two towers of speakers stacked on each side of the main stage. In the middle of the stage, like the captain of a lifeboat lost at sea, a skinny bald deejay stood at his mixing desk holding one headphone to his ear, twiddling knobs and occasionally punching the air with his free hand.
She turned her ears off and got to work. Squeezing the trigger and picking detritus off the floor. Bottles, tins, food wrappers, flyers. Magazines with titles such as Earth Aware and Green Team and Clean Ocean Future. She carefully placed each item in the black bag. She drifted between the ebb and flow of gargoyle faces. Stupefied revellers glanced off her, barely noticing they had made contact. They dropped litter at her feet and continued on their way, arms wrapped around kindred spirits; half-naked, painted. She picked up a leaflet in the claw and held it up in front of her face. The leaflet promoted a quiet evening in the ‘Green Tent’ where one could listen to acoustic music and learn about composting, gardening by moonlight and alternatives to disposable nappies. She pressed her way through the crowd and spied a marquee tucked away by itself in the corner of a field at the far end of the festival site. She figured it would be a good idea to work towards the ‘Green Tent.’
She picked her way through the field, silently passing bodies unconscious in the long grass. Some were alone; some were in pairs, clamped together like railroad couplings. Other bodies were awake and naked and writhing against each other, moaning softly. Occasionally her boots crunched upon hidden shards of glass. Boxer shorts, a bra, a broken necklace. Fries and polystyrene. Burgers and mayo. Tortillas. Plastic rings from multipacks of beer. A rattled Devil’s Coach Horse beetle running this way and that. A crow with plastic around its neck. A dead seagull with its belly split open. Broken Eden.
The black bag in her left hand had become bloated and heavy. Without any thought or drama, she gave it a violent shake, producing a rattle of glass and tin. A puff of black smoke issued from the gaping mouth of the bag and it went limp. Empty again.
Now she stood outside the entrance to the grey/green marquee planted in the corner of the field away from the merchandise stands and the burger stands with their burnt offering stink and the incessant pounding of the live music stage. She looked up from under the brim of the Stetson. Above the entrance, painted on the canvas were the words GREEN TENT with a rainbow painted over them. On either side of the entrance sunflowers were painted and outside of the sunflowers a big yellow smiling sun. From within came a gentle, high-pitched voice, weaving between plucked chords sweet as any Song Thrush. She stopped and opened her ears fully and remembered when the earth was filled with birdsong and little else. A tear rolled down her cheek, fell from her chin and turned to ice mid-air, shattering into a million stars upon striking the ground.
Inside, the marquee was filled corner to corner with punters sitting or lying on the grass which now resembled a threadbare green carpet. Tables with demonstration items and leaflets and magazines and demonstration people were lined up around the periphery. She tracked the sweet vibration and found it came from two beings perched on high stools on a small stage. A bearded man with long hair and round spectacles plucked reverently at his instrument while his female partner with long flowing hair and long flowing dress and long flowing notes warbled, fragile, nervous. She looked as though she expected to be put away in a suitcase after the show.
She began carrying out her sworn duty; picking up rubbish, placing it in the black bag, treading narrow paths between bodies. Only this time she was noticed. Languid hippies watched fascinated at the grabbing motion of the mechanical claw and the deft transport of beer bottle or tin can through the air and into the bag. The hipsters laughed, pointed and wowed. The lady on the stage warbled. The light was golden brown and the air was acrid. She kept her ears open and her nose closed. She squeezed the trigger and the claw grabbed, making its peculiar, creaking, dying animal sound, hypnotizing the spectators who were now more fascinated by this new entertainment than by the warbling lady and the bearded guitarist.
She wandered into an open area of the floor where no-one was sitting. No-one could sit there because of all the rubbish; it had become a communal dumping area. She began squeezing and lifting again. Bottles, cans, a pair of knickers, a used condom, clingfilm, polystyrene, leaflets, a tampon. Joy of joys, love of loves, life of lives. It started raining beer cans. The joyous crowd were ‘helping’ by throwing them into the clearing where she stood. The cans landed and bounced and careened and danced creating a bewitched marionette show. She picked them up. She dropped them in the black bag. The lady warbled. The people laughed. The cans flew. She raised the litter picker and intercepted a flying can mid-air in the claw. A cheer and a round of applause. She squeezed the trigger and watched the beer can crush slowly in the claw of the litter picker. Filios salvet Deus.
BOING!
A beer bottle bounced off her head.
She turned slowly and, from behind John Lennon’s sunglasses, scanned the startled faces around her. Some were openly laughing, a few had their hands over their mouths stifling laughter, some looked surprised and some looked a little scared. She stopped turning and focussed upon a shirtless fool sitting among a group of bright young things painted; bejewelled; boisterous. The shirtless one sat there grinning, eyebrows raised, arm around the painted bird beside him, enjoying the adulation from his friends at being a supremely accurate missile thrower.
She released the trigger and the crushed beer can dropped into the black bag. She walked towards the smilers whose smiles became wider and stupider the closer she got. She stopped at the feet of Shirtless and they all got a real up-close sense of how tall she was and they grinned even wider and giggled, only now they were nervous and their bravado was wearing thin. Around them the chatter of the masses had died down and even the music had stopped as the guitarist, taking a moment to retune, paused in his work and looked up at the crowd, his warbling partner frozen to her stool, bewitched by the unfolding scene.
Shirtless and his male buddies, looking up at the towering figure before them, tightened their chests involuntarily as their bodies anticipated dynamic physical interaction. His girlfriend cocked her head to one side and put her hands together in a sign of prayer, or peace, or please leave us the fuck alone. She looked down at them all. They looked so very far away, so very small, so very insignificant, yet so very capable of the best and the worst. That they might rescue a sparrow with a broken wing, and yet build a machine that would condemn tens of thousands to fiery doom in a split second. Strange breed. Anyway – to work.
She raised the litter picker horizontal and thrust it forward, grasping Shirtless by his neck. She squeezed the claw tight and Shirtless instinctively grabbed at it while his face turned the colour of a nice ripe apple and his eyes looked like two big special marbles – the kind that children are always trying to win from each other. Then she lifted the litter picker high in the air and up went Shirtless – about five feet off the ground – legs kicking like a frog, hands grasping at the claw, face more like a plum now.
Screams. Lots of screaming. Deep male voices cried out profanities and oaths of all kinds – some were very religious indeed! Females exercised their falsetto voices in a crescendo of ascending notes loud enough to send all the seagulls on the festival site airborne. The guitarist twitched and his high E string snapped. His songbird partner fell backwards off her stool. Shirtless’ girlfriend was crawling backwards on her arse, shaking her head and wordlessly mouthing no no no no no.
After a few moments of watching the kicking, gagging, snot-oozing, eye-watering Shirtless hanging in the air, she swung him over the heads of his friends and positioned him over the black bag. She shook the bag open and it seemed to grow in size as if it were expecting a load of exceptional proportions, the mouth gaping wide and circular like a lazy Basking Shark. She released the trigger of the litter picker and the springs went TWANG and the claw sprung open and Shirtless dropped cleanly into the black bag, disappearing entirely into its belly.
More screams.
She gave the black bag a hearty shake and a cloud of red mist expelled from the opening and drifted skyward. Then the bag returned to its normal size – what’s more – it was completely empty.
The marquee was now full of the sounds of the desperate: groaning; crying; cursing. Some vomiting; lots of Ohmigods. A few managed to get it together to run out the entrance, but many were transfixed. She turned on the spot, causing more frantic yelping and scrabbling away by those nearest. She shook open the black bag and reached down and squeezed the trigger and picked up a beer can and released it into the black bag. Then she reached down and squeezed the trigger and picked up a beer bottle and released it into the black bag. Then, another beer can. Another bottle. Another can, and another. A fluid three-step motion: Squeeze, lift, release. Squeeze, lift, release. And so she continued, working her way slowly but surely through the trash.
People were running past her now, out the entrance, staring wild-eyed and scared at her, pushing and dragging each other in silence, hoping not to attract her attention. Outside, men were shouting to each other to call the cops; get security; find weapons; and it’s a fucking alien man, I’m telling you, man. They found some policemen and some festival security guards and told them there was a dodgy bastard in the Green Tent who had abducted their mate. The security detail and the police looked at each other and shrugged and reticently began walking toward the marquee. The crowd followed close behind, emboldened by their professional reinforcements. A couple of men pulled out knives and had them immediately confiscated and their names taken by the cops. As they neared the entrance the crowd fell back and became silent as did the security detail who were more than happy to let the police go in first. A few moments later a cop reappeared and beckoned everyone to follow him in.
The marquee was deserted. Bemused police and security guards stood around scratching their heads, looking questioningly and accusingly at the revellers. The floor was spotlessly clean; not a can, bottle or condom anywhere. Not only that but all the tables with the pamphlets and demonstration equipment had vanished and so too had the stage and the chairs where the guitarist and the warbling lady had sat.
Back at the main stage, the headline act was playing and the crowd were moshing and the litter was flying through the air and being trampled underfoot. Between the dancing legs and feet a mechanical claw squeezed its prey and lifted it into a black bag. Squeeze, lift, release. Squeeze, lift, release. She closed her ears and pushed through the melee and focussed upon each tiny, poisonous piece of trash because, at that particular moment, in this peculiar time and space, nothing else mattered except the capture of that one item.
BOING!
A beer bottle bounced off her head.
David resides among the mountains of County Leitrim in the northwest of Ireland. In 2022 he graduated from the BA(Hons) Writing & Literature Degree at Atlantic Technological University; Sligo. He loves the writing of Flannery O’Connor, Cormac McCarthy, Flann O’Brien and James Joyce. His favourite screenwriter/directors are Shane Meadows, Mark Jenkin, Akira Kurosawa. He is currently writing a series of short stories – mostly drama, with the occasional supernatural twist, and a screenplay for a TV drama set among the Arthurian steeped cliffs and valleys of North Cornwall. Find him online at davidnorth.ie. Find him on Twitter at @whoisMcNorth & Instagram at @davidnorth57.
