Glastafari
Chapter Fifteen

Deep inside the Tor-vision Centre, Drako Larr, like most of the soaking public back on Drakonis, had been feeling increasingly frustrated at the lack of gruesome action going down at Pilton. Beavis’s Glastonbury Live Aid concert seemed to be adding several thick layers of protective coating to the so-called thin veneer of human civilisation. What would it take to finally crush these Earthlings, to snuff out this Dunkirk spirit? Her viewing figures were dropping fast. Everyone was switching over to Comedy Central for the latest genocide. There were only so many panel discussions and highlights that an audience could take, so many simulations and predictions. Glastonbury Dead would be dead in the water unless something pretty nasty and painful happened fast.

Once again, she found herself standing over her secret stash of human prisoners all laid out and fully immobilised in a broom cupboard behind the studio floor. Once again, she found herself wondering if she had the nerve to break an entire swathe of major Drako gambling regulations and send someone in to twist this horror fest back on track.

Security guards Spike and Wesley and the rest just lay there, frozen to the spot like a sack of potatoes. All they could see was the lower half of two muscular and scaly reptilian legs pacing up and down. And after the longest stretch of menacing silence, a phlegmy chesty cough voice suddenly filled the space like an extreme throat lozenge commercial, giving an indecipherable message of mucus. Sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ Find ɴøᴠel.nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

Larr had just received some disturbing news. The authorities back on Drakonis wanted to know why a craft registered to her name had been seen entering a forbidden zone, a notorious planet understood to be the haunt of known subversives and drug addicts. Could she explain what she was doing there? And did she realise that ‘entering a restricted area without the necessary clearance’ could incur ‘a massive fine and/or a hefty prison sentence’? This was obviously the last thing that she needed, and that phlegmy outburst could be roughly translated as, “Those bloody kids!”

Then one of her commentators suddenly announced some promising action within the site. It seemed like the humanoids were finally coming to the party. Focus immediately switched to footage of a group of human thugs hauling their victim several metres into the air and nailing him into a wooden cage. Various interactive pop-up menus offered up the profiles of those involved. One in particular, a large bloke wearing a muddy England top, showed great promise and strengthening odds. The victim was apparently an irksome Jesus look-alike that had been making Drakonis feel nauseous for some time. The weapon of choice? A huge ghastly fire in the shape of a man. Real inventiveness at last, with a touch of operatic high drama, like the horror fests of old - the Aztecs, the Roman arena, and the Spanish inquisition.

Drako Larr quickly turned her scaly back on the broom cupboard, leaving Spike and Wesley and the rest of captured search party to just lie there in the dark.

* * * * *

Our Goddess of Gore’s two errant youngsters, Vlad and Antigen, were also coming to the party, finally entering the Earth’s atmosphere in their mum’s stolen saucer, heading down to Glastonbury with a couple of Gray hitchhikers, who were looking to once again tag the English countryside with a crop circle or two.

Dor-Eon and Fade2 had been doing it for years, hitting the hay after hitting the latest party planet hard. It was their post party piece, figuring that a little mystery never hurt anyone. In fact, giving human evolution a three-fingered helping hand by revealing a few universal truths, had to be a good thing, right? Call it a kind of inter-galactic cultural exchange; wasted alien youth reaching out to wasted human youth, through the medium of corn. Hollywood always gave aliens such a bad rap, but Fade2 and Dor-Eon’s trip was much more about Germinate than Exterminate.

They began to head down to their usual spot, a hillside on the edge of the Somerset Levels, close to Glastonbury festival. This time, Fade2 had a kind of portal pin number design in mind, the crop circle equivalent of publishing the access codes to every major mainframe computer on Earth. Hopefully one day the human race would fully get it, but so far it had been a bit like daubing E=MC²onto the wall of a Neanderthal’s cave, the keys to the Universe made all the more rusty as so many fake crop circles had been cropping up to effectively scribble psycho babble all over their cosmic blackboard.

* * * * *

Back at the site, somebody else had hit the road, on a collision course for the unfolding drama. Captain Chuck and half a dozen Jesus Army were heading down to the Main Stage looking to pluck a few endangered souls from the treacherous waters of an Iron Maiden concert. There being nothing quite so devilish or Hieronymus Bosch-like than a Maiden gig. It was the perfect opportunity for the God Squad to do a little fishing. In fact, half the Jesus Army had been recruited at a Metal concert.

They were just passing the Rainbow Circle Field when they spotted some of the Barmy Army acting suspicious, recognising quite a few of them from the recent punch-up down at the nick. They were obviously following someone. Someone who looked a lot like their Lord Jesus Christ, only without all the trimmings. No cross or crown of thorns. More like Jesus on his day off. But definitely Christ like. Next thing they knew, the soccer thugs had attacked the guy and dragged him off. So, they tailed the deed, doing up their rainbow camouflage jackets and scouring the ground for weapons. Hanging back for reinforcements. Getting ready for a final conflict with the Forces of Darkness.

* * * * *

In the distance, as Iron Maiden pumped out ‘Wicker Man’, Jesus look-a-like Earnest was spending his afternoon nailed inside a pagan effigy wondering just what the hell he was going to do.

He strained his neck another quarter of an inch, spreading his eyeballs as wide as he could to snatch a glimpse of the ground below. Through a gap in the ripped timber, he could just make out the main thug furiously scrunching up balls of paper and tossing them onto the ground. From the Main Stage, Wicker Man’s chorus announced right on cue that his time had come, and as his attacker reached inside his pocket for a box of matches, it was becoming increasingly obvious to Earnest that his time had indeed come.

“Oh, the irony of it all,” he thought. “To be burnt alive by a vicious mob all wearing the Cross of St George.”

Luckily the matches either broke or wouldn’t light, and the pallet wood was still way too damp to catch by itself.

“We need petrol,” ordered the main guy. “Go find me some petrol!”

But who were they, and why were they doing this to him? Earnest wondered. Had he met them before and somehow wronged them? The fat controller guy looked somewhat familiar.

Through a gap in the side of the Wicker Man’s timber torso he could just make out two of the thugs siphoning off petrol from someone’s transit van, filling up an old coke bottle with fuel.

And then the penny dropped, landing heads up on the situation. Weren’t these the same guys that had attacked them back at the police station? Wasn’t the large chap who was really going to town on all the Guy Fawkes night preparations the same man that he’d given a crafty Jesus Creeper kick to the bollocks back at the cop shop? Earnest’s heart sank like an England world cup dream.

“Oh shit!” he muffled into his sweaty gag, watching as a bottle of the scummiest-looking coke imaginable finally ended up in the fat controller’s hands.

He couldn’t believe his bad luck. He’d busted a gut to finally get to see the love of his life, only to be denied her once again, perhaps for all eternity, because he’d busted some bone-head’s nuts.

* * * * *

Ariadne was beside herself. Earnest had been gone way too long. He’d only popped round the corner for a quick wash and brush up, not hiked all the way to the local petrol station for a bunch of flowers. Something must have happened to him, but what?

“Earnest!” she called out. “Earnest!”

She could hear the boom of a distant rock concert, obviously the reason why there appeared to be no-one around to ask if they’d spotted him. But a small brightly coloured procession was just heading past along the main drag, so she rushed over. Gaily dressed they may have been, in their matching rainbow camouflage outfits, but their faces held a look of serious intent, and their hands held a wide variety of large wooden lumpy bits. This fruit punch definitely had some punch.

Before Ariadne could even ask them if they’d seen a man who looked a bit like Jesus, their leader, Captain Chuck, offered up an explanation for their urgency,

“They’ve taken the Lamb of God,” he said, pointing into the distance. “And they seek to roast him, yonder.”

Ariadne followed his finger. Two fields away she could just make out the top of a huge wicker man, the burning of which, like her own fire labyrinth, had had to be cancelled due to bad weather. A number of the group wore T-shirts with the name ‘Jesus’ written on them.

“Oh No!” She covered her mouth, as if suddenly finding herself standing at the foot of Calvary. Someone had taken her Earnest and intended to kill him.

* * * * *

For our Mistress of Gore, Larr, all this sudden nasty action on the ground was a welcome escape from the nauseating peace and love affair that had been going on down at the Main Stage. Even with the sudden arrival of Iron Maiden’s maniacal skeleton, Eddie the Head, stamping out all the positive vibes with a blistering apocalyptic set, the soaking public back on Drakonis had been turning away from Glastonbury Dead in droves, forcing sections of the Drako media to ask the unthinkable - ‘Is Glastonbury Dead, dead?’

But now, it was fast becoming like the Middle Ages all over again. A tantalising ritualistic torture device. A tragic love affair. At least two opposing armies drawn into mortal conflict. Was this the spark they needed to finally set those flagging ratings on fire?

Someone had mentioned something about a video being shown to the crowd, lifting the lid on their wicked programme, even showing one of their Gray security guards taking a human prisoner. But what was the point of knowing the truth when you are about to drown in an orgy of death and destruction? Did knowing that the Drako were behind it all really matter, when you’re about to get your head caved in with a large rock, or burnt alive inside a huge wicker man? Like a very nasty protracted civil war, an endless cycle of violence feeding in on itself, it was all about to become far too late for the people of Worthy Farm. Nothing, or no-one, could save them now.

* * * * *

“Urgh!” Gagged Dan Sykes, as he tried to manoeuvre his nasal passage over the two tiny slots at the front of his newly acquired alien mask. He’d always fantasised about one day storming some alien mother ship, saving the princess and winning the day. But now that the opportunity had finally come knocking, he was understandably having his doubts.

Plus, the sour stranger who’d tossed him the suit had left behind enough wet and clammy to run a holiday camp for slugs, with industrial scale levels of body odour that could incinerate your nose hairs like a grasslands fire. Just as well the tight rubber was holding it all in, he figured, because it was very doubtful that your average Extra Terrestrial smelt like a dead badger.

“Was there even such a thing as your average ET?” he thought, as he once again sneaked a tinted, partially misted up look through that crack in the wall. Close-by he could see an actual living breathing gray alien engaged in some kind of tech task, a former conspiracy theory that had become a deeply uncomfortable fact.

There was just so much that he didn’t know about them. Like, did they ever fold their arms? How did they like to relax after work? Did they ever relax at all or even sleep? Sykes had always wondered about that. You never thought of them needing to sleep. But surely even a lizard dozes off occasionally? So even though he’d spent years writing entire bookshelves about them, he had to admit to himself that he really didn’t know anything about them at all.

It helped to think about such things, if only to take his mind off whatever suicidal scheme his new-found subterranean friend, Daryl, had up his crusty sleeve. He’d been gone quite a while, looking for a way into their lair, which apparently had to be around there somewhere. Leaving Dan to just sit it out in his dark clammy suit, in a dark clammy tunnel, trying not to think about what happens next.

* * * * *

Only Iron Maiden, and a sound guy called ‘Chains’, seemed to know what happens next, at least in a musical sense. After ‘Wicker Man’, the band launched into ‘Satellite 15’ - an infectious slab of muscular hard rock if ever there was one. A ground-breaking track topped with a disorientating maelstrom of swirling distortion and laced with mad spectral vocals. In terms of their typical musical style - ‘utterly unexpected’. But for the band and their genius sound guy ‘Chains’, who used to work with Hawkwind, it was the one tune that was totally expected to completely blow the Main Stage speakers. The Glastonbury Live Aid vibe may have all been about peace, love and understanding, but Maiden still intended to wrap a couple of chords round its neck and throttle the fucking life out of it. Some scores just had to be settled.

* * * * *

Beer Gut Barry certainly had a score to settle. No-one makes him look like a complete and utter tosser in front of his boys and gets away with it. Simple as.

If this had been a stag night stunt, you would have called it way over the top. You would have said, “Best call it a night, lads.” You would have said that Earnest was hanging out with the wrong crowd. And even though none of his crew actually believed that they’d actually go ahead with it and set the smelly Jesus Freak on fire, Barry had other plans.

As Maiden’s marauding metal stalked the site like the soundtrack to a terrifying ‘Alien’ sequel, the head of the Barmy Army finished pouring petrol over the huge pile of off cuts and scrub that lay around the base of the wicker man and tossed in a lighted match.

* * * * *

“Okay,” growled Daryl the Dealer, sparking up the Clipper once again, his smashed-up face poking out of the gloom. “I’ve found a way in.”

“Shit!” said Sykes, immediately running Plan A through his mind once again - the one where he runs onto the set dressed as an alien, causing as much chaos and confusion as he can before getting wasted, while the sour stranger smashes up as much delicate instrumentation with his piece of wood as he can before he too gets wasted. It was a crap plan; ‘A’ as in ‘A total fucking nightmare’, totally ‘wasted’ on them both.

“I’ve been thinking,” said Sykes. “I’m not happy with your plan. Can’t we just set off a fire alarm or something?”

“No, we fucking can’t!” snapped the Dealer. “This isn’t secondary school!”

Beneath his understandable reluctance to get killed, Sykes had of course been gob-smacked by all the major revelations to have come out of this gruff guide and his freaky fissure. He himself had hinted at some of it in a number of blogs that he’d written over the years. Alien TV had obviously become a huge and necessary distraction for the cold-blooded masses on Drakonis, a chewing gum for the slitty reptilian eyeball, a freak show of endless pain and suffering designed to keep the lizard lumpen glued to the one spot, just watching and consuming, and getting constantly updated and programmed.

Though he hated to admit it, the strung-out stranger was right. Someone needed to go in there hard and try and trash the transmission before it killed everyone for kicks. And from behind he could feel the hand of fate shoving his rubberised shoulder like an impatient diving instructor.

“Okay,” he said reluctantly, setting in motion the most foolhardy five minutes of his life. No doubt the last five minutes of his life. “Let’s do it.”

* * * * *

“Onward Christian soldiers!” shouted Captain Chuck, rushing forward with a dozen of his best Jesus Army troopers. They were supposed to be rescuing souls from the satanic grip of an Iron Maiden gig, but instead found themselves attempting to save their Saviour, Earnest. There was no time to lose. The Bazster’s fire show was already beginning to cover the calves of the wicker man.

The riot of colourful camo jackets caught the Barmy Army completely by surprise, while their trapped Lord Jesus Christ was beginning to feel the heat above.

“You want some!?” shouted Beer Gut Barry, snatching a smouldering log from the fire and lashing out, the rest of his crew giving it a combination of expert kicks and punches and karate chops. Their filthy Cross of St George T-shirts grappling with filthy ‘I’m gunning for Jesus’ T-shirts, rolling about in the dirt, all flailing arms and legs.

“Earnest!” screamed Ariadne, seeing her nailed-up lover for the first time, and now knowing the worst. “Somebody save him!”

* * * * *

Back on Drakonis, the Soaking public absolutely loved the worst. Doorbells were ringing, and small Grays on minimum wage were delivering bargain buckets of fried abductee to lizard lairs throughout the thirteenth zodiac. Everything was about to unravel, with some chubby human providing the spark they needed for this much vaunted horror show to begin.. in Earnest.

Inside the Tor Vision Centre, Drako doyens were going into overdrive, trying to keep up with the accelerated pace of action. Glastonbury was finally coming to the party. While in a dark and distant corner of the studio floor, crouching beside a recently opened air vent, Dan Sykes was preparing to crash the party and provide his coarse cohort with as much cover and confusion as he could.

Humans had been trying to invade the Earth version of Big Brother for some time. One guy in particular actually parachuted into the Dutch Big Brother Garden in 2000. But no-one back on Drakonis or in the Tor Vision Centre would have seen anything like this before.

“Oh shit!” muttered Sykes, preparing to launch himself like a Centre Court streaker.

“Go on!” hissed the Dealer, nervously tapping his clunky four by two club. Bill Hicks had told him that the world is like a ride in an amusement park. But sometimes you just had to blow the tracks, shoot up the carousel, and rip on all the lights in the haunted house.

“Okay, here goes,” said Sykes, rushing across the studio floor like a really bad choice of costume at a charity fun run, slipping and sliding on his frog man feet, before tripping on the edge of a podium, and diving head first into the lap of a well known Drako commentator.

Back on Drakonis, soakers stopped shoveling chunks of fried abductee into their fly-trap gobs. Everyone in the studio just froze. What the fuck was that podgy looking Gray doing?!

“Fuck you!” growled Daryl the Dealer, leaping up and lumping some poor unsuspecting alien techie on the back of his bulbous. With any luck he’d get at least three more good strikes in before he was out.

“That’s for trashing my fucking van!” He lashed out, sending showers of delicate technology all over the studio floor.

“That’s for wasting my fucking puff and whizz!” He rushed forward pummeling some kind of highly advanced looking holographic generator into dust.

“And that’s for busting my fucking nose!” He struck out once again, obliterating a large and finely carved chunk of Tor Vision Centre crystal.

Our Mistress of Gore, Larr, didn’t know where to look first. One of the Gray studio hands had apparently gone ape shit, diving into the lap of a household name on prime-time TV, while a scruffy looking humanoid was smashing things up with a large piece of wood.

It was like the time the Lesbian Avengers invaded the BBC news, chaining themselves to cameras and getting pinned down by news readers. And as on that occasion, our quick-witted Dragon Lady did the only thing that she could do under the circumstance, that is to rush over and sit on the one closest to her.

Daryl the Dealer’s element of surprise would have been soon exhausted, the revolt literally held down by Larr’s muscular buttocks, if it hadn’t have been for the unforeseen side effect of one of his side swipes. Whatever he’d lumped with his piece of four by two, it had certainly hit the right spot for our trapped security guards Spike and Wesley and the rest of the captives, who suddenly found themselves able to move a muscle for the first time in ages.

“Come on!” shouted Spike, dragging himself up from the floor, aware of a large commotion going on outside. “Let’s get the hell out of here!”

* * * * *

Earnest was thinking exactly the same thing, nailed to a pagan bonfire, his mouth stuffed with some kind of disgusting sweaty cast-off. Down below, in between wafts of smoke, he could just make out a massive punch up between the Jesus and Barmy armies. Both sides laying claim to the cross.

Beer Gut Barry and his crew embodied a major part of the deep-seated ignorance that had shadowed Earnest’s own personal crusade for years; helping to form one of many might as well give up the Holy Ghost doubts that had followed him around ever since he first picked up the cross. Like prayers on the eve of war, or the ‘In God we trust’ inscription on the side of a bank note, the Bazster’s pathetic God and Country mindset was just one of the many reasons why Earnest had finally felt the need to leave his crucifix to rot away on a barren English hillside beneath the drafty husk of a long abandoned English church.

But as the flames worked their way up the wicker man’s thighs, what a time to finally turn your back on God. What a time to reject the asbestos comfort blanket of blind faith and face up to the dark finality of your own very painful and very certain death.

* * * * *

What a time to head down to Glastonbury in your mum’s flying saucer!

Throughout their many trips down to Blighty, delinquent Drakos, Vlad and Antigen, had seen a fair number of messed-up Glastonbury’s. During muddy years, it wasn’t difficult to spot the vast splat of churned-up mud from afar. This year they had been told by the Met Office to expect a rain-drenched site, but not an entire district of complete devastation. What the hell had happened to Pilton? It had become a gigantic scab on the landscape. As if it had been constantly worried and scratched off by a giant. As supporters of the anti-TV pressure group The White Dot, Ant and Vlad hadn’t looked inside a TV schedule for years. They weren’t to know that the giant in question was a giant in Drako broadcasting - their not so dear old mum, Drako Larr.

As for their two Gray hitchhikers, Fade-2 and Dor Eon, clearly none of their usual corn fields had been left unscathed. Some terrible toddler had gone and splashed thick dark brown paint all over their crisp new canvas. They’d hitched an awful long way from outer space not to demand a closer look.

* * * * *

Down below, but high above the writhing mosh pit, “Chains” was hammering the levels like a roller coaster ride, his finger poised to flick the hidden ‘Booster Switch’ that he’d stashed beneath the main consul just as soon as the guitar solo reached its peak about six and a half minutes into Satellite 15. As the lead singer screamed out ‘The Final Frontier’ several times, brandishing his microphone stick like a ceremonial sword, “Chains” prepared to take everyone way beyond the frontier into unknown territory, the mixing desk equivalent of a suicide mission; handing Iron Maiden the dubious title of the very last act ever to play the Glastonbury Main Stage.

The front man punched the air one last time, signaling Glastonbury’s final descent into decibel hell, while freshly animated security guard Spike found himself punching one of his alien counterparts in the mouth - quite possibly the one that had attacked them all in the tunnel. It felt like punching a bouncy castle. As Ex-army, Spike was used to extreme combat situations, but nothing like this X-Box style scenario, with its subterranean lairs and nasty looking aliens. This was in no way a level that you would want to get stuck on. There had to be a lift shaft round there someplace, a way out and quick, before it was Game Over for everyone.

Across the studio floor, Dan Sykes was trying to flip round to escape a highly compromising head-first dive into the lap of a major household name on Drakonis, aware that a mean-looking bouncy castle was heading his way fast - a big gray security guard obviously on a mission to hurt him.

When you think about it, it seems like such an obvious flaw in the Gray’s anatomy. Those big black slanting eyes were just asking to get given a right pop. And Dan Sykes wasn’t waiting around for the invite. He sprang forwards, throwing a terrified fist right into the path of an oncoming alien eye socket. A jab so powerful that it actually ploughed a rubber knuckle far beneath the surface of the lens, punching on into cold wet matter like a bowl of black jelly.

“Fucking hell!” he cried inside his alien mask, finding his fist stuck inside the Gray’s face. The alien bouncer every bit as keen to remove the hand as he was.

Sykes instinctively lashed out with his free fist, hitting the blinded Gray right in the middle of its massive forehead, another obvious design flaw, knocking him backwards, and Sykes’ suddenly freed up but horribly messy and sticky hand outwards.

This was of course playing very badly on Drakonis. Chunks of marinated abductee were now tumbling from scaly lips held ajar in total shock and confusion. Grays didn’t usually express themselves audibly, preferring to blink than try and work those long forgotten vocal chords. But this Gray was screaming in agony, sounding like a highly stressed steam iron - another first for Drako television, and another nail in TV hotshot Larr’s professional coffin.

Our Mistress of Gore was beaming out the wrong kind of gore. Something very foul and sticky was being scraped across the threshold of audience acceptability. The Tor Vision Centre switchboard would soon be awash with dozens of complaints. But as she straddled Daryl the Dealer, temporarily unable to prevent the mayhem that was beaming out live to millions of soakers, she felt a massive blow to the back of her scaly head. It was Wesley with the piece of four by two.

“C’mon man,” Wesley shouted, dragging the dazed dealer up by the shoulder. “Dragon ting is well nasty.”

“Don’t you know it,” said Daryl, seeing Spike and the other newly freed captives rush past, punching and kicking their way onto the studio floor.

Larr was down, but not out. Imagine Esther Rantzen with the strength of Mike Tyson crossed with a gecko. Now imagine it grabbing hold of your ankle as you try to get away.

“Shit!” screamed Wesley. “It’s got me!”

Daryl the Dealer had seen that look before, on a wildlife documentary in prison. It was the same look that a thirsty impala gives when it’s set upon by a hungry crocodile. Wesley was seconds away from being dragged under the water for good and rolled about in a marinade of mud.

They’d told Wesley that being a security guard at Glastonbury would have its ups and downs, that it wouldn’t all be wine and Stone Roses, but this was insane.

Daryl the Dealer looked at the air vent - open and not too far away. He looked at Wesley’s quivering legs and wide-eyed expression. Drako Larr was reaching up with her spare arm, seeking out a firmer grip. He looked at the air vent, once again. Surely he’d done enough? Surely, one of the key requirements of being a successful dealer was knowing when to split?

“Oh bollocks!” he snapped, kicking the TV hot shot square in the face, sending her flying backwards, her grip tearing a large chunk out of Wesley’s regulation navy blue trouser leg.

“Come on,” he urged, taking his turn to drag someone up by the shoulder. “Let’s get the fuck out of here!”

* * * * *

Earnest would have said the same thing, if his mouth wasn’t stuffed with a some kind of foul cast-off. As Iron Maiden’s front man taunted him from the Main Stage, with words like ‘stranded’ and ‘lost’, he could just make out Ariadne’s terrified face, staring up at him through the flame and smoke, pleading with the warring factions to stop the fighting and save her lover.

The entire scene was like some messed up frieze from the period of Renaissance Art. A highly unlikely reinterpretation of Christ on the Cross. With Ariadne forced into the role of Mary Magdalene, and Beer Gut Barry a rather podgy Roman centurion.

From the Main Stage, it had looked like the Greenpeace Field had caught fire, so Dr Meyer had raced up the main drag, expecting to find the Rainbow Warrior adventure playground engulfed in flame, her co-workers and volunteers desperately trying to put it out. But as she got nearer she realised that it was the wicker man that was burning, with someone apparently trapped inside.

“They’ve taken my Earnest,” Ariadne cried, rushing up to Suzie Meyer, pointing up to just above the rapidly expanding and rudely undulating mass of smoke and fire. “Please save him!”

“That is Earnest?” Suzie asked, wiping the smoke from her eyes. “Jesus Earnest?”

“Yes,” said Ariadne. “He likes to dress up like Jesus.”

It had been one of the first things that Ariadne had noticed about him. How they’d laughed when she cried out “God!” during that first amazing night on the floor of her tipi.

“What’s he doing up there?” shouted Suzie, trying to make herself heard above the roaring flame.

“That man is trying to kill him,” said Ariadne, pointing towards Beer Gut Barry, who was leering and swigging beer, and still waving his smouldering log in the air.

If something drastic wasn’t done to save him, and fast, Earnest was going to become just another slice of miracle toast. But with intense flame and billowing smoke everywhere, and at least ten metres of tough climbing to get through, finding a way through Beer Gut Barry’s scorched Earth policy wasn’t going to be easy.

With Greenpeace, you kind of know what you’re going to get. The clue’s in the title. It’s Green.. And it’s peaceful. What happened next was so out of touch with Greenpeace’s core values, that it was like this particular rainbow warrior had become imbued with the spirit and rage of the Celtic Warrior Queen, Boudicca. Green peace, she was not. She could see the extreme danger that Earnest was in, and who was largely responsible for his predicament. She immediately rushed in, her white Greenpeace boiler suit boiling over with righteous indignation and smacked the Fat Controller soundly across the chops with the palm of her hand, shoving his can of commandeered Red Stripe deep into the far reaches of his palate.

“Good-bye to bad rubbish,” she said, as the top boy belly flopped into a large pile of bin bags, a broken tooth and bloody spittle sent scurrying across his bull dog spirit.

Dr Meyer was a brilliant climber, highly experienced in the art of abseiling down the side of giant cooling towers and corrupt ministries. Shinning up a huge wicker man should have been a piece of cake. But this cake had already been in the oven for way too long. The Bazster’s fire show was already licking at the wicker man’s groin area, devouring pallet-sized chunks of wooden manhood just a few feet beneath Earnest’s gagged reflexes. Luckily, someone had left a rope dangling from the upper torso.

“Please save him!” pleaded Ariadne, grabbing hold of her arm.

“I’ll try my best,” said the Doctor, trying to judge the best way to proceed. The end of the rope had already caught fire.

“Oh, and you’re going to need this,” Ariadne said, holding out a claw hammer.

“Thanks,” smiled Suzie, tucking the hammer inside her boiler suit.

As she launched herself at the dangling rope, and Iron Maiden’s ‘Satellite 15’ prepared to break up on entry into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Infamy, there was this huge cosmic crash - an audio collision the size of a runaway train through a skyscraper’s window. Over towards the Tor a massive chunk of shattered sky came tumbling down in a blizzard of pulverised pane and glistening shard. The Ground Zero of a stray cricket ball through a giant grumpy pensioner’s window.

The band just froze, abandoning all that remained of that epic guitar solo, denying the sound guy Chains’ hidden ‘Booster Switch’ finger, which had been just two chords away from tearing every speaker and melting every amp within a hundred yards.

A massive metal lozenge had ram-raided the side of the Glastonbury goldfish bowl experience obliterating the illusion of nothingness, and busting a huge hole in the sky, leaving a bullet hole like rupture lined with scores of giant cracks.

We’ve all done it, I suppose. Run into a huge patio window. Felt that sense of total bewilderment as the air seems to lash out at you, lay you out with the ultimate sucker punch. What a fool you feel when you finally realise what has happened. Well, stone-head Drako teens, Vlad and Antigen, had just done it in their mum’s flying saucer.

“Oh shit!” blinked Dor Eon, the alien hitch-hiker come designated driver, as Ant and Vlad ploughed their reptilian faces into the dash board, and Fade-2’s latest seven skinner creation hurtled into space like a hash meteorite shower.

Vlad and Antigen’s closer look had inadvertently pulled the plug on their mother, Drako Larr’s, evil experiment in family entertainment; forcing the channel to hastily throw up a test card, leaving behind a totally perplexed soaking public back on Drakonis to either stare into space, reach for the remote, or search about for stray chunks of fried abductee down the back of the sofa.

Quite a number of festival goers flung themselves to the ground in total shock and terror. Those who could run for their lives, ran like crazy, screaming and shouting - a stampeding herd of banshees bursting into Babylon. While Star and Nick from the band Solar Warrior, like many others, just stood there transfixed, unable to move.

Reg, the former owner of Greased Lightning Burgers, felt a warm trickle down the side of his inner thigh. He’d been bursting for quite a while, and this terrifying spectacle had turned the inside of his jeans into a gent’s urinal.

Some of the Maiden faithful started cheering and clapping, thinking this was part of Maiden’s set, a Pink Floyd type stunt, the Satellite 15 in question, crash landing right on cue and smashing into the perimeter fence.

Yvette, the now wingless angel from Essex, had been trying to escape the sweaty, leathery clinch of the Maiden gig for some time, and actually gave a sigh of relief.

“What the hell was that!?” said Chief Inspector Ash, staring straight at Bumstead, who’s State of Emergency Plan now seemed to be in a constant state of emergency. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“That, my friend, is the explosive birth of spiritual consciousness,” smiled Soodha, spinning round to share his big bang theory with the others. “Behold, the explosive birth of spiritual consciousness!” He smiled and clapped, sending the temple into another round of Hari Ramas.

Sasha Lush looked at her small camcorder, a chipped fingernail poised over the REC button. But what was the point? Television was all about watching things from the comfort of your own living room. But would anyone ever be that comfortable again?

Maiden’s front man just stood there smiling, watching as another massive section of Drako windshield crashed to the ground. “Chains” was a legend. Iron Maiden had only gone and busted the sky!

“Oh my God!” mumbled Earnest, with the best view of all.

The hand-to-hand combat down below had suddenly ceased, each bloodied soccer thug or bruised Jesus Army trooper just standing there in awe as another chunk of sky sheared off and fell to the ground.

The perfect moment for Daryl the Dealer to suddenly poke his head up from below the ground, exiting the side of the Tor like a squeezed blackhead, his hands and knees getting ripped apart on the many tons of shattered glass that now lay all about. Wesley following on close behind, flapping about on the ground like stranded goldfish, having taken all he had left to climb out of the Tor to safety. Against all the odds, they had both escaped the evil clutches of the Drako. Or had they?

Wesley looked up from his panting fit and gave a little yelp. There in the distance, buried into the side of the festival’s giant perimeter fence like the end of a really bad night out, was a huge UFO, a hundred yards or so from the front of the Pyramid Stage, surrounded by thousands of stunned onlookers. A huge burning wicker man in the far distance, belching out massive clouds of smoke.

“Oh no!” said Mathew Beavis, watching from the Main Stage. The police and the local authorities had been busting his balls for years over that damn fence. He’d probably spent a solid year of his life arguing over its dimensions and cost and maintenance. Hundreds of people had attempted to climb it or even tunnel under it, but only a handful had managed to breach it. Less than an hour ago he’d learnt that little green men had been behind the trashing of his beloved Worthy Farm, and now one of them had clearly overshot the main car park and ploughed into the side of the Main Stage arena.

“Hello Earnest,” said Dr Meyer, dangling precariously from one of the wicker man’s shoulders. “I’ll get you out of here just as soon as I can.” She reached in and removed Earnest’s gag.

“Oh, thank God!” sighed Ariadne down below, her knees buckling under the stress of it all. Captain Chuck just managing to catch her by the elbow.

“Thank you,” said Earnest, delighted to see a friendly face, and desperate to connect with Ariadne to let her know that he was okay.

In the distance, more and more people were beginning to kneel down in front of this unidentified flying gate crasher. Some were crossing themselves. Some were throwing up their arms in wild exaltation. While some terrified souls were going all Mecca-like on this other worldly mechanisation.

“What is it?” asked Suzie, seeing a look of profound sorrow in Earnest’s eyes, as she tried to claw hammer his wooden straight jacket apart.

“Meet the new boss,” said Earnest, nodding into the distance. “Same as the Old Boss.”

Dr Meyer looked over her shoulder.

“Oh my god!” she cried, taking in the whole crazy scene.

“What the fuck are they doing?” gargled Antigen, his young Drako lungs ruined after days of smoking far out intergalactic weed. Through his mother’s majorly cracked front windscreen, he could hear a cacophony of wretched Hail Mary’s, fearful Allahu Akbars, and desperate Oms.

“It must be some kind of greeting,” Vlad explained, staggering about like the worst hangover in living memory, trying his best not to bleed blue Drako blood all over his mum’s dashboard.

How quickly people had been willing to bow down to the mystery of this one new and awesome sky god. It was like Sumeria all over again. The first contact that the entire human race had been waiting for, for a very long time, had finally arrived, with Vlad and Antigen’s crippled ride fast becoming a kind of crashed Extra Terrestrial pope mobile. And of course, no papal visit would be complete without a local song and dance routine.

“Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna

Krishna Krishna’ Hare Hare

Hare Rama, Hare Rama

Rama Rama, Hare Hare.”

There would be no better opportunity for Glastonbury’s entire Krishna movement to launch a stage invasion, Hari Ram-raiding their way up to the main stage, clapping and dancing and singing that former Czechoslovakian number one.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” said DJ Nimbles, watching from the now largely abandoned mosh pit. Big Hair, Iron Maiden, and now this!

But whatever bliss and joy the Temple was hoping to generate was soon extinguished.

“Fuck me!” said Soodha, reverting back to becoming plain old ASBO Terry from Dudley, properly seeing the carnage for the first time.

In the bruised and battered distance, large sections of Drako lens were still collapsing to the ground, everyone had their backs to the stage. Not even Inspector Bumstead could be bothered to tell the Krishnas to piss off. The Temple’s little prayer to God was being completely upstaged by a crashed UFO, just sitting there letting off steam. Oxford Street, with all its busy shoppers, was bad enough, but no one could compete with this.

Even “Chains” had left the sound booth to see what all the fuss was about, heading towards a fierce debate that would rage down the ages. Was it Iron Maiden and their legendary sound guy who took this CASE OF EMERGENCY, and broke the glass into about a quadrillion-pieces? Or was it our Empress of Evil’s stolen ride driven by her delinquent brood, crashing onto the show like a misfired Strongbow commercial?

“I guess we’d better go and say hello,” blinked Dor Eon, staring out at this great steel pyramid surrounded by thousands of stunned earthlings.

“I guess,” Blinked Fade-2, picking up bits of hash from the floor of the flight deck. “But let’s skin up first.”

With all the Hail Mary’s, Allahu Akbars, and Oms reaching fever pitch, each prayer and chant jostling to claim the new sky God for their own, and the craft’s main exit having been buried under tons of Worthy Farm soil, Vlad finally put a chair through his mum’s windscreen, adding to the massive hole that they’d already punched in the middle of her TV schedule.

Poor old Larr. This was far worse than someone stepping on your smart phone or crunching the screen of your laptop. All the real time player monitors within the Tor Vision Centre had been punched out with vast and irregular and deeply troubling sections of blackness. Her wicked window on the world had been smashed into a zillion pixels of High Definition nothingness, as if someone had taken this highly ingenious example of cutting edge soaking and soaked it from head to scaly tail in crude oil.

The test card had blinded Drakonis to what was going on, but now the studio itself had lost sight of the situation. But how? No human technology, no missile or aircraft, could have breached the show’s defences. She quickly padded over to a bank of corrupted screens, where there was nothing to see but a few tiny remnants of widescreen woe - a hint of smoke here, a slither of panic there. There, at the far extreme of one huge block of black Tetris, she saw it. The edge of some kind of huge lozenge-shaped craft. No human technology, but alien. Something that wasn’t there a few Earth minutes ago. And judging by what she could see by the shape, very similar to her own make of spaceship back on Drakonis.

Down at the Pyramid Stage, everyone grew silent. Something was emerging from the craft. Tens of thousands of famished festival goers were watching with bated breath - Reg from Greased Lightning Burgers, Star and Nick from the band Solar Warrior, Yvette from Essex, the landowner, the top cop and the bent cop, all staring at this major mystery surprise guest. Fliss, her brother Croppie Pete, and Clash Man Keith, all about to meet a creature from another planet, some kind of intelligent life form, though clearly not a decent driver. Anyone who had ever raved the night away, finally seeing the influence behind generation after generation of alien-themed party backdrops and drug paraphernalia, finally and most trippily made alien flesh. Everyone now having to reinterpret and reframe everything they thought they knew about life and the universe.

Antigen went out first, a party head Drako looking very much the worst for wear, slipping down the side of his mum’s flying saucer like a play park slide, and landing beside a half-eaten falafel and a long-abandoned sleeping bag. His bad brood brother, Vlad, following on close behind, holding a bloody tissue over the two vertical slits that passed as a nose on his young reptilian face. Then Dor-Eon, the little Gray hitchhiker, looking bashful and tiny beside his two partners in party crime.

Finally Fade-2, a recently built seven-skinner poking out from his tiny little extra-terrestrial mouth - a peace pipe of sorts, looking to get sparked up at the first sign of genuine human warmth and understanding.

“Good-evening Glastonbury,” he blinked, taking one small step for such a wee young alien, but a giant leap for all humankind. Stepping up to the ultimate planetary alignment, just in front of the Pyramid stage.

The End.. of the Beginning.

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