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.
No comments:
Post a Comment