Saturday, January 9, 2010
I put the mat out
Sometimes it's nice to get back a little feedback, particularly when you've spent so much time and effort trying to create something that you hope people will enjoy, and that's the reason why I've put this out for you.
The Christmas Labels of 2009 - 'What Ring?' and 'Campbells in Blunderland'
An Introduction.
Another year and another season of cheer have gone by. Campbell Brothers' wines, a red and a white, have been procured, produced, and bottled (by Ralph's valiant efforts), and the resultant product distributed and gurgled. It has hopefully contributed to some of that seasonal cheer as well.
I would like to say a little bit regarding the stories, at least the parts that I write. I gear the stories to my bestest brother and friend, Ralph, and to my bestest friend Sid (who is like a brother to me, and who has made an appearance in the 'Ring' story too this year). They are the ones for whom the stories are actually written. I like to make them laugh.
There's actually quite a bit of stuff in this year's two stories that are elements particular to Ralph and I. Here's an example: In the earliest incarnation of the blog I think I mentioned something about sitting in a basement under a bare bulb and bottling the wine and laughing. That actually happened. The telling of it has resurfaced in one of the stories. And it's the same with other things from our individual or shared experiences, or from things that we've talked about, so you end up with references to things like clearing brush, septic tanks, arc welders, and chainsaws. Oh and there's wine, to be sure (or at least, sometimes, something else alcoholic, but usually wine), usually made by us, and usually patently potent. And chili too.
And I am sure there are many things mentioned that are shared with Sid, like his library in this instance.
The stories that were written to go along with this year's wine offerings were huge things, at least by our standards. Each story became something like 17 printed pages long, each. They were so long in fact that we felt that we couldn't afford to make print outs of them and hand them around with the wine, as we've done for so many years now. The stories just kept on growing longer and longer. If that's a fault then it is mine (mea culpa) but I swear that the characters involved in them just wouldn't shut up, they all demanded space. That's my excuse and I'm sticking by it.
So we had these long stories and puzzled a while on what to do with them, how to package them up for distribution. What we did, instead of printing them out, was to make 'pdf' files of the labels and the stories, and burn everything out to disc. Actually I put 'html' versions on the discs as well so that any computer's browser could access them. Then we put Campbell Brothers Winery stickers on the discs and handed them out. Finito. Right?
Unfortunately I found out recently that not all computers could read the discs I burned out even though I put the files in formats that should have been accessible by both machines. They were created and burned out on my iMac and it seems that some Window's machines just won't see the files. What a crock of, well, smelly stuff (don't get me started), but it became one of the reasons why I wanted to make the effort early in the new year to get the new stories onto the blog where, if you have the internet, you should be able to access them (didn't I just finish saying something similar about the files themselves?).
So I hope you enjoy the stories.
Oh, I almost forgot to add, as a bonus bonus on the discs I threw in the Sherlock Holmes story as well (which already appears earlier in this blog and is called 'The Case of the Speckled Tongue').
Another year and another season of cheer have gone by. Campbell Brothers' wines, a red and a white, have been procured, produced, and bottled (by Ralph's valiant efforts), and the resultant product distributed and gurgled. It has hopefully contributed to some of that seasonal cheer as well.
I would like to say a little bit regarding the stories, at least the parts that I write. I gear the stories to my bestest brother and friend, Ralph, and to my bestest friend Sid (who is like a brother to me, and who has made an appearance in the 'Ring' story too this year). They are the ones for whom the stories are actually written. I like to make them laugh.
There's actually quite a bit of stuff in this year's two stories that are elements particular to Ralph and I. Here's an example: In the earliest incarnation of the blog I think I mentioned something about sitting in a basement under a bare bulb and bottling the wine and laughing. That actually happened. The telling of it has resurfaced in one of the stories. And it's the same with other things from our individual or shared experiences, or from things that we've talked about, so you end up with references to things like clearing brush, septic tanks, arc welders, and chainsaws. Oh and there's wine, to be sure (or at least, sometimes, something else alcoholic, but usually wine), usually made by us, and usually patently potent. And chili too.
And I am sure there are many things mentioned that are shared with Sid, like his library in this instance.
The stories that were written to go along with this year's wine offerings were huge things, at least by our standards. Each story became something like 17 printed pages long, each. They were so long in fact that we felt that we couldn't afford to make print outs of them and hand them around with the wine, as we've done for so many years now. The stories just kept on growing longer and longer. If that's a fault then it is mine (mea culpa) but I swear that the characters involved in them just wouldn't shut up, they all demanded space. That's my excuse and I'm sticking by it.
So we had these long stories and puzzled a while on what to do with them, how to package them up for distribution. What we did, instead of printing them out, was to make 'pdf' files of the labels and the stories, and burn everything out to disc. Actually I put 'html' versions on the discs as well so that any computer's browser could access them. Then we put Campbell Brothers Winery stickers on the discs and handed them out. Finito. Right?
Unfortunately I found out recently that not all computers could read the discs I burned out even though I put the files in formats that should have been accessible by both machines. They were created and burned out on my iMac and it seems that some Window's machines just won't see the files. What a crock of, well, smelly stuff (don't get me started), but it became one of the reasons why I wanted to make the effort early in the new year to get the new stories onto the blog where, if you have the internet, you should be able to access them (didn't I just finish saying something similar about the files themselves?).
So I hope you enjoy the stories.
Oh, I almost forgot to add, as a bonus bonus on the discs I threw in the Sherlock Holmes story as well (which already appears earlier in this blog and is called 'The Case of the Speckled Tongue').
What ring? I got no stinking ring.
When Ralph first told me that he wanted to do a story about the Lord of the Rings I inwardly groaned. I thought no, no, anything but that. At the same time I could hear Ralph's voice in the back of my mind saying 'Anything?' in that way he has that hints of things worse. So Ralph sent to me a summary of the story and I overcame my initial reluctance, and this is what grew from it.
For the photograph that appears on the label we decided to go with a 'product shot' that shows some of the key elements of the story. The ring that appears in it, by the way, is one of the set of rings made for us by Ralph's daughter, Taya, for the 3 Campbell brothers (and yes, there's a third one, and thank you Taya very much for that).
This is the label:
And here is the story:
What is magic? It’s a hard thing to explain. It’s like, well, magic, right? When a little magic and the Campbell brothers, Ralph and Colin, are brought together it’s like mixing the proverbial oil and water, the results can be disastrous. Magic is unstable most of the time, which is pretty much the state that the Campbell brothers are trying to attain for most of the time too.
The Campbells are sore, scratched, and tired. They’ve spent hours cleaning up the thorn bushes from around the tower, a left over from some old fairy tale before The Grand Wizard pSid (the ‘p’ is silent), the Wizard of Odd, took over residence. Technically Ralph was the handyman. Colin, wanting a title for himself, had settled on ‘puller brush man’.
When they thought the wizard was out they stole into the tower. As is something of a standard in tales involving wizards and magic, it was bigger inside than it looked from the outside. They wandered around until they found and entered the huge room that contained his magical library and lab looking for some, well, refreshment shall we say. They looked around. Along a long wall facing windows was the wizards work desk piled with strange apparatus: a bunch of those alchemical glassworks with liquids of various colours and consistencies bubbling and gurgling and dripping trough tubes. To the Campbells it looked like a giant still. At the end of a series of these tubes sat a small beaker on a beer coaster, into which green luminescent drops were falling; drip, drip, drip.
An old cat, sleeping high up on one of the windowsills, raised its head and opened one eye. He regarded the invaders into his space.
Ralph spotted the beaker first. “Hey, Colin”, he whispered in a hoarse voice, “over here.”
Colin came. They looked at the beaker for a while. Drip, drip.
“Smell it”, his brother said.
Colin did. “It smells kind of minty.”
“Taste it.”
“Whoa, packs a punch.” He takes a larger swallow.
“Save some for me”, Ralph said and grabbed the flask then downed the rest of the contents.
There was a moment of appreciation of the taste of the strong elixir, and then both brothers began to stagger about. They grabbed at each other for support, not necessarily the wisest of things to do in the circumstances. Colin fell backwards and as he did so his hand met the binders of a set of books on one of the shelves. There was a loud ‘prap’ (sorry, the closest I could approximate the sound) and the two brothers vanished in a puff of faintly minty smelling green smoke.
This happened on the Fifth of Tuesday. pSid’s little concoction cast them from the realm of the present, to Muddy Earth.
I would like to say that they hit the ground with a thud, but I can’t. It was more like a splash, thud, and groan. A big splash, thud, and groan at that. Both brothers landed in a small, quickly flowing, and luckily shallow, river. They hurried out of the water. The idea of being clean repulsed both of them. I would just like to add that if you had been there, and if you had the magic sight to see, it might have looked like the water itself helped to throw the brothers out, not wanting to be polluted by such filth.
As they made it to shore Ralph noticed, in a little pool cut into the near shore, a small package or pouch made of some kind of see through crinkly paper, impervious to the water. Ralph picked it up and looked at it. The wrapping was brightly coloured and covered with words and a picture of a sailor and a little dog.
Colin made a grab for it, stealing it out of his brother’s hand. He looked at it. Then Ralph stole it back. Then Colin stole it back a second time and quickly put it into his pocket. Ralph held his brother arms back and retrieved it from the other’s pocket and then put it in his own. Both Campbell brothers pushed and shoved at each other trying to steal and now hide the shiny package from each other.
“Okay, okay”, Ralph finally said, holding up both hands. “We’ll open the damn thing and see what’s in it.” They sat on the bank of the river on conveniently places rocks. Ralph retrieved the package and, with some effort, tore it open. Into his hand fell something like a small egg, it was yellowish and, when held up to the light, sort of translucent. There was a faint line or edge that ran around the middle. When it was shaken there was an audible rattle from the thing inside the thing.
“It’s mine”, said Ralph. “I saw it first.”
“No, it’s mine”, said Colin, “I saw it second.”
“Get stuffed” his brother replied.
Colin sulked. “Well”, he said after a short miff, “can you eat it? Is it precious do you think?”
“Don’t know. Couldn’t guess. We’ll take a closer look at it when we figure out where the hell we are. Here you can have this”, he said, passing his brother the remains of the package that it had sat in.
“Gee, thanks”, Colin said sarcastically. He thought about throwing it in the river but ended up pocketing it anyway (he was a bit of a pack rat that way). Then he came up to his brother and patted him on the back in a brotherly fashion while his other hand reached into his pocket.
“Now, let’s get going” Ralph pronounced. “And give me back the thing.”
“What thing?”
They wrestled on the ground for a while. Finally, when that struggle appeared to be going nowhere, they started off.
They found a small path that led away from the water and followed it.
The woods grew darker and quiet. Well, almost quiet. The only disturbance to the peace in this lush forest was sound of the constant bickering between the two brothers, that and trying to regain sole possession of the thing. After a couple of hours of this they lumbered (like a saunter but heaver) into a small village called, according to a person they asked, CheezWiz. He showed them to the tavern and guesthouse. The sign above the door said ‘The Studding Stallion’. The two brothers entered.
It was a small smoky interior with a bar at one side and a few tables in the middle. Ralph, ever the optimist, headed towards the bar to try making a deal and score some drinks using his roll of Canadian Tire money. Colin had his back to the bar and was checking out the customers in the place when he spotted a lone figure sitting at a table near the fire with a string-less guitar across his lap. The two looked at each other for a moment and then Colin started to approach the table.
The bartender spotted this and shouted, “No, no. Don’t make eye contact.” But it was already too late. There was a large sigh from the bartender who then said in a resigned voice, “Well, there goes business.”
“What do you mean” asked Ralph?
Tears stared to come to the bartender eyes. “That’s Airgo, a De-Ranger, one of the last of the race of Dunnothings, and every time he makes eye contact with someone he ends up telling his sob story. The whole tavern goes quiet, everyone listens, everyone gets depressed, and they sort of sits there spellbound you might say, quietly crying in their beers. Then they stops drinking altogether and have to leave. He’s cleaned out the place five times this week. I’m going broke.”
“I have money”, said Ralph, a huge smile on his face.
He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and from it pulled a wad of Canadian Tire money.
“What’s your name”, he asks?
“Butterball.”
“Well, Mr. Butterball, have you gotten any of the new paper money yet,” he asked?
“The what?”
“Paper money.”
“Paper money you say. You must be joking. Never heard of such a thing.”
Ralph turned up his smile and began to speak. “Oh, yes, it’s all the rage. Butterball, you probably haven’t seen any of it before now because you’re, well excuse me for saying, way out here in the boonies.” He unfolded one of the bills and showed it to the bartender with a flourish. “This is a 5 cent Canadian Tire coupon. See? And on it, right here, see this writing? It says that’s it’s redeemable in merchandise, well, Butterball, my good man, you have merchandise, yes? And I’m interested in redeeming some of it.”
“But…”
Ralph talked right over top of him. “You know, of course, how heavy a bag of coins can be, right?”
“Yes, but…”
“Well, this takes care of that problem, doesn’t it? Feel it. It’s lightweight, it’s portable, and it’s worth 5 silver pennies.”
“It is?”
“Yes, my dear Butterball, it is. It says so right on it. See here?”, he said, basting him like a well cooked turkey.
He looked at the note skeptically and then asked, “What is this c with the little line through it?”
“It means it’s certified.”
“Certified?”
“Yes, it’s guranteed to be worth five pennies, so we call it a five cent note. Five cents.”
“Cents?”
“Yes, that stands for the Certified by the Engravers, Netters, Tanners, and Sentries association. C E N T S.”
“Well, I don’t know…”
Ralph was on a proverbial roll and wouldn’t be interrupted. “Yes, Mr. Butterball. It’s real; it’s right in front of your face. The netters originally thought of the idea.”
“Netters?”
“Yes, the fishermen. You see if you fall off a boat into the water and you have a big bag of coins, why the weight alone would drag you straight to the bottom. Wouldn’t it?”
“Well, I suppose so,” Butterball grudgingly admitted.
“It would. So this one netter, I mean fisherman, in fact the guy who’s pictured here on the paper,” he points to him, “went to the engravers with the problem and had them make up some of this paper money.”
“He did?”
“And they thought the idea was so good that they wanted to be a part of it.”
“This fella, he must be a very important man then.”
“Oh, he’s dead.”
“Dead?”
“Yes, dead. He fell off a boat and drowned. Couldn’t swim a stoke you see, poor guy. So they put his picture here on the paper as a sort of memorial thing.”
“Poor fella. That’s sad.”
“Yes, but the important thing is that he had paper money, and he would have lived if he had only known how to swim.”
“Oh, I see,” he dug some ear wax out of his ear, “but you said something about the tanners too?”
“Yes I did. You saw this wallet? The folded leather thing that I took the money from? Here, look.” He dug it out of his pocket again and unfolded it. Various bit of paper and other items tumbled to the bar top along with a used condom. Ralph hurriedly swept them into his pocket. “Well, Butterball, this,” Ralph waved the wallet under Butterball’s nose, “was another inspiration of our poor dead netter, I mean before he died obviously. He wanted to have something specially made to hold the paper money and important papers in. It’s very handy.”
“Ah, I can see that. It looks handy.”
“And the tanners all thought, hey this is a good thing. Let’s get behind it too.”
“And the other?”
“The sentries? Well, that should be obvious.”
“It should?”
Ralph nodded seriously. “Yes, with all this valuable paper money being produced, and all the people now wanting it, sentries had to be hired to protect it from people trying to steal it. And people were also bringing in their old, worn out, coins and trading them in for the new paper. So, Butterball, the sentries had to guard not only the new money but also the huge piles of old coins as well.”
“Well, I’ll be. And so they got involved, did they?”
“Right you are Butterball.”
Butterball picked up the five cent note and stared at it. There was an element of new respect to his gaze.
“So,” Ralph closed in for the kill, “I am going to make you the deal of your lifetime.”
A short while later Ralph headed over to the table where Colin and the De-Ranger, Airgo, were sitting and talking. He was carrying a huge platter filled with the best food of the house, and three large mugs of beer.
“Thank you. Thank you very much” Airgo said as he was handed a mug.
After they had gorged their appetites a bit and the consumption of food had slowed down so that they could take breaths between bites, Airgo began to tell his story again (Colin already had gotten an ear full while Ralph was busy at the bar). It truly was a sad, sad story, one of the saddest sad stories of all time. It was the story of how he had lost the key to his Chopper, of his never ending search of his pockets to try to find it again, of his constant fingering of the hole in the pocket of his jeans, of his wanderings in Muddy Earth searching everywhere for the key (because he already looked for it at home and couldn’t find it) and, finally, of what the future will hold when he finally finds the key again and he can become, once more, King of the Road.
The spell didn’t seem to affect the brothers the same way it did everyone else. They listened, they ate, they drank, they repeated the process. Then they began to tell tales themselves. It became a contest, a game, to try to outdo each other and see who could tell the saddest story of all.
“Why, when we were young, we had to eat rocks”, Ralph began.
His brother chirped up, “You had rocks. We would have died for rocks. We had to eat our own feet.”
“You had feet”, interrupted Ralph. “We had to go around on our bums all the time.”
“You had bums…,” and so it went on, and on, and on. You can say ‘ad nauseam’ if you like.
The effect on the bar was drastic if un-dramatic; all the former drinkers silently picked-up their things and left, tears running down their cheeks. Even the bartender prepared to leave. He looked at the strange script still in his hands, then sighed, and stuffed the wad in his apron pocket. He paused at the door and looked back, just once, at the trio in the corner before blowing his nose in the dirty rag he used for cleaning out the mugs. He shut the door behind him, leaving them alone. Once outside he stood in thought for a moment and then made his way to the village tanner, to talk to him about making a wallet.
Inside the now deserted bar, after all the tales had been told and silence had stretched it’s legs for a few moments, and after Ralph had helped himself and refilled their mugs, Airgo finally asked, “But what brings you here to Muddy Earth? And what is that thing that you keep taking from one another?”
“What thing”, Colin said?
“So, you have a thing. Tell me its tale.”
He didn’t seem hostile, and it didn’t seem that he wanted it for himself, and so Colin slowly drew it from some recess of his clothing and showed it to Airgo. Ralph patted a pocket and cast an accusing look at his brother.
There was a gasp from Airgo. “Do you know what you have here?”
Ralph plucked the thing from his brother’s palm. “No, what?” He stared at it, as if his eyes could penetrate it’s secret content.
“Unless I miss my guess you have found an ancient artifact, one of the Palantir, or Plans, of the Yelves. He rolled it in his hand and then said, “Some say that these were to be found in specially marked packages of Palantir’s Peanuts, plain or salted, but I believe this to be B.S., baseless supposition, thank you very much.”
“Then where did it come from,” asked Colin?
“I think that this was a gift exchanged for offerings of small pieces of silver money from something that was called, I believe, ‘the Gumme Ball Ex Machina.’”
Airgo studied it for a moment longer and then, grasping each end in one hand, twisted it in opposite directions. To Ralph and Colin’s surprise it opened. Airgo spilled the contents onto his hand. There was an unusual ring and a tiny bundle of rolled parchment. He placed the ring in front of him and began to unroll the parchment, and it turned out to be three tiny sheets rolled together, each covered with tiny cramped lettering.
Airgo put the parchments down and then thoughtfully scratched his nuts for a moment. He then pointed to the ring on the table with his finger. He poked it, tentatively, with one long, cracked, and filthy nail and said to the brothers, “This is a thing of great import. What you have found is possibly a ring of power. It could even be the secret decoder ring of the Big Eye himself.”
The brothers were speechless, which was a quality many people thought they should cultivate more often.
Airgo picked the parchments up again and looked at each page in turn. “These two are in code”, he says handing them back to the brothers. “I know not what they say. You will have to discover their meaning for yourselves, possibly by using the ring itself. This third, however, is a page full of mystic runes.”
“Mystic runes”, the brothers chanted.
“Yes, runes. They were once ordinary letters at one time, but somebody spilled wine all over them and now they are runed. Very few, now a day, have the patience to unlock their meaning.” He squinted at it a bit. “See if you can find something to write with,” he said. “More drinks would be nice too.”
Airgo spent a long time at the translation. When he was finally finished he sat back, took a long draught of beer, and farted. The flames of the fire momentarily flashed green. He said, “It is a part of the legacy of my ancestor, Dieseldorc, and holds the ancient verse.” He clears his throat.
“Three drinks for the Yelven-kings and see them stupefied.
Seven bowls for the Dwarp-lords to stink up their halls of stone.
None for Mortal Men, Don’t ask me why.
One Combo for the Big Eye, with fries and gravy on the side (extra catsup please).
In the Land of Fourdoor where the condoms lie.
One Combo to rule them all,
One Combo to find them,
One Combo to bow them all and in the outhouse find them
In the Land of Fourdoor where the condoms lie.
Thank you. Thank you very much”, he said as he finished reading.
Airgo then told them the story of Dieseldork’s Pain, of how Dieseldork managed to wrest the ring from the Big Eye, Sorehead himself, at the end of a huge custody battle. Of how he hid it and kept it as his own precious thing, hiding it in a package made by Dwarps and sealed by Yelves. “This package”, he said, “was placed in a small cardboard box along with candied popcorn where none should ever find it.”
He took up his air guitar and strummed a silent chord.
“Such was the talk around the hearth when I was but a lad. Unfortunately it seems that Dieseldork made and then ate too much of the cursed Combo himself and, after an excruciating bellyache, exploded. Anyway, the ring and the recipes vanished out of our knowledge, but it is said that the package shall be known by the sigil ‘Cracker Jack®’”.
Colin reluctantly removed the remains of the package from his pocket and looked at the words. They were the same.
Ralph, looking over the translation of the poem, asks, “Why none for Mortal Men?”
“As the poem says, ‘Don’t ask me why’. Actually, no one is sure. All know that the combination of the wine and the chili is dangerous, but it is also said to be a wonder as well. The power of the Combo was said to be such that, if many partake, it could fulfill a wish shared by the people. Well, not just people but any race that tried it. But the result would have unexpected side effects?”
“Like what?”
“Again, it is never said. Maybe it has something to do with my ancestor exploding, or something, maybe not. Mortal Men, I heard, just got the worst of it.”
Airgo began strumming a soft melody on the guitar. It had to be soft; he had no damn strings on the instrument. Then he continued, “The story goes that if the Big Eye ever gets the recipes back then everyone will become addicted to his food and all will have to eat at his chain of restaurants all the time. He’s going to call it something like Mickey Dees or something.”
“Wow”, said Colin.
His brother agreed, “Yeah, wow. Now that’s planning.”
So now the brothers start in earnest, intent on solving the riddles of the coded pages, each one stealing the ring back from time to time to put on his finger.
When the ring was put on the letters on the page seem to float up from the parchment and re-arrange themselves in to something that made sense. The brothers copied down the translations on fresh pieces of parchment. When they finally completed the two pages, with much bickering back and forth, they showed the results to Airgo.
“This sheet holds the long lost recipe for the Chili of Power, the lost recipe of the Dwarps. Said to be the most delicious but the most vindictive food ever devised. SBD it is called. The effect is silent but deadly. It is a chili that would burn one’s very soul, leaving behind only ashes, and an unbelievably foul smell. Oh, and it is rumored to leave an after taste of cow dung.”
He picks up the other. “And this is for the Yelvish Wine of Density. You have to be thick to drink any of it. It’s the only alcoholic recipe ever to receive a jail term, but unfortunately it escaped by tunneling out of the prison in which it was kept and was thought lost to the ages.
So this ring and these parchments give the holder the secret of the two foods so that he can make both the chili of all chillies, and the wine of all wines, recreating the fabled Combo of old, which causes you to form and release the fart the fart of all farts, the smell of the universe.” He shuffled the pages. “The fortunate thing is that in most of Muddy Earth these spices are illegal (pointing at the eleven herbs and spices indicated on one of the sheets). There’s just one place where they all grow together. The people there, well they just don’t give a … something. They’ll grow anything there, legal or not. It’s called the WorcesterShire. I’ve been there a couple of times. Those Bobbits can be nasty, you know. The men are bad but the women are worse. It’s because of a mix-up at the endowment department, you know. They’re practically dickless.”
“But the chili”, said Ralph, a gleam in his eye.
“But the wine”, said Colin, a drop of drool ran and hid in his beard.
“Road trip”, both brothers shouted at the same time. They grab Airgo under his arms and begin to haul him from the bar.
“And you’re our new guide”, Ralph adds.
As they where leaving, Ralph turns to Colin and says in a whisper, as Airgo was taking a leak against the leg of a horse and couldn’t hear, “I’ve been thinking about what Airgo said right at the beginning, you know his sad story, losing this Chopper and all. How does chopping wood make you a king?” They both shrugged their shoulders and started waddling along, with Airgo now in tow.
Eventually they found themselves in the place called the WorcherShire and, soon after, fell over a young Bobbet named Fubar, who was sitting under a tree and, ah, concentrating on the fold out page of some sort of soft covered booklet that he had on his lap.
After awkward introductions were made the young Bobbit told his tale. Fubar, it seems, had lit out of town because he had forgotten to book the caterers for his Uncle Dildo’s sixty-ninth birthday party, which was this evening. And what was even worse was that he had also forgotten to get the alcoholic beverages. It was worse, he explained, because a sober Bobbit was worse than one who was well and truly smashed. And almost all the WorcesterShire would be in attendance. Fubar figured that he’d be lucky to get off with a lynching, his own of course.
“Well, we can make food. We even have a recipe”, Ralph offered.
“And we can make the wine for you too”, Colin added.
“Um”, said Airgo.
“And all you have to do is to get us this list of ingredients. You can do that, can’t you”, Ralph said.
“You will do this, and right away”, Colin added meaningfully.
“Yes, of course. Just let me, ah, finish this article. I love the articles in this publication. You go ahead to Uncle Dildo’s and I’ll be right there, honest. His home is called ‘Scrota’s End’. You can’t miss it, it’s just at the end of the path.”
So the food was prepared according to the ancient recipe, and the wine was made and left to stand for the required hour and twenty minutes as set out in the text before being served. The crowds of Bobbits were already a couple of hours into a really foul mood before the feast was presented.
And the results? Well, lets just say that after all the vomiting, and all the ‘letting flay of fartes’, and after all the small fires were extinguished from the flare ups of gas meeting fire, after all the groaning, all the shock that feet and hands were growing alarmingly (and growing hairy at that), after all the shoes were discarded, and after all the lying down in small groups across the party field (because it was too painful to walk), after all that there was a sudden silence, there was the silence of small people becoming intently interested in what the other had in their trousers. Then the moaning and the groaning took on a new tone and urgency, and Dildo’s 69th Birthday Party was forever known as the largest orgy in the history of WorcesterShire.
Well you know what they say about big hands and hairy feet.
In the morning Ralph sat up and looked out the window of the little room he shared with Airgo and his brother at Scrota’s End. He was alarmed to see most of the women from the night before heading their way, armed with scythes and knives, desperate looks on their faces. It appears that they were determined to keep the recipes for the chili and wine for themselves (in case the spell ever wore off). But, it was also seen, they were all walking kinda’ funny, and not just from the big hairy feet they now all had.
Luckily the women, accompanied by some of the men, were all tripping over their own feet, literally, which gave the company time to gather their things, pack some chili and some wine, a bag of spices, some rope, play a couple rounds of poker, pick their noses, make and consume breakfast, and just generally look about for things that might come in handy. They found a couple of huge packs, which they commandeered for the purposes of transporting their loot. Then they skipped town.
I would not classify what the brother did as running. It was more of a bump and stumble. They both felt sure that their heads were several sizes too large to carry on their bodies, each having consumed an amazing amount of wine the night before. They stumbled into each other and bumped into any object in their path. Even with that the sounds of pursuit faded behind them.
Airgo, for some reason unaffected by the night’s revelry, pranced and danced beside the two brothers and did air riffs and power chords on his guitar. He was pleased with himself because he had performed for the Bobbits last night, and had survived to tell the tale as they say.
Their fleeing led them out of the forest and into the mountains where they soon found caves and tunnels, and signs of habitation. Living within the caves were the Dwarps, an ancient and extremely short people who were, at the same time, extremely short sighted so that they could hardly make out what was a foot or two in front of their bearded faces. They worked tunneling and mining precious ores, which they traded for the goods to sustain themselves.
They found out that even their new hosts had trouble telling the guy Dwarps from the gal Dwarps. It was only because they were so short sighted that they occasionally bumped into a Dwarp of the opposite sex (although from all outward appearances they looked the same) and things would take that natural course that seems to be the only subject of real importance in nature’s curriculum.
They looked at the Campbells, and at Airgo too, in a kind of bleary awe.
Ralph said “They would be great people to be around if they weren’t so short.”
“I can see that”, agreed his brother, “too bad they can’t.”
But the Dwarps were friendly enough and invited the travelers inside. The Campbells were grateful for the shelter, and grateful to have left the Bobbits behind. The Canadian Tire money trick didn’t work on the Dwarps (they couldn’t see what was on the paper) so they made a batch of wine and chili for the Dwarps too.
It was quite a party. It went on till the wee hours, whichever ones they are, and they all passed out. The air was so full of gas that all the canaries in the mines went on strike and refused to return to work for days afterward.
In the middle of the night Colin threw a bucket of cold chilly over Ralph to wake him up yelling, “ Wake up, wake up. We got to get out of here. It’s the most horrid sight I have ever seen. GET MOVING.”
Ralph wiped some of the chilly from face with his fingers and licked it. “Needs more Tabasco definitely, definitely Tabasco” he opened his eyes and jumped to his feet.
There in the great hall where all the Dwarps, and they didn’t look too happy. In fact they were seeing all too clearly for the first time. Their eyesight was as sharp as needles. And they looked ridiculous, like little wrinkly children, only not so cute, and they were as hairless as they had been on the first day they had been born into this world because, unfortunately, during the night, all their hair had fallen out. A huge bunch of Dwarps was running around, nude as something without any clothes on, going through chili withdrawal and getting stirred up. It was horrible. And they were pissed at the Campbells because they could see how gross they actually looked.
It was like in the cartoons. The brother’s feet did triple time trying to get the traction to run. Since the entrance to the mine was now blocked (with several hundred angry hairless little devils, with acute eyesight) they realized that the only way out was to go further in and so they headed deeper into the mines of Gonorrhea. Airgo was way ahead of them. They could see the small flame of his Zippo lighter in the distance.
A new sensation stole over the brothers. The deeper they went into the mine, the greater the feeling came over them that something was following them (well, beside the Dwarps). It was Airgo who finally figured out who or what it was.
“We are being followed by a creature that is called Glumo. He has been seeking the ring for years and years and wants to get it back really bad. He once had the ring and had used the decoder to make for himself a lock that none could pick. Now all he desires is to get the ring back so that he can unlock his locker and get a change of clean underwear. Poor creature.”
They continued through the mine.
Deeper and deeper they went into the mountain, losing track of time and coffee breaks. Suddenly, as they rounded a corner of a vast hall, they were attacked by a creatire out of legend, Doornod. It was said to have come from the very depths of hell. It was the biggest thing ever. No it was bigger than a thing. It was so big they had to make a new name for it. It was a THANG.
They started to run. The THANG, Doornod, gave chase. Their only hope was to cross the narrow bridge over the chasm of Lorna Doom before the monster caught them.
Airgo, as always, was way in the front lighting the way followed by Ralph. Colin was having difficulty keeping up and puffed in the rear. Ralph turned his head for a moment to look behind him and saw the huge head of Doornod, with jaws agape, dip towards his brother and then Colin was lifted high into the air.
Colin screamed. Ralph screamed. They all had ice scream. Sorry, I don’t know where that came from. It must be the excitement of the moment.
Unawares to Ralph the creature Doornod had grabbed Colin by the backpack. As he lifted his huge head the straps to the pack gave way under Colin’s considerable bulk and he fell to the ground with a thud. The monster then tossed the pack into the air and bit down on it. He swallowed. He looked around for more.
Ralph had gone on a couple of more strides until the thought of his brother being eaten alive hit home. He stopped in his tracks and then searched in his own pack for something to use as a weapon. His hand chanced upon one of the jugs of wine. He brought his arm back and then threw the jug in a great high arc at the Doornod. The THANG merely opened its mouth and chomped the tidbit. Then it licked its reptilian lips with its great tongue in what appeared to be satisfaction. Its expression then changed to one of surprise as, with a puff of smoke, it changed.
It still had its fiery head, it still had its horns, but now, instead of the great reptilian body, it was soft and squishy, had bunny ears, and a fluffy white tail. It also, somehow, had acquired a big bass drum, which it started to beat frantically. And it kept moving forward. It tried to halt its progress but, for some reason, it just couldn’t. It kept going, and going, and going, until it dropped over the edge and plunged into Lorna Doom. As it went over a voice boomed, “Is this the way to the Mariposa Carrot Festival?” and was gone.
Colin picked himself off the ground with some difficulty. Ralph blinked at him. He said, “Hey, you haven’t been eaten.”
“No, it appears that I haven’t.”
They ran to one another and embraced, brotherly of course, until they each realized that they were in a clinch together. They hurriedly backed away from each other.
Ralph, in a moment of inspiration, patted his pocket. “Give me the damn ring”, he said.
“What ring?” came the reply automatically. And then, with a shy grin, he delved into his own pocket and took something out. He gave the ring of power back to his brother.
They continued on and stumbled out of the caves and down the mountainside. They entered a lush green forest, with Airgo skipping and singing in the lead. They soon came, just outside of the city of Livinhell, to a giant woodland outlet mall called the ‘Everything You Want and More Valle’. This was the home of the famous ‘Ye Olde Yelvish Haberdashery and Dancing School’, There was a sign in the window, ‘Special Half Price TUTU SALE One Size Fits All’.
The brothers looked at each other and said, at the same time, “ We got to try that.”
Well, what resulted was a sight for sore eyes. NO, NO!! It wasn’t a site that should be seen by anyone’s eyes, sore or not.
Inside the shop the Yelf Fastbuck met them. He was way under quota set by the head Yelf of Livinhell, Elrond Hubbard, and under a lot of stress. He desperately needed to make a sale. The brothers told him, or yelled at him, what they wanted and, once the message had gotten through, then took their tutus into fitting rooms and eventually, after many a groan and the sounds of slight tearing, came out to look at and admire themselves in the mirrors.
Fastbuck, after seeing the brothers emerge in tutus and leotards, and trying to prevent his insides from spewing and becoming the outside (all over his nice clean display cases), yelled back, “Ah, guys, if you two take off those tutus and put your old clothes on we can take a break and talk price over dinner. How’s that?”
The Campbells agreed and reluctantly dragged themselves away from the mirrors.
Airgo, looking over a rack of shoes, found a pair of blue suede shoes that he liked. He shouted at Fastbuck, “Do you have these in my size, thank you very much.”
They proceeded into Livinhell.
The Yelves, it turned out, live in a type of commune. It is true that they only have one pot to piss in but it’s a very big pot. The brothers, over a beer or three, haggled with Fastbuck over the price of the clothes. Their voices were becoming rough. The negotiations were really tough because all of the Yelves are practically deaf. You needed cannon fire to get their attention. Finally they settled on another mitt full of Canadian Tire money and, (here it comes) they offered to supply chili and refreshment for all the Yelves to clinch the deal.
You might have thought that the Campbell brothers had learned their lesson by now, but I guess that they’re hard of learning. They made the crap, sorry I mean chili, in the giant cauldron and put together a batch of wine. And, as before, everyone got stuffed and then got hammered. And again the results were disastrous. Bad stars seem to follow the Campbells wherever they go.
So again we find the Campbell brothers scurrying for their lives, tutus in hand (and Airgo clutching his blue suede shoes). The Yelves where trying to catch them but, although they had regained their hearing and could hear a tack fall at a hundred paces, their ears looked like something you might find on a basset hound, only larger. They were so big that the Yelves kept tripping over them allowing the travelers to escape. Colin turned and looked at the elves one last time and, between gasps of air, said, “Hey, they look like hound dogs.”
”There could be song in there some place?” said Airgo.
And, keeping to form, were, a day or so later, captured by Dorcs. Several of the ugly little buggers ate up most of the remaining supplies that were stashed in the packs. They drank most of the wine as well. They whole tribe were going to finish off by eating Ralph, Colin, and Airgo when the Dorcs who had eaten the chili and drank the wine suddenly sprouted white plastic pocket protectors and spectacles appeared on their faces held together by pieces of tape. They had become Nyrds. In the confusion caused by the Nyrds looking for sticks to make into slide rules and looking for paper to write stuff down, Airgo and the Campbell brothers narrowly escape.
In years to come the Nyrds became a tribe of their own. They didn’t get laid very often either.
By now, word of the Campbells’ brothers traveled like lightning ahead of them. Everywhere they went they were harried. It seemed like all the races of Muddy Earth were uniting against them. Living trees, called Dents, threw squirrels at them to drive them away. Ralph found out first hand that squirrels made good missiles (as well as excellent bait for muskie fishing, but that’s another story) when one nasty rodent went for his nuts. Then the legendary hog riders of the Rumdumb chased them off the plains. Finally they had to hide for days in the ancient Dwarp defensive moat and cesspool of Crotch Deep in order to avoid being captured.
Well, the company finally arrived at the city of Minus Truth, Airgo’s hometown, where he had said they would be made welcome. Much to their surprise people again surround them with several types of sharp pointy things which they insistently pointed at them, meaningfully and menacingly. They were stripped of all their possessions and their clothes, taken to a deep dungeon, and locked inside. They were given back their tutus to wear. Airgo was clad only in his purple long johns, the back door flapping. Over the inside door some other unlucky soul had scraped in the stone ‘The Heartbreak Hotel’. “Hmmm”, Airgo murmured, looking at it.
The next day they were led out into the great courtyard where it seemed that every race of Muddy Earth had gathered together: Bobbits (the women protectively holding their hands over the men’s crotches, some had their hands actually in the trousers) and Yelves (ears nattily tied under their chins in bows; it had become a kind of fashion statement how these ear bows were tied and decorated) and Dorcs (including the pocket-protector Nyrds) and Dwarps (all wearing dark, and I mean really dark, glasses; in part to screen out the daylight but mostly because then they wouldn’t have to really look at one another) filled the space. No one looked pleased to see them. Actually no one looked at them at all, tutus or no. Strangely, they were ignored, another novelty for the two brothers.
On one side of the courtyard, on a raised dais, sat two old men, Gandolfo (the Grabby) and Solomodo (the Whiner), two second rate wizards. Floating between them was the huge fiery eye of Sorhead, the Big Eye himself. They were squabbling among themselves, trying to decide on how best to execute the Brothers (in the most painful way).
On a trestle table set up in front of the dais were the clothes that they had worn and meager remains of the sacks, including the last pot of left over chili and the last jug of wine. The entire assembled multitude stared at what remained of the food, all hating themselves desperately for it, but all wanting to eat more of the chili, drink more of the wine, no matter the consequences.
Gandolfo got up to speak. First he turned to Airgo. “As you are a son of this city and, as far as we can tell, only served as guide to these, these, these, perverts, you are free to go. But let this serve as a warning to you, not to involve yourself with the plots of the wicked. Pick-up your things and go.”
Airgo looked at the brothers, shrugged, and approached the table. He picked up his pants and his shirt and grabbed his boots and stuffed them under his arm. To his surprise a key dropped out of one of the boots and hit the ground with a tiny ‘ting’. He looked at it. He smiled a crooked grin and then bent and picked it up. His steps seemed to take on a new purpose as he strode from the assembly. “Thank you very much,” he said under his breath as he left.
Gandolfo spoke again. “Now as for you two, we’ve decided that death is to good for you (the brothers sighed in relief) but we also decided that it would just have to do (they un-sighed), but, in your honour we shall make those deaths particularly gross and spectacular.”
A ragged cheer went up from the assembled audience.
Solomodo, speaking from his chair on the dais continued, “Were it not for you the secret of the Combo would likely not have been discovered as soon, and for that we thank you.”
Gandolfo added, “But, unfortunately, as the ones responsible for making the chili and the wine we can’t afford to let you live. You might remember enough of the recipes for you to become our, what would you say, competition, and we don’t want that.”
Solomodo finished for him, “As far as it goes, though, you did an excellent job of, shall we say, testing the market. All who consumed the Combo have gathered here and crave more even though they hate themselves for it.” He cackled to himself. People who cackle to themselves are usually four fifths of the way to being outright bonkers.
The Big Eye spoke, “Get on with this. We have some cooking to do and some plans to make. And if we have any time left over I’m hoping to create some Onion Ring Wraiths for the weekend.”
“Ah, yes your Bigness.”
Solomodo stood up, pointed a rather grubby finger at the table in front of him and said, “We have the last of the chili, and we have the last of the wine. We have recovered the translation of the recipes and so we can make more, but where is the ring?”
“What ring, we got no stinking ring”, chorused the brothers.
“And where are the original parchments?”
“I think”, offered Colin, “that you should ask Doornod. He ate my pack after all.”
“Ah”, said the wizard, “so that’s another loose end taken care of then.” He sat back down.
Gandolfo continued, “So the only thing remaining, it seems, is to, ah, deal with you.” He chuckled to himself. It wasn’t a pleasant chuckle.
You can never trust people who cackle and chuckle to themselves; they’re just up to no good.
Just then there was a commotion at the back of the throng. It made its way incredibly swiftly through the crowd. The people, and the other kinds of people, threw themselves out of the way just in time as a huge hog roared through the courtyard, smashing and grunting and thundering as it rushed the dais. It wore a studded silver and leather collar, the handle of a key could just be seen jutting from its lock. There, sitting on the saddle on its back, guitar slung over one shoulder, was Airgo.
Chopper reached the dais and came to a hoof squealing stop. He butted the platform and knocked it over backward tumbling the two old men into the cesspit. At the same time, in one graceful motion, Airgo lept from Chopper’s back onto the tabletop. He unslung his guitar and, using it like a, well, guitar shaped golf club, he drove the pot of chili into the Big Eye’s, um, eye. It shattered on contact and bits of pottery shard punctured the eye. The chili, streaming into the wounds and over the eye, steamed and oozed. The eye turned pink like the worst case of pinkeye in the world, and there was a horrendous scream.
Then, with a second mighty swing Airgo did the same with the wine. It too shattered when it made contact with the eye.
The Big Eye tried to blink the stuff away, but of course, having no lid, it couldn’t. Abruptly the flame went out with a poof and the eye exploded sending aqueous humor, or vitreous humor, or whatever the hell that gooey inside the eye stuff is, and bits of pupil, throughout the crowd.
Airgo stooped, picked-up the pages of translation, took his trusty Zippo from his pocket and set the sheets alight. He held them aloft as they burned and shouted at to crowd, “There shall be no Mickey Dees while I am King.”
A hush went through the crowd as the spell of the chili and wine was broken. All the people sighed in what we assume was relief.
Shortly thereafter, a couple of smelly old men quietly made their way out of town, hooded, staffs clutched in their hands. They were literally heading for the hills. One turned to the other, “And I was going to be a Regional Manager too.”
“Yeah, me too. Best not to think of it. Well, back to the drawing board.”
“Know any good towers to rent?”
Once they left the confines of the city of Minus Truth, Gandolfo started to hum a walking tune. Soon both figures were measuring their strides and singing old Wizard school songs. They sang ‘That Old Black Magic’, they harmonized ‘My Friend the Witch Doctor’, and they skipped and sang together, ‘We’re off to be the Wizard’.
They wandered out of the pages of this narrative.
A day or so later Ralph and Colin are finally taking it easy, sitting back and enjoying the view from one of the terraced bars of the city. A rather familiar looking and foul smelling waiter served them drinks and then tried to stay close enough to the brothers to overhead their conversation.
“Who would have thunk it,” Ralph said? “He really was the King.”
“Is the King”, corrected his brother. “The thing that really got me though was when that delegation of Yelves and Dwarps came up to him and presented him with those guitar strings made out of, what did they call that really precious metal? Oh yes, Minstral.”
“Yeah, and then he played two whole sets at his coronation.”
“Too bad he can’t play guitar worth shit.”
“Yeah, you can say that again. Although I did kind of like that song about, what was it, Jail House Rocks?”
“Yeah, that was okay. I didn’t at all get the ‘Viva, Lost Wages’ thing though, did you?”
“Nope. Not a clue.”
Colin lowered his voice. The waiter leaned in to hear. “Say, Ralph, now be honest. Do you still have the ring?”
“What ring, right? Well”, he smiled, looked over his shoulder and completely missed seeing the waiter hovering nearby; “I sort of put it where the sun don’t shine. Yeah, I still have it. Too bad we don’t have the parchments though.”
“Who says we don’t. I did the same as you. I put them back in that plan thing container and stuffed it up the old wazoo.”
“You conniving bastard”, Ralph laughed, “So it looks like a couple of assholes hold the secrets of the Combo.”
“Right you are”, his brother agreed.
“You know, I think I can get used to this.” And then with a pop he disappeared. Colin just had an opportunity to look over at the empty chair and have his jaw hit the table when he too vanished.
They were back in a kind of familiar space.
“What in hell are you two trying to do?” It took a moment or two before the brothers realized where they were. They were sitting on the floor of the library in the tower back in the world they had left, and over them was bending the angry figure of the Grand Wizard pSid. Then they knew then they were home. They also knew they were in deep shit, only they didn’t know now deep yet. They slowly got up.
“Us!! We!! Me!! You!! Him!!” Both brothers began their excuses, pointing at one another.
“Now we’ll have to change the books.”
“What books?”
“These damn books”, he said indicating a hardbound set of volumes on the table. “You know, ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’, only now it reads ‘The Followship’ and it’s about how the people of Muddy Earth band together, both the good and the evil, to get rid of the Campbell Brothers.”
“Um”, said Ralph.
‘And then there’s The Two Towers, only now it reads ‘The Two Bladders, and it has something to do with you two and your feces spotting the landscape.”
“Ah”, said Colin.
“And then there’s ‘The Return of the King’.”
“Well, at least the name is right.”
“Yes, but this book is about a concert tour. Something about The King live on stage with his magic guitar playing, what does it say here? Oh yes, Music with rock in it. What the hell is that?”
“Uh”, said both brothers together.
“But the worst, and I mean the really worst, is what you did to this poor thing, ‘The Hobbit’. You weren’t even in that story but because of the laws of retrograde narrative…
“Huh,” they asked?
“Look, never mind what it’s called, just know that because you screwed up the later story line, and you really did screw that up, the first book had to re-write itself in kind. What was once a kid’s story about dragons and gold has become a porno. ‘In and Out Again, a Bobbit’s Tale’ indeed.”
“Sorry”, the brothers intoned.
“You two really know how to screw up, don’t you?” He sighed. “I guess it only goes to show that a good story will always suck you in.”
“Sorry”, they said again.
“If it wasn’t for Nigel, my Overly Familiar…”
“Your what?”
“Nigel the cat. I’ve had him far too long for him just to be Familiar. Anyway, if he hadn’t seen what you had done and where you had gone and told me I might still be looking for you. As it was I had to waste a whole day going through the books to see if I could track you down. Idiots.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s going to take me ages to restore the books to their proper form.”
“Sorry.”
“Ah, and you’re giving me a such a headache. I think I need to eat. Tell you what, we’re going to go down to the pub and you”, he said pointing, “are going to pay for lunch.”
“Yes pSid.”
“And then I’m going to come up with a proper punishment for the two of you. You know, I think maybe you can start on cleaning out the privy.”
“No shit?”
“No, plenty of that I’m afraid. And speaking of shit”, he turned to the figure that was lurking behind the two brothers, “go and change your underwear, will you?”
“Glumo”, it said and looked down sheepishly.
“Then you can help them.”
They start for the village. The brother’s begin arguing about who is going to pick-up the cheque. They were both, by this time, short on Canadian Tire money.
“And knock that off or I’ll turn you into something unpleasant. More unpleasant even than being a Campbell.”
“Yes pSid.”
“Glumo.”
For the photograph that appears on the label we decided to go with a 'product shot' that shows some of the key elements of the story. The ring that appears in it, by the way, is one of the set of rings made for us by Ralph's daughter, Taya, for the 3 Campbell brothers (and yes, there's a third one, and thank you Taya very much for that).
This is the label:
And here is the story:
What is magic? It’s a hard thing to explain. It’s like, well, magic, right? When a little magic and the Campbell brothers, Ralph and Colin, are brought together it’s like mixing the proverbial oil and water, the results can be disastrous. Magic is unstable most of the time, which is pretty much the state that the Campbell brothers are trying to attain for most of the time too.
The Campbells are sore, scratched, and tired. They’ve spent hours cleaning up the thorn bushes from around the tower, a left over from some old fairy tale before The Grand Wizard pSid (the ‘p’ is silent), the Wizard of Odd, took over residence. Technically Ralph was the handyman. Colin, wanting a title for himself, had settled on ‘puller brush man’.
When they thought the wizard was out they stole into the tower. As is something of a standard in tales involving wizards and magic, it was bigger inside than it looked from the outside. They wandered around until they found and entered the huge room that contained his magical library and lab looking for some, well, refreshment shall we say. They looked around. Along a long wall facing windows was the wizards work desk piled with strange apparatus: a bunch of those alchemical glassworks with liquids of various colours and consistencies bubbling and gurgling and dripping trough tubes. To the Campbells it looked like a giant still. At the end of a series of these tubes sat a small beaker on a beer coaster, into which green luminescent drops were falling; drip, drip, drip.
An old cat, sleeping high up on one of the windowsills, raised its head and opened one eye. He regarded the invaders into his space.
Ralph spotted the beaker first. “Hey, Colin”, he whispered in a hoarse voice, “over here.”
Colin came. They looked at the beaker for a while. Drip, drip.
“Smell it”, his brother said.
Colin did. “It smells kind of minty.”
“Taste it.”
“Whoa, packs a punch.” He takes a larger swallow.
“Save some for me”, Ralph said and grabbed the flask then downed the rest of the contents.
There was a moment of appreciation of the taste of the strong elixir, and then both brothers began to stagger about. They grabbed at each other for support, not necessarily the wisest of things to do in the circumstances. Colin fell backwards and as he did so his hand met the binders of a set of books on one of the shelves. There was a loud ‘prap’ (sorry, the closest I could approximate the sound) and the two brothers vanished in a puff of faintly minty smelling green smoke.
This happened on the Fifth of Tuesday. pSid’s little concoction cast them from the realm of the present, to Muddy Earth.
I would like to say that they hit the ground with a thud, but I can’t. It was more like a splash, thud, and groan. A big splash, thud, and groan at that. Both brothers landed in a small, quickly flowing, and luckily shallow, river. They hurried out of the water. The idea of being clean repulsed both of them. I would just like to add that if you had been there, and if you had the magic sight to see, it might have looked like the water itself helped to throw the brothers out, not wanting to be polluted by such filth.
As they made it to shore Ralph noticed, in a little pool cut into the near shore, a small package or pouch made of some kind of see through crinkly paper, impervious to the water. Ralph picked it up and looked at it. The wrapping was brightly coloured and covered with words and a picture of a sailor and a little dog.
Colin made a grab for it, stealing it out of his brother’s hand. He looked at it. Then Ralph stole it back. Then Colin stole it back a second time and quickly put it into his pocket. Ralph held his brother arms back and retrieved it from the other’s pocket and then put it in his own. Both Campbell brothers pushed and shoved at each other trying to steal and now hide the shiny package from each other.
“Okay, okay”, Ralph finally said, holding up both hands. “We’ll open the damn thing and see what’s in it.” They sat on the bank of the river on conveniently places rocks. Ralph retrieved the package and, with some effort, tore it open. Into his hand fell something like a small egg, it was yellowish and, when held up to the light, sort of translucent. There was a faint line or edge that ran around the middle. When it was shaken there was an audible rattle from the thing inside the thing.
“It’s mine”, said Ralph. “I saw it first.”
“No, it’s mine”, said Colin, “I saw it second.”
“Get stuffed” his brother replied.
Colin sulked. “Well”, he said after a short miff, “can you eat it? Is it precious do you think?”
“Don’t know. Couldn’t guess. We’ll take a closer look at it when we figure out where the hell we are. Here you can have this”, he said, passing his brother the remains of the package that it had sat in.
“Gee, thanks”, Colin said sarcastically. He thought about throwing it in the river but ended up pocketing it anyway (he was a bit of a pack rat that way). Then he came up to his brother and patted him on the back in a brotherly fashion while his other hand reached into his pocket.
“Now, let’s get going” Ralph pronounced. “And give me back the thing.”
“What thing?”
They wrestled on the ground for a while. Finally, when that struggle appeared to be going nowhere, they started off.
They found a small path that led away from the water and followed it.
The woods grew darker and quiet. Well, almost quiet. The only disturbance to the peace in this lush forest was sound of the constant bickering between the two brothers, that and trying to regain sole possession of the thing. After a couple of hours of this they lumbered (like a saunter but heaver) into a small village called, according to a person they asked, CheezWiz. He showed them to the tavern and guesthouse. The sign above the door said ‘The Studding Stallion’. The two brothers entered.
It was a small smoky interior with a bar at one side and a few tables in the middle. Ralph, ever the optimist, headed towards the bar to try making a deal and score some drinks using his roll of Canadian Tire money. Colin had his back to the bar and was checking out the customers in the place when he spotted a lone figure sitting at a table near the fire with a string-less guitar across his lap. The two looked at each other for a moment and then Colin started to approach the table.
The bartender spotted this and shouted, “No, no. Don’t make eye contact.” But it was already too late. There was a large sigh from the bartender who then said in a resigned voice, “Well, there goes business.”
“What do you mean” asked Ralph?
Tears stared to come to the bartender eyes. “That’s Airgo, a De-Ranger, one of the last of the race of Dunnothings, and every time he makes eye contact with someone he ends up telling his sob story. The whole tavern goes quiet, everyone listens, everyone gets depressed, and they sort of sits there spellbound you might say, quietly crying in their beers. Then they stops drinking altogether and have to leave. He’s cleaned out the place five times this week. I’m going broke.”
“I have money”, said Ralph, a huge smile on his face.
He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and from it pulled a wad of Canadian Tire money.
“What’s your name”, he asks?
“Butterball.”
“Well, Mr. Butterball, have you gotten any of the new paper money yet,” he asked?
“The what?”
“Paper money.”
“Paper money you say. You must be joking. Never heard of such a thing.”
Ralph turned up his smile and began to speak. “Oh, yes, it’s all the rage. Butterball, you probably haven’t seen any of it before now because you’re, well excuse me for saying, way out here in the boonies.” He unfolded one of the bills and showed it to the bartender with a flourish. “This is a 5 cent Canadian Tire coupon. See? And on it, right here, see this writing? It says that’s it’s redeemable in merchandise, well, Butterball, my good man, you have merchandise, yes? And I’m interested in redeeming some of it.”
“But…”
Ralph talked right over top of him. “You know, of course, how heavy a bag of coins can be, right?”
“Yes, but…”
“Well, this takes care of that problem, doesn’t it? Feel it. It’s lightweight, it’s portable, and it’s worth 5 silver pennies.”
“It is?”
“Yes, my dear Butterball, it is. It says so right on it. See here?”, he said, basting him like a well cooked turkey.
He looked at the note skeptically and then asked, “What is this c with the little line through it?”
“It means it’s certified.”
“Certified?”
“Yes, it’s guranteed to be worth five pennies, so we call it a five cent note. Five cents.”
“Cents?”
“Yes, that stands for the Certified by the Engravers, Netters, Tanners, and Sentries association. C E N T S.”
“Well, I don’t know…”
Ralph was on a proverbial roll and wouldn’t be interrupted. “Yes, Mr. Butterball. It’s real; it’s right in front of your face. The netters originally thought of the idea.”
“Netters?”
“Yes, the fishermen. You see if you fall off a boat into the water and you have a big bag of coins, why the weight alone would drag you straight to the bottom. Wouldn’t it?”
“Well, I suppose so,” Butterball grudgingly admitted.
“It would. So this one netter, I mean fisherman, in fact the guy who’s pictured here on the paper,” he points to him, “went to the engravers with the problem and had them make up some of this paper money.”
“He did?”
“And they thought the idea was so good that they wanted to be a part of it.”
“This fella, he must be a very important man then.”
“Oh, he’s dead.”
“Dead?”
“Yes, dead. He fell off a boat and drowned. Couldn’t swim a stoke you see, poor guy. So they put his picture here on the paper as a sort of memorial thing.”
“Poor fella. That’s sad.”
“Yes, but the important thing is that he had paper money, and he would have lived if he had only known how to swim.”
“Oh, I see,” he dug some ear wax out of his ear, “but you said something about the tanners too?”
“Yes I did. You saw this wallet? The folded leather thing that I took the money from? Here, look.” He dug it out of his pocket again and unfolded it. Various bit of paper and other items tumbled to the bar top along with a used condom. Ralph hurriedly swept them into his pocket. “Well, Butterball, this,” Ralph waved the wallet under Butterball’s nose, “was another inspiration of our poor dead netter, I mean before he died obviously. He wanted to have something specially made to hold the paper money and important papers in. It’s very handy.”
“Ah, I can see that. It looks handy.”
“And the tanners all thought, hey this is a good thing. Let’s get behind it too.”
“And the other?”
“The sentries? Well, that should be obvious.”
“It should?”
Ralph nodded seriously. “Yes, with all this valuable paper money being produced, and all the people now wanting it, sentries had to be hired to protect it from people trying to steal it. And people were also bringing in their old, worn out, coins and trading them in for the new paper. So, Butterball, the sentries had to guard not only the new money but also the huge piles of old coins as well.”
“Well, I’ll be. And so they got involved, did they?”
“Right you are Butterball.”
Butterball picked up the five cent note and stared at it. There was an element of new respect to his gaze.
“So,” Ralph closed in for the kill, “I am going to make you the deal of your lifetime.”
A short while later Ralph headed over to the table where Colin and the De-Ranger, Airgo, were sitting and talking. He was carrying a huge platter filled with the best food of the house, and three large mugs of beer.
“Thank you. Thank you very much” Airgo said as he was handed a mug.
After they had gorged their appetites a bit and the consumption of food had slowed down so that they could take breaths between bites, Airgo began to tell his story again (Colin already had gotten an ear full while Ralph was busy at the bar). It truly was a sad, sad story, one of the saddest sad stories of all time. It was the story of how he had lost the key to his Chopper, of his never ending search of his pockets to try to find it again, of his constant fingering of the hole in the pocket of his jeans, of his wanderings in Muddy Earth searching everywhere for the key (because he already looked for it at home and couldn’t find it) and, finally, of what the future will hold when he finally finds the key again and he can become, once more, King of the Road.
The spell didn’t seem to affect the brothers the same way it did everyone else. They listened, they ate, they drank, they repeated the process. Then they began to tell tales themselves. It became a contest, a game, to try to outdo each other and see who could tell the saddest story of all.
“Why, when we were young, we had to eat rocks”, Ralph began.
His brother chirped up, “You had rocks. We would have died for rocks. We had to eat our own feet.”
“You had feet”, interrupted Ralph. “We had to go around on our bums all the time.”
“You had bums…,” and so it went on, and on, and on. You can say ‘ad nauseam’ if you like.
The effect on the bar was drastic if un-dramatic; all the former drinkers silently picked-up their things and left, tears running down their cheeks. Even the bartender prepared to leave. He looked at the strange script still in his hands, then sighed, and stuffed the wad in his apron pocket. He paused at the door and looked back, just once, at the trio in the corner before blowing his nose in the dirty rag he used for cleaning out the mugs. He shut the door behind him, leaving them alone. Once outside he stood in thought for a moment and then made his way to the village tanner, to talk to him about making a wallet.
Inside the now deserted bar, after all the tales had been told and silence had stretched it’s legs for a few moments, and after Ralph had helped himself and refilled their mugs, Airgo finally asked, “But what brings you here to Muddy Earth? And what is that thing that you keep taking from one another?”
“What thing”, Colin said?
“So, you have a thing. Tell me its tale.”
He didn’t seem hostile, and it didn’t seem that he wanted it for himself, and so Colin slowly drew it from some recess of his clothing and showed it to Airgo. Ralph patted a pocket and cast an accusing look at his brother.
There was a gasp from Airgo. “Do you know what you have here?”
Ralph plucked the thing from his brother’s palm. “No, what?” He stared at it, as if his eyes could penetrate it’s secret content.
“Unless I miss my guess you have found an ancient artifact, one of the Palantir, or Plans, of the Yelves. He rolled it in his hand and then said, “Some say that these were to be found in specially marked packages of Palantir’s Peanuts, plain or salted, but I believe this to be B.S., baseless supposition, thank you very much.”
“Then where did it come from,” asked Colin?
“I think that this was a gift exchanged for offerings of small pieces of silver money from something that was called, I believe, ‘the Gumme Ball Ex Machina.’”
Airgo studied it for a moment longer and then, grasping each end in one hand, twisted it in opposite directions. To Ralph and Colin’s surprise it opened. Airgo spilled the contents onto his hand. There was an unusual ring and a tiny bundle of rolled parchment. He placed the ring in front of him and began to unroll the parchment, and it turned out to be three tiny sheets rolled together, each covered with tiny cramped lettering.
Airgo put the parchments down and then thoughtfully scratched his nuts for a moment. He then pointed to the ring on the table with his finger. He poked it, tentatively, with one long, cracked, and filthy nail and said to the brothers, “This is a thing of great import. What you have found is possibly a ring of power. It could even be the secret decoder ring of the Big Eye himself.”
The brothers were speechless, which was a quality many people thought they should cultivate more often.
Airgo picked the parchments up again and looked at each page in turn. “These two are in code”, he says handing them back to the brothers. “I know not what they say. You will have to discover their meaning for yourselves, possibly by using the ring itself. This third, however, is a page full of mystic runes.”
“Mystic runes”, the brothers chanted.
“Yes, runes. They were once ordinary letters at one time, but somebody spilled wine all over them and now they are runed. Very few, now a day, have the patience to unlock their meaning.” He squinted at it a bit. “See if you can find something to write with,” he said. “More drinks would be nice too.”
Airgo spent a long time at the translation. When he was finally finished he sat back, took a long draught of beer, and farted. The flames of the fire momentarily flashed green. He said, “It is a part of the legacy of my ancestor, Dieseldorc, and holds the ancient verse.” He clears his throat.
“Three drinks for the Yelven-kings and see them stupefied.
Seven bowls for the Dwarp-lords to stink up their halls of stone.
None for Mortal Men, Don’t ask me why.
One Combo for the Big Eye, with fries and gravy on the side (extra catsup please).
In the Land of Fourdoor where the condoms lie.
One Combo to rule them all,
One Combo to find them,
One Combo to bow them all and in the outhouse find them
In the Land of Fourdoor where the condoms lie.
Thank you. Thank you very much”, he said as he finished reading.
Airgo then told them the story of Dieseldork’s Pain, of how Dieseldork managed to wrest the ring from the Big Eye, Sorehead himself, at the end of a huge custody battle. Of how he hid it and kept it as his own precious thing, hiding it in a package made by Dwarps and sealed by Yelves. “This package”, he said, “was placed in a small cardboard box along with candied popcorn where none should ever find it.”
He took up his air guitar and strummed a silent chord.
“Such was the talk around the hearth when I was but a lad. Unfortunately it seems that Dieseldork made and then ate too much of the cursed Combo himself and, after an excruciating bellyache, exploded. Anyway, the ring and the recipes vanished out of our knowledge, but it is said that the package shall be known by the sigil ‘Cracker Jack®’”.
Colin reluctantly removed the remains of the package from his pocket and looked at the words. They were the same.
Ralph, looking over the translation of the poem, asks, “Why none for Mortal Men?”
“As the poem says, ‘Don’t ask me why’. Actually, no one is sure. All know that the combination of the wine and the chili is dangerous, but it is also said to be a wonder as well. The power of the Combo was said to be such that, if many partake, it could fulfill a wish shared by the people. Well, not just people but any race that tried it. But the result would have unexpected side effects?”
“Like what?”
“Again, it is never said. Maybe it has something to do with my ancestor exploding, or something, maybe not. Mortal Men, I heard, just got the worst of it.”
Airgo began strumming a soft melody on the guitar. It had to be soft; he had no damn strings on the instrument. Then he continued, “The story goes that if the Big Eye ever gets the recipes back then everyone will become addicted to his food and all will have to eat at his chain of restaurants all the time. He’s going to call it something like Mickey Dees or something.”
“Wow”, said Colin.
His brother agreed, “Yeah, wow. Now that’s planning.”
So now the brothers start in earnest, intent on solving the riddles of the coded pages, each one stealing the ring back from time to time to put on his finger.
When the ring was put on the letters on the page seem to float up from the parchment and re-arrange themselves in to something that made sense. The brothers copied down the translations on fresh pieces of parchment. When they finally completed the two pages, with much bickering back and forth, they showed the results to Airgo.
“This sheet holds the long lost recipe for the Chili of Power, the lost recipe of the Dwarps. Said to be the most delicious but the most vindictive food ever devised. SBD it is called. The effect is silent but deadly. It is a chili that would burn one’s very soul, leaving behind only ashes, and an unbelievably foul smell. Oh, and it is rumored to leave an after taste of cow dung.”
He picks up the other. “And this is for the Yelvish Wine of Density. You have to be thick to drink any of it. It’s the only alcoholic recipe ever to receive a jail term, but unfortunately it escaped by tunneling out of the prison in which it was kept and was thought lost to the ages.
So this ring and these parchments give the holder the secret of the two foods so that he can make both the chili of all chillies, and the wine of all wines, recreating the fabled Combo of old, which causes you to form and release the fart the fart of all farts, the smell of the universe.” He shuffled the pages. “The fortunate thing is that in most of Muddy Earth these spices are illegal (pointing at the eleven herbs and spices indicated on one of the sheets). There’s just one place where they all grow together. The people there, well they just don’t give a … something. They’ll grow anything there, legal or not. It’s called the WorcesterShire. I’ve been there a couple of times. Those Bobbits can be nasty, you know. The men are bad but the women are worse. It’s because of a mix-up at the endowment department, you know. They’re practically dickless.”
“But the chili”, said Ralph, a gleam in his eye.
“But the wine”, said Colin, a drop of drool ran and hid in his beard.
“Road trip”, both brothers shouted at the same time. They grab Airgo under his arms and begin to haul him from the bar.
“And you’re our new guide”, Ralph adds.
As they where leaving, Ralph turns to Colin and says in a whisper, as Airgo was taking a leak against the leg of a horse and couldn’t hear, “I’ve been thinking about what Airgo said right at the beginning, you know his sad story, losing this Chopper and all. How does chopping wood make you a king?” They both shrugged their shoulders and started waddling along, with Airgo now in tow.
Eventually they found themselves in the place called the WorcherShire and, soon after, fell over a young Bobbet named Fubar, who was sitting under a tree and, ah, concentrating on the fold out page of some sort of soft covered booklet that he had on his lap.
After awkward introductions were made the young Bobbit told his tale. Fubar, it seems, had lit out of town because he had forgotten to book the caterers for his Uncle Dildo’s sixty-ninth birthday party, which was this evening. And what was even worse was that he had also forgotten to get the alcoholic beverages. It was worse, he explained, because a sober Bobbit was worse than one who was well and truly smashed. And almost all the WorcesterShire would be in attendance. Fubar figured that he’d be lucky to get off with a lynching, his own of course.
“Well, we can make food. We even have a recipe”, Ralph offered.
“And we can make the wine for you too”, Colin added.
“Um”, said Airgo.
“And all you have to do is to get us this list of ingredients. You can do that, can’t you”, Ralph said.
“You will do this, and right away”, Colin added meaningfully.
“Yes, of course. Just let me, ah, finish this article. I love the articles in this publication. You go ahead to Uncle Dildo’s and I’ll be right there, honest. His home is called ‘Scrota’s End’. You can’t miss it, it’s just at the end of the path.”
So the food was prepared according to the ancient recipe, and the wine was made and left to stand for the required hour and twenty minutes as set out in the text before being served. The crowds of Bobbits were already a couple of hours into a really foul mood before the feast was presented.
And the results? Well, lets just say that after all the vomiting, and all the ‘letting flay of fartes’, and after all the small fires were extinguished from the flare ups of gas meeting fire, after all the groaning, all the shock that feet and hands were growing alarmingly (and growing hairy at that), after all the shoes were discarded, and after all the lying down in small groups across the party field (because it was too painful to walk), after all that there was a sudden silence, there was the silence of small people becoming intently interested in what the other had in their trousers. Then the moaning and the groaning took on a new tone and urgency, and Dildo’s 69th Birthday Party was forever known as the largest orgy in the history of WorcesterShire.
Well you know what they say about big hands and hairy feet.
In the morning Ralph sat up and looked out the window of the little room he shared with Airgo and his brother at Scrota’s End. He was alarmed to see most of the women from the night before heading their way, armed with scythes and knives, desperate looks on their faces. It appears that they were determined to keep the recipes for the chili and wine for themselves (in case the spell ever wore off). But, it was also seen, they were all walking kinda’ funny, and not just from the big hairy feet they now all had.
Luckily the women, accompanied by some of the men, were all tripping over their own feet, literally, which gave the company time to gather their things, pack some chili and some wine, a bag of spices, some rope, play a couple rounds of poker, pick their noses, make and consume breakfast, and just generally look about for things that might come in handy. They found a couple of huge packs, which they commandeered for the purposes of transporting their loot. Then they skipped town.
I would not classify what the brother did as running. It was more of a bump and stumble. They both felt sure that their heads were several sizes too large to carry on their bodies, each having consumed an amazing amount of wine the night before. They stumbled into each other and bumped into any object in their path. Even with that the sounds of pursuit faded behind them.
Airgo, for some reason unaffected by the night’s revelry, pranced and danced beside the two brothers and did air riffs and power chords on his guitar. He was pleased with himself because he had performed for the Bobbits last night, and had survived to tell the tale as they say.
Their fleeing led them out of the forest and into the mountains where they soon found caves and tunnels, and signs of habitation. Living within the caves were the Dwarps, an ancient and extremely short people who were, at the same time, extremely short sighted so that they could hardly make out what was a foot or two in front of their bearded faces. They worked tunneling and mining precious ores, which they traded for the goods to sustain themselves.
They found out that even their new hosts had trouble telling the guy Dwarps from the gal Dwarps. It was only because they were so short sighted that they occasionally bumped into a Dwarp of the opposite sex (although from all outward appearances they looked the same) and things would take that natural course that seems to be the only subject of real importance in nature’s curriculum.
They looked at the Campbells, and at Airgo too, in a kind of bleary awe.
Ralph said “They would be great people to be around if they weren’t so short.”
“I can see that”, agreed his brother, “too bad they can’t.”
But the Dwarps were friendly enough and invited the travelers inside. The Campbells were grateful for the shelter, and grateful to have left the Bobbits behind. The Canadian Tire money trick didn’t work on the Dwarps (they couldn’t see what was on the paper) so they made a batch of wine and chili for the Dwarps too.
It was quite a party. It went on till the wee hours, whichever ones they are, and they all passed out. The air was so full of gas that all the canaries in the mines went on strike and refused to return to work for days afterward.
In the middle of the night Colin threw a bucket of cold chilly over Ralph to wake him up yelling, “ Wake up, wake up. We got to get out of here. It’s the most horrid sight I have ever seen. GET MOVING.”
Ralph wiped some of the chilly from face with his fingers and licked it. “Needs more Tabasco definitely, definitely Tabasco” he opened his eyes and jumped to his feet.
There in the great hall where all the Dwarps, and they didn’t look too happy. In fact they were seeing all too clearly for the first time. Their eyesight was as sharp as needles. And they looked ridiculous, like little wrinkly children, only not so cute, and they were as hairless as they had been on the first day they had been born into this world because, unfortunately, during the night, all their hair had fallen out. A huge bunch of Dwarps was running around, nude as something without any clothes on, going through chili withdrawal and getting stirred up. It was horrible. And they were pissed at the Campbells because they could see how gross they actually looked.
It was like in the cartoons. The brother’s feet did triple time trying to get the traction to run. Since the entrance to the mine was now blocked (with several hundred angry hairless little devils, with acute eyesight) they realized that the only way out was to go further in and so they headed deeper into the mines of Gonorrhea. Airgo was way ahead of them. They could see the small flame of his Zippo lighter in the distance.
A new sensation stole over the brothers. The deeper they went into the mine, the greater the feeling came over them that something was following them (well, beside the Dwarps). It was Airgo who finally figured out who or what it was.
“We are being followed by a creature that is called Glumo. He has been seeking the ring for years and years and wants to get it back really bad. He once had the ring and had used the decoder to make for himself a lock that none could pick. Now all he desires is to get the ring back so that he can unlock his locker and get a change of clean underwear. Poor creature.”
They continued through the mine.
Deeper and deeper they went into the mountain, losing track of time and coffee breaks. Suddenly, as they rounded a corner of a vast hall, they were attacked by a creatire out of legend, Doornod. It was said to have come from the very depths of hell. It was the biggest thing ever. No it was bigger than a thing. It was so big they had to make a new name for it. It was a THANG.
They started to run. The THANG, Doornod, gave chase. Their only hope was to cross the narrow bridge over the chasm of Lorna Doom before the monster caught them.
Airgo, as always, was way in the front lighting the way followed by Ralph. Colin was having difficulty keeping up and puffed in the rear. Ralph turned his head for a moment to look behind him and saw the huge head of Doornod, with jaws agape, dip towards his brother and then Colin was lifted high into the air.
Colin screamed. Ralph screamed. They all had ice scream. Sorry, I don’t know where that came from. It must be the excitement of the moment.
Unawares to Ralph the creature Doornod had grabbed Colin by the backpack. As he lifted his huge head the straps to the pack gave way under Colin’s considerable bulk and he fell to the ground with a thud. The monster then tossed the pack into the air and bit down on it. He swallowed. He looked around for more.
Ralph had gone on a couple of more strides until the thought of his brother being eaten alive hit home. He stopped in his tracks and then searched in his own pack for something to use as a weapon. His hand chanced upon one of the jugs of wine. He brought his arm back and then threw the jug in a great high arc at the Doornod. The THANG merely opened its mouth and chomped the tidbit. Then it licked its reptilian lips with its great tongue in what appeared to be satisfaction. Its expression then changed to one of surprise as, with a puff of smoke, it changed.
It still had its fiery head, it still had its horns, but now, instead of the great reptilian body, it was soft and squishy, had bunny ears, and a fluffy white tail. It also, somehow, had acquired a big bass drum, which it started to beat frantically. And it kept moving forward. It tried to halt its progress but, for some reason, it just couldn’t. It kept going, and going, and going, until it dropped over the edge and plunged into Lorna Doom. As it went over a voice boomed, “Is this the way to the Mariposa Carrot Festival?” and was gone.
Colin picked himself off the ground with some difficulty. Ralph blinked at him. He said, “Hey, you haven’t been eaten.”
“No, it appears that I haven’t.”
They ran to one another and embraced, brotherly of course, until they each realized that they were in a clinch together. They hurriedly backed away from each other.
Ralph, in a moment of inspiration, patted his pocket. “Give me the damn ring”, he said.
“What ring?” came the reply automatically. And then, with a shy grin, he delved into his own pocket and took something out. He gave the ring of power back to his brother.
They continued on and stumbled out of the caves and down the mountainside. They entered a lush green forest, with Airgo skipping and singing in the lead. They soon came, just outside of the city of Livinhell, to a giant woodland outlet mall called the ‘Everything You Want and More Valle’. This was the home of the famous ‘Ye Olde Yelvish Haberdashery and Dancing School’, There was a sign in the window, ‘Special Half Price TUTU SALE One Size Fits All’.
The brothers looked at each other and said, at the same time, “ We got to try that.”
Well, what resulted was a sight for sore eyes. NO, NO!! It wasn’t a site that should be seen by anyone’s eyes, sore or not.
Inside the shop the Yelf Fastbuck met them. He was way under quota set by the head Yelf of Livinhell, Elrond Hubbard, and under a lot of stress. He desperately needed to make a sale. The brothers told him, or yelled at him, what they wanted and, once the message had gotten through, then took their tutus into fitting rooms and eventually, after many a groan and the sounds of slight tearing, came out to look at and admire themselves in the mirrors.
Fastbuck, after seeing the brothers emerge in tutus and leotards, and trying to prevent his insides from spewing and becoming the outside (all over his nice clean display cases), yelled back, “Ah, guys, if you two take off those tutus and put your old clothes on we can take a break and talk price over dinner. How’s that?”
The Campbells agreed and reluctantly dragged themselves away from the mirrors.
Airgo, looking over a rack of shoes, found a pair of blue suede shoes that he liked. He shouted at Fastbuck, “Do you have these in my size, thank you very much.”
They proceeded into Livinhell.
The Yelves, it turned out, live in a type of commune. It is true that they only have one pot to piss in but it’s a very big pot. The brothers, over a beer or three, haggled with Fastbuck over the price of the clothes. Their voices were becoming rough. The negotiations were really tough because all of the Yelves are practically deaf. You needed cannon fire to get their attention. Finally they settled on another mitt full of Canadian Tire money and, (here it comes) they offered to supply chili and refreshment for all the Yelves to clinch the deal.
You might have thought that the Campbell brothers had learned their lesson by now, but I guess that they’re hard of learning. They made the crap, sorry I mean chili, in the giant cauldron and put together a batch of wine. And, as before, everyone got stuffed and then got hammered. And again the results were disastrous. Bad stars seem to follow the Campbells wherever they go.
So again we find the Campbell brothers scurrying for their lives, tutus in hand (and Airgo clutching his blue suede shoes). The Yelves where trying to catch them but, although they had regained their hearing and could hear a tack fall at a hundred paces, their ears looked like something you might find on a basset hound, only larger. They were so big that the Yelves kept tripping over them allowing the travelers to escape. Colin turned and looked at the elves one last time and, between gasps of air, said, “Hey, they look like hound dogs.”
”There could be song in there some place?” said Airgo.
And, keeping to form, were, a day or so later, captured by Dorcs. Several of the ugly little buggers ate up most of the remaining supplies that were stashed in the packs. They drank most of the wine as well. They whole tribe were going to finish off by eating Ralph, Colin, and Airgo when the Dorcs who had eaten the chili and drank the wine suddenly sprouted white plastic pocket protectors and spectacles appeared on their faces held together by pieces of tape. They had become Nyrds. In the confusion caused by the Nyrds looking for sticks to make into slide rules and looking for paper to write stuff down, Airgo and the Campbell brothers narrowly escape.
In years to come the Nyrds became a tribe of their own. They didn’t get laid very often either.
By now, word of the Campbells’ brothers traveled like lightning ahead of them. Everywhere they went they were harried. It seemed like all the races of Muddy Earth were uniting against them. Living trees, called Dents, threw squirrels at them to drive them away. Ralph found out first hand that squirrels made good missiles (as well as excellent bait for muskie fishing, but that’s another story) when one nasty rodent went for his nuts. Then the legendary hog riders of the Rumdumb chased them off the plains. Finally they had to hide for days in the ancient Dwarp defensive moat and cesspool of Crotch Deep in order to avoid being captured.
Well, the company finally arrived at the city of Minus Truth, Airgo’s hometown, where he had said they would be made welcome. Much to their surprise people again surround them with several types of sharp pointy things which they insistently pointed at them, meaningfully and menacingly. They were stripped of all their possessions and their clothes, taken to a deep dungeon, and locked inside. They were given back their tutus to wear. Airgo was clad only in his purple long johns, the back door flapping. Over the inside door some other unlucky soul had scraped in the stone ‘The Heartbreak Hotel’. “Hmmm”, Airgo murmured, looking at it.
The next day they were led out into the great courtyard where it seemed that every race of Muddy Earth had gathered together: Bobbits (the women protectively holding their hands over the men’s crotches, some had their hands actually in the trousers) and Yelves (ears nattily tied under their chins in bows; it had become a kind of fashion statement how these ear bows were tied and decorated) and Dorcs (including the pocket-protector Nyrds) and Dwarps (all wearing dark, and I mean really dark, glasses; in part to screen out the daylight but mostly because then they wouldn’t have to really look at one another) filled the space. No one looked pleased to see them. Actually no one looked at them at all, tutus or no. Strangely, they were ignored, another novelty for the two brothers.
On one side of the courtyard, on a raised dais, sat two old men, Gandolfo (the Grabby) and Solomodo (the Whiner), two second rate wizards. Floating between them was the huge fiery eye of Sorhead, the Big Eye himself. They were squabbling among themselves, trying to decide on how best to execute the Brothers (in the most painful way).
On a trestle table set up in front of the dais were the clothes that they had worn and meager remains of the sacks, including the last pot of left over chili and the last jug of wine. The entire assembled multitude stared at what remained of the food, all hating themselves desperately for it, but all wanting to eat more of the chili, drink more of the wine, no matter the consequences.
Gandolfo got up to speak. First he turned to Airgo. “As you are a son of this city and, as far as we can tell, only served as guide to these, these, these, perverts, you are free to go. But let this serve as a warning to you, not to involve yourself with the plots of the wicked. Pick-up your things and go.”
Airgo looked at the brothers, shrugged, and approached the table. He picked up his pants and his shirt and grabbed his boots and stuffed them under his arm. To his surprise a key dropped out of one of the boots and hit the ground with a tiny ‘ting’. He looked at it. He smiled a crooked grin and then bent and picked it up. His steps seemed to take on a new purpose as he strode from the assembly. “Thank you very much,” he said under his breath as he left.
Gandolfo spoke again. “Now as for you two, we’ve decided that death is to good for you (the brothers sighed in relief) but we also decided that it would just have to do (they un-sighed), but, in your honour we shall make those deaths particularly gross and spectacular.”
A ragged cheer went up from the assembled audience.
Solomodo, speaking from his chair on the dais continued, “Were it not for you the secret of the Combo would likely not have been discovered as soon, and for that we thank you.”
Gandolfo added, “But, unfortunately, as the ones responsible for making the chili and the wine we can’t afford to let you live. You might remember enough of the recipes for you to become our, what would you say, competition, and we don’t want that.”
Solomodo finished for him, “As far as it goes, though, you did an excellent job of, shall we say, testing the market. All who consumed the Combo have gathered here and crave more even though they hate themselves for it.” He cackled to himself. People who cackle to themselves are usually four fifths of the way to being outright bonkers.
The Big Eye spoke, “Get on with this. We have some cooking to do and some plans to make. And if we have any time left over I’m hoping to create some Onion Ring Wraiths for the weekend.”
“Ah, yes your Bigness.”
Solomodo stood up, pointed a rather grubby finger at the table in front of him and said, “We have the last of the chili, and we have the last of the wine. We have recovered the translation of the recipes and so we can make more, but where is the ring?”
“What ring, we got no stinking ring”, chorused the brothers.
“And where are the original parchments?”
“I think”, offered Colin, “that you should ask Doornod. He ate my pack after all.”
“Ah”, said the wizard, “so that’s another loose end taken care of then.” He sat back down.
Gandolfo continued, “So the only thing remaining, it seems, is to, ah, deal with you.” He chuckled to himself. It wasn’t a pleasant chuckle.
You can never trust people who cackle and chuckle to themselves; they’re just up to no good.
Just then there was a commotion at the back of the throng. It made its way incredibly swiftly through the crowd. The people, and the other kinds of people, threw themselves out of the way just in time as a huge hog roared through the courtyard, smashing and grunting and thundering as it rushed the dais. It wore a studded silver and leather collar, the handle of a key could just be seen jutting from its lock. There, sitting on the saddle on its back, guitar slung over one shoulder, was Airgo.
Chopper reached the dais and came to a hoof squealing stop. He butted the platform and knocked it over backward tumbling the two old men into the cesspit. At the same time, in one graceful motion, Airgo lept from Chopper’s back onto the tabletop. He unslung his guitar and, using it like a, well, guitar shaped golf club, he drove the pot of chili into the Big Eye’s, um, eye. It shattered on contact and bits of pottery shard punctured the eye. The chili, streaming into the wounds and over the eye, steamed and oozed. The eye turned pink like the worst case of pinkeye in the world, and there was a horrendous scream.
Then, with a second mighty swing Airgo did the same with the wine. It too shattered when it made contact with the eye.
The Big Eye tried to blink the stuff away, but of course, having no lid, it couldn’t. Abruptly the flame went out with a poof and the eye exploded sending aqueous humor, or vitreous humor, or whatever the hell that gooey inside the eye stuff is, and bits of pupil, throughout the crowd.
Airgo stooped, picked-up the pages of translation, took his trusty Zippo from his pocket and set the sheets alight. He held them aloft as they burned and shouted at to crowd, “There shall be no Mickey Dees while I am King.”
A hush went through the crowd as the spell of the chili and wine was broken. All the people sighed in what we assume was relief.
Shortly thereafter, a couple of smelly old men quietly made their way out of town, hooded, staffs clutched in their hands. They were literally heading for the hills. One turned to the other, “And I was going to be a Regional Manager too.”
“Yeah, me too. Best not to think of it. Well, back to the drawing board.”
“Know any good towers to rent?”
Once they left the confines of the city of Minus Truth, Gandolfo started to hum a walking tune. Soon both figures were measuring their strides and singing old Wizard school songs. They sang ‘That Old Black Magic’, they harmonized ‘My Friend the Witch Doctor’, and they skipped and sang together, ‘We’re off to be the Wizard’.
They wandered out of the pages of this narrative.
A day or so later Ralph and Colin are finally taking it easy, sitting back and enjoying the view from one of the terraced bars of the city. A rather familiar looking and foul smelling waiter served them drinks and then tried to stay close enough to the brothers to overhead their conversation.
“Who would have thunk it,” Ralph said? “He really was the King.”
“Is the King”, corrected his brother. “The thing that really got me though was when that delegation of Yelves and Dwarps came up to him and presented him with those guitar strings made out of, what did they call that really precious metal? Oh yes, Minstral.”
“Yeah, and then he played two whole sets at his coronation.”
“Too bad he can’t play guitar worth shit.”
“Yeah, you can say that again. Although I did kind of like that song about, what was it, Jail House Rocks?”
“Yeah, that was okay. I didn’t at all get the ‘Viva, Lost Wages’ thing though, did you?”
“Nope. Not a clue.”
Colin lowered his voice. The waiter leaned in to hear. “Say, Ralph, now be honest. Do you still have the ring?”
“What ring, right? Well”, he smiled, looked over his shoulder and completely missed seeing the waiter hovering nearby; “I sort of put it where the sun don’t shine. Yeah, I still have it. Too bad we don’t have the parchments though.”
“Who says we don’t. I did the same as you. I put them back in that plan thing container and stuffed it up the old wazoo.”
“You conniving bastard”, Ralph laughed, “So it looks like a couple of assholes hold the secrets of the Combo.”
“Right you are”, his brother agreed.
“You know, I think I can get used to this.” And then with a pop he disappeared. Colin just had an opportunity to look over at the empty chair and have his jaw hit the table when he too vanished.
They were back in a kind of familiar space.
“What in hell are you two trying to do?” It took a moment or two before the brothers realized where they were. They were sitting on the floor of the library in the tower back in the world they had left, and over them was bending the angry figure of the Grand Wizard pSid. Then they knew then they were home. They also knew they were in deep shit, only they didn’t know now deep yet. They slowly got up.
“Us!! We!! Me!! You!! Him!!” Both brothers began their excuses, pointing at one another.
“Now we’ll have to change the books.”
“What books?”
“These damn books”, he said indicating a hardbound set of volumes on the table. “You know, ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’, only now it reads ‘The Followship’ and it’s about how the people of Muddy Earth band together, both the good and the evil, to get rid of the Campbell Brothers.”
“Um”, said Ralph.
‘And then there’s The Two Towers, only now it reads ‘The Two Bladders, and it has something to do with you two and your feces spotting the landscape.”
“Ah”, said Colin.
“And then there’s ‘The Return of the King’.”
“Well, at least the name is right.”
“Yes, but this book is about a concert tour. Something about The King live on stage with his magic guitar playing, what does it say here? Oh yes, Music with rock in it. What the hell is that?”
“Uh”, said both brothers together.
“But the worst, and I mean the really worst, is what you did to this poor thing, ‘The Hobbit’. You weren’t even in that story but because of the laws of retrograde narrative…
“Huh,” they asked?
“Look, never mind what it’s called, just know that because you screwed up the later story line, and you really did screw that up, the first book had to re-write itself in kind. What was once a kid’s story about dragons and gold has become a porno. ‘In and Out Again, a Bobbit’s Tale’ indeed.”
“Sorry”, the brothers intoned.
“You two really know how to screw up, don’t you?” He sighed. “I guess it only goes to show that a good story will always suck you in.”
“Sorry”, they said again.
“If it wasn’t for Nigel, my Overly Familiar…”
“Your what?”
“Nigel the cat. I’ve had him far too long for him just to be Familiar. Anyway, if he hadn’t seen what you had done and where you had gone and told me I might still be looking for you. As it was I had to waste a whole day going through the books to see if I could track you down. Idiots.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s going to take me ages to restore the books to their proper form.”
“Sorry.”
“Ah, and you’re giving me a such a headache. I think I need to eat. Tell you what, we’re going to go down to the pub and you”, he said pointing, “are going to pay for lunch.”
“Yes pSid.”
“And then I’m going to come up with a proper punishment for the two of you. You know, I think maybe you can start on cleaning out the privy.”
“No shit?”
“No, plenty of that I’m afraid. And speaking of shit”, he turned to the figure that was lurking behind the two brothers, “go and change your underwear, will you?”
“Glumo”, it said and looked down sheepishly.
“Then you can help them.”
They start for the village. The brother’s begin arguing about who is going to pick-up the cheque. They were both, by this time, short on Canadian Tire money.
“And knock that off or I’ll turn you into something unpleasant. More unpleasant even than being a Campbell.”
“Yes pSid.”
“Glumo.”
The Campbells in Blunderland (or Through the Drinking Glass)
This piece is one of those things that has been sitting around the old hard drive in one form or another for a while now and it finally made a break for the light of day. It seemed time.
Although I really wanted to get an actual Alice dress for this (I thought it would be just too hilarious), time and money considerations wouldn't allow for it. I had to search out images on the net and Photoshop them all together.
This is the label:
And this is the tale:
Once upon a time, or maybe it should be Twice upon a time because it had to deal with those two damned brothers. Hmmm. I had better decide which one it is or we’ll never get this thing started.
O.K., so…Once upon a time it is, there were these two brothers. Well, I guess I already gave that one away, didn’t I? Blew it right from the start. I better get my feces collectivized as they say. Start again.
Once upon a time there were these two brothers. A big brother named Ralph, and an even bigger little brother named Colin. Good so far?
They were sitting on plastic crates in the basement of a rather ordinary looking house, under a bare light bulb that hung dangling from the ceiling by a wire. The meager light fitfully illuminated them as they were bottling their latest batch of wine and, oh, sampling the wares as they did so. They were, in actual fact and at this point sampling more than bottling but you might have guessed that already.
The wine they were sampling was an interesting combination of grapes and the small pink and bluish mushrooms that Ralph had found in the septic system by accident one midnight (don’t ask) and since their last effort at a baking soda wine had been so, well, disastrous (meaning ‘under a bad star’ by the way), they were both more than pleased that they had produced something that was relatively drinkable, and good for dissolving the rust on nails they found out, well actually for dissolving whole nails. Okay, so another ingredient for the wine was nails, but they thought of ‘nails’ as a trace element of the concoction. The thing of it was that they had to nail the little mushrooms to the side of the wooden vat because they kept trying to run away from the grapes.
So, Ralph and Colin were up to their third (bottle, each) sampling when, at almost the same instant, they stood bolt upright, grabbed their heads, screamed, and then fell into a swoon. It was far deeper than anyone might have thought. They screamed as they fell down the long dark hole of the swoon. They screamed until they were short of breath and then filled their lungs with air and screamed again, and again. At the next pause for breath the older brother, Ralph, started to laugh. That set Colin off too. So now they laughed as they fell, screaming now just for effect, tumbling over and around each other and deeper and deeper into the swoon with each second.
Colin took a passing glance at his brother as he went somersaulting by next to him and said, “Well, it appears that you’ve grown yourself a top hat of some kind, and a long coat and tie too. Very natty that.”
“And you,” Ralph broke into another fit of laughter, “have grown yourself a dress.” He broke up again, even harder than before. “And you look good in braided hair, you know.” The laugh became a roar.
Colin looked, well not down at himself, but, you know, kind of around at his self as he tumbled, at least as best he could. It was true. He was now, for some strange and unknown reason, wearing a pretty blue frock covered by a white apron. Oh, and he had on striped stockings as well.
“Holy shit!” he exclaimed, and then after taking a moment to look at himself again, stated incredulously, “I’m wearing a dress.” A more lengthy pause occurred and then he said, in a much softer voice and more to himself than anyone else, “Why does this always happen to me?”
Ralph broke up again. “At least you lost weight.”
Colin was rather annoyed at this reaction from his brother and started yelling at him, “Shut up. Stop it. Give it a break. Take a pill. Cut it out.” … and so on. It only served to make Ralph laugh the more.
Ralph was, as you can tell, and in spite of the circumstances, having quite a good time. Not only had he got himself a cool new hat but he could also laugh, like any true brother would, at the expense of his younger brother’s discomfort. He did end up regretting it all a short time later when they finally hit the bottom of the swoon and Colin fell directly on top of him, knocking the wind from his lungs mid laugh. It really was painful. He wheezed. Surprisingly the hat stayed firmly on his head.
After they both pushed themselves up into a more or less erect posture they looked around at the place they now found themselves. They groaned. The Campbells, no strangers to regaining what loosely can be termed ‘consciousness’ in situations where everyone and everything around them swam around in a blurry kind of nauseating motion (like Brownian motion only much, much greener), were quite unprepared for what they saw.
The perspectives in this time and in this space were all wrong. It made their heads hurt. Well, okay, their heads were already hurting, but this just made them hurt all the more. It was like three, well not dimensions, but rather three whole sets of dimensions, one sitting on top of the other, all occupying the same space. It made your eyes water and the brain want to put up a little sign saying, ‘Out to lunch, please call back in 5 minutes’, to try to take it all in. I know, it’s hard to explain.
They were in a room, or space, or whatever you wanted to call it: tables, chairs, walls, lamps, everything normal and to scale. But then, when they looked up, and their brains shifted perceptual gears a bit (not an easy task for them to do) they saw that they were also, simultaneously, standing in a huge space that was sort of there and not there at the same time. This room, for indeed it appeared to be another furnished space, was decked out like the ‘normal one’ they were presently standing in gawking upward in stunned awe (Colin was drooling a bit). They could just barely make out the huge mountainous chairs and lofty tables and towering lamps and far distant pictures on the walls. It made you feel tiny and insignificant. You certainly wouldn’t want to dust the place.
Then they looked down. Their overworked brains became scrambled eggs. Perspective twisted itself again and they felt, besides dizzy, that they were standing over and yet part of a space that could only be described as the interior of a doll house; everything tiny, perfect, and in place, and to miniature scale.
Just at that moment, some strange rodent in a vest appeared, twitched its whiskers, glanced at his watch, and then scurried under Colin’s skirt and between his legs. It emerged from the other side and ran up to Ralph’s right foot, which it kicked savagely. Ralph lifted his leg and grabbed his foot in surprise and in pain hopping up and down on the other foot. The rodent stuck out his tongue at Ralph, did a tiny raspberry, muttered something about being late, and disappeared through the tiny door in the wall of the ‘doll’s house’. The door, which had been, only moments before, blocked by Ralph’s now aching right foot, slammed behind it, closing with a miniature boom and an audible click.
Ralph squinted at the door. All he said, in an undertone was, “Bastard rabbit.”
Seeing the tiny door brought to the brothers’ minds the taxing question of how they were going to get out of wherever the hell they now were. Looking around Colin spotted a table near one wall. On the table sat a small bottle and printed on its label were the words, ‘Suck on this.’ He showed it to his brother. Ralph sniffed it. The Campbells, ever interested in the contents of bottles, or really in the emptying of the contents of bottles, and without really considering what the consequences might be, each took a sip.
They grew and expanded and inflated and stretched until their bodies filled the much larger space. Luckily their clothes did the same. It would have been really embarrassing otherwise, and a gross strain on narrative decency to try to describe. Colin was now rubbing the top of his head because he had hit the underside of the table as he was growing.
“Ow,” he said intelligently.
When their growing pains had finally stopped they looked and wandered around. They realized that they were now the perfect size for the ‘bigger’ room. All the once towering furnishings now appeared perfectly normal (of course for an admittedly warped state of normality).
Colin clambered up a large overstuffed chair. “Is that it, we just get biggified? Big deal.” He began jumping up and down on the cushion. “Kind of a let down, don’t you think?”
Ralph looked at him, “Why are you doing that?”
“Doing what?”
“Jumping on the furniture. You’re acting like a kid.”
“Am I? It must be then that the clothes make the man, or kid, or girl, or something. Anyway, I feel like it.”
“Fine. Be that way”, Ralph replied. He turned around to examine the room more carefully. He spotted another table not far off. “What’s this?” he asked.
“How the hell should I know?” Colin bounced down on his bottom on the cushion and hurried over to see what his big brother had found.
Ralph turned around to look at him for a second and then said, “For a little kid you should watch your bloody language.”
“Oh, and why is that?”
“Because that kind of language doesn’t suit a little lady.” He started to laugh.
“Bugger off” said Colin in his sweetest voice.
On a table, next to an antique oil lamp and beside an old brass key, was a small dish on which there was a biscuit of some description with one of those candy hearts stuck on it, this one a pink one. The heart had on it the words, ‘Bite me’.
The Campbells, after the briefest moment of pause, bit. Yeah, they were that gullible.
A sound and a sensation like the air being let out of a balloon and the brothers shrank or shrunk, whatever the proper word is to describe an impossible concept, until they ‘fit’ into the littlest space of all, the doll house dimension.
“I feel awful,” said Ralph.
“You look that way too” replied his brother or sister or whatever.
They went over to the door and tried to open it. It was locked. After several minutes of swearing and hammering against the door Ralph said, “So what do we do now?”
“You might try the key,” Colin offered.
“What key? Where?”
Colin pointed above his head. “Back up there, near the biscuit” he said.
“So why didn’t you tell me this before? I just spent five minutes banging on the damn door.”
“Well, because you didn’t ask before.” He gave his brother a little crooked grin. “Anyway, you looked like you were having too much fun. And besides, you were up there too, remember?”
After several more minutes of this type of conversation, and a bit of shoving at each other, they thought they should try to retrieve the key.
It took the brothers several tries, the larger part of an hour, several samplings each of the contents of ‘Suck Me’ and several nibbles of ‘Bite Me’ to manage to get key and door and selves lined up in the proper perspective. Colin said that he’d never be cruel to balloons again.
The brothers pushed and shoved at each other in order to be the last through the door. When they finally emerged on the other side they found themselves in a vast wilderness, a path laid out before them, which disappeared into dark forest. Huge plants and trees towered on either side and above their heads.
Once upon a time a couple of hours later…
They stumbled (they were Campbells after all) around in the forest following a path that wandered up and down and around the landscape. Things didn’t look quite right. Everything was too big, too huge: the grass grew like bamboo, the trees were monstrous, and the rocks were, well, rock sized but only more so, and when they finally saw a dragonfly zoom past it was gigantic, the size of a helicopter they thought. Only then did it click into their tiny brain cells that they must be tiny themselves.
Colin stated the obvious, “I guess that we’re stuck this size.”
Ralph said, more to himself than his brother, “Hmmm. I guess we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
Colin skipped down path beside Ralph.
“Cut that out.”
“What?”
“The skipping.”
“But I feel like it.”
“You said that before, when you were jumping on the furniture. Can’t you stop?”
“I don’t think I could if I wanted,” Colin replied.
“Well, fine. Hey, it’s getting warm, isn’t it? I feel like I’m on a safari.” He takes off his hat to wipe his forehead. Already on his head sits a pith helmet.
“Way cool. Your hat changed.”
“What?”
“Your hat. It’s different now.”
“Is it?” He took the new hat off his head to look at it. As he did so, the top hat reemerged from underneath and sat jauntily on his head.
“Do it again.”
“Don’t know if I can.”
“You said safari before, try something else.”
“Like what?”
“How about Robin Hood?”
So Ralph imagines himself as Robin Hood and when he takes off the topper again a Kelly green hat appears on his head, with a feather in it.
Colin makes a squeal of delight. Ralph shudders slightly at the sound and gives a curious glance at his brother.
“Now try a gangster, you know like Al Capone,” he chirps up. Ralph obliges.
“Now try McArthur.” A short pause and then he adds, “Hey, you even got the pipe.”
“Holy shit!”
“Do a Flapper.”
“A what” asked Ralph?
“You know, like one of those woman’s hats from the Roaring 20’s, or, I know, how about one of those Los Vegas show girl things? A huge tiara.”
“Nah, I’m not going to do anything of the kind.”
“Bet’cha can’t.”
A sparkly huge headdress now sits on his head. Colin laughs.
“Satisfied?”
“Wow, I’m impressed.”
Ralph took the headpiece off, his topper emerged from underneath.
“How you gonna’ scratch your head if you can’t take off your hats?”
Ralph momentarily lifted the hat and scratched his pate underneath. “I don’t know, he said thoughtfully, “I really don’t know.”
They continued a while down the path gazing about them in wonder. Eventually Colin speaks up, “Say Ralph, I’m kinda’ getting hungry, aren’t you?”
Ralph pauses, thinks for a moment and then doffs what he’s beginning to think of as his ‘default’ kind of top hat to reveal, on his head, a farmer’s straw hat, slightly worn at the brim. He also now had two ripe peaches in his hands. He hands one to his, um, brother.
They slurp at the deliciously ripe fruit as they continue to amble. Colin looks at Ralph and says to him, “That’s a handy talent you got there.” He threw the peach pit into the forest. From somewhere close by there comes the sound of animal indignation. A squirrel, minding it’s own nutty business, had just been assaulted by the pit. Talk about poetic justice.
“I’m still hungry though. Can you make some burgers?”
“How am I going to do that?” Ralph asked.
“Hey, how about wearing one of those silly hats you used to wear when you worked at the A&W. And think hamburgers.”
Not very long after that Ralph is sitting at the side of a small stream and enjoying a burger and fries. His brother, burger in hand, takes occasional bites as he plays hopscotch on a grid he had scratched in the earth. Ralph refused to play with him.
They finish off the main course and then Ralph, now wearing a Dickey Dee ice cream hat, serves up ice cream cones. They eat for a while in silence. Colin burps. “Hey Ralph, do you think that the water is safe to drink?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think we should chance it unless we really need to. Give me a minute, let me think.” He does the hat thing again and is soon wearing what he thinks of as ‘a Bootlegger’s hat’. He thinks the hat is actually called something like a ‘Straw Boater’, but he found that names aren’t really all that important; it was the image in his mind that was the key. The most important aspect of this particular change of hat, at least to him, was that he now held a couple of bottles of (Campbell vintage) wines, already uncorked.
Colin settled down on the grassy bank, sitting companionably beside his big brother Ralph. He spreads his skirt, takes one of the opened bottles, and takes a big swig & sighs.
Ralph, looking over at him, and after taking a large hit from his own bottle says, “It kinda’, creeps me out seeing you like that.” Colin shrugs and drinks. And then, after a short refreshment pause, Ralph got up, stretched his legs and said, “Okay, better get going if we’re going to get anywhere.”
Colin says, “Just a moment. I have to go to the can, and well, I want to check something out too.” He skips off into a screen of grass.
Now it must be said that Colin was starting to be a bit concerned about, well, not just his own appearance, the dress and all, but what he might find, or not find, underneath when he had to, you know, go; but to his relief, or really during his relief, discovered that his male parts came, well, readily to hand as it were.
In a minute he returns.
“Well?”
“Everything’s fine Ralph, just fine.” And then adds, as they start down the path again, “Say, can we play the hat game again?”
“Okay,” agreed his brother, “but this time I’ll change the hat, you guess what I am. Okay?”
“Go for it.”
There came a succession of hats and Colin put a name to each one. “Astronaut. Sherlock Holmes, and you got a pipe again. Fireman. King Tut.”
And Ralph’s voice, “Yeah, and the damn thing is heavy too.”
“Try pig tails?”
“But that’s hair, not a hat,” Ralph complained.
“P l e a s e.”
“No!”
“Pretty please.”
“I said no.”
“But I really want a skipping rope.”
“A skipping rope. No way, José.”
“Please, please, please.”
“No, and stop jumping up and down in front of me, it’s making me sick.”
“Please, please, please, please, with sugar on it.”
(Sigh) “You’re being a brat you know.”
“And a cherry on top.”
Ralph doffs his hat, momentarily revealing hair like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. He hands his brother a skipping rope.
Colin lets out another squeal of delight followed by, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
His brother says, “And you can stop that squealing any time now.”
They disappear around a bend in the path and their voices fade in the distance.
The hats left behind on the path slowly fade to nothingness.
Some time later they came to a fork in the road beside a huge tree. Three ways lead off in different directions, and each path looked about the same from where they stood. They found the direction signs (telling where each path led) laying on the ground beneath the tree, next to a small pry bar. It was impossible for them to tell which way lead where. They read the three signs. One said ‘The Bog of Despair’, the next ‘The Dark and Creepy Forest’, and the third read ‘The Hamlet of Wonderland’.
“Shit,” Ralph said meditatively. “So which way do we go?”
“How about this way,” Colin suggests, pointing to the right fork.
A voice from above replies, “Well, you could of course, but that would only take you into the Dark and Creepy Forest. Not a nice place at all.”
They look up. There’s a huge cat in a crotch of the tree grinning hugely down at them.
Ralph said, “I don’t know. You took the signs down, didn’t you?”
“Who me? Never. No opposable thumbs, you see?” It waggled one huge paw at the brothers, then used one massive claw to pick at a tooth, “No, I just happened to come by”, the cat said.
“So which way should we go,” Colin asked?
“I’d take the left one, to the Hamlet of Wonderland, of course.”
“You’re not screwing with us I hope,” said Ralph.
“Wouldn’t think of it.”
He turned to his brother, “What do you think?”
Colin, who had been doing a bit of complicated double time alternating foot skipping, missed a beat and the rope became tangled up his legs. He looked up at the cat and then at his brother. “Well, we have to go some way; to the left then?”
“Okay then, lets go,” Ralph said. He took a meaningful glance at the cat in its high perch. “This had better be the right way”, he added to the cat.
“Oh, it is,” said the cat, “you can trust me.” He gave them a wide eyed kittenish smile.
Some time later they arrived back at the crossroads, a bit bedraggled as they say, Colin dragging the skipping rope behind him, head down, in a foul funk. Both Ralph and Colin are covered with sores and splotches from bug bites and what may develop into rather unpleasant rashes from assorted plant poisons.
Colin sighs. “So which way do we go now?”
Ralph stopped and looked at the two remaining paths and said, “It’s a 50/50 choice now. Got a coin?”
“I’d say to take the middle one,” said the voice from the tree.
Ralph cringed at the voice then looked up. “But you lied to us the last time, you bastard.”
“I know,” said the cat. “I’m sorry. I was just playing a little joke.” He grins a big cat grin.
“Well, it wasn’t funny,” Colin added.
“Sorry. I really am. Look, I want to make it up to you, okay. I feel really bad about the last time. But the centre path is the way to go, really. Cat’s honour.”
Colin, not really taking into consideration the cat’s acute sense of hearing whispers into his brother’s ear, “Whichever way he tells us, maybe we should go the other way.”
The voice from above spoke. “Well, you could do that. But, you know, I might have realized that you’d think like that and so I’d tell you to take the right path so that you’d choose the wrong one yourselves, if I was inclined to do something like that, but I’m not. The centre path leads to the village, you can stake my life on it.”
“It better be,” said Ralph.
“Shit,” said Colin. “He’s got us again, doesn’t he?”
“Afraid so”, agreed his brother.
“Don’t worry little girl”, the cat called down, “you’ll soon be safe and warm at the Inn.”
On their second return to the little clearing they didn’t even look up at the tree. Now they are covered with mud and bits of green swamp plants, and didn’t smell very good either. With heads down they turn into the last path. Colin doesn’t even have the skipping rope anymore.
They feel a grin at their backs and hear a chortle.
“He’s number one on the hit list,” Ralph says.
Eventually they find the Wonderland Bar and Grill. It’ looks very inviting if a little on the rustic side: low, wattle and daub walls topped with a thatched roof. A wisp of smoke rose from the chimney and played with the wind until it disappeared.
The room they entered was surprisingly large. There’s a long bar, a few tables, and some booths along one wall. On the other side of the room they see a large caterpillar, sitting at a faintly glowing mushroom table, and watch it for a moment in fascination as it takes a long pull from a hose that lead to a huge hookah, which sat nearby on the floor. It pursed its lips and blew smoke through its lips. The cloud assumed the indefinite but suggestive shape of what might have been a dildo, with attachments.
Several playing card men were drinking at the bar.
All conversation dropped and all eyes turned and watched the two brothers as they entered. They sat at a booth near a corner and Colin begins hitting the sides of the booth with the heels of his shoes. Boom, boom. Boom, boom. Boom, boom.
“Start acting your age” Ralph spoke.
“What age am I supposed to be?”
“I don’t know, then act your height instead.”
“I don’t think that that’s a good indicator any more either.”
A waiter comes over and they’re served tea. Colin opened up the pot and saw a rodent of some kind sleeping in it. He tips the teapot to show his brother. Ralph picks the rodent up by the tail and lifts it out. It yawns.
“And what is this,” he asks?
“It’s a dormouse, sir. It’s for the dormouse tea. Very refreshing.”
Colin looked from the dormouse to the waiter. “Well, let’s just say that we don’t want any tea, okay?”
“Could you maybe get us something stronger to drink,” asked Ralph, “without any creatures in it?” The dormouse, upside down, sleepily nodded its head in agreement. Ralph put the rodent back in the pot and gently put the lid back on.
The waiter clears the tea set and removes the tray. He clears his throat noisily and then looks over at Colin but speaks to Ralph. “Well, sir, there is still the small matter of the age of your companion. I may need to see some identification.”
“What?” they chorused.
“I’m being carded,” queeried Colin? “Get stuffed.” He looked directly into the waiter’s eyes as he spoke. “Do you like birthdays,” Colin asks sweetly? “I do. Would you like to see another one? You would? Then I’d suggest that you get us drinks, and fast. Understood?”
“Perfectly sir. Or young miss. Or madam.”
Shortly afterward, Colin is drinking a large glass of milk through a straw. Well, not all milk. There were also three big shots of something sweet and sticky and above all alcoholic in it, this worlds answer to Bailey’s Irish Cream. He glances up at the plate ledge that runs along the far side of the room above the caterpillar’s head. A huge egg is ogling him. It licks its lips meaningfully and winks. Colin turns his attention away and concentrates on blowing bubbles in his drink.
Everything seems to be going fine, for a while.
They drink.
Ralph teaches several card men how to play ‘Colonel Puckey Wuckey’, a rather cruel drinking game. They seem to take to it naturally.
They drink some more.
Colin is invited over to the caterpillar’s table. After thinking about it for a while he stands and straightens his skirts. He holds his arms behind his back, right hand loosely cradling left wrist, and shyly saunters over.
Ralph, meanwhile, is getting rather mellow, sitting by himself at a table by the fire, a glass with the local scotch substitute in his hand. He’s finally starting to feel almost human again, soaking in the scotch and the ambience, and knew he could very easily nod off after the exertions of the day.
Just about then the bar door swings open and in saunters the cat, accompanied by a thing that looked sort of like a turtle, and the rabbit. The cat sees the brothers and then laughs. He looks at his companions and grins. The rabbit glances at his watch, and tells the cat, “It’s time.”
Then things start to go bad.
Within a very short space of time Colin is in a corner desperately trying to defend his honour and fend off the caterpillar, a walrus, and the thing that looks like a turtle using the base of the hookah as a club. Ralph backs into the corner with him, a chair upraised in his hands. Facing the two brothers was the entire compliment of the bar. Nobody looked happy.
“What the hell just happened,” Ralph asked between feints of the chair?
“I don’t know,” says Colin. “All I was doing was sitting there minding my own business when that big green asshole started making passes at me. All right, I had a couple of puffs on his pipe but, really. He thought that gave him the right to have his way with me, and I wasn’t about to find out what that way was. He had his hands all over me. All of them.” He swung the hookah again. “And then that damn half-turtle shows up and starts trying to hump my leg. What about you?”
“I was sitting by the fire and then that damn cat and rabbit show up. I should have plowed them both in the face right then. I really should have, but I was feeling kind of mellow.”
“Shitfaced you mean.”
“Well, maybe. Anyway, they sat, uninvited by the way, at my table and the damn rabbit pulled a deck of cards from it’s vest and starts to shuffle. I was thinking about that line, what is it? You know the one; something about keeping your friends close and your enemies even closer. Well, they talked me into playing a ‘friendly game of cards’ with them. I should have known.
“Every time that cat drew a card it’s grin got bigger and bigger. I thought its face was going to split open. The rabbit kept looking at his watch and discarding cards it seemed at random. And it always seemed to play the card that the cat wanted. I was starting to think that I didn’t really know all the rules of the game, at least the one they were playing. Oh, and then that thing, the dormouse, scampered over the table and peeked at my hand. Then it whispered in the rabbit’s ear, and the rabbit whispered in the cat’s ear, and that damn grin turned up to 2oo watts.
“So I threw the cards on the table and was starting to say something like, ‘Why you thieving pair of ass…’ when the cat suddenly gets this look on it’s face, jumps on the table and yells, ‘You can’t be serious and say such a thing about her majesty, that’s treason’.
“Then the room goes quiet and all the playing card men start reaching for their weapons.
“I say, ‘But I never…’
“I couldn’t even finish. The cat screamed, ‘And I don’t think it very nice of you to say that the Red Queen is a bitch.’
“I got up out of my chair, grabbed it, and took a swing at the cat and knocked him off the table. And that’s how I got here.”
“I sort of heard some of that”, Colin spoke, “but I was too occupied at the time to really give it much attention.”
The whole room of card men and creatures furred and scaled, were now facing the two brothers. Assorted cutlery and implements of destruction sprouted from various hands and paws and claws. It looked Grim, yes, very much like something that that other fairy story guy might have made up.
Ralph said, “We may have to resort to violins.”
Now, knowing Ralph you would have to realize that the phrase ‘having to resort to violins’ was not an idle threat because it involved the forceful insertion of said stringed instruments up the fundament of the victim and then the release of sting tension through the use of wire cutters.
Ralph took off his hat, to throw it in a corner, and astoundingly to the multitude, there appeared on his head a hardhat. In his hand, again magically, appeared a chainsaw, it’s motor idling menacingly.
He passed the saw to his brother, “Here take this,” he said. He takes off the hardhat, which reveals a welding helmet underneath. In his hands he was now holding the business ends of an arc welder.
“Now, let’s get some”.
Colin grins and revs the chainsaw and said, “Here kitty, kitty. Here kitty. Come to mama.”
And then sparks flew, as did fur, scaly things, and assorted cardboard bits.
Once upon a later time…
In the ruins of a still smoldering building Ralph, dressed in a chef’s hat and apron, is crouched over a fire, cooking a meal. It consists of mock-turtle soup (with mushroom and caterpillar bits) and rabbit on a spit, the vest just beginning to crisp and flake, its buttons melting and then dropping into the fire with an audible hiss.
“Nice watch though,” he says to himself, then adds a bit louder, for the sake of his brother, “and you know I never understood the thing about lucky rabbits feet. I mean, when you think of it, the poor bugger had four of them, didn’t he? Not that it did him much good.”
Colin, sitting across a fallen roof timber, one foot to either side, a cracked crockery mug of beer near his hand, set down Ralph’s wire cutters on his apron and held up the necklace he was working on for critical evaluation. It consisted of shiny pieces of scale and little white nuggets of things that may have been teeth. “And you used a cello on him.”
“There’s always room for cello.” They both chortled (like chuckled, only a bit more fun).
“And that cat sure got a different look on his face when you welded his tail to the ceiling fan.”
Ralph laughed, “Yeah, he made a noise like a siren too, notice that?”
“Yeah, I did. And it must have taken him by surprise when his tail let go and he was thrown through the looking glass. Well, mostly through anyway. What a mess.”
There’s silence for a bit. Ralph stirs the pot and prods the rabbit. He glances at the huge egg sitting on top of the ruin of a wall. It nervously looks away and just fails to catch Ralph’s eye.
Colin asks, “What are you thinking about?”
Ralph looks at him. And then says, with a grin, “Actually I was just thinking about breakfast.” He glanced up again. “Hello breakfast.”
The egg on the wall trembled.
Colin looked over as well, “Hell, I don’t do eggs, and we haven’t even had dinner yet.”
“But I do, and I think it’s a good thing to be prepared.”
“Say, Ralph, I’ve been thinking, what do you want to do if we get back?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It might be fun to open up a hat store.”
“Millinery” Colin suggests?
Ralph used the end of the spoon he was using to scratch a temple, “No, no I don’t think so. I don’t want to sell to the army”.
“Then a haberdashery?”
Ralph thought about this idea too. “No, I don’t want to sell to priests or nuns either.”
“Ah. Just a hat shop then.”
“Yup, you got it. So, what about you?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about starting a girl band, and I’ve even been thinking up names for it, like The Squirrelles.”
“Colin.”
The Strumpettes?
“Colin.”
“Theolopholous and the Twisted Sisters?”
“Colin.”
“Mama Orca and the Baleens?”
“Colin.”
“The Sprockettes?”
“Colin.”
“The Spinnerettes?”
“Colin.”
“Velvet Underpants?”
“Colin.”
“Sexed Pestols?”
“Colin.”
“Barberella and the Bar Belles?”
“COLIN!”
“What?”
“You’re sick. You’ve spent too much time in a dress. You’re not a girl, remember?”
Colin sighed. “Yeah, I know that. But the dress”, he paused, “it sort of gets to you. And it’s like your hats, I can’t seem get out of this stupid thing without there being something girly underneath. He looked back to his work. I think I’m definitely going to need counseling after this.” He spent a moment sucking on the end of one of his locks. “Okay, guy group names then. How about Vince and the Vasectomies?”
“You’re still sick.”
“What about The Gonads, we could just call it ‘The Nads’?”
“Still sick.”
“Well, you come up with one then.”
“How about ‘The Steaming Spludge’?”
“Not very good either.” He took the bit of hair out of his mouth. “But what if we never, never get out of this land?”
“Well, I think that’s an easy one. We open a bar?”
“What, us? Where?”
“Well, here. There seems to be a need of one.”
“Hmmm.”
Ralph continued. “You throw a plank over a couple of barrels and you’re open for business. And the cellar’s mostly intact and there’s lots of stores and crap still in there.”
“And I found a bathtub over there in the wreckage” Colin said pointing, warming to the topic.
“‘Gin’ has been called, “ his brother shouted. There’s a not quite evil glint in his eye. Visions of something bottled, wet and alcoholic drifted like fumes through his mind, refusing to wipe their feet as they passed through. “And think of the tourist trade.”
“They’ll never know what hit them,” Colin agrees.
And one of those companionable silences descends.
Once upon a time later than the once upon a time just before…
As we approach an inn we hear, coming from inside, that noise particular to drinking establishments everywhere; in fact a noise heard throughout the universe, wherever people gather to drink and to socialize, to remember and to forget, accompanied by the faint tinkling of music and the occasional glass being broken.
Over the door, hanging from a couple of chains, is the head of a grinning cat. Next to it has been placed a ladder. The Campbells, not really mean or vindictive types, allow the cat, or the head anyway, to beg for drinks and get an occasional scratch behind its ear from customers coming and going.
A little girl wanders across the road and up to the door. She looks up at the cat’s head who’s grin is suddenly replaced by a worried frown. It says, in a whisper, “Get away. Get away from here now. Run, before you get caught up in the horrible nightmare.”
“What nightmare,” the little girl inquires sweetly?
“The Campbells.”
“Campbells?”
“Yes Campbells, two of them.”
“The Campbell’s are coming?”
“It’s worse than that, they’re already here.”
“No, not the…”
“Yes, them. You’re not safe here you know, they run this place. They’d warp a sweet young thing like you into something awful, something unsavory, something, ah, Campbell. They’d make you do the dishes for starters, and they haven’t done any of those since they opened up the place.”
There’s no reaction from the little girl. She just looks at the head curiously.
The cat continues, “Or clean the privy. Or harvest the mushrooms, at midnight, from the Dark and Creepy Forest.”
Still nothing.
“They’ll make you sing karaoke.”
She gasped, did a quiet kind of ‘eek’, turned and fled back the way she had come.
Inside you find a cozy little bar, a fire dancing merrily in a stone hearth. Here and there are tables and chairs where several customers sit. There are a couple of crazy eights slouching near the bar, worn, tattered, frayed at the edges. They didn’t look like they were playing with a full deck.
On any night you can find several mythological beasts and other creatures here, consuming various perfidious fermentations (as Colin likes to call them, but again he would). And there is the man himself, Ralph, behind the bar, at present having a discussion with an old hag who has a basket full of apples on the counter by her. He has just asked her what her poison was, meaning, of course, what she wanted to drink, but the answer he got was quite unexpected.
Still, he was a man of many hats and enjoyed serving drinks. Every so often he changed his hat, usually according to whom he was serving, but not always. Miners, trappers, fairies, pixies, western, eastern, you name it, he had the hat for it. Everyone now called him ‘The Mad Hatter’ because of this peculiarity, and the fact that he’d laugh delightedly with every new change he made, as if each time was the very first. ‘He was daft’, they all claimed, ‘and mad as a Hatter’, and it stuck. Ralph also liked to do magic tricks. Just now, having finished his conversation with the hag for the moment, and during a lull in serving, he pulled a rabbi out of his hat.
So he served most of the drinks, mainly wine (which the brothers made themselves), and if customers want something, shall we say, stronger, there’s always his homemade chili and biscuits to be had.
Oh, I forgot to mention about the, um, decor of the place. Excuse me. Perhaps a word here is required.
Hanging from the walls were animal trophies, mounted on wood plaques; some large and some incredibly small. It gave the place a backwoodsy feel Ralph thought. They were unusual because it was only the rear ends of the animals, not the heads, which were showing to the clientele. When Ralph had come up with the idea originally for putting up heads his brother had complained that he didn’t want to be looking at the faces of those assholes all the time, and that had given Ralph the idea. Tails and fins and flippers now adorned the walls, occasionally beating time and swaying to the music, as they did now.
Newcomers to the bar would come in and look at the mounted trophies. Invariably they would say something like, “Well, ain’t that the cat’s ass.” And they’d be right.
Colin was, at present, at a small stage in one corner, half reclined on the top of a sort of mushroom piano/harpsichord type thing (you’d be surprised what some mushrooms grew into in these parts), in a beaded gown, stroking his beard thoughtfully with the pipe of a hookah languidly held in one hand. He was singing, if you can call it that, show tunes and rude parodies of Disney songs, to the hoots and cheers of the 7 dwarves sitting at the ringside table.
He had already had done the ‘Hi Ho’ song to death, and did a sad but bawdy rendition of ‘When You Wish Upon a Star’. He was now belting out a rude version of the song ‘Dreams are a Wish Your Heart Makes’, only in this version Colin sang: ‘Sperm is a paste your nuts make’ (when you’re fast asleep). I know it’s not physically accurate, but that’s what he sang. By the time he got to the line about ‘Farts are a song your ass makes’, his brother was singing gustily, if out of tune, along with him from behind the bar.
And, you know, that just about sums up the two brothers; infantile humour of the lowest kind; like thinking the word ‘bum’ was one of the funniest words in existence, and the word ‘boobies’, well, it was enough to send you into hysterics. Some people just never grow up.
Over the bar – and over the pieced together, um, pieces of the huge looking glass was a sign, and the reason everyone called this place ‘The Alice’, although, surprisingly, the Campbell brothers hadn’t really gotten around to naming the place officially. The sign read:
Das Ist Alles.
That’s all, folks.
Although I really wanted to get an actual Alice dress for this (I thought it would be just too hilarious), time and money considerations wouldn't allow for it. I had to search out images on the net and Photoshop them all together.
This is the label:
And this is the tale:
Once upon a time, or maybe it should be Twice upon a time because it had to deal with those two damned brothers. Hmmm. I had better decide which one it is or we’ll never get this thing started.
O.K., so…Once upon a time it is, there were these two brothers. Well, I guess I already gave that one away, didn’t I? Blew it right from the start. I better get my feces collectivized as they say. Start again.
Once upon a time there were these two brothers. A big brother named Ralph, and an even bigger little brother named Colin. Good so far?
They were sitting on plastic crates in the basement of a rather ordinary looking house, under a bare light bulb that hung dangling from the ceiling by a wire. The meager light fitfully illuminated them as they were bottling their latest batch of wine and, oh, sampling the wares as they did so. They were, in actual fact and at this point sampling more than bottling but you might have guessed that already.
The wine they were sampling was an interesting combination of grapes and the small pink and bluish mushrooms that Ralph had found in the septic system by accident one midnight (don’t ask) and since their last effort at a baking soda wine had been so, well, disastrous (meaning ‘under a bad star’ by the way), they were both more than pleased that they had produced something that was relatively drinkable, and good for dissolving the rust on nails they found out, well actually for dissolving whole nails. Okay, so another ingredient for the wine was nails, but they thought of ‘nails’ as a trace element of the concoction. The thing of it was that they had to nail the little mushrooms to the side of the wooden vat because they kept trying to run away from the grapes.
So, Ralph and Colin were up to their third (bottle, each) sampling when, at almost the same instant, they stood bolt upright, grabbed their heads, screamed, and then fell into a swoon. It was far deeper than anyone might have thought. They screamed as they fell down the long dark hole of the swoon. They screamed until they were short of breath and then filled their lungs with air and screamed again, and again. At the next pause for breath the older brother, Ralph, started to laugh. That set Colin off too. So now they laughed as they fell, screaming now just for effect, tumbling over and around each other and deeper and deeper into the swoon with each second.
Colin took a passing glance at his brother as he went somersaulting by next to him and said, “Well, it appears that you’ve grown yourself a top hat of some kind, and a long coat and tie too. Very natty that.”
“And you,” Ralph broke into another fit of laughter, “have grown yourself a dress.” He broke up again, even harder than before. “And you look good in braided hair, you know.” The laugh became a roar.
Colin looked, well not down at himself, but, you know, kind of around at his self as he tumbled, at least as best he could. It was true. He was now, for some strange and unknown reason, wearing a pretty blue frock covered by a white apron. Oh, and he had on striped stockings as well.
“Holy shit!” he exclaimed, and then after taking a moment to look at himself again, stated incredulously, “I’m wearing a dress.” A more lengthy pause occurred and then he said, in a much softer voice and more to himself than anyone else, “Why does this always happen to me?”
Ralph broke up again. “At least you lost weight.”
Colin was rather annoyed at this reaction from his brother and started yelling at him, “Shut up. Stop it. Give it a break. Take a pill. Cut it out.” … and so on. It only served to make Ralph laugh the more.
Ralph was, as you can tell, and in spite of the circumstances, having quite a good time. Not only had he got himself a cool new hat but he could also laugh, like any true brother would, at the expense of his younger brother’s discomfort. He did end up regretting it all a short time later when they finally hit the bottom of the swoon and Colin fell directly on top of him, knocking the wind from his lungs mid laugh. It really was painful. He wheezed. Surprisingly the hat stayed firmly on his head.
After they both pushed themselves up into a more or less erect posture they looked around at the place they now found themselves. They groaned. The Campbells, no strangers to regaining what loosely can be termed ‘consciousness’ in situations where everyone and everything around them swam around in a blurry kind of nauseating motion (like Brownian motion only much, much greener), were quite unprepared for what they saw.
The perspectives in this time and in this space were all wrong. It made their heads hurt. Well, okay, their heads were already hurting, but this just made them hurt all the more. It was like three, well not dimensions, but rather three whole sets of dimensions, one sitting on top of the other, all occupying the same space. It made your eyes water and the brain want to put up a little sign saying, ‘Out to lunch, please call back in 5 minutes’, to try to take it all in. I know, it’s hard to explain.
They were in a room, or space, or whatever you wanted to call it: tables, chairs, walls, lamps, everything normal and to scale. But then, when they looked up, and their brains shifted perceptual gears a bit (not an easy task for them to do) they saw that they were also, simultaneously, standing in a huge space that was sort of there and not there at the same time. This room, for indeed it appeared to be another furnished space, was decked out like the ‘normal one’ they were presently standing in gawking upward in stunned awe (Colin was drooling a bit). They could just barely make out the huge mountainous chairs and lofty tables and towering lamps and far distant pictures on the walls. It made you feel tiny and insignificant. You certainly wouldn’t want to dust the place.
Then they looked down. Their overworked brains became scrambled eggs. Perspective twisted itself again and they felt, besides dizzy, that they were standing over and yet part of a space that could only be described as the interior of a doll house; everything tiny, perfect, and in place, and to miniature scale.
Just at that moment, some strange rodent in a vest appeared, twitched its whiskers, glanced at his watch, and then scurried under Colin’s skirt and between his legs. It emerged from the other side and ran up to Ralph’s right foot, which it kicked savagely. Ralph lifted his leg and grabbed his foot in surprise and in pain hopping up and down on the other foot. The rodent stuck out his tongue at Ralph, did a tiny raspberry, muttered something about being late, and disappeared through the tiny door in the wall of the ‘doll’s house’. The door, which had been, only moments before, blocked by Ralph’s now aching right foot, slammed behind it, closing with a miniature boom and an audible click.
Ralph squinted at the door. All he said, in an undertone was, “Bastard rabbit.”
Seeing the tiny door brought to the brothers’ minds the taxing question of how they were going to get out of wherever the hell they now were. Looking around Colin spotted a table near one wall. On the table sat a small bottle and printed on its label were the words, ‘Suck on this.’ He showed it to his brother. Ralph sniffed it. The Campbells, ever interested in the contents of bottles, or really in the emptying of the contents of bottles, and without really considering what the consequences might be, each took a sip.
They grew and expanded and inflated and stretched until their bodies filled the much larger space. Luckily their clothes did the same. It would have been really embarrassing otherwise, and a gross strain on narrative decency to try to describe. Colin was now rubbing the top of his head because he had hit the underside of the table as he was growing.
“Ow,” he said intelligently.
When their growing pains had finally stopped they looked and wandered around. They realized that they were now the perfect size for the ‘bigger’ room. All the once towering furnishings now appeared perfectly normal (of course for an admittedly warped state of normality).
Colin clambered up a large overstuffed chair. “Is that it, we just get biggified? Big deal.” He began jumping up and down on the cushion. “Kind of a let down, don’t you think?”
Ralph looked at him, “Why are you doing that?”
“Doing what?”
“Jumping on the furniture. You’re acting like a kid.”
“Am I? It must be then that the clothes make the man, or kid, or girl, or something. Anyway, I feel like it.”
“Fine. Be that way”, Ralph replied. He turned around to examine the room more carefully. He spotted another table not far off. “What’s this?” he asked.
“How the hell should I know?” Colin bounced down on his bottom on the cushion and hurried over to see what his big brother had found.
Ralph turned around to look at him for a second and then said, “For a little kid you should watch your bloody language.”
“Oh, and why is that?”
“Because that kind of language doesn’t suit a little lady.” He started to laugh.
“Bugger off” said Colin in his sweetest voice.
On a table, next to an antique oil lamp and beside an old brass key, was a small dish on which there was a biscuit of some description with one of those candy hearts stuck on it, this one a pink one. The heart had on it the words, ‘Bite me’.
The Campbells, after the briefest moment of pause, bit. Yeah, they were that gullible.
A sound and a sensation like the air being let out of a balloon and the brothers shrank or shrunk, whatever the proper word is to describe an impossible concept, until they ‘fit’ into the littlest space of all, the doll house dimension.
“I feel awful,” said Ralph.
“You look that way too” replied his brother or sister or whatever.
They went over to the door and tried to open it. It was locked. After several minutes of swearing and hammering against the door Ralph said, “So what do we do now?”
“You might try the key,” Colin offered.
“What key? Where?”
Colin pointed above his head. “Back up there, near the biscuit” he said.
“So why didn’t you tell me this before? I just spent five minutes banging on the damn door.”
“Well, because you didn’t ask before.” He gave his brother a little crooked grin. “Anyway, you looked like you were having too much fun. And besides, you were up there too, remember?”
After several more minutes of this type of conversation, and a bit of shoving at each other, they thought they should try to retrieve the key.
It took the brothers several tries, the larger part of an hour, several samplings each of the contents of ‘Suck Me’ and several nibbles of ‘Bite Me’ to manage to get key and door and selves lined up in the proper perspective. Colin said that he’d never be cruel to balloons again.
The brothers pushed and shoved at each other in order to be the last through the door. When they finally emerged on the other side they found themselves in a vast wilderness, a path laid out before them, which disappeared into dark forest. Huge plants and trees towered on either side and above their heads.
Once upon a time a couple of hours later…
They stumbled (they were Campbells after all) around in the forest following a path that wandered up and down and around the landscape. Things didn’t look quite right. Everything was too big, too huge: the grass grew like bamboo, the trees were monstrous, and the rocks were, well, rock sized but only more so, and when they finally saw a dragonfly zoom past it was gigantic, the size of a helicopter they thought. Only then did it click into their tiny brain cells that they must be tiny themselves.
Colin stated the obvious, “I guess that we’re stuck this size.”
Ralph said, more to himself than his brother, “Hmmm. I guess we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
Colin skipped down path beside Ralph.
“Cut that out.”
“What?”
“The skipping.”
“But I feel like it.”
“You said that before, when you were jumping on the furniture. Can’t you stop?”
“I don’t think I could if I wanted,” Colin replied.
“Well, fine. Hey, it’s getting warm, isn’t it? I feel like I’m on a safari.” He takes off his hat to wipe his forehead. Already on his head sits a pith helmet.
“Way cool. Your hat changed.”
“What?”
“Your hat. It’s different now.”
“Is it?” He took the new hat off his head to look at it. As he did so, the top hat reemerged from underneath and sat jauntily on his head.
“Do it again.”
“Don’t know if I can.”
“You said safari before, try something else.”
“Like what?”
“How about Robin Hood?”
So Ralph imagines himself as Robin Hood and when he takes off the topper again a Kelly green hat appears on his head, with a feather in it.
Colin makes a squeal of delight. Ralph shudders slightly at the sound and gives a curious glance at his brother.
“Now try a gangster, you know like Al Capone,” he chirps up. Ralph obliges.
“Now try McArthur.” A short pause and then he adds, “Hey, you even got the pipe.”
“Holy shit!”
“Do a Flapper.”
“A what” asked Ralph?
“You know, like one of those woman’s hats from the Roaring 20’s, or, I know, how about one of those Los Vegas show girl things? A huge tiara.”
“Nah, I’m not going to do anything of the kind.”
“Bet’cha can’t.”
A sparkly huge headdress now sits on his head. Colin laughs.
“Satisfied?”
“Wow, I’m impressed.”
Ralph took the headpiece off, his topper emerged from underneath.
“How you gonna’ scratch your head if you can’t take off your hats?”
Ralph momentarily lifted the hat and scratched his pate underneath. “I don’t know, he said thoughtfully, “I really don’t know.”
They continued a while down the path gazing about them in wonder. Eventually Colin speaks up, “Say Ralph, I’m kinda’ getting hungry, aren’t you?”
Ralph pauses, thinks for a moment and then doffs what he’s beginning to think of as his ‘default’ kind of top hat to reveal, on his head, a farmer’s straw hat, slightly worn at the brim. He also now had two ripe peaches in his hands. He hands one to his, um, brother.
They slurp at the deliciously ripe fruit as they continue to amble. Colin looks at Ralph and says to him, “That’s a handy talent you got there.” He threw the peach pit into the forest. From somewhere close by there comes the sound of animal indignation. A squirrel, minding it’s own nutty business, had just been assaulted by the pit. Talk about poetic justice.
“I’m still hungry though. Can you make some burgers?”
“How am I going to do that?” Ralph asked.
“Hey, how about wearing one of those silly hats you used to wear when you worked at the A&W. And think hamburgers.”
Not very long after that Ralph is sitting at the side of a small stream and enjoying a burger and fries. His brother, burger in hand, takes occasional bites as he plays hopscotch on a grid he had scratched in the earth. Ralph refused to play with him.
They finish off the main course and then Ralph, now wearing a Dickey Dee ice cream hat, serves up ice cream cones. They eat for a while in silence. Colin burps. “Hey Ralph, do you think that the water is safe to drink?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think we should chance it unless we really need to. Give me a minute, let me think.” He does the hat thing again and is soon wearing what he thinks of as ‘a Bootlegger’s hat’. He thinks the hat is actually called something like a ‘Straw Boater’, but he found that names aren’t really all that important; it was the image in his mind that was the key. The most important aspect of this particular change of hat, at least to him, was that he now held a couple of bottles of (Campbell vintage) wines, already uncorked.
Colin settled down on the grassy bank, sitting companionably beside his big brother Ralph. He spreads his skirt, takes one of the opened bottles, and takes a big swig & sighs.
Ralph, looking over at him, and after taking a large hit from his own bottle says, “It kinda’, creeps me out seeing you like that.” Colin shrugs and drinks. And then, after a short refreshment pause, Ralph got up, stretched his legs and said, “Okay, better get going if we’re going to get anywhere.”
Colin says, “Just a moment. I have to go to the can, and well, I want to check something out too.” He skips off into a screen of grass.
Now it must be said that Colin was starting to be a bit concerned about, well, not just his own appearance, the dress and all, but what he might find, or not find, underneath when he had to, you know, go; but to his relief, or really during his relief, discovered that his male parts came, well, readily to hand as it were.
In a minute he returns.
“Well?”
“Everything’s fine Ralph, just fine.” And then adds, as they start down the path again, “Say, can we play the hat game again?”
“Okay,” agreed his brother, “but this time I’ll change the hat, you guess what I am. Okay?”
“Go for it.”
There came a succession of hats and Colin put a name to each one. “Astronaut. Sherlock Holmes, and you got a pipe again. Fireman. King Tut.”
And Ralph’s voice, “Yeah, and the damn thing is heavy too.”
“Try pig tails?”
“But that’s hair, not a hat,” Ralph complained.
“P l e a s e.”
“No!”
“Pretty please.”
“I said no.”
“But I really want a skipping rope.”
“A skipping rope. No way, José.”
“Please, please, please.”
“No, and stop jumping up and down in front of me, it’s making me sick.”
“Please, please, please, please, with sugar on it.”
(Sigh) “You’re being a brat you know.”
“And a cherry on top.”
Ralph doffs his hat, momentarily revealing hair like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. He hands his brother a skipping rope.
Colin lets out another squeal of delight followed by, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
His brother says, “And you can stop that squealing any time now.”
They disappear around a bend in the path and their voices fade in the distance.
The hats left behind on the path slowly fade to nothingness.
Some time later they came to a fork in the road beside a huge tree. Three ways lead off in different directions, and each path looked about the same from where they stood. They found the direction signs (telling where each path led) laying on the ground beneath the tree, next to a small pry bar. It was impossible for them to tell which way lead where. They read the three signs. One said ‘The Bog of Despair’, the next ‘The Dark and Creepy Forest’, and the third read ‘The Hamlet of Wonderland’.
“Shit,” Ralph said meditatively. “So which way do we go?”
“How about this way,” Colin suggests, pointing to the right fork.
A voice from above replies, “Well, you could of course, but that would only take you into the Dark and Creepy Forest. Not a nice place at all.”
They look up. There’s a huge cat in a crotch of the tree grinning hugely down at them.
Ralph said, “I don’t know. You took the signs down, didn’t you?”
“Who me? Never. No opposable thumbs, you see?” It waggled one huge paw at the brothers, then used one massive claw to pick at a tooth, “No, I just happened to come by”, the cat said.
“So which way should we go,” Colin asked?
“I’d take the left one, to the Hamlet of Wonderland, of course.”
“You’re not screwing with us I hope,” said Ralph.
“Wouldn’t think of it.”
He turned to his brother, “What do you think?”
Colin, who had been doing a bit of complicated double time alternating foot skipping, missed a beat and the rope became tangled up his legs. He looked up at the cat and then at his brother. “Well, we have to go some way; to the left then?”
“Okay then, lets go,” Ralph said. He took a meaningful glance at the cat in its high perch. “This had better be the right way”, he added to the cat.
“Oh, it is,” said the cat, “you can trust me.” He gave them a wide eyed kittenish smile.
Some time later they arrived back at the crossroads, a bit bedraggled as they say, Colin dragging the skipping rope behind him, head down, in a foul funk. Both Ralph and Colin are covered with sores and splotches from bug bites and what may develop into rather unpleasant rashes from assorted plant poisons.
Colin sighs. “So which way do we go now?”
Ralph stopped and looked at the two remaining paths and said, “It’s a 50/50 choice now. Got a coin?”
“I’d say to take the middle one,” said the voice from the tree.
Ralph cringed at the voice then looked up. “But you lied to us the last time, you bastard.”
“I know,” said the cat. “I’m sorry. I was just playing a little joke.” He grins a big cat grin.
“Well, it wasn’t funny,” Colin added.
“Sorry. I really am. Look, I want to make it up to you, okay. I feel really bad about the last time. But the centre path is the way to go, really. Cat’s honour.”
Colin, not really taking into consideration the cat’s acute sense of hearing whispers into his brother’s ear, “Whichever way he tells us, maybe we should go the other way.”
The voice from above spoke. “Well, you could do that. But, you know, I might have realized that you’d think like that and so I’d tell you to take the right path so that you’d choose the wrong one yourselves, if I was inclined to do something like that, but I’m not. The centre path leads to the village, you can stake my life on it.”
“It better be,” said Ralph.
“Shit,” said Colin. “He’s got us again, doesn’t he?”
“Afraid so”, agreed his brother.
“Don’t worry little girl”, the cat called down, “you’ll soon be safe and warm at the Inn.”
On their second return to the little clearing they didn’t even look up at the tree. Now they are covered with mud and bits of green swamp plants, and didn’t smell very good either. With heads down they turn into the last path. Colin doesn’t even have the skipping rope anymore.
They feel a grin at their backs and hear a chortle.
“He’s number one on the hit list,” Ralph says.
Eventually they find the Wonderland Bar and Grill. It’ looks very inviting if a little on the rustic side: low, wattle and daub walls topped with a thatched roof. A wisp of smoke rose from the chimney and played with the wind until it disappeared.
The room they entered was surprisingly large. There’s a long bar, a few tables, and some booths along one wall. On the other side of the room they see a large caterpillar, sitting at a faintly glowing mushroom table, and watch it for a moment in fascination as it takes a long pull from a hose that lead to a huge hookah, which sat nearby on the floor. It pursed its lips and blew smoke through its lips. The cloud assumed the indefinite but suggestive shape of what might have been a dildo, with attachments.
Several playing card men were drinking at the bar.
All conversation dropped and all eyes turned and watched the two brothers as they entered. They sat at a booth near a corner and Colin begins hitting the sides of the booth with the heels of his shoes. Boom, boom. Boom, boom. Boom, boom.
“Start acting your age” Ralph spoke.
“What age am I supposed to be?”
“I don’t know, then act your height instead.”
“I don’t think that that’s a good indicator any more either.”
A waiter comes over and they’re served tea. Colin opened up the pot and saw a rodent of some kind sleeping in it. He tips the teapot to show his brother. Ralph picks the rodent up by the tail and lifts it out. It yawns.
“And what is this,” he asks?
“It’s a dormouse, sir. It’s for the dormouse tea. Very refreshing.”
Colin looked from the dormouse to the waiter. “Well, let’s just say that we don’t want any tea, okay?”
“Could you maybe get us something stronger to drink,” asked Ralph, “without any creatures in it?” The dormouse, upside down, sleepily nodded its head in agreement. Ralph put the rodent back in the pot and gently put the lid back on.
The waiter clears the tea set and removes the tray. He clears his throat noisily and then looks over at Colin but speaks to Ralph. “Well, sir, there is still the small matter of the age of your companion. I may need to see some identification.”
“What?” they chorused.
“I’m being carded,” queeried Colin? “Get stuffed.” He looked directly into the waiter’s eyes as he spoke. “Do you like birthdays,” Colin asks sweetly? “I do. Would you like to see another one? You would? Then I’d suggest that you get us drinks, and fast. Understood?”
“Perfectly sir. Or young miss. Or madam.”
Shortly afterward, Colin is drinking a large glass of milk through a straw. Well, not all milk. There were also three big shots of something sweet and sticky and above all alcoholic in it, this worlds answer to Bailey’s Irish Cream. He glances up at the plate ledge that runs along the far side of the room above the caterpillar’s head. A huge egg is ogling him. It licks its lips meaningfully and winks. Colin turns his attention away and concentrates on blowing bubbles in his drink.
Everything seems to be going fine, for a while.
They drink.
Ralph teaches several card men how to play ‘Colonel Puckey Wuckey’, a rather cruel drinking game. They seem to take to it naturally.
They drink some more.
Colin is invited over to the caterpillar’s table. After thinking about it for a while he stands and straightens his skirts. He holds his arms behind his back, right hand loosely cradling left wrist, and shyly saunters over.
Ralph, meanwhile, is getting rather mellow, sitting by himself at a table by the fire, a glass with the local scotch substitute in his hand. He’s finally starting to feel almost human again, soaking in the scotch and the ambience, and knew he could very easily nod off after the exertions of the day.
Just about then the bar door swings open and in saunters the cat, accompanied by a thing that looked sort of like a turtle, and the rabbit. The cat sees the brothers and then laughs. He looks at his companions and grins. The rabbit glances at his watch, and tells the cat, “It’s time.”
Then things start to go bad.
Within a very short space of time Colin is in a corner desperately trying to defend his honour and fend off the caterpillar, a walrus, and the thing that looks like a turtle using the base of the hookah as a club. Ralph backs into the corner with him, a chair upraised in his hands. Facing the two brothers was the entire compliment of the bar. Nobody looked happy.
“What the hell just happened,” Ralph asked between feints of the chair?
“I don’t know,” says Colin. “All I was doing was sitting there minding my own business when that big green asshole started making passes at me. All right, I had a couple of puffs on his pipe but, really. He thought that gave him the right to have his way with me, and I wasn’t about to find out what that way was. He had his hands all over me. All of them.” He swung the hookah again. “And then that damn half-turtle shows up and starts trying to hump my leg. What about you?”
“I was sitting by the fire and then that damn cat and rabbit show up. I should have plowed them both in the face right then. I really should have, but I was feeling kind of mellow.”
“Shitfaced you mean.”
“Well, maybe. Anyway, they sat, uninvited by the way, at my table and the damn rabbit pulled a deck of cards from it’s vest and starts to shuffle. I was thinking about that line, what is it? You know the one; something about keeping your friends close and your enemies even closer. Well, they talked me into playing a ‘friendly game of cards’ with them. I should have known.
“Every time that cat drew a card it’s grin got bigger and bigger. I thought its face was going to split open. The rabbit kept looking at his watch and discarding cards it seemed at random. And it always seemed to play the card that the cat wanted. I was starting to think that I didn’t really know all the rules of the game, at least the one they were playing. Oh, and then that thing, the dormouse, scampered over the table and peeked at my hand. Then it whispered in the rabbit’s ear, and the rabbit whispered in the cat’s ear, and that damn grin turned up to 2oo watts.
“So I threw the cards on the table and was starting to say something like, ‘Why you thieving pair of ass…’ when the cat suddenly gets this look on it’s face, jumps on the table and yells, ‘You can’t be serious and say such a thing about her majesty, that’s treason’.
“Then the room goes quiet and all the playing card men start reaching for their weapons.
“I say, ‘But I never…’
“I couldn’t even finish. The cat screamed, ‘And I don’t think it very nice of you to say that the Red Queen is a bitch.’
“I got up out of my chair, grabbed it, and took a swing at the cat and knocked him off the table. And that’s how I got here.”
“I sort of heard some of that”, Colin spoke, “but I was too occupied at the time to really give it much attention.”
The whole room of card men and creatures furred and scaled, were now facing the two brothers. Assorted cutlery and implements of destruction sprouted from various hands and paws and claws. It looked Grim, yes, very much like something that that other fairy story guy might have made up.
Ralph said, “We may have to resort to violins.”
Now, knowing Ralph you would have to realize that the phrase ‘having to resort to violins’ was not an idle threat because it involved the forceful insertion of said stringed instruments up the fundament of the victim and then the release of sting tension through the use of wire cutters.
Ralph took off his hat, to throw it in a corner, and astoundingly to the multitude, there appeared on his head a hardhat. In his hand, again magically, appeared a chainsaw, it’s motor idling menacingly.
He passed the saw to his brother, “Here take this,” he said. He takes off the hardhat, which reveals a welding helmet underneath. In his hands he was now holding the business ends of an arc welder.
“Now, let’s get some”.
Colin grins and revs the chainsaw and said, “Here kitty, kitty. Here kitty. Come to mama.”
And then sparks flew, as did fur, scaly things, and assorted cardboard bits.
Once upon a later time…
In the ruins of a still smoldering building Ralph, dressed in a chef’s hat and apron, is crouched over a fire, cooking a meal. It consists of mock-turtle soup (with mushroom and caterpillar bits) and rabbit on a spit, the vest just beginning to crisp and flake, its buttons melting and then dropping into the fire with an audible hiss.
“Nice watch though,” he says to himself, then adds a bit louder, for the sake of his brother, “and you know I never understood the thing about lucky rabbits feet. I mean, when you think of it, the poor bugger had four of them, didn’t he? Not that it did him much good.”
Colin, sitting across a fallen roof timber, one foot to either side, a cracked crockery mug of beer near his hand, set down Ralph’s wire cutters on his apron and held up the necklace he was working on for critical evaluation. It consisted of shiny pieces of scale and little white nuggets of things that may have been teeth. “And you used a cello on him.”
“There’s always room for cello.” They both chortled (like chuckled, only a bit more fun).
“And that cat sure got a different look on his face when you welded his tail to the ceiling fan.”
Ralph laughed, “Yeah, he made a noise like a siren too, notice that?”
“Yeah, I did. And it must have taken him by surprise when his tail let go and he was thrown through the looking glass. Well, mostly through anyway. What a mess.”
There’s silence for a bit. Ralph stirs the pot and prods the rabbit. He glances at the huge egg sitting on top of the ruin of a wall. It nervously looks away and just fails to catch Ralph’s eye.
Colin asks, “What are you thinking about?”
Ralph looks at him. And then says, with a grin, “Actually I was just thinking about breakfast.” He glanced up again. “Hello breakfast.”
The egg on the wall trembled.
Colin looked over as well, “Hell, I don’t do eggs, and we haven’t even had dinner yet.”
“But I do, and I think it’s a good thing to be prepared.”
“Say, Ralph, I’ve been thinking, what do you want to do if we get back?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It might be fun to open up a hat store.”
“Millinery” Colin suggests?
Ralph used the end of the spoon he was using to scratch a temple, “No, no I don’t think so. I don’t want to sell to the army”.
“Then a haberdashery?”
Ralph thought about this idea too. “No, I don’t want to sell to priests or nuns either.”
“Ah. Just a hat shop then.”
“Yup, you got it. So, what about you?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about starting a girl band, and I’ve even been thinking up names for it, like The Squirrelles.”
“Colin.”
The Strumpettes?
“Colin.”
“Theolopholous and the Twisted Sisters?”
“Colin.”
“Mama Orca and the Baleens?”
“Colin.”
“The Sprockettes?”
“Colin.”
“The Spinnerettes?”
“Colin.”
“Velvet Underpants?”
“Colin.”
“Sexed Pestols?”
“Colin.”
“Barberella and the Bar Belles?”
“COLIN!”
“What?”
“You’re sick. You’ve spent too much time in a dress. You’re not a girl, remember?”
Colin sighed. “Yeah, I know that. But the dress”, he paused, “it sort of gets to you. And it’s like your hats, I can’t seem get out of this stupid thing without there being something girly underneath. He looked back to his work. I think I’m definitely going to need counseling after this.” He spent a moment sucking on the end of one of his locks. “Okay, guy group names then. How about Vince and the Vasectomies?”
“You’re still sick.”
“What about The Gonads, we could just call it ‘The Nads’?”
“Still sick.”
“Well, you come up with one then.”
“How about ‘The Steaming Spludge’?”
“Not very good either.” He took the bit of hair out of his mouth. “But what if we never, never get out of this land?”
“Well, I think that’s an easy one. We open a bar?”
“What, us? Where?”
“Well, here. There seems to be a need of one.”
“Hmmm.”
Ralph continued. “You throw a plank over a couple of barrels and you’re open for business. And the cellar’s mostly intact and there’s lots of stores and crap still in there.”
“And I found a bathtub over there in the wreckage” Colin said pointing, warming to the topic.
“‘Gin’ has been called, “ his brother shouted. There’s a not quite evil glint in his eye. Visions of something bottled, wet and alcoholic drifted like fumes through his mind, refusing to wipe their feet as they passed through. “And think of the tourist trade.”
“They’ll never know what hit them,” Colin agrees.
And one of those companionable silences descends.
Once upon a time later than the once upon a time just before…
As we approach an inn we hear, coming from inside, that noise particular to drinking establishments everywhere; in fact a noise heard throughout the universe, wherever people gather to drink and to socialize, to remember and to forget, accompanied by the faint tinkling of music and the occasional glass being broken.
Over the door, hanging from a couple of chains, is the head of a grinning cat. Next to it has been placed a ladder. The Campbells, not really mean or vindictive types, allow the cat, or the head anyway, to beg for drinks and get an occasional scratch behind its ear from customers coming and going.
A little girl wanders across the road and up to the door. She looks up at the cat’s head who’s grin is suddenly replaced by a worried frown. It says, in a whisper, “Get away. Get away from here now. Run, before you get caught up in the horrible nightmare.”
“What nightmare,” the little girl inquires sweetly?
“The Campbells.”
“Campbells?”
“Yes Campbells, two of them.”
“The Campbell’s are coming?”
“It’s worse than that, they’re already here.”
“No, not the…”
“Yes, them. You’re not safe here you know, they run this place. They’d warp a sweet young thing like you into something awful, something unsavory, something, ah, Campbell. They’d make you do the dishes for starters, and they haven’t done any of those since they opened up the place.”
There’s no reaction from the little girl. She just looks at the head curiously.
The cat continues, “Or clean the privy. Or harvest the mushrooms, at midnight, from the Dark and Creepy Forest.”
Still nothing.
“They’ll make you sing karaoke.”
She gasped, did a quiet kind of ‘eek’, turned and fled back the way she had come.
Inside you find a cozy little bar, a fire dancing merrily in a stone hearth. Here and there are tables and chairs where several customers sit. There are a couple of crazy eights slouching near the bar, worn, tattered, frayed at the edges. They didn’t look like they were playing with a full deck.
On any night you can find several mythological beasts and other creatures here, consuming various perfidious fermentations (as Colin likes to call them, but again he would). And there is the man himself, Ralph, behind the bar, at present having a discussion with an old hag who has a basket full of apples on the counter by her. He has just asked her what her poison was, meaning, of course, what she wanted to drink, but the answer he got was quite unexpected.
Still, he was a man of many hats and enjoyed serving drinks. Every so often he changed his hat, usually according to whom he was serving, but not always. Miners, trappers, fairies, pixies, western, eastern, you name it, he had the hat for it. Everyone now called him ‘The Mad Hatter’ because of this peculiarity, and the fact that he’d laugh delightedly with every new change he made, as if each time was the very first. ‘He was daft’, they all claimed, ‘and mad as a Hatter’, and it stuck. Ralph also liked to do magic tricks. Just now, having finished his conversation with the hag for the moment, and during a lull in serving, he pulled a rabbi out of his hat.
So he served most of the drinks, mainly wine (which the brothers made themselves), and if customers want something, shall we say, stronger, there’s always his homemade chili and biscuits to be had.
Oh, I forgot to mention about the, um, decor of the place. Excuse me. Perhaps a word here is required.
Hanging from the walls were animal trophies, mounted on wood plaques; some large and some incredibly small. It gave the place a backwoodsy feel Ralph thought. They were unusual because it was only the rear ends of the animals, not the heads, which were showing to the clientele. When Ralph had come up with the idea originally for putting up heads his brother had complained that he didn’t want to be looking at the faces of those assholes all the time, and that had given Ralph the idea. Tails and fins and flippers now adorned the walls, occasionally beating time and swaying to the music, as they did now.
Newcomers to the bar would come in and look at the mounted trophies. Invariably they would say something like, “Well, ain’t that the cat’s ass.” And they’d be right.
Colin was, at present, at a small stage in one corner, half reclined on the top of a sort of mushroom piano/harpsichord type thing (you’d be surprised what some mushrooms grew into in these parts), in a beaded gown, stroking his beard thoughtfully with the pipe of a hookah languidly held in one hand. He was singing, if you can call it that, show tunes and rude parodies of Disney songs, to the hoots and cheers of the 7 dwarves sitting at the ringside table.
He had already had done the ‘Hi Ho’ song to death, and did a sad but bawdy rendition of ‘When You Wish Upon a Star’. He was now belting out a rude version of the song ‘Dreams are a Wish Your Heart Makes’, only in this version Colin sang: ‘Sperm is a paste your nuts make’ (when you’re fast asleep). I know it’s not physically accurate, but that’s what he sang. By the time he got to the line about ‘Farts are a song your ass makes’, his brother was singing gustily, if out of tune, along with him from behind the bar.
And, you know, that just about sums up the two brothers; infantile humour of the lowest kind; like thinking the word ‘bum’ was one of the funniest words in existence, and the word ‘boobies’, well, it was enough to send you into hysterics. Some people just never grow up.
Over the bar – and over the pieced together, um, pieces of the huge looking glass was a sign, and the reason everyone called this place ‘The Alice’, although, surprisingly, the Campbell brothers hadn’t really gotten around to naming the place officially. The sign read:
Das Ist Alles.
That’s all, folks.
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