F irst, a bomb explodes a few feet away from me.
Then there is this flying Columbian dude air-paddling from the explosion in midair. He looks like he’s just been shot out of a cannon. A nearby helicopter finishes the dramatic masterpiece and chops off his head with its blades. The head flies off in midair again, lands closer to us, and starts rolling toward me.
“Does this head know it’s dead?” the Pillar comments.
Delirious, my feet are cemented in the mud. The Pillar pulls me closer, and we start running. Behind us, the helicopter crashes exactly where we once stood, right over that poor head.
Fire guns, wind, and shotguns are everywhere.
I run, pant, holding the Pillar’s hand. I am very much upset with myself. But I am not myself anymore. The mushrooms are messing with my head, and it’s hard to tell what is going on. All I know is that I need the Executioner’s coconut—as silly and preposterous as it sounds.
“Duck, Alice.” The Pillar pulls me down as a missile churns through the air, right into a Jeep.
“What are they fighting for?” I ask.
“They’re fighting over the throne of the mushroom empire all around the world. They grow it here, sell it for millions. But the question is who rules this jungle?”
“The Executioner, I suppose?”
“I thought so, too,” the Pillar says. “He was the main drug supplier in Wonderland, but it seems he can hardly get a grip on this real world.”
“So, how do we find him?”
“I have a feeling I’m going to steal that Jeep with the dead men in it. It looks functional,” he says. “You don’t mind riding alongside the dead. Do you?”
We duck and run like scurrying rats along the fields, pushing our luck and hoping not to get shot by a wandering bullet or a missile.
I see a man on top of a missile, riding it like a banana boat, saying hooray!
Happens all the time, I tell myself.
“How come everyone enjoys murdering each other?” I ask the Pillar.
“Humankind, dear Alice, have enjoyed that sport since Cain and Abel.” He jumps into the Jeep, and I follow. “Luckily, killing is prohibited these days, unless you do it en masse. They call it conquering.”
“So, I’m supposed to accept living in such a bloody world?” I shout against the maddening sound of war, then pull a dead body out of the passenger’s seat.
“No Alice, you’re supposed to outlive it,” The Pillar ignites the ramshackle Jeep and chugs through the mist of smoke and bullets.
“Stop that,” I protest, as the Jeep bumps over a few dead bodies. “Always trying to pose the human race as a bunch of lunatic apes who’ll never learn to love and live with one another.”
“In spite of this not being the time or place to have this conversation, I’d like to point out that advertisers pay tenfold for TV ads when the news is covering major war disasters around the world. Now duck before that bullet hits you, and you make the news.”
I feel so dizzy. I can’t even pull out my umbrella and shoot at anyone.
Wait. Why do I suddenly feel so aggressive, wanting to shoot people? The mushrooms must be doing this to me.
“Hey!” The Pillar points at a dying soldier reaching out at us. He’s holding a letter in one hand.
Amidst the impossible killing fields, the Pillar detours closer to the soldier and pulls the letter from his hands.
“Send it to my family,” the soldier pleads. “Tell them I love them, and that I’ve buried over a hundred thousand dollars of drug money in the back yard.”
“Nah, I’m not taking that letter,” the Pillar says. “ You should have sent them an SMS. Twitter post? You know you can schedule those, right? Maybe schedule the day of your death?” The Pillar tucks the letter in his pocket. “Besides, who writes letters anymore? Die, you old-fashioned typewriter!”
I don’t comment because I’m not sure this is really happening.
But then something assures me I’m not hallucinating this war at all. Every bit of this is real. Someone has shot me in my left arm.