Resident Evil

Its 05:00am and about 5 degrees Celsius. Cruising along in a pair of shorts, a ripped shirt and no shoes while sitting on the fuel tank on my motorbike. The road looks like a lane of black marshmallows, with the trees swaying from side to side like in the Jungle Book movie, as we head back to school to drop off the Fender Strata PA system.

Dane’s house parties were always so diverse. He was one of those guys that is friends with everyone at school and somehow friends with everyone in every other school as well. The school we went to was quite small and so you ended up surrounded by the same people day in and day out – Dane was our exit.

“My parents are away for the weekend so let’s do this” he says and we start scheming. “We will need a sound system” says Ryan and with an Irish charm he convinces us to steal the schools outdoor PA system. This thing is a Fender Strata system worth more than my year tuition. The speakers clamp onto the amplifier which is encased into the control mixer. It forms a sort of egg shaped device about the size and weight of a scooter. Ryan diverted the principal’s attention while I sneaked the pod out from the assembly hall and into the back of my car. Sound system – Check.

“What about booze” Brendan says to which Greg and I both realise that out life skills will come in handy here. Greg arranged a few bottles of brandy and I loaded up a few cases of Black Label quarts. It’s Friday night and we all meet up at Danes place to get the place set up for a massive party on the Saturday. I got the punch ready and Ryan set up the sound system. Brendan worked on the tables and chairs and Dane cleared the garden Wendy hut out. Yes, the little wooden Wendy hut. No idea why but he did it will a massive grin on his face. “So nobody will have to go inside. I will lock the door and that’s it” said Dane. His Mom collected dolls and wind chimes in the hundreds and they were all precariously staged all over the house. So much so that when Dane gets home from a boozer he would just sleep outside until he was sober enough to circumnavigate the hallways.

Dodgy Doug Punch:

         1) First cut the fruit. If you make punch like we do then you don’t want to be handling knives at the end. Apples, pineapples and peaches work well to absorb the liquor and retain firmness. About 2 kg of fruit. Sour worms and wine gums do frikken awesome here as well.

         2) Add two bottles of cane spirit to the fruit mix and allow it to stand for 15 minutes. Have a few shooters while you are at it. No, not straight cane you nutter…make a potent cane mixer with Sparberry and pour that into shooter glasses.

         3) The base of any good punch is not juice. Juice is for the ladies. A good punch should have a nice, cheap and sweet rose wine. Lots of it. 5 litre pap sack does the trick.

         4) Boil up a cup of water that would be used to dissolve 5 heaped table spoons of sugar. Add the dissolved mixture into the punch.

         5) Store that overnight.

         6) 30 minutes before your mates arrive throw in 6 litres of sparkling soda water for fizz and a bag of ice.

        7)  If your mates are like mine then add in 250ml of Gin. Gin does to Cane what petrol does to a smouldering fire. Use with caution and make sure your property is well insured. Stuff is evil.

The party gets going. My punch is a hit with the ladies (I left out the Gin this time) and the cold beers are going down like a legend. The pool party was pretty intense with the ladies going mental and the guys all having a good time. Somebody found the kitchen keys and Danes house was slightly raided but it was all going quite well late into the night. At around 22:00 when I ran out of beers I decided to sip away on the punch to absorb some sugar. I poured Greg and Ryan a cup as we sat there in the marvel of our party creation. The party was really banging along well. Sip…sip sip…ah kak. Greg’s face went cold as he looked up at me in the realisation…I did put gin in this.

It got out of hand.  Dane kicked off his Wendy House Hot Box, I started to suckle directly on a bottle of brandy, the Fender was on full tilt and Greg had disappeared. Chucky – whom is well known for being an unstable bloke with a lot of guns – come running up to me and he is flaming-furious. 

“Where the eff is Greg? He took off with some chick on my motorbike like 30 minutes ago”. Oh poo. I pulled out my phone to call him while I stumbled to the nearby wall to support myself and ZAP! My world got smaller, my brain felt like it was oozing out of my ears as I went cross eyed and collapsed.

I woke up lying on the floor, brandy bottle in hand and smelling of burning hair. What happened? My neck muscles were throbbing and I had two burn marks just above my left ear. I had no idea how long I was out for but it felt like hours. I started to giggle and sway myself back up when I realised I had woken up to desolation. Nobody. I sat up, stood up and hobbled towards the PA system which was just running static. What happened to the music?  

I knocked on the Bong Hut but it was empty. Where is everybody? I stumbled up the PA system and turned it off…silence. Starting to get freaked out a little here. I was tripping over bottles and garden gnomes as I walked up the pathway that runs adjacent to the house and into the kitchen. The door as jammed shut but I could climb over the top half and get into the house. They are all gone.

The kitchen light was on, the stove top was burning red and the ceiling fan was making the most unnerving scratching sound as it spun slowly around with fishnet stockings hanging from it. “Hello?” I shouted down the dark corridor with all the collectable dolls on the walls…I felt them staring at me. A slight breeze flowed from the top of the passageway… Ting, tingle, ting as the wind chimes softly filled the empty space with sounds… I felt the darkness growing, it got deeper and darker like thick mist rolling towards me. I felt a chill down my spine and then…

“What’s that?” I heard a noise coming from the main gate. “People arguing?” I fell out and over the stable door and fumbled up to the gates… People!

Turns out Greg has dropped Chuky’s brand new motorbike and this had drawn the crowd. The bike was a little scratched and the chick on the back had bits missing from her legs. Greg was a little wobbly but looking okay as he, and the crowd, all stared at Chucky waiting for the eruption of mental unstableness.  

It didn’t happen, they shook hands, shared a brandy, we all survived and the sun cracked on the lights for us in awe of the destruction in the back yard. I had to get the PA system back before the principal arrived for the Sunday sports day and with my car keys in some mystical hole somewhere I had to use my motorbike. I sat on the tank, Sipho sat on the tail light and we perched the PA system in between us. I controlled the steering and clutch while Sipho handled the gears and braking. I couldn’t find my shoes and my shirt was in tatters. It’s a 15km journey to school, through the middle of town on church Sunday. If looks could kill.

As the stories came out at school the following Monday it turns out when I was leaning against the wall I had rested my frikken head against the security electric fencing which in turn delivered a gazillion volts through my noggin. Apparently I pulled off a pretty impressive self KO with the brandy bottle on my way down.