Tales of the Premium Field

Chapter 2 - Ziggy's tale : Part 1

The tale of one of the best pilots aboard the premium field starts in what would seem quite an unexpected location; Blacktown, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Home to a family of five. No dad, just Mum, then our oldest sister Janice, then Alfie, Cillian and then me, Ziggy. Three boys, two girls. Our family was very close. We would treat each sibling like our best friends. Someone got depressed, then everyone got depressed together. Someone got bullied, then we would find the bully and we would kill them, literally, the Blacktown way.

Any guy that Janice dated, well, none of us trusted. So if she went on a date, it didn't matter where it was, we would always be watching. Whether it was the cinemas, we'd find a way to sit in the row behind and start kicking their chairs if they started getting intimate. Or if she went out for dinner at a restaurant, we would sit at the table next to them, wear hoodies, and pretended we weren't family.

As for the guys in the family, well, we were all fuck ugly so none of us went on any dates. After all none of us were interested in girls, we always had better things to do, on the weekends it was either making sure Janice was safe in the rough streets of Blacktown or alternatively as a family we would all go shooting.

To explain what happened to dad, well when I was a toddler, Alfie took me out to go hunting without the family knowing. Janice and Cilian started a warm, wood lit fire in the house, due to the cold bliss of winter but as soon as it started getting dark they came out searching for me and Alfie, leaving the fire lit and dad asleep. The small fire gradually became a furnace and spread around the house, setting the entire house on fire, including dad within it. Every treasured memory died in that house and that was when we moved from the blue mountains down too Blacktown.

Although the shooting was a bad memory to be associated with the shooting, we brightened the sadness up when it was eventually my tenth birthday, Mum decided to create new memories associated to shooting but getting me two hunting dogs; An Irish wolfhound and a Rottweiler. The family was obviously jealous of me that they didn't get a dog at their age and I was apparently spoilt but if I ever felt like I was spoilt I would make sure I'd respect my family by sharing my treats with them.

Until maybe later in life when I became a teenager and became ignorant, that's when the family fell apart. We weren't close anymore. We wouldn't be there for each other. We all went our seperate ways. Janice moved out of home and got a good job in the city where she wouldn't need protecting. Alfie went to university and then it was just Cillian and me alone at home with mum. Alfie was only two years older then me, so his friends would have younger siblings that were forced to be my friends. At the core stages of my teenage years I easily became hooked into the horror of Blacktown. Murder, illegal drugs, under age drinking, trespassing homes and robbing them.

My friends that were related to Alfie's friends became scared of me and my new interests and began to drift away. Did it make me upset? Of course it didn't, I was just reminded of the five by five rule; if it won't matter in five years than don't waste five minutes being upset about it. So I didn't waste that five minutes and instead I joined the dirtiest, roughest thug gang in Blacktown. It was easy, all I had to do was find Alfie's secret stash of marijuana under the house and give it to the lads in the gang and bam, I'm in. It worked. Then from there, I gained at least a ten grand a week, from robbing houses and assassinating under request.

Months went bye, the family had become divided, mum worked late hours, never saw her. As for Cillian, well, he was always out doing something with his friends. Then me, always plotting a new hideout for the gang to hide from the police. But a family that is divided, always means united they will fall. For our family, it was mum. At the brink of my gangs success, Mum got cancer. She couldn't work anymore.

My dirty money paid for the families expenses whilst mum wasn't working. Cillian stopped attending school to help mum and I stopped attending school to spend more time with my gang, lying to my family saying I was at my job. Rather than spending the last precious weeks of my mums life with her, instead, I spent that time lying to her. Still now, as I tell this tale, I remain in a state of regretting these actions, but in life, push forward, do not dwell on the past, if you are to survive. The gang was never worth it in exchange for the last remaining life in my mum. Once she was gone, everything fell apart. All my earnings from the gang, my dirty money, I burnt, in a pit, in the back yard.

The night before the funeral, the police found the gang and before they were able to expose me to the police, me and brother ran away. We both changed our names to Kolt Dameron and I chose the name Poe Dameron, like the dude from Star Wars. We then got as far from Blacktown as possible. We began scavenging in the city, sleeping on the streets, waiting for scraps of food to be left, money to be dropped.

We had no way of contacting Alfie, nor Janice, but everyday we searched for where Janice worked, in the city, but for two whole years we never found her. She never came searching for us either. She had built a new life. As we had also.

Cillian went out to a back street to scavenge bins, I picked up a perfectly nice guitar case that was abandoned on the side of the road, with a guitar in great condition inside of it.

As my fingers gliding onto the surface of this guitar case, my mother's soft fingers plucked my heart strings. I was instantly taken back to when I was a toddler, with my father and mother by my side, teaching me how to play the guitar.

I took the guitar and made my way to the perfect place to busk.

An ancient stone wall. Mud on the floor. I flatten my blanket. Then my guitar gets removed, from it's soft case, using my dirty hands. Whilst observing the chaotic street market, my busking begins. My fingers on the rusty strings of the guitar, whilst plucking them I feel the vibration echo through my bones.

My nose twitches as it receives the fragrance of the intense cooking occurring a few meters from my position; the chef tosses his fry pan to and fro, onions and herbs flying in mid-air and then descending back onto the boiling surface of the butter. The sound of the crash vibrating in my ears constantly.

The scent of the wonderful arabic foods crawling into my nostrils, but then rudely interrupted by the smell of the crowded people's odour. I pluck different chords in rhythm, whilst watching different cultures meet. Black, White; Indian, Chinese. This is a corrupt place, yet so many cultures come to visit and enjoy. I reach the chorus as a domestic shaggy dog visits me and sits on my blanket.

CRASH!

Suddenly the atmosphere changes. My scent from the area becomes entirely different. The insane heat from the midday sun causing so much panic, that the nearby chef drops his frying pan that he was tossing. Food splattered all along the mud. The domestic animal that was once sitting beside me leapt up and is sprinting to eat the mess. The chef viciously booted the animal away, in his anger.

Then the fragrance changes. The smell that was once butter chicken, becomes substituted by burning smoke. Another chef frustrated from the heat ended up burning a meal he was preparing for a customer. People begin to leave. I stop playing. The chefs begs for the customers to come back. The tranquility ended and the chaos began. People rush to leave and find another undercover area. I shove my guitar into its sleeves, inside its case and move with the crowd.

Within the crowd Cillian was shouting,

"Brother! Brother! Where are you? Ziggy? Ziggy? Come here?"

I ran out of the crowd and saw my brother. Then called to him,

"Bother. I am here."

Cillian ran upto me, rubbed my arm and ran out of the street market.

"Your coming with me. I have something to show you!"

We ran to a stadium with large posters advertising the annual event.

"Look at this brother."

Cillian said to me in passion. Then continued,

"This event is perfect. I met a scavenger today on the backstreets. He was dying. I offered to help him."

Cillian looked at me with a tear in his ear.

"He told me to stop worrying. He told me that the wait was almost over. He told me that he may look like he's dying but the time of revival was near. I asked him what he meant and he pointed at a poster he had treasured under his dirty bed. One of those posters, Ziggy. He told me that every time these annual events happen, the people that watch it leave loads of food, even printed cash, like twenty to a hundred dollar cash notes, and they don't even notice. Ziggy. It's better to be born lucky then rich brother. It fucking is. This is our revival!"

Was this our revival?

What was this annual event?

I needed to know what this annual event was, it may just change my life.