The Rockin' Rodents

St. Jerry Lee Mouse

Ariana was right. Convinced that he was high and walking the streets of Dublin at night, Ger's imagination went to work. His mind goaded by that imagination began to do backflips over logic. Like an Indian shaman on a spirit quest in a steam hut, he began to mentally fly through his psyche.

Six hours on a train.

Six o'clock when they started the concert.

They played to a whole six People.

They'd traveled six hours with their gear. They'd come all the way from the border to play a concert in a grimy old bar in Dublin. Six hours to play for six people, at six o clock.

Six. Six. Six.

The number of the beast.

Great.

The Iron Maiden song now blared in his headphones.

"I left alone, my mind was blank
I needed time to think to get the memories from my mind"

The Number of the Beast howled in his head, as he wandered lost and desolate, and as a high as a kite on speed, or so he thought.
He meandered through the almost empty streets of Dublin, in the early hours of the morning.

Occasional taxis passed by, like patrolling Hyenas, looking for the last of the vampires spilling out of bars and clubs, and hopefully not vomit into the back of their cars.

The song swung into high gear. Even though the haze was caused by the speed, which was, in fact, the effect of a sugar rush from a tic-tac dissolved in soda and lime and an overactive imagination, he couldn't escape the questions.

Was he running away from their bass player Ariana and her drug shenanigans? Or the disaster of a concert they'd played in that grubby little bar? Or his problems at home?

The truth was he'd known that the concert was a bad idea. He'd known it before they'd lugged their instruments onto the train, but he just wanted to run away. Away from his mother's snow globe brokenness. Away from his father's absence.

His dream to be a musician had never seemed further away than now.

"Maybe that's all it ever was," he thought to himself as he continued walking. He tried to be more optimistic and convince himself that even The Rolling Stones had once played to an almost empty bar, on a Monday, at happy hour, to a bunch of drunken geriatrics. In fact, judging by the average age of the audience it might have been the same six people.

It had been worse than the school concert a couple of years ago when Johnny had united them under their first incarnation as a rock group, Johnny Keeling and the Fruit Nuts. At least this time the audience hadn't thrown anything.

Those teachers could be brutal.

He wondered about how he would feel returning to Ballycraicsdown, the sleepy one-horse town, with his tail between his legs. The cost of the train and hostel alone had wiped out his small savings. Ari and Johnny would be heading off to University after the Summer, and he'd be stuck back at home with a floundering music shop and his Ma.

His mother, whose statue silhouette haunted the kitchen, cigarette in hand, bleeding smoke since dad had left late in the night. Ger buried that memory as quickly as he could. He didn't want to think about it
He could hear Bruce Dickinson as he sang the words, full of dramatic force and power. The lyrics hit him hard and cold.

The night was black, was no use holding back
'Cause I just had to see, was someone watching me?
In the mist, dark figures move and twist
Was all this for real or just some kind of hell?