Snakes and Ladders and the Destinies of Unborn Universes: Chapter 14
A Novel
If you’re joining us just now, follow the snake’s tail to the Prologue or climb a ladder to the Table of Contents.
Chapter 14: “We’re All Mad Here”
Evan jumped into another magic mirror in the hedge maze. He had figured out that all he had to do was wish himself into the glass and it drew him in.
Niyati was struggling to keep up. “Evan, where are you going? You keep dashing into mirrors, and there are more mazes inside of them! If you don’t slow down, we’ll get separated!”
“It doesn’t matter where I go!” he said manically. “I’m apparently always on the right path—even though I’m in Hell. . . Besides, my scoutmaster said: ‘When you get lost, keep moving and making decisions. Otherwise, you’ll get overwhelmed, sit down in frustration; and the next thing you know you’re a skeleton in the desert.’”
“Wait!” Niyati stopped. “Have you noticed something about this part of the maze?”
“No. . . I mean, it’s a little more quiet. But everything’s still purple and misty.”
“No. . . There’s something else.” She snapped her fingers. “I know! There are no fireflies or inert singularities here, or in any of the hedge mazes in the mirrors we keep jumping into!”
“Oh,” Evan said and disappeared around a corner of the maze.
Niyati hiked up the front of her dress and ran after him. “Are you going to hare off again?” she asked. Then she stopped dead in her tracks because the moment she said “hare”, she saw a powder-blue hare standing in the path in front of them.
Evan stepped back. “Where’d he come from?”
“I’m not sure. But I think he’s one of the aliens from the planet of Satcitananda.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because time has just slowed down.”
“I was wondering why my ears were ringing.”
“What do you want?” Evan asked, but his words were slurred.
“Evan, the Satcitanandans don’t communicate with language,” Niyati said in a drunken voice. “Remember? They’re embodiments of Absolute Time.”
“Go away!” Evan shouted. “Shoo!”—And the word “shoo” was drawn out so elastically that it snapped back into Evan’s mouth and caused him to repeat the words “Go away!” as if he’d never said them.
The March Hare held a fob watch between its swollen hands. Niyati studied the watch and turned lethargically to Evan. “He’s trying to tell us that we’re running late.”
“For what?”
“The tea party.”
The flow of time returned back to normal. The March Hare turned and walked away, moving on wobbly legs like a toddler.
“I don’t think the Satcitanandans understand mammalian locomotion,” Niyati observed.
It had no tail; just three horizontal creases on its buttocks where a tail should have been.
They followed the Hare into a glade and saw Gordon sitting at a tiny round table. He was dressed as the Mad Hatter in a powder-blue suit with a top-hat. A Dormouse slept among the tea things on the table.
Niyati whispered into Evan’s ear: “I think Gordon’s dead.”
“He looks alive.”
“Yes, but he lacks vivacity.”
The Mad Hatter spoke: “Why is a raven like a writing desk?”
“I know!” Niyati said. “They both have inky quills.”
The Mad Hatter slammed his hand on the table. The Dormouse fell to the ground but didn’t wake up since it had been dead all along.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Gordon sneered as his dead eyes kindled with an indigo hue. “I’m afraid I only have three places set. I didn’t expect so many guests.”
Evan looked at the dead Dormouse and over at the March Hare, who was an alien that didn’t require food or drink.
“It’s okay,” Evan said. “I don’t like tea anyway.”
“That’s fortunate,” the Mad Hatter said, “since I haven’t any tea to offer you.”
“What’s in the teapot, then?” Niyati asked.
“Prophetic coffee,” Gordon remarked. He beckoned them to approach. “Come here. There’s something I want you to see! I am going to pour a magic mirror into this mug.”
Evan rolled his eyes. “I’ve had enough magic mirrors for one day.”
“You mean you’ve drunk your fill of them,” Gordon remarked as the amber-black coffee fell into the porcelain mug without a splash.
Evan stood at the table and looked down into the mug. “What am I supposed to see?”
“Whatever you happen to.”
“To what?”
“See.”
Evan took a deep breath and concentrated. “Everything’s going back in time. Like waaay back.—Like, the dinosaurs just got invented.”
“The dinosaurs weren’t invented,” Niyati mumbled.
Evan jumped. “Woah!”
“What?” she asked.
“The Big Bang just shrunk into a dot.”
“That’s a singularity,” Niyati said.
“Oh, wait,” Evan remarked. “The dot blew up again.”
“Ah,” the Mad Hatter said, “but we’re still going backwards.”
“In time?” Niyati asked. “Not all the laws of physics work in reverse.”
The Mad Hatter ignored her. But the March Hare grinned slyly.
Niyati noticed this and turned to the Mad Hatter. “I didn’t think the Satcitanandans comprehended language.”
“They don’t!” The Mad Hatter said, peering at her with a look of concern. “Where did that come from? A rather insane thing to say.”
The March Hare nodded in agreement.
Evan scratched his head and looked up from the mug: “So it’s like a reverse Big Bang? Is that the way things are?”
“No, it’s the way they seem, at least in your dream.” This was the first time the Mad Hatter had looked into Evan’s eyes. He smiled coyly and added, “You’re trying to make sense of what you can never understand.”
Evan frowned and looked back into the mug. “It keeps doing the same thing over and over again, like a pulse or heartbeat.”
“Pulse. Heartbeat. You’re being tautological.”
Evan looked up. “I get it. The world has a rhythm—like a beating heart—the farther and the faster back in time you go.”
“But we’re no longer going back in time,” the Mad Hatter yawned.
“When did we start going forward?”
“The moment you were born,” he said with a simper, as he wiped paternal tears from his eyes. He tried to look adorable and caring, but the rigor mortis was so far advanced that his smile froze in a risus sardonicus.
Evan looked at the March Hare because he suspected the alien had something to do with all this talk about time. But the Hare and the Dormouse had vanished.
The Mad Hatter mopped his sweaty brow. “We’re moving so fast that I’m getting winded. Shall we slow things down?”
He stirred the coffee and tapped the spoon on the mug’s brim.
Evan looked down again. “That’s my apartment at UCLA. That’s me and the crew before the Christmas break, when I told them Destiny was as real as the bong I was smoking.—I’ve already lived this.”
“Did you live it or experience it?”
“Same difference,” Evan said.
“There’s no such thing as a ‘same difference’.” The Mad Hatter scowled. “Stop looking at me. You’re supposed to be looking into the mug. Otherwise, you’ll miss the trick.”
Evan saw himself again on the beach in Sydney on New Year’s Eve. Then he was boarding the plane—and now they were over the Pacific.
“There I am asleep on the plane, dreaming. It’s still dark out so I think we’ve gotten to where I am now.”
“And where are you now?”
“On the plane, but in a dream.” Evan squinted at the mug. “Are you implying I’m missing something?”
“No,” the Mad Hatter said. “You’re the one implying you’re missing something. I’m merely inferring that you are.”
“What?” Evan asked. He looked up, but Gordon was gone. And in his place stood a powder-blue scarecrow with a top-hat holding a shaman’s staff.
“Evan!—Over here!” Gordon cried out.
Niyati and Evan ran to a mirror hanging in the hedges and saw Gordon inside of it. He was reclining on a mushroom, smoking a hookah with a ‘come hither’ look in his eyes. He wore a powder-blue caterpillar costume but the zipper was coming undone at the back.
“Gordon!” Evan shouted. He reached inside the mirror and pressed Gordon’s tummy with his finger.
“Who are you?!” Gordon remonstrated as his legs wiped the place on his belly where Evan had touched him.
“I’m Evan. You just called my name. I had no idea you were going to jump into a magic mirror.”
“I’m not in a magic mirror, you idiot! This is an oil painting.”
“Oh,” Evan said. “I thought it was real. I didn’t know it was an illusion.”
“Evan,” Gordon said, “I have something to tell you.” Then he puffed languidly on the hookah. “Something very important.”
“Yes?” Evan asked.
“You’re losing the game,” he said with a frown. And the snake-like tendrils of smoke slithered out of the painting, forming letters that spelled out the words LOSER and MORON.
“How am I losing?”
“You’re missing the point,” Gordon said.
“What’s the point?”
“There is none! That’s what you’re missing!”
Then Gordon gasped and grabbed his tummy because something fanged was stretching against the cloth of the caterpillar costume. Then his belly burst open and his entrails spilled out in a mass of purple gore. Levi’s head emerged from the hole but his eyes were balls, like those of an insect. He was a butterfly and Gordon’s body was his cocoon.
Niyati screamed.
Gordon shrieked and moaned in agony as a jet of indigo ooze spewed from his quivering lips.
“Jesus!” Evan shouted. “It’s like a Wes Craven film!”
Levi flew out of the oil painting.
“I think we’re supposed to follow Levi,” Niyati said.
The two of them jogged after the butterfly.
“I never knew Alice in Wonderland was so dark,” Evan said.
“It’s not,” Niyati replied. “It’s creepy, but not this dark.”
They lost sight of Levi, but found him waiting for them on a lamp pole. The light had just gone out since it was two minutes till midnight and dawn was less than an hour away.
“Evan,” Niyati said, slowing down and walking briskly. Evan stopped and waited for her to catch up.
“Think about what Gordon said: ‘You’re missing the point because there is none.’ Remember when I said that there were no unborn universes in this part of the labyrinth?”
“Yes.”
“Unborn universes are singularities. They’re points. They have neither length, breadth, nor height; only spatiotemporal position.”
“I have no idea what that means.—Let’s just keep following Levi.” Then he shouted at Levi: “You’re doing great, buddy!”
They turned left at a fork.
“Evan, what I think Gordon meant is that you’re missing the point because you don’t seem to care about unborn universes.”
Evan stopped and looked at her. “I don’t see what the big deal is about unborn universes. They don’t even exist!”
“It’s what they symbolize that matters. Each one represents a world of possibilities. They’re everywhere on the planet Earth where the sun rises in the west, but people have become so used to them that they take them for granted.”
“I’m too busy dealing with reality to think about things that may or may not happen. People who obsess about stuff like that get anxious and depressed. Then the next thing you know they’re talking to shrinks and taking drugs to cope.”
“YOU take drugs to cope.”
He stopped and regarded her with a “that was a low-down dirty thing to say” kinda look.
“I’m sorry, Evan. Forget I said that. . . It’s not a bad thing to live in the now as you do. But we all need goals, things to aspire to. What do you want out of life?”
“I want to get married,” he said. “And more than anything else, I want to have children, lots of them!” He looked away from her because he was embarrassed.
“Ah,” she said, blushing. “Well, there you have it! You do think about unborn possibilities.”
Levi was fluttering in the air up ahead, waiting for them to catch up. Suddenly a toad’s tongue lashed out and he was gone. A squat little girl with jet black hair, who was standing on the other side of a hole in the hedges, sucked in the butterfly’s wings. She chewed up Levi and swallowed him. Then croaked like a bullfrog.
“Hey!” Evan exclaimed. “You ate my friend!”
Purple blood trickled like grape jam down the child’s chin. She smeared it on her pink blotchy cheeks and glared at Evan and Niyati.
“Is that supposed to be Alice?” Evan asked.
“I think so,” Niyati said brightly, smiling at the little girl. Then she whispered into Evan’s ear, “But it’s actually the demon Manat.”
“So what should we do?” Evan asked.
“Run!”
They took off. And the demon leapt through the hole.
They sprinted between the magic mirrors hanging on either side of the maze. Sometimes the mirrors reflected Evan and Niyati running in the opposite direction; and sometimes Evan and Niyati seemed to be running deeper into the worlds on the other side of the glass.
Manat leapt into a mirror that vomited her out of another mirror closer to Evan and Niyayi.
“Maybe we should split up!” Evan suggested.
“No,” Niyati gasped. “She’s not after me, she’s after you! She’s trying to steal your dream!”
“I have an idea,” Evan said. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“I think that I’m thinking what you’re thinking,” Niyati said. “And it’s such a brilliant idea that I wish I had thought of it first!”
They came to a fork in the maze.
“Now!” Evan said.
He took off to the left as Niyati sprinted to the right.
Manat followed Evan, closing the distance in three leaps. But Evan made a sharp right and Manat leapt into the hedges. Then she turned around.
Evan found a rabbit hole. He stood on the edge of it and waited for Manat to catch up. The demon child hissed as she advanced. She seemed amused that he thought he could escape by jumping into the rabbit hole.
Then Evan grinned and opened his mouth. But it was Niyati’s voice that came out. “You missed!” she said.
Manat screamed in fury and whirled around, leap-frogging back in the direction she’d come from.
Niyati (still in Evan’s body) jumped into the hole. Down she fell into the well, the walls of which were crammed with roots and rotting corpses. Then the shaft became a curly slide. She fell seven hundred feet before she was ejected from an oval mirror, the frame of which was shaped like the mouth of a cobra. She heard the die cast onto the Snakes and Ladders game board. And there was Evan (in Niyati’s body) running down the path toward her.
The two transferred their minds back into their own bodies.
“I had no idea it was so hard to run in a dress,” Evan said, panting.
“It’s not the dress that’s hard to run in,” Niyati said as they rushed down a narrow lane. “It’s the corset that’s a bitch!”
There was a growl. They turned around and there she was. Manat raised her arms high in the air and the hedges folded in behind her, sealing the path. Evan looked the other way and saw it was a dead end.
“Dammit!” he shouted, clenching his fists. “I never have a weapon! Wait a minute! I can will myself a weapon, can’t I?”
“Umm. . . Maybe?” Niyati shrugged.
Evan reached into his plum jacket and removed a double-barrel dueling pistol. He pointed it at Manat. “I hope you enjoyed eating my friend for dinner because you’re about to get two lumps of lead for dessert!”
He pulled the trigger and two rods shot out of the pistol’s barrels with weighted flags that unfurled, revealing the words “BANG!” and “POW!”
Manat cackled like a hyena, running toward them on all fours.
Evan threw the pistol away and yelled “Faugh a Ballagh!” Then he ran at Manat as fast as he could.
“Evan!” Niyati screamed.
When he was close enough to Manat, he kicked her squarely on the chin like a football. The demon flew head-over-heels backwards into the air and crashed down somewhere in the distance. They heard the snapping of twigs and the entire earth shook.
Evan ran back to Niyati.
“Our only way out,” Niyati said, “is through one of the magic mirrors. But I don’t know which one to choose!”
“Look!” Evan said, pointing to the closest one. It led into the university library in the Canadian Colony of Norway. Evan saw himself wearing the glasses that Levi thought he looked so fetching in.—“Evan,” the scholarly reflection said. “I found the answer here in this book!” Niyati was standing next to him in the library. “He’s telling the truth, Evan! Come quickly!”
“I guess it’s back to the library!” Evan remarked and was about to jump into the mirror.
“Wait!” Niyati interjected. “Look! Madame Blavatsky is in the library, too, and she’s still under Manat’s control.”
“Shit,” Evan mumbled and ran to another mirror. “This must be it! Look! It’s the two of us when we were kids playing Snakes and Ladders in my backyard!”
Niyati ran to the mirror and cried, “That’s not me!”
Evan saw that, instead of Niyati, it was Manat sitting across from him on the backyard deck.
There was a horrendous roar, as a child’s arm rose thirty feet out of the hedges. Manat’s astral form was growing.
“Evan!” one of the reflections cried out.
Evan and Niyati ran to the mirror. They saw themselves dressed in Elizabethan costume. Niyati’s reflection called out to them. “Trust us! This is the right way!”
Evan shouted. “That’s definitely not the right one!”
“How do you know?” Niyati asked.
“Look at him! He’s wearing purple tights! I’d never wear anything like that! His junk’s all hangin’ out!”
“You wear wrestling singlets!”
“That’s different,” Evan grumbled.
Manat’s roaring could be heard overhead. They looked up and saw a gargantuan child floating over the hedges like a Thanksgiving Day parade balloon.
The man in tights cried out: “Evan!” Niyati and Evan turned to him. “Don’t be a fuckin’ dumbass!”
“It’s you!” Niyati exclaimed.
Evan grabbed her hand and the two leapt into the magic mirror. They landed in their reflections on the other side.
A monstrous eye pressed against the mirror and the frustrated roar of Manat shattered the glass. Then all was quiet.
“Are we still in Wonderland?” Evan asked.
“I think so,” Niyati said. She pointed to a rank of zombie guards standing with lances. Their bodies were playing cards. “We’re in the rose garden of the Queen of Hearts.”
“Everything’s still purplish!” Evan said. “It’s like these dreams have an interior decorator.”
“We’re outside,” Niyati said, moving delicately around the zombies.
“Landscape artist. Whatever.”
“Shhh! . . . Let’s try to get out of here quietly.”
The garden was a labyrinth of rose bushes. Some of the zombies were painting the roses purple.
They came face-to-face with the Queen herself.
Niyati gasped.
“It’s Madame Blavatsky,” Evan whispered.
“Yes, but she’s not aware of our presence.”
“Get out of here,” Madame Blavatsky mumbled. Then she made a hissing sound.
“Evan,” Niyati said in a hopeful voice. “She’s trying to find her way out of the psychic labyrinth that Manat has imprisoned her in. When she said ‘get out of here,’ she wasn’t talking to us.”
“So she’s sleepwalking?”
“In so many words, yes!”
“In my dream?”
“Shhh. . . Keep quiet. We have to tread carefully. She could do something unpredictable and dangerous, something she doesn’t mean to do.”
“If you’re not careful,” the Queen mumbled, “you’ll lose your heads.”
“Uh-oh,” Evan said.
Then the demonic voice of Manat spoke through Madame Blavatsky’s astral form: “Off with their heads!”
Evan felt his head rising off his shoulders like a balloon. It spun in the air and he heard Niyati screaming because the same thing was happening to her. His hands reached for his neck. He felt his carotid artery rising out of his body, still attached to his head. He grabbed the artery. It was slimy. He desperately started pulling his head back down again.
“Evan!” Niyati cried out.
“Grab your artery before your head flies away!”
“It’s so gross!”
“Do it, Niyati!”
“Oh!. . . It’s too late!”
Evan reeled his head in until he had it with both hands. He pointed his face in Niyati’s direction and saw her body wringing its hands in agitation. Then he pointed his face up into the air and saw Niyati’s head floating over the rose garden, but the artery got caught in a tree and there was a painter’s ladder leading up to it.
“Hold on!” Evan shouted. “I’m coming to get you!”
“Hurry!” Niyati screamed and her body jumped up and down in terror.
Evan wound his artery around his wrist so his head wouldn’t float away. Then he put his head in the crook of his arm; and with the chin angled up, he was able to climb the ladder. But he had only made it halfway up when a gust of wind blew the branches of the tree that Niyati’s artery was stuck in. Niyati’s head flew away.
“Nooo!” Evan shouted and let go of his own head, which also floated up into the sky as his carotid artery unraveled from around his wrist. His body lost its purchase and fell from the ladder.
Both heads blew more or less in the same direction; and, as Evan’s head tumbled this way and that, he could see that Hell was vaster than he’d thought it was.
There was a whooshing sound. Someone had seized his carotid artery. He began to descend toward the rose garden again. It was Madame Blavatsky! She’d flown up into the air and retrieved both heads.
Within minutes Evan felt his artery threading its way back down into his neck. And now his head was reattached to his shoulders. He touched his forehead, hair, and temples. And pulled his head down by the earlobes for good measure.
“Madame Blavatsky!” Niyati exclaimed. “You’re free!”
“I am,” she said, “and I have you both to thank for it.” She spoke with a thick Slavic accent and was still dressed as the Queen of Hearts. “The wicked demoness no longer has me under her spell.”
“Who exactly is Manat?” Evan asked. “And why is she after me?”
“You’ve not told him?” Madame Blavatsky asked, turning to Niyati.
“I told him that she was demon that was older than time,” Niyati answered, lowering her gaze.
Madame Blavatsky sighed. “Manat is the ancient Arabian goddess of Destiny.”
“Destiny?” Evan said. “Isn’t that what your name means in Hindi?”
“Yes,” Niyati said, “but I’m no goddess.”
“You are to me,” Evan said. Niyati grinned and covered her mouth.
Madame Blavatsky rolled her eyes. “Manat fears unborn universes because she has no dominion over them. She can keep one or two at bay at any one time. But when they gather in swarms or clusters as they do on the planet Earth where the sun sets in the east, her powers are useless. You were in a part of Hell where there was no hope. And because there was no hope, there were no unborn universes. That was why she was able to attack you. And while she was distracted, I made my escape. But you must complete your journey through the Underworld.”
“You mean this is all still part of the katabasis?” Evan said disconsolately.
“Of course!” Madame Blavatsky said.
He shook his head. “Man, this is all so trippy.”
“It’s about to get trippier,” Madame Blavatsky explained. “You’re a very special young man, Master Evan. You must complete the Game of Self-Knowledge so that a new world may be born. Now that Manat no longer controls the most powerful dreamcatcher who scours the Astral Plane, which is to say me, she can no longer steal your dream from you.”
Evan nodded. “Good.”
Niyati inhaled deeply. “Does this mean. . . ?”
“Yes,” Madame Blavatsky said. “Since Manat cannot steal the dream, she has decided to kill the dreamer.”
“Wait a minute,” Evan said. “I can’t die if I die in my dream!—Can I?”
Madame Blavatsky nodded. “Of course, you can. You’d have a heart attack on the plane.”
“Are you shitting me?! That means that I coulda died back there when I was fighting Manat! I think I’m gonna faint.—Wait. . . If I faint here, do I die there?”
“No,” Niyati said. “You’ll pass out and wake back up within moments, but it’ll feel like you were asleep for a few minutes, a few hours, a few days—”
“A few centuries,” Madame Blavatsky interjected. “It’s all the same here.”
Evan looked between Madame Blavatsky and Niyati. “I just want to get back to California. My classes start tomorrow and I’m gonna miss the first day. . . Why all these tests? It’s like midterms.—Why all the dreams?”
“It’s the same dream,” Madame Blavatsky said.
“Just tell me what I need to know!”
Madame Blavatsky regarded him with those faraway eyes that he had first seen in the pages of the textbook of that religious studies class that he had never actually been enrolled in because the class had never existed. “No one can tell you what you need to know,” she said. “You’re on a path that only you can tread. And there are no shortcuts. The way to wisdom, Master Evan, involves seeing much and suffering more. You must feed your mind with pain.”
Evan had no response. He looked at Niyati.
“I’m so sorry, Evan,” she said.
“So what’s next?” he asked.
“Walk with me,” Madame Blavatsky said as she threaded her way through the maze of rose bushes. Evan and Niyati followed. “You must go to the Festival.”
“What Festival?” Evan asked.
“You’ll find out once you’re there. There will be many unborn universes at the Festival, so Manat will avoid it. She can only track you by your heart—and only when your heart is with your head. Therefore, you must give me your heart here, so that I can take it to the Festival where it will be waiting for you.”
“Umm. . . Okay,” Evan said.
Because she was still the Queen of Hearts, Madame Blavatsky was able to insert her velvet-gloved hand into Evan’s chest. When she withdrew it, the inert singularity that Evan had found on the beach in Sydney was in her palm. “Hello old friend!” Madame Blavatsky said to the glowing light. “It’s been a long time.”
Niyati now seemed perplexed. She turned to Evan. “I can no longer read your thoughts as clearly as I could.”
Evan ignored her. “How do we get to this Festival?”
“You’ll need tickets,” Madame Blavatsky said as she floated up into the lavender twilight. “Go that way,” she said, pointing to a path that led to the shores of an estuary. “The Walrus and the Carpenter will be able to help you.”
Madame Blavatsky shed her brocaded astral form and transformed into a globe of honey-hued light. And then she was gone.
They didn’t have to walk very far. The Walrus was standing at the edge of the reeds, waiting for them.
“Hi Pal!” he said.
“Gordon!” Evan replied.
“Where are your tusks?” Niyati asked.
“I’m in disguise,” the Walrus said. “I don’t want to be recognized.”
“Then why are you standing so close to the path?” Evan persisted. “Manat will see you.”
“Evan!” Niyati said, pointing to the oyster shells on the sand. There were unborn universes hovering over the shells. The Walrus belched and more came out of his mouth.
“Trust me,” he said. “Manat won’t come here.”
“Mr. Walrus,” Niyati said, “we need tickets to the Festival.”
“I know. My colleague, the Carpenter, can help you with that.” The Walrus pointed to a tall wooden structure near a field of wheat. “He built that booth a few minutes ago because he knew you were coming.”
Seagulls clanged overhead.
“There’s a lot of sand here,” Evan remarked. “It’s getting into my shoes.”
“You should’ve seen it before the seven maids showed up with their seven mops. It’s been half a year now and they still have their work cut out for them.”
Niyati and Evan proceeded to the ticket booth, which had a rickety ladder running up to the low counter behind which the carpenter stood.
“Mr. Carpenter,” Niyati said. “We need two tickets to the Festival.”
“Sure thing!”
“Levi?” Evan asked.
“Hi, Evan!”
“So you’re the Carpenter now?”
“Yessiree! Just like our Lord and Saviour!”
“Why did you build a ladder up to the ticket booth?”
“For convenience sake. Come up, Evan! I want to show you something I made just for you.”
Evan crouched and carefully walked up the ladder, trying to keep his balance.
Levi’s face was warty and his head was shaved. He looked like a convict. There was something unusual about his demeanor, but Evan couldn’t put his finger on it.
“Here you go!” the Carpenter said, handing Evan a dirty martini. “Tell me if you like it!”
“But Levi, you don’t know how to mix drinks.”
“I know, but you can make it taste however you want, Evan. It’s your dream.” There was something feline about Levi’s grin.
“I better not drink right now.”
“Make’s sense,” Levi said. “You wouldn’t want to lose your head. . . again.”
Niyati sucked in her lower lip. Levi was certainly behaving oddly. She called up to him: “We need two tickets to the Festival!”
“Here they are,” Levi said, holding the tickets up and waving them back and forth. When Evan reached for them, Levi pulled them away. Then he giggled and handed them over.
“So how do we get there?” Evan asked.
“That depends a great deal on where you want to get to?” And now Levi’s grin was unusually broad.
“I already told you,” Evan said. “We want to get to the Festival.” He turned away from Levi, leapt over the low counter, and landed on the grass. Levi was starting to freak him out.
“Follow the Golden Path,” Levi said, pointing to an entrance back into the hedge maze of Hell.
“But where’s the Golden Path?” Niyati asked.
“Right there! Where I’m pointing!”
Evan walked to the entrance to the maze, shrugged his shoulders and looked at Niyati “Levi, there’s no Golden Path!”
“But it’s right there!” he said in a velvety voice that was not the voice of Levi. Then he batted the martini off of the counter with one paw and jumped up onto it. With catlike grace he tiptoed down the ladder, without so much as bowing the slender sticks it was made of.
“Evan, be careful!” Niyati said. She saw a cat’s tail sticking out of the Carpenter’s pants.
Levi’s pink nose was now whiskered. “I don’t know how to be any clearer,” the Carpenter said, as he approached Evan and gestured casually toward the lavender hedge maze. The red and violet clouds roiled overhead. “The Golden Path is right there.”
Evan looked into the maze. There was no Golden Path. He turned to Levi and said, “Are you mad?”
Levi bared his fangs and shrugged. He giggled, growled and purred as his body (which had become the body of a cat) began to disappear.
“We’re all mad here, Evan!” the Carpenter said, as the Cheshire Cat’s head detached from his shoulders and floated up into the air like a balloon, carotid artery trailing in the wind.
Ooh, the stakes are raised! I really enjoyed this chapter, especially because amid the immersive philosophy and inventive horror there is real humor. I LOL at Evan and his reflection bickering over fashion choices: “Don’t be a fuckin’ dumbass!” ;-)