A Lease on Wonderland

Storm in a Teacup

Malady had a little fleece

Whose lamb was white as jade

And everywhere Nick Sardine went

The stench was sure to raid.

It landed in the washing tub

And blew out from the dryer,

Then to sneeze and scratch the whole day long,

The children began to tire.

The shearer blamed the cure

So he would not be blamed;

Thus leaving all to Nick Sardine

To doctor who'd been maimed.

Adhikari was not sure when he went from falling to waking. He was not sure of where he was waking to before he heard quite firmly these three verses playing somewhere as though from an old horror movie. His sense of sight was all grayness, though he was definitely somewhere enclosed, long, and earthen. The smell of dirt however sweet was overpowering. He was standing in some sort of tunnel, he then realized just as the last words faded out; though he was not sure if he had landed on his feet like a cat, materialized here, or had picked himself up off of that bed of leaves near at hand without being fully conscious of it.

There was the pitter-pattering of feet behind him, but he did not turn to what he knew was the White Rabbit continuing to run along this burrow. There was even some sense of light behind him, but he remained fixed looking into the hollow blackness from which he knew with full positivity that the song had emanated from. He recalled the elusive conversation between the White Rabbit and Dr. Donner about a Nick Sardine; though, he was not sure anymore what they had said about it. He was not sure of very much at the moment, except that he wished to know where the poem had come from, who had recited it and why.

Thus he took a step forward despite a tingle of wariness. He took another step that was easier and another and another, and soon all fears were subdued in not gone entirely. Curiosity took its full grip, as well as a little anger. That Nick Sardine, whoever that was, was somehow responsible for all this, he felt sure, and as he had evidently got to the bottom of all this physically, he felt it high time to get to the bottom of this figuratively.

Forget a talking rabbit, he thought to himself; though he suddenly had to wonder if perhaps Nick Sardine really was a talking fish.

He paused just as he was rounding a bend to brush off what apparently was a loose dried leaf from his hair. It was oak and still stiff and strong as he let it fall feather-like to the floor.

He could not stand straight up in here, but he stood as straight he could and put his hand on the roof of the tunnel where his thick black hair brushed up against roots. The further he went the more burrow-like the surroundings were becoming. As he took a few more steps he felt like he was in some sort of bear den. Then suddenly he heard clicking like the end of a record on a record player.

There it was after he cleared the curve. The record player sat in the middle of the path and looked as gleaming as new and certainly out of place. He knelt down on one knee to touch the mechanism and turn it off to inspect the record itself, but just as he graced the surface of the arm of it, he heard something downright thump behind him. For a split second he almost thought it was a heartbeat, but as he spun around, he cried out to see that White Rabbit once again who had bounded within two feet's proximity to him with the look of a parent finding a child within inches of sticking his head into a bear trap.

"What on earth do you think you're doing?"

"'On earth'?" demanded Adhikari as he steadied himself against the rounded burrow-wall on his feet again. "'What on earth'? You can't possibly look me in the face and tell me that we're on earth!"