For most of us, a trip to Pixie Town is a happy Christmas-time highlight. Not so for David Loughrey, who says the ''remorseless, jerking hysteria of the dreadful sharp-eared Christmas gang'' is settled deep within his subconscious. He braved near certain psychological damage to relive the traumas of his youth.
The butcher raised the meat cleaver high above his head, held it aloft for no more than the briefest of moments, then brought it slamming down on the bloodless, fleshless severed limb that was the focus of his dark act.
Then the butcher raised the meat cleaver high above his head, held it aloft for no more than the briefest of moments, and brought it slamming down on the bloodless, fleshless severed limb that was the focus of his dark act.
Then he did it again.
He did it again - and again, again, and then again.
His terrible, malevolent energy was without limit, as the sickening attacks cut dark red fissures in the unyielding meat.
Welcome to Cheerio Butchers, just down the lane from where a sharp-eared man is caught in the clutches of the same deranged and manic violence, slamming his beer bottle down, down on the outdoor table, bang, bang-bang, bang, bang-bang, bang, bang-bang.
At his shoulder, standing, his compatriot pats hard on his arm, his intent perhaps to calm: more likely he means to infuriate.
Whichever, the open palm hits the limb over and over and over again, tapping out its demonic beat; tap-tap, tap, tap-tap, tap, tap-tap, tap, tap-tap, tap.
Somewhere, behind a neatly painted white picket fence, the machinery of this awful ritual rumbles and groans, a demented orchestra of suffering.
Subterranean cogwheel teeth grind cruelly together, then part; the con rod-forced piston nightmare grabs hand and leg and head, driving them in merciless rhythms that subject each tortured body part to neurotic spasms of uncontrollable, repetitive trauma.
And it does not stop.
Across the way from Cheerio Butchers, in this vile charade of existential hysteria, a chef stands over his pot, his spoon plunged deep into its contents, and stirs.
Every time the spoon completes its journey of that metallic circumference, the chef's head jerks harshly back, and his spine hyper-extends with such violence no mortal back could bear.
But such damage is not limited to one circuit; again and again the spoon leads the chef on his merry dance of agony, his back twisting and his head slamming back and forward.
Welcome to Pixie Town.
And suffer, the little children, to come unto me.
The mechanical marvel of its age, this town of pixies was dragged on its own circuit by its maker - Fred Jones, of Nelson - who toured his 1930s-era creation throughout the colony.
Brought here by the Otago Scottish Council in 1951, its inhabitants were clearly enamoured by the Gothic darkness of Dunedin, and jumped at the chance in the 1970s to put down their sinuous roots in the DIC department store, and let their sharp tendrils burrow deep into the minds of a whole cohort of children.
Those children were brought there by their parents.
It was Christmas after all.
They entered Pixie Town then, as they can enter now at the Toitu Otago Settlers Museum, their soft, innocent fingers gripping the displays as their deep subconscious is gripped tightly in turn.
They stare wide-eyed at an elephant, his whole head and trunk gripped by a brutal nervous tic that slams them from side to side.
Skeletal-faced monkeys ride unicycles round and round, spinning and twirling their monkey friends on a dizzying roundabout ride - and these monkeys are not going to heaven.
A skeleton dances outside the Mystery House, a house that surely loomed darkly in 1970s children's dream-scapes, its shrouded door pulled back to reveal unknowable terrors.
A see-saw balances on a barrel marked ''gunpowder, danger'', seeing and sawing over certain oblivion.
Our cohort of '70s kiddies has reached its 40s and 50s now and, metaphorically, we see-saw over gunpowder still.
Our minds warped darkly by this mechanical horror, we cling to our sanity and fear the soft fall of the December night.
Because it is not Santa who climbs down the chimney of our dreams.
It is the unstoppable horror of Pixie Town, its inhabitants released from their shackles and marching across Queens Gardens, a cruel mania born of unspeakable suffering in their eyes.
''Come to us,'' the pixies call into the gloaming.
''Come to us,'' they scream.
''Come to us.''
And a new generation comes.
