CH20
by Mark Webber, Bad Pony

If you hop in your car in Melbourne, Victoria and head in a mostly east direction for somewhere between two and three hours you might be lucky enough to stumble across a little slice of hell called Walhalla. I’m not interested in giving you a history lesson, but briefly:

The town was founded sometime during the gold rush by four twerps who discovered a seam of gold, raced to Seaton to register their claim, and promptly died. This is where I would ordinarily insert a depressing metaphor, but I could sit here for days and not come up with one that is more of a bummer than what happened to Stringer and his pals. In some sort of sick consolation prize, the group were posthumously awarded one hundred pounds for their discovery, and Stringer had a Creek named after him.

The town had a moderately successful mining boom through the late 1800’s, the town’s population dwindled until sometime around 1960 when the mining industry all but wrapped up in Walhalla, because honestly, fuck being a gold miner. Have you ever been gold panning? Of course you haven’t, because you’re a sensible person who enjoys doing fun things.

If you believe everything you read on the internet, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Walhalla has enjoyed something of a cultural renaissance in the last few decades, what with the restoration of a number of historical buildings (many of which were burnt down through such nefarious means as “some guy trying to rid state lands of invasive blackberries” and “a candle fell down”) and a few other “attractions” I won’t describe here, because you don’t want to read anything about narrow-gauge railways and I sure as hell don’t want to write about it.

What’s important is that you know the town was once somewhat populated and interesting, and now it is decidedly not.

Ivy the Wonder Dog mark webber — *Ivy the Wonder Dog*

And that last point really makes me scratch my head, because for some reason I decided “fuck it, I want to see some creepy shit” and I jumped in my car and drove in the general direction of Shitsville with Ivy the Wonder Dog in a moment that I can only presume was some sort of delusional episode triggered by mixing strong coffee and sleepytime tea.

I rolled into town and immediately regretted my decision. There was clearly not much for me to see or do here. Call me naïve but a lifetime of watching Scooby Doo cartoons has filled me with the expectation that if I take my dog to a strange, faraway, semi-abandoned place I am guaranteed some manner of whacky hijinks. As it stood, I couldn’t even see myself getting involved in even mild tomfoolery. This was a bitterly disappointing realisation.

Now, the town isn’t 100% abandoned, so as I cruised down the main drag (which some genius had the audacity to name “Main Road”) I was treated to the inspiring visage of an old library, a drapery mart (don’t ask, I have no idea what it is), and of course a bottle shop. My eyes welled with tears and it felt like I had found religion because now I would not have to do this sober. I raced out of the car, tied up the Wonderdog and burst into the bottle-o ready to embrace the wonderful person who has dedicated their life to numbing the boredom of weary travellers such as myself.

“Owzgunmate?”

I gave myself whiplash with my double take. The man behind the counter was very nearly wider than he was tall. It looked like once upon a time he had been built like a fridge. He probably did something very tough for a living like carrying big rocks a great distance and then punching them until they were sand, which he would sell to a dealer for their eventual distribution amongst silly rich people with too much money so that they may sprinkle their ugly, manicured driveways with artisanal river sand.

I presume that time and the weight of boredom had slowly compressed this poor bloke until he was unfit for any profession other than dribbling out entire sentences in one word and pointing you in the direction of local wine and spirits.

“Oh, hey mate,” (oh yeah, I thought, use the MATE word as much as possible, he won’t know you’re a little fancyboy from Sydney). “I’m not really sure what I’m looking for. I’m thinking something brown and dangerous, like some kind of whiskey with a sunburn.”

My joke didn’t register. My new best friend, The Beautiful Thumb-Shaped Man stared at me blankly. He had no clue what I was trying to say. I tried another tact.

“Whiskey…? Please?”

Still nothing. Maybe he has beer.

“Do you have beer?”

Nothing.

“Frothies?”

Thumbster’s eyes lit up. Bingo. He jerked his head towards the back of the shop, from whence the siren song of a fridge long past its prime beckoned me. What was that honey-glow pouring from the back of this wonderland of local beverages?

“Ovfyagomate.”

I floated towards the honey glow of an old fridge lightbulb and there before me was a towering chillyboy, stocked to bursting point with an amber elixir that could well have held the secret to eternal life. Labels that appeared to be handmade adorned deep-brown bottle after deep-brown bottle.

My new best friend, The Beautiful Thumb-Shaped Man stared at me blankly. He had no clue what I was trying to say.

“C.H.2.O.” I mouthed the strange sequence of letters. I knew that regional frothies often had strange names but this was like the brewer hadn’t even tried at all. I didn’t let my confusion linger long, I was too excited about getting this weird brown liquid inside my stomach. I have been known to really enjoy a frothy on just about any occasion.

I loaded myself up with as much as I could carry and waddled enthusiastically to the counter. I thrust a handful of notes to my guardian angel, The Man Who Fought Gravity and Lost and skipped from the store. Ivy the Wonder Dog sensed my excitement and bounced on her paws.

We spent the next few hours kicking about town, I would pick up on of the many sticks laying about the place and hurl it as far into the shrubbery as I could, Ivy would zoom into the trees and return with an entirely different stick. I didn’t have the heart to let her know she was terrible at fetch.

ivy mark webber's dog from bad pony — *You try telling that face she’s bad at something. Impossible.*

As the sun was starting to fall behind the enormous, empty hills I was struck by a realisation – I had nowhere to sleep. I mean, I guess I could sleep in the car but that would be a huge bummer, have you ever slept in a shitted out Toyota Corolla that you drove twelve hours in? The thing smelt like somebody soaked soiled underpants in a vat of other, even more soiled underpants.

A brilliant idea suddenly occupied my worrying undersised head. This place was founded by miners, surely I could find a charming disused mine carved into the towering cliffs where I could set myself up for the night. Hell, maybe sleeping in a cave would fill me with some of that masculine fervour I had been hearing about. I might even have to shave more than once a week.

“Camping overnight in a mine,” I declared to nobody in particular, “what could go wrong?”

Thunder clapped, which was weird because until just a moment ago it had been perfectly clear skies. I was sure it was probably nothing, and besides, I stopped being scared of storms like eight months ago.

It didn’t take me long to find a cave, the hills were infested with them. To be honest it was a little surprising that these pockmarked mountains had the structural integrity to stand under their own weight. I was reminded of my friend, from the bottle shop for some reason.

This particular mountain hole (I think that’s what geologists call them) was perfectly situated for a bored dude and his kickass dog, the size, shape, and orientation was similar to the hovel I call my home. From the cave’s mouth I could see most of the town, from this distance it looked like a toy town somebody would set up around their train set.

I had scrounged around whilst the sun was still visible and collected a bunch of sticks with the half-plan of building a fire so that I could;

stay warm;
see inside my cave; and
salvage whatever small trace of mountain-man pride I had.

I had, however, completely underestimate how much wood I would go through, and I was down to a worryingly small amount. Ivy the Wonder Dog eyed me suspiciously, as if to say, “Dude, I’m a whippet… I have like ten percent body fat! I’m going to freeze!”

I felt like an utter failure.

The fire died down to a pile of red coals, which were definitely pretty, but useless for lighting the space. I decided it was about time to crack open a cold one and see what fresh, delicious treat I had in store.

I twisted the top off of my frothie with a little difficulty – my little fancyboy hands were not accustomed to the tightness of mountainous beer lids. A satisfying ‘pshhhhh’ announced that I was mere moments away from a delicious treat.

“Mmm… libations…” I muttered to myself. I lifted the elixir to my lips, ready to quench a thirst so profound that I suddenly understood the plight of the sultana.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, I felt the breeze of someone swiftly moving and everything went black.

Something that action films and footballers never seem to convey all that well about being knocked out cold is that when you come to, you don’t just come bounding back to reality like you’re waking up from a restful slumber.

The first thing to come back is your hearing, and then you can feel your skin really clearly, like you’ve just hopped out of a warm bath. You’re always really cold as well, maybe because you haven’t been moving for a bunch of time.

They also don’t tell you about the skull-crushing headache. It felt like some joker had somehow inserted a small balloon through my ear into the exact centre of my head, and was periodically inflating and deflating the sucker, making my eyes throb and my nose run.

I could tell that my arms were bound tightly to the sides of my body and that my ankles were restricted.

“Well this is shithouse,” I thought to myself. I should have known that disappearing into the bush to set up camp in a cave like that Japanese dude I read about a few weeks ago. He must have been so well prepared, and I can barely get out of the house in the morning dressed properly if I haven’t listed everything I need to do the previous night.

Caves are as dark as hell, not like, “ooh somebody turned out the lights dark”, nor “it’s dark in here but there’s a smidgen of light reflecting off stuff so I have a vague sense of my surroundings”. I’m talking so dark that you have no sense of space. I could have been either floating in an infinite abyss or I could have been pressed tightly against a cliff face.

From my left, in what I presumed was the distance a small orange glow appeared. It was clearly moving because the colour it threw across the cave walls jumped around like a strobe from the creepiest disco you’ve ever been to, being held by someone who is trying and failing to learn to play the tambourine.

The sound of footsteps bounced from wall to wall in a chaotic and disorienting symphony. Someone was clearly moving towards me, and reading the context with expert insight I had a feeling they were not friendly.

The figure was now muttering, but I couldn’t make out any words.

I felt feverish. Something bad was about to happen.

“Mmmaldehyde…”

I sort of made out some poorly enunciated words, and a light rattling sound filled the room.

My eyes were slowly adjusting to what little light there was in the room, and I could see a hunched figure with eyes so wide and wild it looked like somebody had shoved a peppercorn into two eggs and then shoved those eggs into somebody’s skull.

“What do you want?” I squealed in a manner that did not express the tone of ‘I am not one to be fucked with’ I was going for.

“Yik-yik-yik-yik-yik,” laughed the scariest fuck I have ever come across.

More rattling.

The figure was holding a small mason jar, approximately the size of a coffee cup, and periodically shaking it around, as though punctuating his threatening swanning movements.

I tried to assert myself once again, perhaps if I could strike a power pose it would fill be with the raw confidence necessary to send my captor running back into the depths of the cave.

“I AM FORMIDABLE!” I squealed in a high-pitched and very embarrassing timbre, and as I tried to flay my hands above me and make myself as large as possible I overbalanced myself and went crashing to the floor (in hindsight maybe that isn’t a power stance, maybe that’s something you’re supposed to do to frighten bears).

As I lay there with my face intimately pressed against the sandstone floor a pair of pretty sweet buckled boots came shuffling past me, and I felt two cold hands invite themselves into the pockets of my pants. Being perennially broke there was nothing for this scary individual to rob me of but my will to live, so I squinted and waited for a boot to collide with my chest, but no boot came.

“Mmmmmaldehyde…” the freakazoid muttered again.

More rattling. What was with the rattling?

As though the hand of God had plucked my wonder from ‘twixt my ears, my curiosity was satiated as the jar landed with a gentle ker-plunk right before my eyes. Unfortunately, as the contents spilled from the jar it became clear to me this fruit loop had been wandering around rattling a jar of salt, the majority of which was now embedded in my eyes.

I don’t know if you’ve ever eyeballed a bunch of salt, but if I had to review the experience I would give it a solid zero out of ten. It felt like my head was caving in and of course, my vision was entirely fucked. I was becoming increasingly sure that this kidnapping was going to end in my murder, painstaking preparation, and eventual consumption.

The salt was clearly just there for seasoning (a little bit insulting if I’m honest – I would like to think I’m such a tasty little snack I wouldn’t require salt and pepper, but we’d all like to write our own reviews wouldn’t we?).

“Ahh… fuck,” the creep muttered and staggered towards me.

Those cold, skeletal fingers stretched towards me and I decided that now was time to make peace with the universe. This was it. I would become man-jerky, hanging in a cave in the middle of nowhere being slowly devoured by a cave-dweller.

I closed my almost-useless eyes as tightly as I could and waited for the inevitable, but I was shocked out of my zen-like state of fate-acceptance by a blood curdling scream. I opened my eyes and watched my captor hopping around holding his foot.

As he spun around somewhat majestically in the spooky, spooky light I could see there was a hole all the way through his foot, clearly a bullet wound. I traced the floor for some indication why he was only now realising his grievous wound, but it appeared he had simply stepped in the pile of salt.

I supposed if salt hurts when it gets shoved into your peepers like had happened to me it must hurt like hell if you get it all rubbed in a bullet wound.

This was it. I would become man-jerky, hanging in a cave in the middle of nowhere being slowly devoured by a cave-dweller.

The figure slumped over, somewhat hilariously, and started sobbing.

I know it’s weird but I felt kinda sorry for the poor little weirdo. I mean sure, I was almost certain he had planned to eat me but he just looked so bummed out.

“Hey… hey buddy?” I gently asked, using the voice I used to use when I was dealing with a crying six year old when I taught swimming (an experience only slightly more traumatizing than my current cave-death situation), “you need a bit of help there?”

“Y-y-yes [hiccup] please” came the remarkably coherent response.

“oh… wait-what? You can speak normally?”

“Yes of course I can,” he sounded pretty indignant,

“Well why were you muttering all that weird nonsense before? I couldn’t understand what you were saying.”

“Dude… I was eating taffy. Don’t tell me you came to visit Walhalla and didn’t get stuck into any Walhalla Saltwater Taffy?”

“Well to be honest I had big plans for tomorrow down in the Taffy district but that was before you bonked me on the head and kidnapped me.”

“Kidnapped you?” he seemed genuinely offended, “I didn’t kidnap you, I watched you slip off a rock like an idiot, and after I turned you onto your side so you didn’t choke on your goddamned tongue I went back down to my tent to get some smelling salts to wake you up.”

“Well why did you tie me up then?” I spat, accusingly,

“Are you serious dude? Take a look at your arms, take a look at your legs.”

I looked down, it appeared that sometime during my fall I had halfway shimmied out of my jacket, pulling my arms tightly down by the sides of my body. It also appeared that I had managed to remove one shoe, and stuff my big toe into the remaining shoe, effectively locking my feet together like some sort of solo, toe-based karma sutra manoeuvre.

“I… am embarrassed.”

I had to admit it, if I were this guy I would be pretty upset. He had stopped me from asphyxiating on my tongue and walked god knows how far on a foot with a bullet hole in it in order to get smelling salts, and then stepped in those very same smelling salts with his fresh boot-wound.

He shuffled himself towards me.

“I’m going to level with you, man, a large part of my motivation to help you out was that I noticed you had a slab of the freshest and most delicious frothies ever conceived here on god’s green earth, I was kinda hoping you would share them with me if I saved your life.”

I was pretty taken aback.

“Well, I mean, of course we can split these beers, but if you had just let me die you could have had all of them.”

An uncomfortable silence hung in the air.

“Dude…” he said.

“Yeah okay, fair enough, that’s pretty messed up.” More silence. “So, what’s so great about these beers with the weird name? CH20 or something?”

“That’s not how you say it you moron, CH20 is a chemical formula.”

“Oh, cool… for like… ethanol or something clever?”

“Uh… no… it’s for a chemical they use to preserve dead things to prevent them from rotting. It’s called formaldehyde. That’s what I was muttering with a mouthful of taffy.”

My stomach dropped as I made a startling and embarrassing realisation.

“You’re not some cave-dwelling cannibal! You’re Didirri!”

My new friend made one of those faces like Jim does in The Office and nodded.

It was a good day.

So we powered our way through too many Formaldehyde’s and I woke up the next day to the fantastic surprise that Wonderdog had wandered back into the cave and curled up like a furry little doughnut next to me, but Didirri was nowhere in sight.

I strolled towards the mouth of the cave, and noticed a small folded piece of paper underneath an empty stubby, it read as follows;

“Mark, I’m going to be totally honest with you here… I was actually planning on killing you and turning you into man-jerky, but you seem like a pretty slick dude, so I’m not going to eat you. It feels like it would be unfair.

“Anywho, cheerio, please don’t tell anyone I make person-jerky and eat people because that would make it really hard to sell my records and get people to my shows.”

Bad Pony are set to release their Deficiency EP on Friday June 8, before setting out on tour with Byron Bay band (and 2017 triple j Unearthed Splendour in the Grass competition winners) Wharves.