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?

A lifetime of movies and TV told Ger that his life should have a soundtrack. That plus his affinity for music (which had yet to turn into a talent for making good music) meant he was susceptible to music's pull on his emotions. So he asked himself the questions from the song. Was someone watching him? Was this real or some kind of hell?

The music chilled him. It amazed him how he could hear it so clearly in his head. His suspicion that his life had a soundtrack was confirmed. It also scared him a little. He had never taken drugs before and was unaware that he still hadn't taken any drugs. Yet in his mental state, he felt as though he had discovered the beauty of music for the first time. At the same time, he felt as though he had stepped into a story, as though the music itself held sway over him, and whatever song that came on next would twist his destiny in some fashion.

He didn't know if this was a natural reaction and suddenly regretted his decision to run off from Johnny and Ari. At the very least they could have taken care of him.

Ger felt the beginnings of a panic attack. "Where are my headphones? I need my headphones," he thought.

Ger believed the speed that Ari had given him had muddled the thoughts in his head and he couldn't focus. Suddenly the urgent need for his headphones moved up his trachea, as an urge to vomit washed over him. He fought for control, rested a hand on a cold brick wall for support, he focused on the music in his head.

Ger had a playlist for everything, for walking the dog, doing his homework, escaping his problems. He just didn't have one for being high. He had never taken drugs before. Ariana hadn't even given him the choice. She hadn't asked him if he wanted to get high.

Suddenly, he felt his throat and digestive track burn with liquid flame as he threw up. The building panic attack changed gears and intensified.

"Where are my headphones?"

Ger sometimes got panic attacks and used music to calm himself down. He had been unknowingly self-medicating with music all his life. That's why he had never felt the need to join in the drinking or drug-taking Ariana and Johnny did. That of course and his dad. Ariana knew about his dad! He'd told her about his drinking.

Why had Ariana done that? Why had she spiked his drink?

Ger couldn't understand and it wasn't because of the drugs.

He could feel a panic attack rising again. It was like a far-off ping of anxiety, like a tiny sound whose echo seems to grow in stature, hurtling inexorably closer and closer as it gathers momentum.
"Where are my headphones?"

He needed his headphones to calm himself down. Luckily the Iron Maiden song in his head had come to the guitar solo. The glorious melodies from both guitarists intertwining, and for a moment he felt a warm smugness at the fact that he hadn't needed his headphones to calm himself down. All he needed was a harmonizing duel guitar solo, although technically it wasn't a solo if there were two guitarists, which he then realized were coming out of his headphones which had been on his ears all along.

Ger forced himself to think about the speed that Ari had spiked his drink within the bar. He knew he should worry about that, and the fact that he was lost. His phone buzzed in his pocket and Ger ignored it. It would be Ariana and Johnny, and he didn't want to talk to them. For some reason, he couldn't focus. He didn't know why.

"Oh yeah," he thought "the speed."

Ari was crazy.

This was all Ari's fault. Johnny had convinced him to let her into the band. Well, to be fair, she was the only bassist in town.
We're talking about a village where the main street was also the principal road for miles around and Ballycraicsdown had just kind of grew up along it. It was a village that felt like it hadn't earned its name. It was like a small opening in the countryside, a blemish.

She was crazy.

It had been her idea to play the disaster of a show. Of course, it didn't help they were rubbish. That fact had been bothering Ger more and more lately. He listened to music all the time. He knew that the music they made was rubbish. Johnny and Ari just didn't want to admit it.

Then to top it all off, she'd spiked his drink. She had slipped some speed into it.

The worse thing was, she had been happy, almost cheerful about it. She really thought she was helping him.

What really made Ger angry was how she could still be so light and breezy after that disaster of a gig. Although deep down Ger was jealous, maybe a little in awe of how she could treat life as an adventure.

Now Ger was lost in the middle of Dublin. He was cold and wet, yet strangely fuzzy and warm at the same time. His guitar felt like it was getting heavier and heavier. The light drizzle didn't seem like much, it was almost like an agitated mist, but it was constant and he was getting wetter and wetter, colder and colder, more and more lost.

Ger went over the events of the gig in his head. Ariana was crazy. She didn't even play the bass that well. Yet, she was so valiant, she walked through challenges like a jock through nerds at the beach. "She's so pretty," he thought.

That stopped him. Stopped him like a hammer. What made it worse, was the idea that he couldn't tell if he thought Ariana was pretty because of the speed, or if he thought Ariana was pretty because of the speed.

He felt the waves of a panic attack coming back, as he realized

he was internally debating identical ideas that he couldn't distinguish one from the other, but every fiber of his being screamed was different and he couldn't stop, which made the panic attack rise further and faster.

A passing boxy street cleaning truck scared the hell out of him, but luckily it distracted him enough from his panic attack, and he marveled at the brief rainbow made in the inadequate spray of water from the truck, as its brushes spun like scarabs break dancing through the litter.

Suddenly, between the ending of the Iron Maiden song and the beginning of the next track, he could hear music again, but this time it was different, something melodic and bittersweet. Something pentatonic. Something distant and echoing. He took off his headphones and realized it was coming from an alleyway just a couple of meters away.

The Blues.

A John Lee Hooker song? It sounded like John Lee Hooker. It sounded great. He ignored the pain in his arms and hand from carrying his guitar case, he ignored the wafting stench of piss from the dark alley where the song was coming from.

Ger did what he always did when he was lost and couldn't make sense of anything – He followed the music.

The streets were empty as the neon lights fought the darkness of the early morning. The funky smell of after closing time assailed, and burned at his nostrils. This was the heady odor of the closed pubs which had emptied and the sphincters of the clientele being under a lot of pressure and having to empty. This tiny alley became the local public toilet. The stench threatened to bring on another bout of vomiting.

Ger couldn't see any musicians but still could hear the music. Someone was playing an acoustic guitar, a pair of recycled coke bottle caps on the underside of shoes tapped out the rhythm. A voice hardened in the furnace of pain tried to break the hearts of the shadows of the narrow smelly alley.

Ger went in deeper into the alley.

"Who is playing that music?" he said to the empty, stinky alley.
Partially to Gerry's relief. The music stopped. Then he heard a voice. A voice so husky, that it sounded like it had smoked seventy cigars and gargled nails.

"Got any food, kid?"

Gerry turned in circles, looking for the voice, as its echo pinged out to every nook and cranny in the alley and eventually ran out of surfaces to bounce off until he had made himself a bit dizzy following it.

"Down here!"

Gerry looked down.

There was a mouse.

A mouse with a guitar.

A mouse wearing denim, with a haircut with enough gel to give Elvis Presley quiff envy.

Ger wondered how it was possible.

"Oh yeah, the speed," Ger said out loud to himself (or so he thought).

"No! Not speed! Food! I don't do drugs, it's a fool's game," replied the mouse.

"Oh Sorry! No, I haven't got any food. I don't normally do speed by the way. My friend... well I thought she was my friend. She spiked my drink."

"She probably thought it'd loosen you up a bit. Do you play?" asked the mouse, nodding to the guitar.

"No, I'm a hitman for the mafia," Ger replied with his stock answer to that question, which he had practiced to perfect snark.

"Just because you've got an instrument doesn't mean you know how to play, kid," replied the mouse matching him snark for a snark on the snarky scale.

"Take it from me, it took me a while and some good friends to learn that lesson."

"You're pretty good," said Gerry, whilst also grappling with what it meant to have a hallucinated drug-fueled conversation with a mouse. Luckily he didn't realize that in fact, he was talking to an actual mouse, who was the patron saint of lost musicians reincarnated as a mouse, after losing a bet with the Buddha. Otherwise, he might have felt like he was losing his mind.

"That wasn't always the case and it wasn't until I got some help that I started getting better. You in a band?" the mouse asked.

"Yeah, we had our first gig today, we played to a whole six people," Ger said still upset by it.

"It's a long way to the top if you want to rock n roll, kid," replied the mouse.

"That's a great AC/DC song."

"Let me tell you a story, kid."

"Eh, No thanks. My mother told me not to talk to strange mice. Anyway, you're just a figment of my imagination. Why should I listen to you?" asked Ger, who was starting to feel very aware of how crazy this all was, which he put down to the drugs beginning to wear off.

"I don't know kid, maybe you watched too much Walt Disney as a child and you're so high right now, that if you were in The Beatles you might let Ringo Star have a go at singing a song. Maybe your subconscious is trying to tell you something, through the medium of anthropomorphic animals telling you a parable. I don't know, I'm not Sigmund Fox, kid," said the mouse, who as the patron saint of lost musicians, was used to people being illicitly stimulated.

"Don't you mean Freud? Sigmund Freud?" Gerry said.

"Potatoes, patatas," answered the mouse.

"Okay, but can we get out of this alley? It stinks here," said Ger as he resigned himself to go wherever his trip was taking him. He could sense that the apparition meant him no harm. The very company of his apparently imaginary friend calmed him down considerably.

"Sure, oh by the way. I'm Jerry. Jerry with a J," said the mouse, before shoving his guitar into a soft case and slinging it over his shoulder.

"What a coincidence, mines Gerry with a G, though everyone calls me Ger."

"That's the kind of coincidence that drugs would make appear very important. Well, as I was saying. Once upon a time under a manhole..."

Gerry with a G sniggered at the word manhole, to be fair, it's one of those words that's funny but isn't supposed to be. It sounds like you should shout it at a fat construction worker who's bending over "Hey you! Cover your manhole!"

Jerry with a J, patron Saint of lost musicians and victim of the Buddha's cruel sense of humor, better known in the rodent community as Jerry Lee Mouse, rolled his eyes at such human immaturity and continued the story...