“Not entirely. I am rather sure Lewis Carroll is in London and not here.”
“Do you have the answer to his question?”
“Why a raven is like a writing desk?” He lets out some sort of confident pfff. “I’m one of the few who knows the answer.”
“So why don’t you tell him?”
Just before the Pillar answers me, another group of machine gun men slowly appears from behind the bushes. Those aren’t the laughing ones.
“You’re here to see the Executioner?” their leader inquires.
“No, we’re here to walk on mushrooms,” I retort. “Of course we want to see the Executioner, you cuckoo.”
The man grimaces, looking at me, anger about to steam out of his ears.
“Don’t bother.” The Pillar fakes a smile. “She has issues.” He spirals his fingers next to his head, indicating I’m mad.
“Issues?” the man says.
“She’s just been out of the most secure asylum in London,” the Pillar elaborates. “She ate her warden’s left ear. Then the director’s right ear. Then she ate the guard’s right hand, pulled the left off the guard next to him right off the bat. Plucked her fingers into a taxi driver’s nose until he sneezed to death, right before she bit a young man’s tongue off like a stretching pastrami. He looked very much like you, by the way.”
I wish I could deliver all my lines the way the Pillar does it. The machine gun men take an unconscious step back, steering away from me. The Pillar pulls me closer to him and pats my shoulder. I play along and tuck my thumb into my mouth, flickering my hallucinating eyes at them.
It’s funny how each one of us is in his own hallucination world at the moment.
“You will still need to answer a question to pass,” the man said. “Not the writing desk question, though.”
“Another puzzle.” I roll my eyes.
“Shoot,” the Pillar says. “Not the gun, but the question.”
“What do you do when you find a fork in the road?” the machine gun man says.
“Take the madder road immediately,” the Pillar says.
“Wrong answer.” The man is ready to shoot us.
Like a lightning strike I spit out the answer. “Take the fork and go find something to eat with it.”
The Pillar rolls his eyes now. It’s safe to say we’ve had some considerable amount of eye rolling in the past thirty minutes. It hurts.
“Right answer,” the machine gun man says.
The Pillar looks surprised.
I guess my hallucinations are up to par with their melancholic passwords. “What about the man on the writing desk? I thought that was a better puzzle.” I tell the machine gun man.
“What man on a writing desk?”
When I look, Lewis Carroll and his famous desk are gone. I glance back at the Pillar. He seems uninterested. “Let’s just move on.”
“One last thing,” the machine gun man says. “This is the last of the Mushroom Trail. Beyond the next few mushrooms, there is an open field.”
“Is that where meet the Executioner?” I wonder.
“That is where the drug cartels are in continues war,” the man says. “Where everyone dies within a few moments. So sober up.”
Carefully, the Pillar and I step closer beyond the mushrooms. Then we part a few smaller ones blocking the view. We could already hear the sound of war. The screaming. The shooting. The tanks rolling heavily on the ground.
Then we see it all.
“A war.” The Pillar’s cigar dangles from his lips. “So boring. I’ve seen better on CNN.”
But I don’t find it boring. It scares me to death. All the blood, gunfire, and screams. I need to find the Executioner and his damn coconut. How am I supposed to survive this war?
Chapter 17
First, 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?”