Runner-up: ‘Frequency’ by Niall Kitson

And after all that it’s on a beach.

A secret somewhere guarded by a wonky chain link fence and a speed freak holding sign that says ‘you must be at least this high to enter’. He shines a light in your face and sputters out some directions in the local brogue. Cletus the Monged here isn’t making any sense but you’d have to try really hard not to reach your final destination. Not at this volume, at this hour, with this crowd. Monmouth Beach is windswept and cold as fuck but--for one night only--it’s playing host to five ton of yokeheads, a bodged-together stage, and a sound system on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

And you’re in the middle of it. Right here. Right now. You and the lads on site courtesy of a GPS code tapped into your phone mere hours ago by a woman whose energy you dug enough to make a three-hour road over.

The boys pick a vantage point. They want a view, a spot to drink, bop their heads and flick lit cigarette ends onto the crowd. To them like it’s like rewatching security footage from a night at the Temple circa 1994. Fuck that nostalgia. You’re coming up again and it’s all about that 120bpm dead zone pulse. Lights sweep over bodies with a tribal pound, pound, pound of soft bass. The crowd is wild for it. You’re wild for it. You’re like Keith Flint, petty arsonist first class, pierced, dyed and inked up in the underground. (RIP my brother in E.) Hyperalert to the breakbeat, the attacking strobe lights, the girl on stage behind the decks, blonde dreadlocks peeking out from under a hoodie. She raises a fist as the sound drops and builds to a frenzy. The crowd roars in approval. She sucks up the love by throwing a shape then feeds it all back with still harder, faster beats for you to thrive on. Watching her makes you...

Scene missing.

And it doesn’t ever stop. How long has this track been going on for? Try to think straight. Fight the buzz for one moment to get your bearings. Your boys are missing from their spot. Never mind, you’re well able survive on your own. You’re like Keith Flint, petty arsonist first class, pierced, dyed and inked up in the underground. (RIP my brother in E.) Hyperalert to the breakbeat, the attacking strobe lights, the girl on stage behind the decks, blonde dreadlocks peeking out from under a hoodie. She raises a fist as the sound drops and builds to a frenzy. The crowd roars in approval. She sucks up the love by throwing a shape then feeds it all back with still harder, faster beats for you to thrive on. Watching her makes you sweat. Somehow you’re above the action, enjoying the view from above the stage. The gantry shudders enough to make people run for the stairs. You are unfazed. You wrestle and vibrate out of your body. Out of this world. You’re getting a good look at your high priestess. She fades in a fresh track. You remember the video to this one. Karl Hyde alone in a forest enjoying a pure buzz. No distractions. Filter out the side show: some girl puking her ring by the stage, the wanker taking a beating for snapping a duckface selfie when there were clear instructions not to take pictures. Hundreds of stories washed away by the girl with the headphones. The stage almost calls you by name, invites you to join the maggotfest below. Get closer to the controller. You’ve earned it with those moves--which are all your own work. No, not even work, instinct--honest.

The only climb down of the night. A few shaky steps you’re back at ground-level looking at that skeletal stage rig machinegunning reds, greens, blues, sometimes whites down on everyone. This is where the life is--where the fuel really kicks in. Fingers tingling, stomach warm. Exterminate all notions of personal space. Girls in trenchcoats (for the cold outside) with bikinis underneath (for the heat inside) showing how it’s done: Hips. Tits. Lips. Feet pounding gravel. Two hype men blast instructions from the stage. Baggy trousers, peaked caps, microphones and scobe accents. Brooklyn via Ballyfermot. “HANDS UP! HANDS UP! WE HAVE SOME REAL SHIT FOR YOU TONIGHT. SHOW SOME MOTHERFUCKING APPRECIATION!”

DJ girl steps away from the decks, letting one of the hype men take over. She takes centre stage, bathed in the projection of a black and white murmuration of birds. Pure elemental. The sound system is all out attack but she’s slow, matching the birds, eyes closed--Yolanda Vi$$er, a Venus in Converse. DJ girl takes off the hoodie and the projection bounces off her skin like a mirror ball.

“GIVE IT UP FOR THE GIRL MORGAN OCTAVIA.”

She drops the hoody and wades into the pit, arms out, glowing. She touches everyone within reach. A soft caress of the cheek, a delicate glance up an exposed arm, a flick of the wrist.

Then she’s in front of you. Taller up close. Easily matching your six feet. Radiant with the pointed tips of her ears peeking out from under her dreads. A girl with black, no red, no purple eyes. Whiting out everything around you. She’s got ink. Feathers running the length of both arms. Golden. She’s staring you up and down. Sizing up the threat. A narrow arm snakes around your neck. She draws you close and kisses you on the lips.

“NOW LET’S DO THIS RIGHT, YO!”

She tastes of salt, strawberry, sandlewood. You feel her breath fill your lungs. You’re weak in her narrow arms. She releases you, moves on. Your breath taken away, replaced by the sour burn of battery acid. The girl Octavia glides away.

And as soon as you’re out of her orbit the music comes booming back so hard it almost knocks you on your ass. Try to realign but you’re completely off the pace, struggling to find your rhythm. Let your instinct haul you back to the beat, but you’re flattened. All you’ve got is depleted lithium ion blood, clammy skin. Something outside your control. Beyond the beat. Look around you and it’s the same. Pallid white bodies, vacant faces, pure serenity, a slow riot. Richard James surrounded by kid doppelgangers. “I want your soul”--his words, her promise.

“OH WE’RE GETTING HYPED NOW. ARE YOU READY?”

The crowd hollers in approval.

“BRING YOUR TRICK, GIRL.”

The music rescinds--replaced with a single delicate note. Unamplified, barely audible to those packed against her, reaching out for her arms, hair, face. But for you’ve waded in close enough to see her again you’d never even know. In seconds it’s rising above the crowd, guiding the pulse of hundreds of stamping feet, cheering, cheering nothing. Cheering Silence.

“Run,” you think. Fast as you can. Away from the weird. Remember the route: Beyond the hill, through the drowned lands and past ghost estates. Run as far and as fast as you can until you find an on-ramp so you have some chance of getting a ride somewhere with an actual postcode instead of a line of digits and a smiley face at the end. But you can’t. Body will not comply. Not this moment. With the others. This is where you want to be. Close in and guided by whatever’s running your system. It isn’t sound. It’s not the chemicals. It’s….

Her voice isn’t even a sound, it’s the idea of sound. Vibration. Representation. A sine wave binding everyone to the girl Octavia like a leash, climbing up her arms from wrist to shoulder, the other ends wrapped around the throats of every soul around her. Every joule of energy sucked in and retransmitted through her at the threshold of pain. Breathing in the frequency. The hype men on stage roll her heads in approval,. Too fast to match. There is a trilling harmony. Everyone sings. You’re singing. Syllables scattering in milliseconds. Words caught in the headlights. Beyond adrenaline. Beyond any lab’s finest product.

The note is a pure constant, wrapping around you first like a scarf, then a leash tugging you off the ground, pulling everyone upwards. You leave the ground behind. The here and now, woven together with strangers in beat and harmony. So far, so fast, so high, so good. Pure. For once in your life.

And down below it looks the same only slower. Gravity tries to grasp you but this is your place up here, except there’s one figure in the mill and he’s staring right up at you. The familiar faces of your boys. The ones you left behind for this. Left for dead on the soil, the smoke, robbed cars and dope. Wasted potential. You turn away, staring across, up, swimming higher. The anchor chain snaps, you’ve got tears in his eyes. Please let this feeling last.

The hypemen: “AND E-X-P-L-O...”

Lights erupt. Speakers blow. You crash to the ground. Except for the girl Octavia, gliding with her arms out, eyes wide to heaven and steam coming off her.

The next thing you feel is the thump of someone stumbling over your leg. A cold hand rests on your shoulder, nudges you awake. Another aul wan.

“Hey fella. Party’s over.”

 Communion is done. You sit up and wave away a helping hand. Your ears are still buzzing joined by an ache in your joints. All your joints.

“We have a live one,” the aul wan says. “The comedown is a bastard. Orange juice and eggs are the only things that’ll bring you back.”

You slap the sand out of your hair. Someone, a man takes you by the shoulders, looks you in the eyes.

“Can you lift?”

“Lift?”

“Sure you can. Come on to fuck.”

You tune in to the scene around you. The dust puts years on everyone. Laughter lines, sunken eyes and, everyone alive is all smiles. Yawns, moans, giggles, crying, the occasional slap of a high five. Job well done. Give it an hour and your muscles will seize up proper. Home and straight to bed, please, God. Pity anyone who has to put in a shift behind the wheel in this state.

The stage is dismantled with barely the chink of a hammer to rouse the wasted.

And the bodies. The ones that don’t grunt or move or tell you to fuck right off when provoked. Cold ones. Someone asks: “Are you lifting or letching?”

It doesn’t feel strange to be deadlifting burnouts in the morning. Loading wasted fucks into vans, slapping the doors closed and watching them get sent wherever. You try to find someone to ask about them but nobody’s making eye contact, only looking for bodies and giving them a kick to get a response. Your arms burn but the effort releases a lingering glow. Lift and drop. Lift and drop.

“We’re going to need some proper young bodies, man. These are done.”

Agreed.

Then you find her. The bird from the party. The girl who gave you all this. Slumped in an overgrown parka zipped to her chin. You kneel and try some names on her. Gloria. Sue. Ciara. Darla. Nothing fits. There’s barely a whisp of breath against your cheek.

“Lift.”

So you lift and she’s laid with the other quiet twitching bodies. Then the doors close and she’s gone. The rest of the veterans slip away. Dog soldiers with long service records: Creamfields, Burning Man, Manumission, Midlands, The Mercury Arms circa 1988 when knives were handed out at the door to keep things level. ‘You must be at least this protected to enter’.

On one of the silos someone has scrawled a line of numbers in chalk. You punch in the numbers into your phone and check them three times--the first attempt a mess through shaky fingers.

The instruction comes: “One new face minimum, or no entry.”

You find your boys by the car, taking long swigs from a gallon bottle of water and playing Rock Paper Scissors for the roles of driver and navigator. Their hands filthy from lifting, too.

Taking the phone out of your pocket, you open the note with the string of numbers. It gets passed around from one trembling pair of hands to the next.

“Whatever you were on it was stronger than ours. You were unreachable.”

Laughter as the bottle is raised in your honour and passed around. Solpadeine and a line of blow for the road. Then following wheel tracks in the mud because fuck this place looks different in daylight.

And during the slow drive you see it mapped out in front of you. You don’t need a plan or an explanation, the way forward is uncoiling in your gut. By midweek you’ll back in the ‘burbs and your joints still ache and your heart is torn out but you will be singular and in need. The vibe must be respected. The girl Morgan Octavia’s forever party has to be fed to keep decks spinning and the ears ringing. It needs you to bring that new energy for when your taste goes stale. You’ll go from bar to bar, club to club, corner to corner looking to catch the eye of some young wan with slinky moves, and you tell her how much you dig her energy and tap some numbers into her phone followed by a swirling string of emojis with heart-shaped eyes. You wonder if there’ll be anything left of either of you the morning after. No matter, you’ll do it again and again and again for the note, even for the cleanup as the life slips through your pores. Sweat. Steam. Breath. Movement. Dervishes in a merry hell.