Soon after she took from the water my heirloom the locket, and once it was clear to me that the group of four would stay no longer a time by the lapping lake's edge of Lago Di Garda, I watched and waited, and as expected, before long the three male figures began heading back up the incline, through the olive groves, and in the direction of the road above which had earlier had brought me to this placid place. The girl, however, lingered, turning in her fingers my locket curiously, and as she stood alone for one brief moment, I behind her appeared...as vampires do.

"My Dear..."

She jumped like a hare trapped! "La posso aiutare!" she yelped!

"Yes my lovely," I replied softly. I had no intention to take her down just yet, if at all, and commenced to play the 'lost tourist'.

I stood my ground silently. I then offered a cold hand to her on the wind. "You may indeed 'help' me," I said. " I have lost a small object, and now I notice that you have been so very kind to retrieve this 'piece' of mine from the soft water. Give it here, child...pass, to me, 'that' which you so intently conceal."

"Non e di qui, vero?" she snapped!... her cheeks flush, her eyes now squinting to snare a closer look at my face. Had she paid attention to my unusual pallor, and so soon? Had she copped me, here in the darkness?

"No, my lovely. To answer your question...I am 'not' from here. I am a visitor to your charmingly, somewhat volatile land. Seems I have lost my way! I know, how careless you might think. But perhaps you can help me. I am tired, you see, and I am beginning to suffer a slight hunger. I would like to find somewhere to eat. Any ideas, young girl?"

She made no suggestions. Wise child. I was indeed hungry now , and as the sweet floral scent of her moist skin arrived in a neat little burst to my nostrils, I ran a finger across her bare shoulder. She did not noticed any part of my touch of course. I licked my dewy digit, sampling her trace.

The Boys were calling for her now, somewhere from the trail above. "Ah yes! There they be!", I whispered. And I thought, " I could, with ease now, rush her into the thicket", from whenst I had emerged just moments before. Well you can imagine Casper...I was 'overcome' with temptation at this point, as would you have been. But, had my thoughts been received somwhow by her? For she stepped away from me briskly, and turned in a nervous glance to look up the towards the hills. Of course, she could not see the boys now, although 'I' could view them with great clarity and precision.

I stood where I was, allowing her this 'new distance' between us, no more than two hundred centimetres or so. With a swift movement born at street level, she made a fine and surprising attempt to drop my little treasure secretly behind her. 'Clink!', onto the lake stones. She coughed nervously whilst in play of her magnificent little movement. Most amusing, I thought.

" Fey! Fey! Ma dai! Ma Dai!" from afar. The boys again from above us, now more removed, and calling upon her to leave the lakes-edge to join them.

"Fey"...I had a name. I touched her again, this time playfully about her soft earthy face. And as I did, I felt an odd thing Casper...

Within her, the view of an open road appeared, unraveling like an endless floor, mile by mile. I could see this road clearly, as it stretched out beyond a dry-day landscape, its end-vision dissipating with a myriad stars, cold distant moons, and a junkyard of obsolete space-matter. Had I spied upon her dreams? I gazed along this, her 'Road-of-Roads', as it curved off into some barren universe. And as we both stood in still by the soothing water of that glorious lake, the very nature of her dreams rushed at me aggressively, shards of imagery...notions all modern and demented, all vast and improbable, all bizarre and in sheer contempt of all things mundane. She wished, it seemed...to take a journey along this 'Road-of-Roads', wherever in her future it might appear. I knew too well this 'route', for all young hearts to wild and imaginative, utterly improbable dreams are chained. So on this 'road' she intended to venture, and she would be, along it, lost. For, as youth would have it, she would never heed desperate warnings. A dreamer is one thing, but a fool...quite another. Here stood a child with her cross-hairs on target for International Recognition! She dreamed of being, not a mere Star, but a Galaxy of Stars!

Then something 'other' emerged from this, my quick study of her thoughts. Another 'route'. possibly one that she had contemplated, but dared not speak of. Another road within her...

This vision came fourth reluctantly from Fey, clashing starkly with the 'silver and magenta dreams' of her bent to super-stardom. For this was a dark, Dooms Day apparition...clad in Zero Black, and onto which I found myself peering at my 'very own' peril. 'Twas a cold sight, Freake, to witness the image of a road paved with a union of thick dark tar and night-skin. It seemed to me one might only 'crawl' along its vast length. A damning marriage of formless lines....a still-dead trail, its entrance in Fey's mind emerging on the parting of matt-black drapes. And as I stood as if I were privy to her own vantage point, the drapes parted, revealing a dune-scape of wretched silence onto which the damned traveler embarked, facing a certain eternity of wandering and hopeless solitude. 'Twas like gazing in, and out, to nothing, nothing at all. A stage for nothingness.

I looked for a context in her eyes, some sign, anything to explain all of this mesmerizing, conflicting imagery. There they were, her eyes...blank as buttons, staring curiously up at me, dilating diligently yes, but with no sheen nor sight of the meanest flicker of light. Dim and docile was this 'her view from within', as she might, upon The World, look out. And from this her lousy vista, The House, and The Nun, emerged. A new premonition. Perhaps the only substance I might retrieve from this her 'nightmare road'.  She would no sooner take this path than jump off Earth's tallest spire...yet there it was all the same. I saw a convent...a sad structure with shapeless walls towering over a row of bent and warped windows. And she, the Girl called Fey...'in there' somewhere, no longer able to abide the long dreary walks on wet early Sunday mornings...no longer able to keep the tepid bowls of porridge down...no longer even able to manage an unassisted shite. Her dreams of fame....now long forgotten. Her once lively hopes to travel The World...in ribbons by her toes. And there she stood, in a room no bigger than a bus-shelter, eyeing in pain a pair of tarnished scissors on a rough timber chair...a folded note dangling from her bony lifeless fingers. My eyes watered. Imagine that.
 

And so, having glimpsed some of these, her undying ambitions, her tremendous sorrows, I stepped toward her, and brought with me a warmth. I stretched out my arms across the barrier between us, vampire to human, and brought this girl to a place that I had long past abandoned. She fell into me instantly. Medicine. I held her for that one moment, and shut down all save one sense...touch. I absorbed her 'all', for keepsake...the hammering drumbeat of her pounding...the scent of her tears now flowing...even the way she lay her small fragile head deeply into the folds of my skin-tight tunic, gathering her body in like a the wings of a moth. She clung to me as if to fall forever asleep there in my embrace...and on her lips, the whisper of a wish to be eternally held. Surely, to her, it all seemed 'normally human'. And so, I gave myself to a Kiss. And like the opening of a sluice-gate, a flood of human emotion engulfed me at the joining of our mouths. A time to feel 'human' again. And I did.

Quietly, from her pocket, she produced a small paper, glossy to the touch, and of scents-chemical....

"Prego..." she whispered. "Prego" So I took this, a photograph, from her now still fingers.

"What is is, my sweet enchanted Fey?" I asked.

But she was silent now, fidgety, and no reply came. Just a light kiss, ending in an embrace. Her way of tenderness...a gentle surrender. And as she stood crumpled up against my body, I gazed at the gift she had just given me, and held it up in opposition to a stars-light.'Twas a picture, Dear Freake...and around it my eye took 'a gander'.What a fucked up life she was having. There she was, slim and pretty, in casual Milano attire, in the company of three loyal boys about her. The Boys again. To her, they gravitated, no doubt. I viewed this laminate with a monocle which I produced, to her unawares, from my breast pocket.  How cold, one might imagine, that I stood there holding her...whilst at the same time studying this photograph intensely to the warmth of her arched back, all the while drawing upon, at least, some insight into her everyday circumstances.

Our moment had passed...for the spell was fading.

And so it was, Dear Casper, that I left her. By the time she reopened her eyes, I was well away from her...up into the trees again! Delighted to be back...alone....just Mordi! How wonderful that is, at times.

I glanced 'once' back at her, and watched the girl 'discover' herself to be alone. Her eyelids rose open, a virgin awakening, slowly at first and then in a sudden and rapid lift of lids. Too much mascara. She lurched forward to stare down at the stony ground beneath her feet, then scanned the dark space and silent air about her...her fingers wide open and stretched across the palm of each trembling hand like wings on flight. Apprehension, I'm certain, as if 'shocked back to reality' to the sight of something painfully incredulous. The phantom was gone! She was alone.

Discovering this, she exclaimed in one horrific outburst, "Accidenti! Accidenti!", (translated: Wow! Wow!) before turning in a wild spin swiftly towards the hills, screaming in ecstasy like a mad thing, as she leapt fast  and with lupine-ease across the jagged lakeside stones. Then up along the dirt trail, disappearing from my sight in a tangle of shadow in the direction of her three males friends.

I'm sure, Dear Freake, that from this night on, you shall find her in every tavern and bat-cave across Verona, spewing long tales of her night with a Spectre! But on one future day, she would wake up, and slowly begin to remember. For although she 'now' believed her encounter with me by the lakeside to be some 'loop' in the knit of her shawl of dreams, she would never fully find an answer to that which I had left her..."The Vast Question". And like some strange twist to our meeting, I left her, but not at the mouth of her 'Road-of-Roads'.

Freed from human contact for now, I lay down for awhile, exhausted from this encounter. I was thirsty, but strangely satisfied that, for once, I had demonstrated  a modicum of restrain during this prance with a human. Later, I went back, and reunited my locket with my warm neck. 'Tis where it lies now, Casper, and since that night in Italy.

Drawn and fatigued, I gathered my soft leather satchel and made my way along the craggy tree-lined precipice overlooking Lago Di Garda, where upon, after a good hour or so, I came across the entrance to a deep narrow cave. Full with intentions to sleep, then sleep some more....I crawled inside eagerly, feeling relieved to be alone. Jostling for some comfort, for although it had depth, the cavern snaked inwards through the cliffs, I eventually stretched out within the neat confines of this shallow damp space, and fell into a trance-like depth, a lost slumber. I'm sure I looked, I imagine, like an unaccounted-for corpse stuffed into a transit-tube.

Overhead, a dripping sound. And behind me, only feet, nay, inches away, a hundred black-eyed orbs peered back in disbelief.

"Oh hello Kildare. Do come in."

Kildare? I had never met these creatures before!  Had I? Yet one precocious bat seemed to view me with certain 'recognition', as if 'I' were an old friend. It puckered its tiny pig-pink lips, and yawned. "I'm a stranger here myself", it mumbled.

I fell to sleep, and I dreamed, Casper...long and sound, And riding on this dream came many cloaked visions...some berry-sweet, some pill-bitter and twisted.

The dream unfolds as such: That, at first, I find myself in the midst of a madcap, highly unscheduled excursion to the Castle at Montagnana! A cacophony of organ music greets my ears, emanating from within this medieval town. Montagnana...a fortress, standing to this very day most proudly and pragmatically 'within' a massive surround of high tower walls. The town's very existence, a statement to all seeking the Golden Fleece of  'No Surrender!'  An arrogant stance to the strange new plastic world rising magnificently outside its insurmountable and unyielding walls. In my dream, I stand outside this monumental town, gaping up upon its outer structure, glaring at its utter will, and wanting madly to enter...

I clear the moat...and meander with some trepidation inside, eyes full to burst as I witness my my first sight of this intact, ancient, and strangely secretive town. Even the large wooden doors seem to speak of eons past.

Once inside, I am greeted again by daylight. I notice instantly a tingling feeling in my hands. How ruddy they appear! I feel uncommonly buoyant on my feet! A light step....Faery-like. I am breathing so much more rapidly now than before...and long before that even! I can feel a 'weight' to my form, as Gravity She pulls and tugs upon every muscle in my changed body. The expansive Mother Earth...presenting herself now below my feet, and announcing quite clearly..."My Kingdom Is Royal!".

Soon, the brunt of my suspicions is addressed, as I begin to notice that the many colourfully clad town-folk passing me are not throwing the usual 'fleeting glances' my way, as people often do. In fact, I'm melting...merging with the stream of characters before me, behind me, and brushing up against me as I advance! I feel as if I have become somehow part and parcel of this starry-eyed circus which, with bugle-call and tinsel-flute unfolds before me with an energy utterly demoniac! I stop...summons my ability to force realisation into the fabric of this dream, and it arrives....

In 'this' dream Dear Casper...I am human!

Arriving at this realisation, I think, should I be 'on the lam'? But I dispense with such a notion...and advance fearlessly.

Children come scurrying from a land called 'nowhere', like fleeting dolphin, prancing about me and tossing up magical dust-devils on the ancient street. Red and yellow toy things are whizzed and thrown about in a hurry, life-like and monotone, as the band of children appear to me to revel in the havoc of it all!

By now, I've noted the presence of one particular man. A silver-haired, rather distinguished man with a small strawberry-patch across his bulbous nose. He approaches me with theatrical intention, and springs past me...bumping up against my new human shoulder in clear frustration! He proceeds to smack a creamed 'ice-stick' which he has been holding. It smudges 'viciously'  into his chest on his seemingly routine command...Splundge! Splat! Splundge...Spludge! Splat!

He vanishes through an arched Venetian doorway, above which the words "Signor Palladino" are carved into a rounded solid block of local stone. A 'Vexed Vendor...I presume, and move on.

I continue strolling, picking up speed, and find that I am heading straight towards the centre of the town, where lies the Piazza itself. A young man of slender girth, no more in life than twenty years, is now following me...striding with long sprawling footsteps along-side my very movement as if in mimic...winking a spritely wet eye in my direction...and holding a basket of fresh country bread. "My lucky day?" I think, for, though in dream Dear Freake...I feel as 'wampyr' as ever a 'wamp' might feel, and just as available as the next man! I watch him as he lifts a long tender loaf from the basket. Cornbread....I evaluate...for I can smell its unmistakable husk.

"Wanna trade places?", he says, in English as if in full knowledge of my dreamlike state! Am I dreaming still?

"I think not, my friend," I reply... "I'm having too much fun as it is!"

"Where are you bound for?" he inquires, as an old woman, wearing an oversized black hat passes me on my left and gives me a most unpleasant sign with one of her shingle-thin, clearly diseased fingers...

"I am on my way to the centre of All This Madness!" I reply... "And when I get there, I shall let you know 'where it was' precisely I have been!" Yet, in all of this chitter chatter, I am not so certain that anything, or any words, coming from my mouth make sense. I suddenly feel trapped, and I wish to disengage from his unfolding opera. I begin to feel a tad unsettled.

"I have Corn Bread!" he shouts..."I should like to invite you to Eat This Corn Bread with me!"

"I don't like Corn Bread." I say, all the while praying that my 'pernickety pursuer' goes away, pisses off.

"You don't like cornbread?" he suddenly exclaims, as if with the astonishment of a man who has just been told by his lover  that she no longer even 'likes' him, let alone 'loves' him.

"You don't like Cord bread?!" he bellows!

"He's doesn't eat Corn bread!"...a chorus of angry Villa-Voices join in...
"He's doesn't eat Cord Bread!"
"He's doesn't eat Corn Bread!"

"He's doesn't eat CORN BREAD!"

And on his insane words, 'every moving person freezes'! Every single one! Even those shadowy figures I can see from afar, gathered about the rotunda of the Piazza! All suddenly stone-embedded. All to Time itself, Megalithic, and all now still, whilst a magpie cries from the sharp town walls. And then I see the skies darken increasingly, and then the flashlights. 'Tis a crowd of village folk, Casper, a mob for my very blood! Their angry voices are low at first in timbre. The din increases in volume to a deafening clarity. You and I, Freake, know this scenario as it unfolds...the old lynch mob itself a comin'! Big deal, I think. However a human, upon this singular sound's arrival to the ears, would undoubtedly to "certain fright" succumb! And then I remember...I 'am' Human! At least in 'this' nightmare!

I rush! Back out the gates through which I came....suddenly aware that if I don't find some hiding space...I might be torn to pieces by the inhabitants of this loonatic village! "Where to go! Where to hide!...The Cornfield! Yes, my only sanctuary!" And so, grabbing a black cowl from my satchel, I cover my head and rush to the darkness of the vast cornfields ouside of town!

'The Mob' arrives, hundreds of buzzing and humming voices. "Do you see him?" The flashlights again, scouring the corn! I simply ignore all of it...the shouting for blood, the screaming children, the blazing lights. In a trance, I stand, amidst the stalks of corn....frozen.... And I? A Scarecrow! (Strike Here To View Kildare As Scarecrow! Wait For Full Download)

Eventually my disguise becomes part of the general picture of my set setting. I dare not move, Small children with their mothers pass me by through the corn. I am a success! I am a Scarecrow!

Like a baby snake in path to a sheepish egg-den, he shimmies up against me. I feel his tiny, mean eyes, glaring at me. Against all my better judgement, I yelp at him! The boy scurries away, in terror!

On that note, Dear Casper, the dream ended. 'All' suddenly vanished, much the same way as 'I myself' had vanished on the lakeside, when the girl known to me as 'Fey' to her senses awoke. Even the monstrous walls of Montagnana itself seemed to melt away...every wall, turret and rustic roof-tile disappeared...the villagers, their lights, the orgre-like children. Gone.

I awoke. The bats. My cave.

The Vampire Kildare cried. Why...I don't know. I just did. Perhaps it was a needed thing...to cry at this time. Perhaps I was consumed with my own loss once more. I thought for a long time, there in the cave, about my own kindhearted parents. I even paid a visit to the memory of my wretched uncle Malachy, who's actions brought me to the Turn. "Dear Mother...Dear Father...and Dear Malachy". And so, taking a shard of stone in my hand...I began to cut and scrape upon the rough walls of this cave. An artful work, as if I were leaving something behind for future visitation, for remembrance. In a state of worldweary sorrow...I carved out, upon the dark wall of my resting place, for no one particular or perhaps throngs of cavers to in some distant time stumble upon... This Enchanting Mark! (Strike Here To View This Enchanting Mark Left By Kildare In The Cave! Wait For Full Download)

And there is shall stay, Dear Casper, for as long as rock be rock and time be time. And when into that cave the unknown traveller stumbles, though you and I may long to ash have returned, and all upon the Earth strikes naught but the din of yesteryear, on one dark wall in the depth of a forboding little cave overlooking Largo Di Garda, our name...as two...now stands.

And so, my account of that unforgettable brush with humanity by the water's edge of Lago Di Garda in Italy during the month of July in the year 2001 comes to an abrupt end. For as it does, within me advance pagan-merry pangs no mortal would e'er endure, nor choose to suffer from as relentless as this here pain within presumes I shall do! Horrendous, this pain...as it claims a firm grip of my form, so much so that I can barely move from one room to another here in Christchurch! I have never felt so human! For as I have been writing Dear Freake, this 'condition of qualities-odd'...'an affliction most onerous'...ails me.

No...'tis not a bout of gaseous wind, (although I'm  fresh as a plum from a lengthy, most innocuous surge of such relief!)...nor a spate of Shingle Twig (most appalling, that one). Nor can it be an unexpected "high-falootin' holler!" from that old hand-made-in-hell Harlot of our past days, the always inventful, ever enduring, seamlessly single-minded  Evelyn Ebola.(You remember this one Freake: "Hi sweet'ums...wanna ride my serenade?") Besides, I would be witness to a relentless onslaught of self-seepage by now, were I to suddenly succumb to the presence of Evelyn Ebola ripping through my veins! Thankfully, she's abroad, I have read in quarterlys, taking out one small village or another somewhere on the glorious continent of Africa.

No...I ail from 'sources-sinister', Freake. And Evelyn Ebola conducts her carefree, comfortless affairs in a fashion all but sinister! She's the Queen of Easy Street, and on her lips death itself finds little juxtaposition. My particular sick is a mix 'n match of head-food, of which the 'symptoms themselves' are highly unclear. Perhaps I am Vivien Leigh, I have thought, and am now only slipping into the early phases of madcapdom!

For now though, shall we suppose that I am 'entirely' Mordi Kildare, and that my suspicions be these?...

'Tis some ghastly 'residual' I suspect, a Linger-Loon which has, with warnings 'naught' , "come a biddin' at my door", seeking to run me down-at-heel for a stretch, perhaps in an effort to do the dastardly deed no other invasive can do...disengage from within itself some form of superiority, some 'mung-bug', in an attempt to undermine the resilience of my uncommon blood! I feel like krill, if one could turn to a thousand pieces....fragmented, with no one mind in control, all heady and headed in the wrong direction toward the gaping mouth of an ocean-eating whale! But what is this my strange new illness? Is it of the mind? Or purely of the body? And from where has it come? I have thought it 'too timely an arrival' for this illness not to be somehow connected to, or in result of, 'my very own actions' downtown last night. I shall tell you about last night Casper, of course. But for a spell, the nature of my ailment as yet engages the bandicoot of paranoia within me, and so my words upon the subject of my affliction flow further on, if you may, and the horse-trader of my veins is already placing hefty bets on a short-list of potential suspects. Couriers-Contagious, I shall name them...but who might they be? Who, or what, brought The Sick To My Door? What evasive shadow has across my tepid brow, left its trail in tangent to seek me out, here in my hiding place of Christchurch? Even I, the very victim of this 'its sudden onslaught', am uncharacteristically in the dark as to the indisputable identity of this snake.

Perhaps 'tis the eventful and oftentimes 'eventual' arrival of The Piper Himself , muttering in caper-tongues for a tally of his 'Outstanding Dues', or at least a partial payment thereof. Could be that the tiresome old bastard finally got wind of my full and thorough enjoyment of our 'shared disposition', Casper. Bully for him if he did, for, no matter what the case, he still remains one wretched welcher! If it truly be The Piper Himself...I shall scream some form of pathetic cry for mercy at his marrow-fat face, and lay low for a silent moon or two, hoping he bores of my tempered blood. I may even call upon the Hoar for nursing, but that would be 'plan un-mentionable', for I have arrived at the dead-end of our present alphabet, and can find no letter beyond zed.

If not The Piper, then 'tis possibly A Banded Hoard Of Word-Mongers, those so-called journalists up at Montrose Mill and Factory Works here in Dublin, bent righteously on upgrading their tawdry radio and television careers to a rung above nothing. This morning I caught, whilst hurriedly passing a newsagent, a stream of words being transmitted from a radio set. These nitwits are, I'm convinced, eagerly awaiting word of my, The Vampire Kildare's Repentance, following my slaugthter downtown last eve. Not rewarded by such, for I have no intention, perhaps 'they' have brought this insiduous sickness to my mind.

They write garbage, Casper...utter dribble. They then proceed to call it 'breaking news'. 'Tis more the wretched spawn, if not the very abortion of  The Mother Of All Breaking Wind. From the tepid pan to the open gob, they broadcast all forms of manipulative 'wordage'...slogans, catch-phraseology, and eighteenth-generation plagiarisms disguised as legitimate news-worthy content. All nice and crystal (if one ignores the hooting and spasmodic bark-like coughing clearly audible off-microphone), and beamed out to a nationwide audience and beyond. Nothing of great matter there, one might conclude, unless of course you own a television set in Ireland, in which case you are among the ranks of those accosted each year at the front door by a cap-tipping Montrose Lackey insisting that those in possession of a television-set in Ireland must actually 'pay' for a Television License in order to evade a fine of One Thousand Punts, or alternatively upon refusal to pay such a figure, face imprisonment! And then what? On arrival to the Gaol's television room...only to be exposed all over again to this seditious broadcast-slop! What a shower of neanderthals.

Yes, I perhaps am narrowing down my suspects here, for these aging broadcasters who fill with contempt our once clean airways are undeniably guilty of it all. In tune with one another like the tones of a one-chord flute...they broadcast on and on. If I find that this infliction which I am hindered by this day be emanating from somewhere within the walls of Montrose Mill and Factory Works, then I shall drag each and every lily-white lecturer from this insufferable Irish establishment, and hang them one by one on the Georgian gate-spikes which run the length and breath of Merrion Square.

This manifestation, what e're true form it takes, has delivered 'on to me' a 'personal epidemic'.

Perhaps, if not The Piper Himself nor The Word Mongers, then surely 'tis the Linger-Loon, flexing its sinews for a well-versed  assault to secure a 'justice' of sorts, a rushed balance to the equilibrium of opposing actions, following my night-of-nights. Not unlike the constistant inner workings of a mechanical timepiece, (as one sleeps, the clock works...as one works, the clock works also...a worrying thought), The Linger-Loon works silently 'setting straight' the inconsistencies of a city's landscap- in-time, balancing wrongs with rights, good deeds with evils, and on and on, so that the death of each night and the birth of each day meet in a reluntant 'peace' of sorts, but nevertheless...a peace. But, as I ponder an association between my illness and The Linger Loon, something seems astray in this possibility.

And so, I am arriving at a conclusion.

No doubt, Casper...the 'illness-entity' which coils blatantly within me as I write can be 'none other', (no brother nor sister, no mother nor father, no uncle nor aunt, indeed no sibling, acquaintance, nor any entity thrust into life on a common blood-line either past, in now-times, or future) than The Wagon Wheel Of Epidemics, 'Ruella Retribution'!A 'comes-around', she is, and this, my malaise, is a joint attempt by her, that feline speedboat, and a malevolent and willing incubi she has hooked up with whilst I in slumber deep. And for what gain? To "address the issue" of this aforementioned reckless night in Dublin just past, hosted by "Yours Truly...Mordi Kildare!" A night to remember, it was...

So here I am Casper, a scrawl of my former lavish stroke, crawling about these withered wooden floors like a leper on the last leg! 'Tis a spiteful attack of  'Ruella' indeed! For dramatic entrance, she has employed the free-agent 'Torticollis', a veritable annoyance which first bothered me at sunrise, among other sudden pin-sparp pains and a hideous outbreak of Psoriasis. Advancing from the neck, this wryneck later slithered it's way down along the length of  my legs, and onwards, to the ankle, bowl of foot and toe. (The pain reminds me of The Hoar Of Ages on a shopping spree. Quite the pushy bitch! Not unlike Ruella, she's 'another' who displays a stamina most uncommon... snarling like static on a traitor's gums as she advances towards the shopping aisles, never quite satisfied, jostling for the chance to demonstrate to an on-looking gape of faces, the ease with which she conquers all...

"Watch me! HERE'S HOW YA DO IT! Gimme the Feckin' Product, ya Spineless Cow!! Now Bag it!"
(Oh The Hoar! Such a 'loose map' for every woman...a modern-times stand-in for Mercator's Projection.)

Other pains ail me, Freake....twisted bitter little seeds growing with zest within me. I am doing my best to look the other way, but they come....they come. Seemingly, I 'owe' somebody something. But I am host to no mite of regret for my thunderous night! I rejoice as yet my slaughter, though across somewhat 'tender, bruised' lips. And now then, 'briefly', Dear Casper, I shall describe to you my colourful, relentless crusade across Dublin last night...(finally...one might sigh...)

'Twas a night  into who's bosom I childishly flung myself from the very first glimpse of one ruddy moon-tit, the emergence of which was swiftly followed by the head of  its bruised other, as its shadow traversed my face. Indeed, once the bright festoon of daylight retracted its promise to deliver a never-ending kaleidoscope of sunshine, and once the rain-clouded sky darkened above Dublin, deepening in heavy thuds to the shade of a master's anvil...high upon the flight of a horse-and-trap, I whipped my way from a previous engagement along Northumberland Road, down past Merrion Square, (nodding maliciously at that hideous, boulder-lounging, bush-busy statuette of Oscar Wilde)...into the open-sore Heart of Dublin . Drowning all over again Casper, I was...renewed...and wet on the tooth in my full awares! "Hale Bop! I'm a blessed vampire!" I roared at passers-by..."Now get your spineless carcases out of my bloodlust path!" (The horse was exhausted...and so I 'retired it', after a loose-minded nibble, over the walls of Dublin Castle. 'Tis accurate to say that I spent most of my early evening getting up to all sorts of old games again...

Firstly, I, upon meeting him whilst in my 'strolling' motion along Dame Lane, joyously accepted the invitation of a passing stranger who vulgarly suggested that I accompany him to a Show Of Arts nearby, which, when upon 'All Of It' in one gratuitous manouvere I glanced, was neither here nor there! To call it Art! The cement walls, upon who's Saintly Patience all this nonsense hung, were far more pleasing to mine eye! Nevertheless, as party-times go...the food and drink was thankfully plentiful, for I was smitten with other hungers. I leathered into the side-table right away, enjoyed a sumptuous platter of raw salmon and green-bean bread, washing it all down with a nasty little number from german soil. Afterwards, I left my fair-weather companion with a nod across the room, for he was already feeling the effects of the jimmy I slipped him earlier. Lucky for him, my concoction of body-paralyzing pharmaceuticals hadn't fully squatted, for if he were 'set', I might have nipped him there and then before departing. Instead, I waited for him outside, for as I suspected...he soon followed me. I silently came from nehind and dropped him into his Other World, as he ploughed about the alley, intoxicated and well beyond obnoxious tom foolery. Sour was his blood...tainted.

And so I continued,  floundering about between one Shameless Sheila or  after anotherBoysterous Bob, all to immense satisfaction, during this my mad city crossing. I counted seven, but grapes are grapes....and one tires easily in the tally.

I eventually fed upon my last-to-be...fodder 'most flamboyant', a slender filly in her youthful prime wearing platform footings and a filthy black-feathered boa. She had emerged from the doors of The George Tavern on Dame Street, flaying about in some wild Celtic stupor! Oh what fun she was...for a spell. And she thought so too!

"The George?" I whispered, as she played with a food stain on my shirt.
"A denizen for the extrovert and loveable of Dublin!" she proclaimed!
"Ah, so you've had your taste!" I replied. "I have yet to sup tonight."

 And so you have it Freake. All unaccompanied, I single-handedly orchestrated a solo rendition of  The Slaughter At Butlers Bridge which later made for a splendid sidewalk portrait...an eye-catching array of varying coagulates of blood, spewn across the footpaths of this grey city's thoroughfares. "Most appalling!"...I heard one early riser exclaim this morning, as she, fat as a hefer, to a bus-stop plod. Perhaps I should have hung around with a 'capeen', to later gather schillings throughout the day, shouting "alms for my art!" "alms for my art!".

When my romp had passed, I fell to a lengthy sleep (as one might have it) in a barren alley...a narrow passage-way into which I stumbled whilst flitting about in the Temple Bar district...for I was too exhausted to return to Christchurch. Once to my waking senses at dawn, a malicious pain thrust its presence right into the slender of my neck. The Sickness. I got up, and wandered out into the streets beyond, covering my eyes with swollen hands. I passed a newsagent, and noted from papers I could view that into the columns of every gossip-rag  in Ireland by early morn' hours was printed a tall record of my nocturnal activitiesThe Banded Hoard Of Word-Mongers were already well engrossed in reporting my rampage, for I could hear them bellowing out, from radio transmissions, the names of 'only three' of the annointed. Seems five of my now-dead dinners were as yet to be identified.

I trust the State Pathologist can demonstrate a modicum of patience.

Yours, In Some Discomfort, Kildare

Mordi Kildare, 31st August 2001, Christchurch, Dublin.