Buskers

Fleet street, Dublin 2

Good citizens I speak to you tonight as a broken, shamed man. Bereft of my journalistic credibility and, nay, more than that: maybe even my manhood itself. In the course of many years I have performed many dark and terrible deeds in the many dark and terrible places in the service of the "greater good". Justifying these reckless, extravagant excesses; the mountains of illicit substances, the acts of extreme violence, the bowsies, whoors, thieves and jarveys endured on long nights of bleak savagery. Always there was an overweening seed of objectivity there somewhere. No matter how outrageous the gig, it could always be justified. But no more.

It was armed these defining principles and long years of experience that I approached my latest assignment. Looming out of the darkness, bathed in a præternatural eerie glow I beheld the Mammon-spawn filing throught the hellmouth: Buskers.

Buskers: the very name conjures up those tuneless wharf rats bashing out brutalised versions of the Gypsy Kings and navel-gazing Britpop excrement. I steeled myself. "You can do this, you can do this. You are a strong and powerful man. You can succeed. YOU WILL PREVAIL!" I swallowed my fear, tasted copper on my tongue, and entered the belly of the beast...

Editor's note

What follows is a heavily edited account of the Gurrier's movements and decipherable notes over the following 12 hours. It appears he was overwhelmed by fear and loathing soon after entering this establishment and the true story of that night may never be known. The Gurrier himself claims to remember nothing of subsequent events, bar vague images and sense memories. The bare facts of the tale are this. Sometime between 11pm and 11.15pm the Gurrier entered the premises known as Buskers on Fleet street. At 10.30am the following morning he was found wandering naked and babbling on Bray Head. Most of the hair seemed to have been burned or blasted from his body by an incredible force and in his hands he clutched the bloody, muck-encrusted notes from which we pieced together the proceeding narrative. Following intensive courses of electro-shock therapy and several highly experimental drug combinations he could provide us with only a madman’s ravings and that hollow-eyed pitiless stare.

Editor's further note

On the same night of the Gurrier’s strange and terrible ordeal there were reports by several Bray citizens of strange lights in the sky and chilling manlike screams piercing the night, terrifying family pets and curdling the milk. The Bray Examiner published a fuzzy black and white image of vague humanoid figures carrying what appear to be torches and a raised dais. Further investigations by this office have turned up nothing but surly taciturn locals and cries of "We didn’t burn Him! It was the Filthy!", followed by barely veiled threats to leave town.

What all this means is anyones guess. Was the Gurrier involved in some bizarre occult ritual? Was he the victim of a government conspiracy to cover up the existence of alien/human hybrids in Dublin’s feral outer limits? Or are the strange and terrible goings-on in Buskers part of some larger mystery? Is it really a gateway to the nether world used by the minions of Satan to possess the weak minded souls who frequent it? Or is the old Dublin tale true that Brendan Behan once uttered a curse so foul, so vulgar, so tasteless, odious and indecent regarding the Blessed Virgin that the very gates of hell opened up and spewed their contents onto unhappy Fleet Street, forever poisoning the ground on which it lay? Perhaps we will never know. But remember gentle reader you have been warned. If a creature as twisted, warped and inhuman as The Gurrier could be reduced to a trembling, catatonic, vegetable then step lightly agus bí curamach...

Transcript begins

Warm, fetid rush of air hits as you step through the portal of evil. Before me a vista from Bosch. B_odies twisting and wriwriwri writhing to a vast thumping beat. Scrotum tightening bass creeping up my legs, spine juddering from ultrasonic waves. The first notes then a deluge, aural effluent. "Hit me ^baby one more time, yeah, yeah". Nausea, wave after crippling wave. Weakening, must have refreshment. Approach the bar, the bar, oh Jesus. Humping, shunting creatures. Ordure and elbows, dribbling gurning faces. I’m through the ceixxx crush. There a barman! Pint. A g g g g glass xxxxxxx appears, money exchanged. Transaction over I view the purchase. Pale and insipid, I taste...the hell continues. Turn, inspect the place...must keep... meatmeatmeatmeat objectivity. Cheap shabby ^{interior done up} to look like the _{streets of Dublin}, the irony... Halter tops I did not think there was so[unintelligible]... Ben Sherman, was there ever a shirtmaker to match you? Tables straining under immense quantities of lager and Bacardi breezers...Sickly sweet odour of industrial strength whore horse alcohol and sin synthetic chemical strawberry clings to the air...Choloroforms the senses...Higher brain functions slipping away... Lizard brain taking over...The dancefloor...Oh no. Look at them...[unintelligible]They see me, the squirming,[unintelligible]fleshpots, blurring vision, the xxfnordxxx music...slamming into me ahhhh they’ve got me! Merciful Hour! Mammy, MAMMY!! XXXXXXX

Transcript ends