It was a dark and stormy night…
No, seriously, it was fucking bucketing and the clock had just struck twelve. It
had been a solid 48 hours of torrential rain and the pitter patter was more
akin to gunshots in her ears. This was supposed to be Splendour in the Grass,
Australia’s most popular and acclaimed music festival, pulling in headliners for
the weekend such as the Gorillaz, the Strokes and Tyler, the Creator. But, the
first day had been cancelled and if the rain held up it was likely that the tens
of thousands of people camping in the flooded fields would be trapped here,
without an iota of music that they had paid for, their feet sinking deeper with
every step of the way. Multi-coloured pastel flags billowed in the wind, tarps struggled
with the pooling water and gumboots did their worst with the dirty sludge that
covered every inch of the festival grounds. So far, it had been a totally
miserable start.
Always one to try and keep morale
high, Lottie held three beer cans beneath a flapping poncho, trudging her way
from the bar through ankle deep mud. Her focus was directed to controlling her
balance as the mud stuck like glue to her gumboots, the moving mass of bodies
all around her slipping and sliding as they made their way through the path
most walkable.
Shivering under the tent of a Mexican
food truck were her two friends, the lovebirds – June and Kirk, their arms
folded and their expression blank and defeated. “What’s got you two looking so
incredibly filled with joy?” She handed out the beers.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I
told you,” June said.
Kirk took a swig. “I never want
to hear the sound of rain again.”
“It’s pretty fucked.” Lottie
looked back at the bleak view. A smile was a rare occurrence these days as
people dealt with the grim reality of a flooded campsite, there was no escape
from the wet and cold when even your sleeping bag was damp, no one was equipped
to deal with the amount of rain that had hammered the parkland grounds. But
fuck if she’d let that ruin the weekend they had waited years for, they had to
make the most of it. “Come on, let’s go Tipi forest.”
“The ground is gonna be fucked,”
Kirk said.
“Would you rather sit around our
campsite where it’s equally fucked and have no fun?”
“You make a good point.” June
sipped the beer clutched between her hands.
Lottie knocked back her drink,
encouraging her friends to do so. Kirk didn’t take long but June struggled with
the drink, taking not two, not three but four long and excruciating gulps, her
face screwing with each successive sip. “Guh. I hate beer,” she burped.
The trio, led by Lottie, marched through
the crowds, helping each other where the mud became particularly slippery, and whispering
nothing but prayers that their feet would somehow stay dry within the cold
confines of their gumboots. As they neared the Tipi forest, the thumping bass
of electronic rave music rattled up their legs, neon purple and pink lights
flashed and flickered with intent to the music, lighting up the bouncing heads
of the dancing crowd. They were like moths to a flame, the prospect of a mosh
and finally, a bit of fun, enough to forget how muddy it was for a moment.
Lottie ran in, bumping bodies and
pushing her way to the front, Kirk not far behind, holding June’s hand as she
screamed with joy to the chaos they had joined. In an instant, they were amongst
the bouncing mosh, laughing and pushing while they headbanged with strangers. Rain
continued to bucket down, making the mud watery and splashing up their legs.
While sucking on her vape, Lottie
pulled her phone to capture a moment between June and Kirk as they stared in each-other’s
eyes while shouting the lyrics to a popular house track. She lowered the selfie
to her ecstatic face, whipping her tongue back and forth as smoke steamed out
her nostrils. She was about to stop recording when a large shirtless (are you
fucking crazy dude?) guy smashed into her side, and her phone flew out of her
hands, splattering into the mud below.
“You fuckin’ idiot!” She shouted
and dropped to a squat, searching through the brown water.
Kirk noticed her distress and
yelled above the music. “What’s wrong?!”
“My fucking phone!”
June gasped and immediately
dropped to help her, Kirk doing his best to push anyone away that was too drunk
and fucked up to notice the girls. Lottie felt her hand grasp something solid
and fished out a shape that was definitely the size of an iPhone, but
with a lovely caking of mud instead of her vibrant phone case. She wiped it
against her poncho, doing her best to clean the screen, the pounding music
making this seem like a much more stressful experience than it needed to be. It
was no use, no matter how many times she pressed the side button, her phone
wasn’t turning on. Internally, she groaned, of course it had to be her to lose
her phone, another thing to add to the long, long list of shit that had gone
wrong for the festival.
“Fuck it,” she said to her
friends and flung the dirty phone over her shoulder to splatter into the mud at
some other groups feet. “Who gives a shit.”
“Yeah baby!” June brought her own
phone out and threw it back into the crowd. A grand smile on her face the whole
time as she grabbed her friends shoulder and they began to jump with a manic
energy to the music, both somehow relishing in cutting off their only
connection to reality, only something someone as sleep deprived as they could
do.
Kirk knew June would curse herself
for it tomorrow, but at least for now, they were having a good time. He joined
their little circle and danced along too.
***
Hours had passed since they had
entered the Tipi forest, and now at some unknown time in the early hours of the
morning, they trudged down a seemingly never-ending dirt road to their campsite.
The path dropped down to muddy puddles on either side and flooded campsites
stretched on for as far as the eye could see. Every now and then they’d pass a
group kicking on, their feet sinking into mud as they lounged in their camping
chairs, the morale still high for some.
“Do you see those lights in the
sky,” Lottie said to June, “or am I tripping balls.”
“Oooh, they’re pretty,” June
said.
Kirk craned his neck to watch the
dark cloud cover, the rain had eased into a momentary drizzle that allowed the
sky to be seen. He could see what they were talking about, three circular white
lights, larger than stars and unmoving amongst the clouds, he’d never seen
anything like it. “It’s not from the festival is it?” On the previous night,
spotlights had been shooting out from the festival like giant beams of light to
illuminate spots in the sky. That was the only explanation, but it didn’t
really explain why these three lights were unmoving and admittedly much
brighter than the ones from the festival.
“Yeah, probably,” Lottie said,
she too couldn’t shake how odd it was and convinced herself of the same conclusion
that Kirk had.
June continued to stare at the
lights, her eyes wide in wonder at the beautiful lightshow, she wondered what
it could be. Unlike the other two, she liked to resort to magic in the face of
logic, always more ready to believe the whimsical explanation compared to the
one that made the most sense. Maybe it was aliens or a god coming to life, a
giant insect with glowing eyes or someone shining a cryptic signal into the
clouds, her mind racing at any and all possibilities.
The rain had come back to make
the rest of their walk as unbearable as the start had been, their tents only a
few landmarks away, they had to use the spread-out toilet blocks to navigate the
labyrinthian campsite, certain pathways completely cut off from the flooding
water. After last night when they had strayed off path and added an extra thirty
minutes to the end of their night, they made sure to follow the correct path
home, jokingly reminding each other every five minutes which way it was. Still riding
the high from a night full of dancing.
“We’re finally hooome,” June cooed
to the stars, slumping into her camp chair.
“My feet are fucking dying man,”
Lottie followed her actions, if only she could take her boots off, but then
where would she put them? The mud? Or maybe that mud! Or perhaps some of that
mud over there? There was so much fucking mud.
Kirk picked up an open box of Nutri-Grain
and started snacking on the cereal. “Anyone got any charge?”
“My phone’s out,” June said.
Lottie laughed. “Your phone is
gone idiot.”
She joined her friend laughing,
the situation so absurd that any form of responsibility had gone out the window,
every issue only a problem to worry about in the future while they focused
their attention on dealing with the pooling water in their tents.
“This really is the trenches huh,”
Kirk stepped over rubbish buried in mud, every campsite blown apart so far past
the point of care, it was a pointless endeavour to try and keep clean. “You
guys wanna do ket ‘til we don’t feel wet and then go to sleep?”
“Nice rhyming babe.”
“I’m in.”
And that’s how the rest of the night
went, letting their bodies go numb and melt into their camp chairs, their feet
no longer feeling the freezing cold. They stumbled to their tents, June and
Kirk in a two-person tent purchased only last weekend and Lottie in a swag that
was half in a puddle. Sighing as they zipped themselves into a damp slumber.
Hours passed, only the distant murmurs
of groups kicking it into the early, early hours of the morning could be heard
over the pre-dawn quiet. Right before the sun peaked over the dull orange horizon,
the three beaming lights above the festival began to rotate, slowly at first,
like enormous machinery coming into motion. Droning thunder rumbled across the
parklands, rippling tents and blowing loose items away. Another round of
thunder as three bright flashes blinded everyone in its vicinity. Anyone awake
suddenly forced unconscious.
And now, unbeknownst to a single
soul, a new dynamic had been inflicted among those present. A rude awakening
for some, and nothing more than a sense of primal pleasure for others. For now,
the mud was the least of their worries.