Kicking
It's all about the music
Bodies clashed against her own, spreading an infection of mud and spiralling energy through the crowd. Psychedelic lights lit the platform, hypnotically rotating, dying each of its subjects in different gels of colour, passing over the stage-frenzied performers whose music was carried on a kind of charging, pulsing wind that floated over and around the army of fans, loyal, newfound, and the others just there for the adrenaline-filled ride.
A mixture of the tormenting August heat and the multitude of indistinguishable, unrecognisable glimpse-faced mob stained her cheeks a glowing red and undignified war streaks meant that her overall appearance was that of a painting, somewhere between abstract and realism. An ever-changing painting that deserved a series of photographs charting every moment in order to truly steal one modicum of her experience.
Her voice was rasping like fingernails scraping down her throat from all the inaudible shouting that came freely, spiritedly out of her mouth. It needed whetting, quenching, even the silted Thames water that flowed just across the easily-jumpable safety barrier next to her seemed inviting to her, the ripples as it steadily flowed over its obstacles seemingly oblivious to the music which, even with its heavy, emo-screamo -sceno feel, could not sink as low as to drown and diffuse into it.
She turned and began to edge her way through the crowd, her clumpy wellingtons struggling to cling onto the little friction they could generate within the mud. She reached her hand to her hat, fanning the large brim to generate a whisper of solace from the heat onto her face. As the crowd dispersed, she started to inconspicuously brush a spontaneous fringe over one of her eyes. Sixteen was just a number. Mentally, she knew she was older, eighteen, nineteen, maybe even twenty? But that didn’t matter – eighteen was enough.
Raucous male laughter issued from the beer tent, and she began to inhale the sweet, heady scents of mixed alcohols; beer, cheap, imported wine, vodka, spirits...The smell enticed her. It was what she needed.
She kept her head down as she ordered the drink she could get in the most lurid neon bottle. It had connotations of fun and excitement and summer nights spent dancing to unfathomable club music in Revolution, access by fake ID only, with its flaming red sign, the energy from inside spilling out and flooding the surrounding streets. Blue...vodka...WKD...the words rolled around in her mouth, tasting of pleasure. It was stronger than what she was used to – wine spritzers and watery, thin beers once or twice a night. But she was older now.
The first sip played in her mouth; slight carbon dioxide, adult-sweet fruit that went straight to her head, traces of alcohol that lingered on her lips...this was good. She wanted more, she wanted to fill her body with this, to let it slowly diffuse into her blood and dilute it to something, then to nothingness.
She worked her way through the maze of laughter and out into the haze of sunset and dregs of crowd, the silhouette of the dead stage black against the washed-out pallor of the sky. Turning her back away, heading towards the leisure centre and away from the main exit where the throng of people tried to escape for another day, back to the campsite or to their homes ready for tomorrow, she took another swig from her bottle, the sensations growing in her head like the raging crowd from earlier in the day, seeming like a distant memory.
Another swig, and another...keep drinking...keep drinking...more...more...this is good, I need more...more...yes...yes...
Her world was spinning, like everything revolved around her, a finite central point in space and time. She could just make out a blonde-haired boy holding his mother’s hand exiting from the green glass revolving doors of the swimming pool, wet haired, dripping, laughing, his mingling with her own.
But this wasn’t right.
Too much...much too much.
Now she was spinning, a passenger on an unstoppable roundabout just speeding up. She bent over, wretching, but with nothing to come up.
“Mummy?” the little boy asked, pointing.
The mother looked over concernedly, and rushed over, her son in her wake.
But she was falling, could not be caught...
“Mummy?”
A mixture of the tormenting August heat and the multitude of indistinguishable, unrecognisable glimpse-faced mob stained her cheeks a glowing red and undignified war streaks meant that her overall appearance was that of a painting, somewhere between abstract and realism. An ever-changing painting that deserved a series of photographs charting every moment in order to truly steal one modicum of her experience.
Her voice was rasping like fingernails scraping down her throat from all the inaudible shouting that came freely, spiritedly out of her mouth. It needed whetting, quenching, even the silted Thames water that flowed just across the easily-jumpable safety barrier next to her seemed inviting to her, the ripples as it steadily flowed over its obstacles seemingly oblivious to the music which, even with its heavy, emo-screamo -sceno feel, could not sink as low as to drown and diffuse into it.
She turned and began to edge her way through the crowd, her clumpy wellingtons struggling to cling onto the little friction they could generate within the mud. She reached her hand to her hat, fanning the large brim to generate a whisper of solace from the heat onto her face. As the crowd dispersed, she started to inconspicuously brush a spontaneous fringe over one of her eyes. Sixteen was just a number. Mentally, she knew she was older, eighteen, nineteen, maybe even twenty? But that didn’t matter – eighteen was enough.
Raucous male laughter issued from the beer tent, and she began to inhale the sweet, heady scents of mixed alcohols; beer, cheap, imported wine, vodka, spirits...The smell enticed her. It was what she needed.
She kept her head down as she ordered the drink she could get in the most lurid neon bottle. It had connotations of fun and excitement and summer nights spent dancing to unfathomable club music in Revolution, access by fake ID only, with its flaming red sign, the energy from inside spilling out and flooding the surrounding streets. Blue...vodka...WKD...the words rolled around in her mouth, tasting of pleasure. It was stronger than what she was used to – wine spritzers and watery, thin beers once or twice a night. But she was older now.
The first sip played in her mouth; slight carbon dioxide, adult-sweet fruit that went straight to her head, traces of alcohol that lingered on her lips...this was good. She wanted more, she wanted to fill her body with this, to let it slowly diffuse into her blood and dilute it to something, then to nothingness.
She worked her way through the maze of laughter and out into the haze of sunset and dregs of crowd, the silhouette of the dead stage black against the washed-out pallor of the sky. Turning her back away, heading towards the leisure centre and away from the main exit where the throng of people tried to escape for another day, back to the campsite or to their homes ready for tomorrow, she took another swig from her bottle, the sensations growing in her head like the raging crowd from earlier in the day, seeming like a distant memory.
Another swig, and another...keep drinking...keep drinking...more...more...this is good, I need more...more...yes...yes...
Her world was spinning, like everything revolved around her, a finite central point in space and time. She could just make out a blonde-haired boy holding his mother’s hand exiting from the green glass revolving doors of the swimming pool, wet haired, dripping, laughing, his mingling with her own.
But this wasn’t right.
Too much...much too much.
Now she was spinning, a passenger on an unstoppable roundabout just speeding up. She bent over, wretching, but with nothing to come up.
“Mummy?” the little boy asked, pointing.
The mother looked over concernedly, and rushed over, her son in her wake.
But she was falling, could not be caught...
“Mummy?”