Текст книги "Hookah"

Автор книги: Cameron Jace

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Chapter 5

Pillar’s Plane,

Somewhere next to a mushroom cloud

I wake up to the suffocating and blurry waves of hookah smoke.

Coughing, I part the drapes of smoking curtains and feel my way through this delirium. At the end of the maze, I come to find the Pillar sitting on his favorite couch, dragging and puffing while fiddling with his hookah’s hose.

“I thought I’d bring the couch with me,” he says. “What’s a man without his favorite couch?”

Instead of screaming and pulling hair, I look around and figure out where I am. I may have been a fool for licking the envelope, but I can still tell I’m inside a plane.

An air bump shakes the flight momentarily. I grab for the nearest seat but end up slumping next to the Pillar on the couch.

He doesn’t lose balance. “Never understood what an air bump is,” he says. “I mean, could we have bumped into a giant mushroom cloud up here?”

“Not funny,” I adjust myself on the couch, and now the flight is normal again.

“Want to see what’s really not funny?” He clicks on the TV. “We have a new Wonderland Monster.”

I am watching the same news I saw in the Inklings, only things are getting worse now. People don’t just cough red bubbles. They’re starting to get edgy after it, looking rather mean, like they’re about to hurt one another.

“Who is this Wonderland Monster, really?” I ask. “The Cheshire?”

“The Cheshire can’t possess any of the main Wonderlanders, in case you didn’t notice.” The Pillar sets the hookah aside and waves off some smoke. “But you’re also right.”

“Meaning?”

“The man is Lewis Carroll.”

“That can’t be. Lewis isn’t a monster. He is the one who locked the monsters in Wonderland.”

“I guess he forgot to lock himself in, too. Or, how about he just made you believe he isn’t a monster in the Tom Tower?” The Pillar’s face is unreadable. Is he telling the truth? “The man was nuts. Migraines and split personality. He was schizophrenic. Left handed and unable to hear with his right ear. It all happened particularly after the events of the Circus. He lost his grip on reality when he relied on drugs to ease his mind from the trauma.”

“I don’t believe a word you’re saying.”

“I didn’t believe I’d ever grow up and become old when I was a kid, either,” he says.” I mean, why would God do this to me? I was having a great time being small and unnoticed, doing whatever I wanted.”

Like usual, I pass on commenting. “So Lewis was really using drugs?”

“Drugs were still legal until the middle of the 19th century.” He pulls out an 80’s cassette player and squeezes a tape inside.

“Really?” I can’t understand how. Things like this, and the Circus, make me look at humanity from a new and different perspective. How could drugs have been legal only a century and a half ago?

“In the eyes of society, and himself, Lewis wasn’t doing anything wrong at the time.” He pushes the sticky button. Melodies of White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane blast out of the worn-out cassette player. The Pillar begins his Caucus Race dance. “A lot of writers, including Charles Dickens, took those legal drugs at the time. Makes you wonder if he could have produced his masterpieces without them.” He winks. “But all geniuses have a vice, don’t they?” He points at his hookah. “Besides, really, read that Alice in Wonderland book again. It’s full of hallucinations and madness. Maybe the dude was a little tipsy when wrote it.”

I’m not fond of him talking about Lewis like that, but I need to hear more first.

“Lewis had issues, so what?” The Pillar shakes his shoulders. “We just don’t like to talk about them, so we continue living in our la-la world.” He stretches his arms sideways and imitates a bird’s wings while half-circling in place. “My moves are getting better.”

“I want to know all you know about Lewis.” I feel offended, suddenly realizing how much I love Lewis.

“The world is falling apart, Alice.” He points at the TV. “Look at those angry faces walking around. Lewis Carroll told the press it would take three days to end the world, so I assume the symptoms will worsen at rocket speed.” He pulls out an oversized clock from behind his bag and tucks it in my lap. “The clock is ticking. We don’t have time. We need to find a cure for the plague. Listen. Tick. Tock.”

I put the clock away. It’s not even working. “So Lewis Carroll was behind manufacturing the Hookahs of Hearts all over the world, hiding behind that Dodo Company? I thought it was Black Chess.”

“It’s not,” the Pillar says. “Which is why it’s intriguingly puzzling.” The Pillar fetches something else from behind the couch. “But we’re minutes...I mean seconds away from finding out.” He pulls out two parachutes and throws one at me, as if I’m expected to be an expert with it. “I hope you know how to use a parachute because this plane is going to explode...”

“What?”

“Dress up, and prepare to fly, Alice. It’s not that different from falling into a rabbit hole.” He straps on his parachute and checks his pocket watch. “All we have is about...let’s say thirty seconds before this plane explodes?”

Chapter 6

“Why will the plane explode?”

The Pillar doesn’t answer me, tightening the straps of his parachute and putting on his goggles. “Do I look good?”

Even if I was planning to keep cool, I can’t. Kneeling down, I pick up the parachute and try to put it on. I have never worn one before.

“Excellent.” He is already strapped into his, looking ready. The White Rabbit song in the background is driving me crazy.

I am not sure I am doing this right. I keep strapping whatever I find around me. Is this supposed to be like this, or is it supposed to be upside down?

“Here.” He throws my umbrella toward me. I hardly catch it as I am still strapping my parachute. “You’ll need this fantabulous weapon of yours down there.”

“Where are we going?” The words sputter out of my lips. I’m almost done with strapping. Who in their right mind ties themselves up in a parachute not knowing how to land it?

“You,” the Pillar addresses his chauffeur flying the plane. “You’re good with dying for the cause, right?”

The back of my head hurts when I hear this. The chauffeur is going to stay in the plane when it explodes?

“The men down below have to think we have no one to pick us up, you understand?” the Pillar tells his chauffeur.

True, I understand nothing, but I’ve finally managed to put my parachute on.

“Ten seconds.” The Pillar raises his voice as the plane’s rear door opens, a swirl of wind kickboxing against my body. “So here is the thing,” he shouts. “Lewis Carroll’s plague is like nothing I’ve ever seen. I had a few science labs check it. They didn’t find anything wrong with the hookahs. My guess is that it’s a hallucinogenic. Some substance that drives you mad when you smell it.”

I am not sure if I can hear the rest. It’s not that the air plastering my face but that my heart is racing when I see how far below the earth is.

“Five seconds,” the Pillar continues. “The only ones I know who have the power to create this are ex-Wondelranders who live among us. Those Wonderlanders are the lowest scum of the world. They’d kill you only to take a selfie of your blood on their faces and send it to your mom so they could laugh at the horrified expression on her face. Understand?”

“Shouldn’t we jump already?” I shout, hardly interested in what he says.

“Trust me, jumping is the least of your worries. Those men below could eat us for dessert. So you have to think about it. If you can’t do it, you can simply stay here and explode with my chauffeur.”

“Fabulous choices.” I am so ready to jump, although I don’t know how. What the heck is wrong with me? “If you keep babbling, I’m jumping before you.”

The Pillar smiles. “Wait, don’t jump without this.” He hands over a pair of cool black goggles. “Here is a tip.” He struggles shouting against the wind. “Always look cool on your way down the rabbit hole. Never do it Elvis style.”

“You mean because he was found dead with his head in the toilet?”

“Nah.” The Pillar adjusts his goggles. “Because he died with his ass out at the world.”

Chapter 7

Midair

Have you ever jumped out of a plane in a parachute, down to meet up with people who’d take selfies of your blood on their faces for breakfast?

I am doing it right now. And guess what, it’s nighttime, so not only am I free-falling, but I am also doing it in the dark. That’s what I call a bonus.

Throwing away the Pillar’s goggles, I hear the plane explode in midair above me.

Oh my god, this is for real!

“I’ve always wanted to blow up my employees,” the Pillar shouts all the way down. I am not sure how I can hear him. “But you’ll be fine. Just pull the red lever when I tell you to.”

In spite of all the madness, I feel unexpectedly fine up here in the air. Fine is an understatement. I feel euphoric. I want to feel like this every day. It’s ridiculous how much I am enjoying this, although I may get face-palmed by the earth in a few seconds.

Mary Ann, also known as Alice Wonder, 19 years old, dead and gone. I imagine the scripture on my grave says. But who cares? She was mad anyways.

Suddenly I realize that the madness hasn’t started yet. Not at all.

Down below, I can see something glittering. The vast land where we’re landing is nothing but an endless field of ridiculously over-sized mushrooms.

Big mushrooms growing everywhere, whitening up the black of the night.

“Now!” the Pillar yells. “Pull the lever.”

It’s not easy to see it, so I pull whatever lever my hands come across. What? You think I might push the lever that expedites the fall?

I feel a sudden impact in my shoulders. So powerful I think I am close to dislocating both of them.

Off with their shoulders!

But it’s only moments before it gets even better—or worse. The Pillar and I are floating in the air as we slowly begin our descent.

I try not to laugh myself silly as he pulls out a fishing pole and pretends to be fishing. “A man has to kill the boredom while landing. I can’t tell you how excited I am now.”

“For what exactly?” I say.

“Columbia, of course!”

Chapter 8

Buckingham Palace, London

The Queen of England—discreetly known as the Queen of Hearts—spat on the flowers in her garden.

She jumped in place, angry with the terribly red flowers. Unfortunately, no matter how high she jumped, she was still shorter than the average queen anywhere in the world.

But she was used to that. Ever since Wonderland her height had been her worst nightmare. She remembered having built a tall throne for herself she had to climb up with a ladder, so she could rule and be feared, only to realize how small she looked atop it.

Her own people had made fun of her that day.

However, the Queen always had a solution to shut them up—forever. She’d cut several thousand heads off, silencing the rest of the Wonderlanders.

Off with their heads!

That phrase never ceased to amaze her. It had the power to instantly put things in their place.

Thanks to King Henry VIII, the Queen thought, the Tudor madman whom she had learned the trick from. King Henry had chopped off more heads than anyone else in history—most of them were his wives’. Most people didn’t know he was a Wonderlander, and that his ghost still roamed the darker corridors of Oxford University.

Lewis Carroll had based the phrase on the king. But that was another Wonderland memory for another time.

Right now, the Queen’s problem was with her flowers.

“Why are my flowers red?” she yelled in a loudspeaker she could barely grip with her small fatty hands.

“I thought you liked your flowers red, My Queen,” Margaret Kent, the Duchess, replied.

“I like my flowers white!”

Margaret looked confused. Everyone who’d ever read Alice in Wonderland knew the Queen liked to paint her flowers red as she chopped off some heads. “But you’ve always liked them red,” she argued. “Ever since Wonderland you prompted us to paint them red.”

“See?” the Queen sighed. “That’s the problem with you stupid people. What’s your IQ, Margaret? Five and a half marshmallows? Do you even have a brain behind your surgically-enhanced face? Why didn’t you opt for a better brain instead of a prettier face to address the nation?”

Most guards in the room wanted to laugh, the Queen knew. But none of them would risk their heads being cut off. It was a scientific fact: you couldn’t live without a head unless you were the headless horseman from Sleepy Hollow.

“I’m sorry,” Margaret said. “I thought you like to paint all roses red, so I found a genetically-enhanced species that grows only red flowers. It was designed by the March Hare, and I filled the castle with it.”

Of course Margaret wasn’t sorry, the Queen knew again. This duchess was a vicious woman who only bent over for her queen. There was a reason for that—and it wasn’t respect.

“And what am I going to order my guards to paint red now?” The Queen stepped up on a chair and roared in the loudspeaker. “Here is the logic of it. I paint white roses red because they are white. The purpose is to suppress their nature and force them to turn into the color I want. It’s a psychological thing. A Queen’s thing. A message for the masses. Whatever your color is, I will color you my way. Do you get it?”

Margaret nodded.

“So when the flowers are red, I am losing my argument,” the Queen followed. “Now I have no choice but to force everyone to only sell white flowers in England.”

“Only white?”

“Yes, from this day on, England only sells white flowers.” She jabbed a finger in the air. “What a brilliant idea.” She jumped off her chair and adjusted her stiff troll-like hair. “Not only that. I want the Parliament to have a meeting and issue a law that prohibits the use of white flowers.”

“But that’s contradictory”

“And beautiful!” The Queen grinned. “Let’s mess with those obnoxious human citizens. Let’s see what they can do about it.”

“As you wish, My Queen.” Margaret chewed on the words. “On the side, I wanted you to take a look at another Wonderland Monster who showed up today, if you don’t mind.”

“I have no time for your silly requests, Margaret,” the Queen dismissed her. “I’m more interested in the results of last week’s Event. Please tell me my employees are wreaking havoc and madness all over the world. Please. Please. Please tell me they are driving the world mad.”

Chapter 9

Columbia

I land and bounce on a fluffy large mushroom—did I really say that? Well, it’s the truth. Way crazier than the Alice in the books.

It’s a huge mushroom, coated with what would make a perfect mattress. Yet it’s both bumpy and has a jelly feel to it on a few spots. I curl my body, tangled in my parachute, and roll on until I fall off the edge, right into the mud.

Splash!

Somewhere behind me, the Pillar laughs.

It irks me. I am not going to play clumsy in here. Not in Columbia.

Curling out of the tangled parachute is not an easy task. When I am done, I realize the parachute is painted to look like a huge mushroom from above. I twitch, glancing at the Pillar, who’s standing up straight, his suit perfectly clean, and lighting up a cigar.

“I had the parachutes painted for camouflage purposes.” His eyes look beady, enjoying his smoke. “You see, this place where we’re standing now is off the charts. You can’t find it on a map. Of course, you know where Columbia is, but you can never spot where Mushroomland is exactly.”

“Mushroomland?” I trudge heavily in the mud.

“Indeed. This is where all the profitable drugs, hallucinogens, and a few other mischievous plants are grown.”

“Those mushrooms are drugs?”

“Just like in the Alice in Wonderland books.” Oh, he is enjoying his smoke. “Why did you think one side of the mushroom made you grow taller and the other made you smaller, or whatever that nonsense was?”

“I was being drugged, in a children’s book?”

“Well, that’s debatable.” He marches on through the huge mushrooms.

“What’s debatable?” I pick up my umbrella and follow him into the semi-darkness.

“That Alice in Wonderland is a children’s book—but I don’t have time for such debates.” He crouches, investigating the premises. I crouch, too. “You see, Alice. Mushroomland is like Neverland. You’re supposed to think it’s unreal while it is not. No satellite up in the sky can track it. No one is supposed to talk about it. If you die in here, you’re not only going to die alone, badly, but the authorities all around the world will ditch any evidence of your existence.”

“Why all that?” I am whispering. I sense we’re not alone. Danger is on its way. I still need to know why the Pillar thinks this place is where we can get a cure for the plague. Wasn’t facing the Wonderland Monster in London a better strategy?

“Mushroomland grows ninety percent of the hallucinogens in the world,” the Pillar says. “You may think these are a bunch of Columbian vagabonds controlling the drug business, but in reality they are funded by...”

“Black Chess,” I cut in, thinking I am smart.

“Nah, wrong,” he says. “But I’ll get to that in a minute.” We walk ahead cautiously. The moon is the only light I can see next to the orange hue from the Pillar’s cigar. “Those mushrooms aren’t just drugs. They have a substance that controls people’s minds in the world. Some of them are in your every day food you buy from the market. Fizzy drinks, chocolates, and even vegetables. Why do you think they never stop marketing this stuff? Some of it is even sprinkled in the air.”

“What? Why?”

“To numb you.” He bites on his cigar. “So you feel cool about paying your taxes, tolerating the violence and madness in the world. Hell, some of these are electromagnetic mushrooms that affect your thinking on election days.”

“You’re joking, right?”

“Left.” He winks.

I didn’t expect that nonsensical answer. I was expecting a ‘wrong’ or ‘right.’ But this is the Pillar I am talking to.

“I’m not joking. You asked me who is funding Mushroomland? I’d say most of the world’s high caliber governments.”

“So what are we looking for in here? Are we looking to meet someone who can help us find the cure?”

The Pillar nods, now staring through some night-vision binoculars.

“Who exactly are we looking for?”

“The most ruthless, mind-bent man in the world.”

“Does he have a name?”

“Of course he has a name.” The Pillar stands up abruptly and walks on.

When I follow him, I realize we have company.

Men approaching us. Men with machine guns. This doesn’t look good at all. I understand now what the Pillar meant when he said they’d take selfies of your blood on their faces, and I don’t think we’re getting out of here alive. At least, not both of us.

“Don’t say a word,” he hisses from the corner of his mouth. “And raise your hands. Eyes to the ground.”

I do, feeling the weight of the approaching men, listening to the Pillar talk.

“We’ve come here in peace,” he says. “In the name of all mushroom and hookahs and all trippy things.”

“What are you looking for in here?” I hear a man with an accent and a gruff voice inquire.

“I’m looking for a man. A very important man,” the Pillar says, and now I’m about to know the name of the most ruthless drug trafficker in the world. “The Executioner!”

Chapter 10

Mushroomland, Columbia

The Columbian men start laughing.

Although I can’t make out their faces in the dark, their laughs send out waves that rattle the mushrooms all around me.

I must be really losing my mind. I mean really, like the acute pain of a heartache when you know for sure that it’s over.

What the heck am I saying?

“Who do you think you are to meet with the Executioner?”

“I have two reasons to believe he wants to see me.” The Pillar’s words come out muffled with that cigar in his mouth. “Besides, I know about the Trail of Mushrooms.”

The men’s laughter grows louder. “You think you can pass the Trail of Mushrooms?”

“I’d like to try,” the Pillar says. “I burned my plane with my pilot in it, after all. I have no means of going back to where I came from, so I have no choice but try or die.”

“What’s the Trail of Mushrooms?” I hiss in his ear.

“It’s a pilgrimage. A road that has to be passed among the mushrooms,” the Pillar whispers, not looking back at me. “We have to take it if we want to meet with the Executioner.”

“And why is he called the Executioner?”

“He’s a Wonderlander who used to work for the Queen. Remember that scene in the Alice books when the queen orders him to cut off the Cheshire’s head and he argues that you can’t cut a head that’s disappearing?”

“Oh, yes, although most people would forget about him,” I say. “But he didn’t look scary to me.”

“Like most of the other monsters, he turned into a beast after the Circus, except that he works on his own, and doesn’t like any of the Wonderlanders much. Now shut up and let me speak with those madmen.”

“Here is something for you,” one of the men says. “We’re sending you a man who’s been trying to pass the Mushroom Trail.”

“I thought most men die from the dangers of the trail. Either die or make it to the Executioner.”

The men laugh again. “Well, this one ate a lot of mushrooms and lost it, so we keep him for entertainment purposes.”

We stare at a half-naked and skinny man barely straightening his back as he walks toward us. He is old, skinny, and disoriented.

“Why is he so unstable?” The Pillar asks.

“He thinks he is walking the rope.” A man muses from afar.

We wait for the man to arrive.

“Nice job,” the Pillar plays along. “I’ve never seen a man walk a rope like that.”

“I’m not walking the rope,” the scruffy man retorts. “I’m being careful while walking. Can’t you see I’m a bottle of milk?”

I am going to burst out laughing.

The Pillar pushes the man to the ground. “I guess I spilled the milk now.” He raises his head at the men afar. “Listen, I have no time for games. Let me walk the trail to meet the Executioner. I will take my chances.”

Silence hovers all over Mushroomland, except for the faint rattling of grass.

One of the men approaches us.

Slowly, he shows up. Scarred, wasted, a muscular giant with a machine gun.

Normally, I would be worried, but I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I want to laugh even more now.

The man flashes his gun toward the Pillar. “I’ll let you pass,” he says in a foreign accent. “If you tell me the password.”

“There is no password.” The Pillar steps up to him.

“Of course there is.” The man nudges the muzzle of his machine gun against the Pillar’s chest. “Can you do division?”

“As in mathematics?”

“Yes, but not the stupid real life mathematics. The Lewis Carroll mathematics.”

This is when the need to laugh ends. How do these men at the other side of the world know about Lewis Carroll? Not just that. The man is about to tell us a Carroll puzzle to solve?

“Only a few people are allowed to see the Executioner. They all are capable of answering this question,” the man says.

“I’m listening.” The Pillar and I await the puzzle.

“In mathematical Wonderland terms, what do you get when you divide a loaf by a knife?”