Creature Festival Project
Creaturemag Festival Project – Creature@ Secret Garden Party.
For pics please click here. Scroll down for a Creaturemag tale of SGP.

Is this the best festival that we have ever been to? I think it probably is, not simply because it’s set around a lake, not just because we met some of the loveliest friendly people and not because we saw things that we had never seen or even thought about seeing before, but because all of it, every single little detail merged to create a party like no other we have attended.

For pics please click here. This ones first on the list for next year!

A Short Story about the Secret Garden Party, By Creature…

If you would like to make illustrations to accompany this story in the forthcoming festival edition, please express your interest by sending no more than three examples of your work to Creature@creaturemag.com.

At dusk, our satchels laden with all kinds, my garden companion and I set out for the Valley Of The Antics, a mystical playground beyond the great lake. The immensity of our journey was yet to be revealed. Meandering through lonely pianists and absinthe soaked poets, we wandered, stopping for a short time to gaze at the hoola-hooping actors gyrating wildly to the re-enacted plays of Shakespeare.

Neon spotted twitchers paraded with great bearded torch bearers walking hand in hand with gremlin brides on the scavenge for new sights, sounds and substances. Pickle faced storytellers beckoned with warty hands whilst crawling backwards into their tented caves, new mysteries baffled us at every turn.

We approached the great lake, alive with a green pulsating algae, passable only by rowing boat or by braving a zig-zagging stone path that hung across the surface of the eerie lagoon. Backs hunched and heads bowed we pressed on, cautiously avoiding eye contact with the creatures that lined the levitating thoroughfare. Some braved the sludge only to be hurriedly dragged, screaming with legs flailing in the syrupy liquid. Continued…

Around a small jetty pirates fashioned rafts from shoreline waste and other collected debris, launching them into the drink and paddling with haste towards a proud galleon standing anchored in the centre of the great body of water, more and more boarded the ship, doused in rum and dancing before they disappeared into the midst of a gun powder explosion.

Corpse laden branches greeted us on the southern shore, a Burtonesque masquerade. Trees baring shoes and boots of all kinds, forbidden fruit emitting a bright green haze and plumes of white vapour sheltered rogue traders taking unfamiliar currency in exchange for gaseous laughs. From nowhere zipped three pretty little fairies.

“Do you recognise me?” They twittered, flicking fluttering wings through the hair around my over grown earlobes.

“Do you recognise us”
“Do you recognise me?”
“Here, take a flower, a rose as red as morning, and god speed on your journey.”

A rugged approach led us to a inclining ridge from the top of which, we were told, we would have the most enchanting view of The Valley, the abundant mass of land dwarfed us, but our ascent was surprisingly quick…

“Welcome to the third tier. To proceed you must present us an offering, if we deem your offering worthy we will in exchange provide you with potions to aid you in your journey, then allow you to continue your voyage to the peak.”

We presented a purse of small yellowy gems and in return received a phial brimming with a white powdery substance which we were informed would allow us to continue travelling in the face of exhaustion, and on we traipsed.

Our advance toward the summit brought yet more wonders. Some Creatures sat cross legged, clothing elaborate and faces painted, prancing sprites and lurching swamp creatures tangled with mud monsters and starry eyed grass hoppers. Legless ladies enjoyed tea and cake at the foot of the steepest incline, sheltered by the brush and kept cosy by the remaining warmth of the day that still seeped from the ground.

At the summit we rested. Our perch in the darkness offered a valuable vantage point from which to inspect the unravelling madness below. The creatures, all silent, moved in circles, some laboriously in their arced rotation others more nimbly upon backward bending knees. Some embraced the music box, an intriguing asymmetrical object from which emanated a revolving, repetitive beat, providing some degree of certainty amongst the ensuing chaos; others exchanged currency for the gift of sound and continued to move the night into twilight.

From there, as we laid to rest at the dawn of a new day, as the sun stood on the shoulders of darkness and fell upon the happy faces of the fields, it appeared, disentangling itself from the mist as if being dragged towards us on a rope, The Valley Of The Antics. Through it’s glare we could see souls in the smiles on the faces, in the longing gaze of lovers and in the lingering embrace of strangers thrown together. These nights and these people are not lost, they live on in each one of us, in our memories, in our smiles, in our thoughts, on our journey to The Valley Of The Antics.