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CHAPTER FOUR: ZZ9 plural Z alpha
"Wikkid fun!"
I've discovered that if you're going to hallucinate, do it in the middle of UMass' annual outdoor sculpture exhibit. Every spring the sculpture students overtake the backyard of the art building. They are apparently allowed to get as crazy as they want, and even in daylight, and when observed by the perfectly sober, the land is given a strange dreamy quality.
"I see funky little flowers all over the place!"
"I see some weird spider-dragon thing climbing the building! It's gonna trash the place! Cool!"
"I see dinosaurs," I stopped.
But I wasn't tripping, I reminded myself.
Oh, well. Go with the flow.
"One of them wants me to come and play with them!"
"Aww, lucky you! I wanna play with the dinosaurs!"
"You better go over there and play with that dinosaur now, cause it's mad at you cause you aren't!"
A chill ran down the length of my back. How'd she know that this dinosaur was giving me a particularly angry look?
Unless…
[No, that was all just a dream! They're joshing you,] I convinced myself, [play along with them.]
So I went over to play with the angry dinosaur.
And I ended up getting my ass kicked in by an imaginary creature.
"Damn you," Mad-Ness spat, "what the hell were you THINKING???"
I groaned, "I've got to be dreaming still. Maybe I did down some of their drugs?"
"Do you even KNOW what you've done to my rep? People are gonna be like, 'Lo, the Mad-Ness Monster approaches! Hey, wasn't she an accomplice to the Apocolypse?'"
"This is NOT happening!"
"Silly Angel-moo."
That voice was new.
I was now seeing two imaginary things. One very pissed-off plesiosaur, and one disarmingly cheerful fairy. I rubbed my head hard.
"You both go away now," I demanded, "you're not real and I'm too tired for this."
The fairy laughed at me and tossed a sort of charm necklace at me. The charm was in the shape of the eye symbol on my Crankymental that I didn't recognize. It was very real.
"Tis yours," she said, "Crest o' Reality Check. Use it now so Hyper Izzard get bigger and less kawii. Stop Badger- Jabby, you see?"
"Missy, I am a lizard," Mad-Ness now focused her anger on the fairy, "in the sense that Jewel is a poet and Jerry Springer is a country singer, and I…"
She hadn't seen whom she was addressing until now, and when she did, she immediately flushed, shook with pure fear, and bowed submissively.
I couldn't stand it.
"What?" I said with sarcasm you'd have to swim through, "It's just a pwetty wittle fairy."
Mad-Ness shook more violently, "Lyra…"
"My name is Ms. Hall."
"We have the very rare privilege of being visited by the Queen of the Sidhe."
"She who?"
"I Chica," said the she-fairy-whatever, "of the Sidhe. Et toi est very redic lil moo."
"Really."
"Stop Badger-Jabby, plais? Et return au Crankyland?"
I puffed up with contempt, "There is no such place. And would you mind telling me what a badger jabby is?"
"Um," said Mad-Ness, flicking terrified eyes up at the roof of the art building, "I think THAT might be it."
On the roof of the art building, there was a demented looking bat/fish/spider/dragon thing. It wore a nasty expression and wires in its skin.
"I," I exclaimed, "am SERIOUSLY swearing off the drugs!"
"Youm na on drugs, redic moo!"
"That thing almost looks like ol' Jabberwocky," said Mad- Ness, "after getting assimilated by the Borg. Can't think of why he's trashing the campus, he's usually a cool guy."
"Badger-Jabby," Chica explained, "from one of worst alternate Crankylands. Possessed by brainie slugs. Then attacked by Badger Borgs. You stop him, okay?"
Mad-Ness looked up at me expectantly.
"Really," she said, "it's your call. Either live in complete denial and watch the college go for the 'Everybody in Cybernetic Prosthetics' look, or be a hero."
I didn't want to do this.
"I…"
Badger-Jabby turned his attention to my hallucinating friends.
"Hey, sweet! That spider-dragon wants to kill us! Cool!"
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