Fear and Loathing at Guy Fawkes '04

2004-11-25T01:13:00.000-08:00

The beauty of Guy Fawkes... a fantastic idea... revenge upon another level... two get-aways... fast times on those damn straights... why can’t we score? they flock together like sheep... swine in a lab-coat... the smokin’ Hawaiian?

Chapter 1

Guy Fawkes... the one time of year you can purchase explosives legally. The one time of year you can freely vandalize private property with your purchased, and slightly adjusted goods. What a wonderful time of year for the people of Northland. Every year, during early November, England, Australia and New Zealand celebrate Guy Fawkes’ incredible feat by reenacting it with their own, safe, explosives.

Wouldn’t ol’ Guy be proud of today’s youth? Still defying the law just as he did so many years ago... I discovered the true glory of Guy Fawkes only this year, on the actual night. For years I had heard people jabbering on about modified fireworks, sparkler bombs and duck-tape. I had never paid much attention until I realised how much damage I could inflict upon someone’s property, and get away with it.
I remember sitting underneath the front entrance of my house, sipping gin & L&P Dry and smoking Dutch cigars with my friends Ricky and Anthony. Suddenly a fantastic idea came to my head, it hit me like the first wave of a daytura frenzy. It came out of my lips without any hesitation, “Lets toss a fucking bomb into her house,” I said, “see how she likes that.”
Only the day before I was... disrespected by a certain someone, and only weeks before the incident I had given that person a gift of designer quality. I received the news from a text message, of all things, when I was browsing around the Wharehouse looking for some George Michael tapes. It was a bad thing to lay on someone with a head full of dope, it absolutely ruined my buzz, and even my slushy had seemed to have changed flavour.
In terms of emotions I didn’t care, the person wasn’t that special. In my case it was a matter of respect, and she was going to pay, no matter what. A response came almost instantaneously from Anthony, “Keen as, man.”
“What do you think, Ricky?” I asked.
“Sure.” He replied with a casual grin on his face.
Unfortunately, we had no sparklers and no ride. But, just as I began to get pissed off I heard the sound of gravel crackling, someone was coming up my driveway. The sight of a new model Japanese car instantly told me that it was Grant. The sight of him, no, the car, lifted my mood... we had a ride. My luck doubled when two more of my friends came out of Grant’s car, with a fireworks box. My cocky friend James casually placed the ‘Boom Box’ onto the table. Straight away I was digging through the box, hunting for the slight of Sparklers. Jackpot, 5 packets containing 8 Sparklers in each one. That was a total of 40 Sparklers, perfect for a bomb. As I started explaining my plan to my newly arrived friends the telephone rang, I didn’t say anything, just listened.
“That was Will, he’s on his way here now with some insulation tape.” I said. Perfect, I thought, this shall be a night to remember.

My plan was slightly delayed at first when we decided to shoot Roman Candles at Will’s car when he arrived. The scene looked like an urbanised version of a native African dance. Fire everywhere... people leaping into the air, chaos in every direction at any time. The little bastard didn’t even complain after we ran out of things to throw/shoot at his car, all he wanted to do was drink some booze and relax. I would never give him that satisfaction, especially on Guy Fawkes Night.

The plan was simple. We gathered the troops into Grant’s car, some sort of Toyota I believe, and then headed for the country. Will had chosen to stay behind, to avoid being involved in this sort of thing. Rhys had to keep up with his restricted license curfew, so he made for home. So there were five of us; myself, Grant, James, Ricky and Anthony, all of us wild enough for this kind of thing. I had never taken advantage of this wonderful time of year before; it was to be a whole new thing to me.
I didn’t any waste time preparing the ‘bomb’. I felt the need to make this instrument of disaster myself. En route to our destination I packed the sparklers together in a big bundle, 40 in all, then wrapped around it with insulation tape, at least five times. This was our method of destruction, the infamous ‘sparkler bomb’, and we were going to put it to good use.

We arrived at our destination in about 7 minutes. When I was back at my pad I realised tossing a bomb into someone’s house was a little far-fetched and wasn’t very wise. My promising career as a journalist was on the line, and I wanted a clean record. So, instead of damaging her house I decided we could just destroy the intercom buzzer to her private estate. I was thinking maybe I could melt the hindges of her gate together, but I didn’t have the time to construct such a complicated device. Yes, that would completely fuck it, they’ll be stuck for days in their silly lifestyle block. A sparkler bomb was enough for this kind of gig, nothing too high profile, just right to really fuck some people off.
We slowly approached our target, with the lights dimmed, keeping an eye out for watchful residents in the area. The people that reside around this part of Whangarei are almost all white. Trousered-wankers, golf players, paranoid psychotics... they’re easy to spot. We stopped about 30 feet away from our target, then Anthony and I proceeded the rest of the way on foot. We didn’t waste a second, we didn’t dare to. Within a minute we managed to strap the bomb to the button pad of the intercom, light it, and make it back to the car. I just hoped the tape would hold it in place while the sucker did its business. We all watched through the back window, and after about 15 seconds it happened. A cloud of smoke rose in the air in a rough mushroom shape, a bright orange and yellow flash highlighted it. It reminded me of the incinerary bombs mauling Hamburg during WWII, the endless flashes, clouds of smoke, all life being crushed by this fantastic spectacle. Pointless victory... absolutely necessary in any type of dispute, especially this one.

By 11 o’ clock we were back at my house. The shit went down, and it went down good. Like Rhys, Grant also had to keep up with his curfew so he dropped us home and left. Four of us now, half drunk, running up my driveway. Will was still sitting outside the entrance of my house; I noticed he had indulged in some of our Smokin’ Hawaiian cocktails.
“Sweet Jesus,” I said, “what a rush.”

Chapter 2

After all that, I still wasn’t satisfied. I couldn’t handle the notion that the job might not have been done. We all sat there, I was hastily puffing on my cigar, considering the possibilities, murmuring to myself. Was this a goal I really needed to achieve? Of course it was. After thirty-or-so-minutes I started adding up what resources we had left. James still had some fireworks that we didn’t use on each other or Will’s car. These were the big ones, the ones that were supposed to top-off the night. I also spotted another packet of sparklers that I didn’t use. Fantastic, I thought, we could do it again, but was our driver up to it?

At first Will started freaking out at the idea, he kept accusing me that I was some sort of greedy bastard; he was convinced from Anthony’s story that the job had been done, and done good. Anthony and I shared something in common, we were both unsatisfied. We thought Will would never take us, but there we were, on the road again... once again en route to the cursed intercom.
Ricky didn’t give a damn if we went back or not, he already got a kick out of the night. Unlike Ricky, Anthony and I needed to know that we completely fucked that intercom. It was personal matter for me; Anthony just went along for the ride.
To make sure this was going to be our last trip I decided that we should take some hammers along. I was hoping to find a crowbar to maybe jerk the whole metal plate out of the wall to keep as a token, but unfortunately I did not have the time to look all over my garage.
James had taken the time to ‘professionally’ wrap the second sparkler bomb in insulation tape. The blast would be a lot less than the first, but it would still do some damage. Along with the 8 piece sparkler bomb was the whopper-of-a-firework I decided would be handy in the destruction of the doomed mechanical device. The plan was for me and Anthony, once again, to run up to the intercom and bash it with the hammers, then strap the big firework and the sparkler bomb to it. The only thing I was worried about was that some bastards that lived by the gate called in the vandalism and pigs were there. A teenager with a restricted license, driving past the 10 o’ clock curfew time with a car full of passengers would amount to a heavy fine. If the fuzz were really there we would have to act casual, they wouldn’t expect the vandals to return on the same night. I would expect them to chase us if we suddenly did a U-turn at first sight of their cars. We could always make up some crap that we were checking out the go-kart track, but without a doubt they’d notice our age and ask for Will’s license.

Just like our previous trip, we approached slowly with the lights dimmed. Only a minute ago we had the car stereo on up high, we were listening to Queens of the Stone Age to ‘amp’ us up. We didn’t want any curtains being drawn, so we kept the sound to a minimal when we neared our target. As soon as the car stopped Anthony and I, at the same time, jumped out of the car and sprinted up to the gate.
“Let’s do this shit.” said Anthony.
“Uh huh.” I replied.
Anthony was the first to whack it; his hammer had shattered the name list covered by glass. After that he continued to whack aimlessly at the metal plate. I focused all my hits on the button pad and the digit screen. We smashed it with the hammers for a good 25 seconds, until the whole metal plate was dented and split. Now for the explosives. I placed my hammer under my arm and started pulling out some of the tape to strap the fireworks to it. Bastard metal, impossible for the tape to stick. I ended up strapping the tape onto the wall in order for the thing to hold in place while it went off. The strapping part was all one big rush. I constantly fumbled with the tape and swore when it refused to stick. In total it took us about a minute and a half to do the job. Once we got back to the car we all stuck our heads out the window and watched the whole intercom area go up in smoke once again.
We did not idle any longer.
It was just like before, but this time we knew that we’d completely fucked it. So much more satisfying. Isn’t that what life is all about? Satisfaction?