The Rabbit Hole: Weird Stories, #4

By Tom Wolosz, Stewart C Baker, Jetse de Vries and 22 more

Stepping into the Rabbit Hole for the fourth time, you descend into madness. But is madness zany or just insane? Does the world, the universe, shift under your feet, or is your mind slipping into another realm of being? Maybe that safe reality you so treasure is a mirage, that all knowing, wise god actually having the deep wisdom of a teenage pizza delivery boy, who may just be an alien. Then again, we all may just be in hell.

 

Twenty-five authors take you on trips into madness. Twenty-nine delightfully weird stories which will make you laugh, make you cry, and make you wonder about reality. All you need do is follow that helpful little cottontail for another voyage down the Rabbit Hole.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Writers Co-op
• Release date: Oct 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201579913

Book preview

The Rabbit Hole

Weird Stories Volume 4

Descent Into Madness

A Writers Co-op Production

Compiled and edited by

Tom Wolosz, Curtis Bausse, and Atthys Gage

Cover adapted from an original design by Ian Bristow

https://www.facebook.com/bristowdesign/

No room! No room! they cried out when they saw Alice coming.

There’s plenty of room! said Alice indignantly, and sat down in a large arm-chair at one end of the table.

Have some wine, the March Hare said in an encouraging tone.

Alice looked all around the table, but there was nothing on it but tea. I don’t see any wine, she remarked.

There isn’t any, said the March Hare.

Copyright © 2021 The Writers Co-op. All rights reserved.

The copyright of each story published in this anthology remains with the author.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Contents

Preface

Fugue in a Minor Key...Stewart C Baker

Where Angels Fear to Tread  Jetse de Vries

A New Start  Nicola Forster

Svengali   Gregory J. Wolos

Virtually Ronald  D. A. Becher

The Friendly Monsters  Isabelle Sanders

32nd Street Apartments, Room 814  N. C. Krueger

Creation Science, or, Six Literal Molehills  N. C. Krueger

Dreadful Things  Megan Carlson

In Too Deep  Dominick Cancilla

The Final Float  Kevin Brown

Molly and the Bandit  GD Deckard

Apple of Eden Cake  David Turnbull

With Roommates Like These  Jeff Underwood

The Pubic Wars  Jeff Underwood

Felt Safe For The First Time That Morning  D.M. Kerr

Someone Else’s Story  Carol Fenlon

Sonya’s Mouth  Carol Fenlon

Maisie the Moocher  Mimi Speike

Birthday Cake  Ve Wardh

Night Terror  Carl E. Reed

Haunted House  Carl E. Reed

Ground O  Russell Hemmell

True Americans  Andrew Sutherland

God Seeking Internship Opportunities  Jeffrey Baldwin

Rachel, Above the Clouds, While Flying  Joseph Carrabis

Sportsman Land  Margret A. Treiber

The Serpent Swallows Its Tail  Stephen McQuiggan

Tobey  Tom Wolosz

Image by azzy_roth from Pixabay

Preface

‘Madness’...seems such a simple term, yet there are so many definitions, so many uses.  ‘Madness’ is insanity (in any of its myriad forms). Yes, but it can also be a state of frenzied or chaotic activity; and on the lighter side it can also mean simply extremely foolish behavior.  The hubris of the mad scientist was a staple of B-movies and early science fiction (if it can be graced with that name) to the point of having entered the realm of cliché (despite having a lineage at least as far back as Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus). Yet while audiences cringed at the maniacal laughter of Dr. Frankenstein on the silver screen, they howled their laughter at the madness of the Marx Brothers.  By the 1960s we were back to cringing at the madness of Marlon Brando in ‘Apocalypse Now’ (by way of Joseph Konrad’s trader Kurtz). So, to descend into madness can mean to enter into any of the above mental states, but in doing so is it to avoid — or run away from — reality, or is ‘reality’ a state of ‘madness’ one needs to escape from? And what if ‘Madness’ is a place — Lovecraft, anyone?

The following stories explore ‘madness’ as seen through the imagination of their authors; each defining ‘madness’ in their own, unique, way including, in some cases, humor.  In any case, each does so by taking you, dear reader, on a trip down The Rabbit Hole.

Fugue in a Minor Key...Stewart C Baker

[Originally published in Galaxy’s Edge, Nov 1, 2015]

What they do is sit me in a folding chair in a white-walled room with a single fluorescent bulb on the ceiling. Two techs in white (one short and female, one skinny and male) sit there and tell me this is real, that I was never a world-famous concert pianist, never married and never mourned my husband, and never never never had a daughter.

As such, the skinny one says, it is impossible for her to be in any danger.

Is she in danger? I demand.

Ma’am—

But I don’t let him finish. If she’s all right, I’d like to see her.

Ma’am, the skinny one repeats. You can’t see her. She isn’t real.

Are you the police?

No, the short one says. We’ve been through this before.

We are experimental psychologists with the University of —, the skinny one explains, and you have spent the last eight minutes immersed in a holistic simulation designed to test the human mind’s response to stress.

The name of the school is white noise, a distant burst of static that doesn’t obscure anything else. I can’t make it out.

A holistic . . . simulation?

Yes.

Eight minutes?

Yes.

The University of . . .

The skinny one doesn’t answer. Instead, he taps his clipboard on the table. The clipboard, I know, is signed with my maiden name, Katja Maczyk, and cuts twenty-odd years from my life.

You are not the police, I say.

No.  (The short one, with a note of relief clear in her voice.)

Are you the CIA? The FBI? Interpol officers, terrorists, a rogue A.I.?

Ma’am—

Is this some kind of joke?

Ma’am, the skinny one says. Ma’am, Ms Maczyk, ma’am, please. You’re experiencing an uncommon, but I assure you short-lived episode of extreme disorientation. Once it passes, you will remember signing these papers and being hooked into the machine, and you will come back to yourself and reality.

Reality.

Yes, he says.

The shorter one stands, adjusts her glasses. Let’s show her the machine, she suggests. Maybe it will help.

#

There’s not much to it, this machine they tell me has scrambled my memories. Just a couple of electrode pads connected to a computer by silver-and-clear-plastic cabling that looks like some kind of transparent caterpillar. There’s also a mask, a weighty black conglomeration of mufflers and sunglasses, with a latex mouthpiece and nose-cover that doesn’t have any holes in it except for one that’s attached to a tube for breathing.

The pads go here and here, the shorter one is saying, tapping the sides of her forehead just below the hairline. She shows me a mirror and I can see the marks they left, set into my too-young skin, but I’m not convinced.

Still, the tape marks are there, and there’s no imprint on my ring finger. No wrinkles, brown hair that doesn’t look dyed, and no clear thoughts in music alone. No memories of music at all, for that matter, or of Ben when he was alive. Or Sophie. Only memories of memories, the feeling that something happened without any details of what, or when, or why.

A solitary stave, instead of orchestration.

It looks like something out of a movie, I say.

Yes.

Can I try it again? I ask. Just to see.

A pause, then the skinny one shakes his head. It’s not a good idea. You’re already confused, and it’s unlikely you’d see the same scenario a second time in any case. There’s a tightness to his voice that belies his outward calm.

That’s fine, I tell them. It’s amazing how much better I’m already feeling. Thinking the whole time this can’t possibly be right, that there’s something they’re not saying. Something I’m missing.

The two of them steer me down the hallway, past the room with the chair and table, and out into a lobby where the sun pools thickly through a big double window, warming the backs of my arms.

Go out now, the skinny one says. Immerse yourself in the world and you’ll see how quickly it comes back to you. Jennings here (he gestures to the short one) will meet you for lunch at the student cafeteria in a few hours’ time to see how you’re doing.

Okay.

And I’m out the doors and into the sun, where it smells of concrete and dogwoods and exhaust. The to-ro-ril of the birds and distant hum of traffic can’t overwhelm the absent strains of music I can’t reach, or the sound of Sophie’s fading laughter.

#

On an age-worn flight of wooden steps on the path to the university’s track stadium, I sit and wait for something to happen. It’s pleasantly warm, and there are still those birds with their incessant song, but despite that—because of it, maybe—nothing seems real.

There’s nobody in the stadium, just a pick-up truck with a sweep behind it, going round and round the track in slow, methodical circles. From somewhere in the distance, I can hear people’s shouts as they practice some game or another.

The combination unnerves me, as if somehow there are people on the track and I just can’t see them. I wonder if I should have tried the music hall, but it didn’t seem like a good idea. If in the simulation I was a pianist, and I’m trying to get away from those false future memories, shouldn’t I avoid the piano? Music?

The sun, at least, feels nice against my skin. I close my eyes and take a deep, slow breath. The mixed scents of lilac and honeysuckle.  Rich, earthy dirt beneath it all.

Dirt, I think. When’s the last time you smelled dirt?

That drives it home somehow, in a way none of the psychologists’ words did. Maybe when I meet up with Jennings I’ll suggest it for the next subject. A half-smile spreads lazily across my face. I laugh at myself. A simulation, and I had thought it real.

Eyes still shut, I push to my feet and stretch my arms as high as they’ll go, arching my back, pulling muscles just for the hell of it, enjoying the too-taut feeling it leaves in the back of my thighs.

I had thought it real.

When I open my eyes, there’s someone in the grassy area at the center of the stadium. I think for a moment she’s a student, but then I see she’s a little girl wearing a light purple day dress and just standing there, looking at me, while the truck continues circling.

Sophie.

I open my mouth to shout something, but my tongue is dry, my lips as rough as sand. I can’t breathe, there’s a pressure in my eyes, and the world goes fuzzy. The bird-song fades away, the shouts of people with it, until the only sound is a persistent high-pitched hum just at the edge of hearing. Like a T.V. monitor running on mute in the bushes nearby. There’s a krck behind me, a branch snapping on the grass, and I suddenly feel cold, as if somebody’s approach has shrouded me in shadow. Jennings? Or . . . ?

I turn to see, but there’s nobody there, just an empty field, and wispy cotton-ball clouds floating through the afternoon sky. I’m warm again, the sounds coming back, but I shiver. When I look back to the stadium, it’s empty too, just that same pick-up truck endlessly turning. The white lines on the track make the lanes look like a score with the colours inverted, the bars warped and pulled beyond recognition, a mockery of purpose and music.

#

I’ve only been waiting at the cafeteria a short time when Jennings comes in, polishing her glasses on a small microfiber square. I let her look around for a minute before half-standing in my booth and raising one hand in greeting.

How are you doing? she says, as she slides into the chair opposite mine.

I shrug, non-committal.

Want a coffee? Something to eat? She waves a little plastic card. Incidental expense account. My treat.

Coffee would be good.

Okay, she says. Back in a sec.

I watch her thread through the crowd of students, realizing again that I’m one of them. A few memories unhook themselves: roommates; classes; endless hours of practice at the music hall’s piano.

Piano. So I do play, after all. Funny how I’d forgotten. How I’d assumed that, too, was part of the simulation. A guy across the room waves to me, and suddenly I can remember the morning’s events: how I’d signed up for the experiment to get extra credit in Dr. Edwards’ class; how I’d been surprised to find one of the techs was a woman; how her touch when she set the mask on my temples made my cheeks flush.

By the time Jennings comes back to the table with our coffees, I’m just sitting there, red-faced, thinking of how I’ve been acting. I was glad I hadn’t said anything about the track, or she’d really think I’d lost it. And I don’t want her to think that. Sitting with her like this reminds me of Jenny, my best friend in high school, whom I’d secretly had a crush on for years and who’d turned me down when I confessed. Now we were roommates—no hard feelings. I only wished I’d told her how I felt earlier, instead of keeping it to myself.

Staying quiet here doesn’t seem right, either. This is supposed to be a check-up, after all.

How long will all this take? I ask.

Jennings blinks and hands me my cup, which is still steaming, and sits back down. Well, she says, if you have something to do . . .

Something about her reminds me of Ben. The tone of her voice when she’s disappointed, perhaps, or the set of her shoulders. The colour of her eyes? I can’t remember any more, and that’s somehow worse than my earlier certainty.

I shake my head. Not how long the meeting will take. I mean . . .  this confusion. Using the skinny psychologist’s word. This not knowing who I am, or where, or which life is real.

Jennings shifts in her chair, her cheek quirked up on one side. To be honest, Ms Maczyk—

Kat, I say. Please.

Kat, then. Her face relaxes, and she leans forward on her elbows, fiddling with the coffee stirrer. To be honest with you, there’s no way of saying for sure.

You mean you don’t know?

She waves one hand—dismissive, but not belittling. Not like that. It’s just everybody’s different. And of the fifty people we’ve run this experiment on so far, only three have had confusion lasting more than a few minutes. Yourself included.

The other two?

One for about a day, and the other . . .

I remember the tightness in the male tech’s voice. Longer? Oh no, how long? A month? A year?

She laughs. Nothing like that. We’ve only been doing this for a few months. Our fifth subject’s symptoms lasted a week and a half, though, and he almost lost us all our funding by going after the Dean of Behavioral Sciences with a pair of scissors. We eventually got clearance from the Ethics Review Board to start up again after he got better and argued quite well that he was suffering no long-term effects, but Marquez still gets edgy whenever someone comes out and can’t remember straight away.

So he’s okay now? I ask. The man, I mean.

Sure. Back with his family for over a month now. Keeps sending us little cards to try and apologize.

Family. I close my eyes, see Sophie, but don’t say anything.

We sit there for a while without talking, nursing our drinks, letting the flow of the campus ebb around us. Enveloped in noise and the milky scent of cafeteria coffee.

Jennings looks at her watch. I should get back, she says, leaning back in the booth. Now that we know you’re okay, we’re doing another subject at five.

Can I watch? I ask.

Jennings hesitates, one finger tapping on the table, eyes carefully blank.

I really think it would help.

I don’t know if Marquez . . .

I reach across the table, put one hand over hers. Please.

Well, she says. Um. Okay. But not this one. Come by in the morning at about six and you can observe.

What should I do until then? I ask.

Go home and rest. Talk to friends, family. People you know. Try to forget about the whole thing. If you’re still uneasy tomorrow, come by the lab. Marquez doesn’t get in until eight most days, so it should be fine.

I smile, meet her eyes. Thank you. It really means a lot to me.

Well... um. She coughs, looks away. I’m Sarah, by the way.

Sarah, I repeat. It sounds like the first bar of a symphony.

Be seeing you, she says with a smile, then scoots out of the booth before I can respond.

I stay in my seat, watching her duck through the crowd and out the door, and then she’s gone.

#

On the way to the apartment I share with Jenny, I test my new-remembered life. The dogwood-lined street with its ramshackle student apartments calls up my first day on campus, my parents treating me like a child; late night visits to the cafeteria at finals time. Walking seems to help, and seeing scenery I’d almost stopped noticing before all this.

Muscle memory, I think, and visual stimuli. Terms I’ve heard in a class, maybe, or read in a textbook. Last night? A week ago? Or fifteen years from now in that other life, half-asleep on the sofa with only the radio for company in the dim evening hours after Sophie’s in bed?

I shake the thought aside.

Nobody’s at the apartment, but there’s a note on the fridge from Jenny. She won’t be in before Monday. Back home for a family emergency, and will I let my parents know when I get the chance.

I hang around anyway, trying to relax, but it feels too much like wearing a stranger’s skin. I keep stumbling into furniture, hearing little noises that turn out to be nothing when I check.

Eventually I give it up and go to the music hall in the center of campus, an old red-brick building in the Colonial style, fronted by white trellises and sprawling green vine. Violin and drum and bassoon spill from its various windows, and I stand there awash in it all, in the glorious energy of music. This is life. This is real.

Maybe a session with the piano . . . .

But at the last minute I think, what if it doesn’t work? What if I’m wrong, and that, too, is a mixed-up relic of a life I’ll never live?

Instead, I go to the library, in past its concrete walls to a huge wooden desk where a woman with gray hair and red lips sits clicking a pen open and closed, open and closed, her eyes out of focus.

Excuse me, I say.

click-clk.

Do you have any books on psychology?

click-clk.

I’m trying to find out what would make someone confused, and how to fix it.

That gets a look, a quick, sidelong glance before she goes back to her pen. click-clk. Of course you are, that glance seems to say. Of course you are.

I fidget in place, clear my throat.

click-clk.

I’m trying to—

Basement three. Her voice sounds nothing like she looks. Polite and clear, almost musical. She smiles. You’ll want the RC 400s. Or mezzanine, BF 30s.

Okay, I say. Thanks.

There’s no computer anywhere nearby, and I wonder if maybe she was just processing the request the first time I asked, instead of ignoring me. Retrieving the results with perfect recall.

Down in the stacks, I browse through the books at the numbers she gave me until I find a few on stress, on confusion, on psychiatry in general. They’re filled with phrases I don’t understand, like dissociational trauma and persistent avoidance and physiological reactivity. Amygdala nuclei, another book lists helpfully. Hypothalamus and cortisol and adrenal glands. Medial temporal lobes.

I go back to the shelf and find something that says it’s a dictionary, but it’s the same, endless strings of words and numbers which taunt me with their print, dangling meaning just out of reach. I flip through pages for hours, willing the characters to coalesce into some sensible combination, trying to avoid thoughts of Sophie, of long tours away from home with the orchestra in foreign cities whose residents smile good-naturedly when I mispronounce everything, and who compliment me on my music.

The intercom crackles on in a burst of static, and the gray-haired woman’s voice announces that the library is closing for the night. I head back into the streets, letting my feet go where they will.

I wind up in front of the music hall again—dark now, empty—and stand there so long I lose track of time, just trying to figure out my feelings, my life. Or which life is real. Even now I can pull up all the dates that mattered: Sophie’s birthday, the week before Christmas; the anniversary of Ben’s death in early spring, when Sophie and I would go together to his grave and leave daisies.

I’m remembering the smell of fresh-cut daisies when movement in a top floor window of the music building catches my eye. My tongue dries up, sticks to the roof of my mouth. Someone’s there, but at this time of night the building should be empty. I stare hard at the glass, that high-pitched hum from earlier today coming back into my ears. I can just make out a hand, I think, the palm of a child’s hand pressed against the inside of the window, visible only as a subtle shade of grey against the night-painted dark.

Sophie, I croak.

But what could she be doing here? And how—

Kat?

I spin around so fast I almost fall over. It’s Sarah, standing there one hand on her chest, eyes bulging.

Jesus, she says. You scared the hell out of me.

Something about the way she says it makes me laugh, and once I start I can’t stop. It bubbles out of me, dripping from my lips like sunlight, so bright all the shadows I was trying to see into just disappear. By the time I finally calm down, I’m sitting in the grass next to the path, holding my stomach and with tears in my eyes.

I can tell by looking at Sarah that she doesn’t know whether to help me up or call the cops to take me away.

I’m fine, I gasp out. I’m fine.

Really?

I nod. Want to take a seat?

She hesitates for a minute, still on the fence, I think, so I put on my best smile and say, Sit. Please.

What are you doing out here, anyway? She asks, after setting down her bags and joining me in the grass.

I tell her how I’d gone to the library, and how I still wasn’t feeling completely back to normal, so I came to visit the music hall.

Familiar places, you said, I remind her.