Frankie and the Rabbit Hole

FRANKIE AND THE RABBIT HOLE

by John Fogarty (goryboy)

    So, anyway, it was like this: we decided to rob a liquor store for our friend Frankie. She needed a hysterectomy, on account of her misspent youth. Seems she’d screwed up her innards from years of sleepin’ around and contracting various social diseases, see. And even though Frankie’s swingin’ days were over, her eatin’, breathin’ and sleepin’ days weren’t—and those were all activities that required daily doses of Vitamin Cash. Plus, the surgeon was charging $37,500 for the 20-minute operation. (Now you know why doctors wear masks.)
   
    Which was why Eggplant (Edgerton Jones), Willie-nilly (Will Sampson) and me, Testicle-Ted (Teddy Mandrake) decided to knock over this mom & pop liquor store in Corryville. Little place called (drum roll, please) “Mom & Pop’s.” Which made sense to me.
 
    Now, please understand, we weren’t career criminals or nothin’. We didn’t rob banks or mug people. Just liquor stores and convenience joints. And only when one of us really needed the dough, like Frankie. And I don’t care what the cops say, we weren’t bad men; we were broke men, that’s all. And Frankie was broker than that, ‘cept she couldn’t do nothin’ about it owin’ to her mucked up insides.
 
    And, in case you’re wondering, I never “did,” Frankie; you can ask anybody. I like Asian girls (‘cause they’re cute as buttons and they got the best buttons on earth, period). Only problem is, Asian chicks aren’t exactly tripping over each other in Gooseneck, Ohio, my hometown. Suffice to say I never got friendly with Frankie, so it wasn’t like I owed her or anything. She was just a pal, you know?
 
    Anyhow, the big day comes around and we armed ourselves for the job. Eggplant borrowed his old man’s shotgun, Willie-nilly had a broken .45 (army surplus piece-a-shit), and I had a Taurus .38 snubnose belly-blaster. That only two of our weapons actually worked wasn’t important; we only needed to scare the Mom & Pop employees, not kill them.
 
    Our “weapons” were sorry enough, but even worse was our “getaway car”—Frankie’s 1986 Olds Cutlass, which looked as if it had just lost an argument with a 10-ton Mack truck: every square inch a this shit-bucket was either dented, creased or rusted out. It had over 190,000 miles, no muffler, and the upholstery looked like a horde a Tasmanian Devils had just gang-banged a wombat in the backseat. A real trophy, this one.

    You got no idea. Trust me.
 
    Now, we figured on knockin’ this place over either on a Wednesday or Thursday afternoon, about middle of the day, when it would be, like, dead in there. But late enough in the week for the till to have some cash in it, you know? See, we weren’t lookin’ to score big or get rich. We just figured on knockin’ over two or three a these places till we had enough dough for Frankie’s hysterical-ectomy. No biggie.
 
    Problem was, Egglant had no brains. A shotgun, yeah, but no marbles. 'Cause the instant we pull up to the store, Eggs has to hit the can. Number Two, yet. Can you feature this? And Willie n’ me, we’re like, “Hey, jizz-breath, you gotta store to hit, not the head.” And he’s like, “I can’t help it, I gotta go.” The little peckwad.
 
    So, off he goes—with the shotgun—to the crapper. Which is located right behind the counter and the mom or pop who’s runnin’ the place, right? Only it turns out the attendant’s one a those turban-powered dudes, you know, like Haji on “Johnny Quest.”
 
    Now, I ain’t no frickin’ racist, OK? But they really should hire people who under-fuckin-stand English in these places, you know? ‘Cause when Eggplant walks up to him with the shotgun and says, “Hey, where’s your crapper?” Haji goes ape-shit. Starts cryin’ and pushin’ alarm buzzers and Vishnu only knows what else, so Eggs freaks and shoots him. BOOM! Right in the face.
 
    Blows his frickin’ head off, OK? Turns Haji into a Pez dispenser. Which is just peachie as puke, ‘cause now we got burglar alarms goin’ off, Willie shoutin’ at customers, and me poundin’ hell outta the till. Not exactly the silent treatment, y’know?
 
    Then, like some putz in a Coen Brothers movie, I realized I couldn’t open the thing. The till. It was locked up tighter'n a German virgin on Prom Night.
 
    I went to grab Haji off the floor, to see if he had any keys on him, but his turban had gone the same place as his head, so there’s no ripcord to pull on this guy. So I copped the first thing I see—pack a menthols with a keychain on top—and vamoose. Outta there.
 
    Ditto Willie-nilly.
 
    But not Eggplant. He’s just, like, standin’ there, with this puzzled look on his face, which is now splattered with brains, blood and goo. Perfect. Good news was, he didn’t need the head no more (the toilet I mean, not Pez-boy), ‘cause by now he’s goin’ all over the place—Number One and Number Two, like, simultaneous and all. Helluva mess.
 
    By the time I get dimple-dick outta there, the cops are showin’ up, sirens screamin’, lights flashin’, the works. Which really blows chunks, ‘cause I’m a workin’ man, I gotta job in the mornin’. I got no time for this shit. So I plug the first cop I see, jump into Frankie’s piece-a-shit Olds and hightail it right the flock outta there—with Willie-nilly hangin’ onto the passenger door, and Poopy-pants hangin’ out the window, pukin’ his guts up for all to see. Which makes three bodily functions he’s, like, performing.
 
    The cops return fire, jump back into their cruisers and give chase. This is just gettin’ better by the minute, right? We gotta dead Pez dispenser, Willie-nilly wavin’ a .45 that don’t work, me drivin’ and shootin’ at the same time, and Eggplant plantin’ eggs everywhere. And for what? A pack a menthols nobody wants and a keychain. That’s it. That’s our take.
 
    Lucky for us, I know all the back streets, alleys and whatnot in Corryville. Used to go to school there—or, more accurately, play hooky there. I know all the good hidin’ places. At least, all the ones from when I was a sprout, right? So, we pull into a blind alley, ditch the car, climb the chain link fence at the end of it, and—VOOM! We’re Gandhi. Cops got no idea where we went. All they got is a crappy old Olds loaded with crap. And puke. And pee, all courtesy a Eggplant.
 
    We snuck through a crossword puzzle of backstreets, alleys and tunnels, with Your ‘Umble Narrator in the lead, till I found an abandoned warehouse—one I used to hide in. You know, when I was a kid playin’ hooky. Only now we’re playin’ hooky from the cops. So, we all sneak in and find a bunch a crates, pallets and skids to hide in. No way the cops are gonna trail us in there, given the location of the car we ditched. We’re safe, right?
 
    Heh, like I said: you got no idea.
 
    ‘Cause after we catch our breath, and we’re all, like, decompressing, I pull out the keys I stole. Nothin’ special, just a key ring with a ton a keys that had belonged to Pez-boy. With a cartoon rabbit goin’ down a hole, on the body of the thing.
 
    At first, I thought it was my old pal Bugs Bunny, but it wasn’t. Just some generic rabbit. But the hole . . . now that was weird. ‘Cause every time I looked at it, I felt like I was the one goin’ down the hole, not the bunny.
 
    “Gotta cig?” asked Willie.
 
    “Sure,” I says. I pulled out the menthols I’d stolen and shook one out for him. Kool 100s, for Chrissakes. No one smokes Kool 100s anymore, ‘cept pimps, hookers an’ cops.
 
    Eggplant was still tremblin’ like a drunk with D.T.’s, the poor dilwad. If caught, he’d go up for murder one. The best Eggs could hope for was coppin’ a plea to manslaughter. He was lookin’ at 25 years minimum. As accomplices, Willie and I were starin’ 15-20 in the face. More for me, since I’d plugged that cop in the arm. Felony Assault. On an Officer a the Law, yet. With intent to chill. Hell, I’d get more time than Eggplant.
 
    That’s when I looked at that rabbit hole again, on the key chain, with the sirens screaming in the distance.
 
    It was just a cartoon, you know? But it, like, beckoned me. To look. To see.
To follow . . .
 
    Now, you may ask yourself, “Self, where the hell would Teste Ted follow a cartoon to?” And, honestly, I couldn't a answered that, at the time. ‘Course, today I could, but not at the time. I had no better idea than ol’ Pez-boy, back at the store.
 
    Well, I kept on lookin’ at that cartoon rabbit hole. And blast my ass if it didn’t start . . . like . . . movin’ on me. Like it was a real cartoon (‘cause, let’s face it, no rabbit hole—or any other hole in the good ground a God’s green earth—is gonna start spinnin’ around on ya. Less you’re drunk or dinked on ‘ludes, a course).
 
    And I was not drunk. Or dinked. I was captivated. Frozen to the spot.
 
    I put my right thumb on the hole and kinda . . . rubbed it a little. And damn if I didn’t feel the tip a my thumbnail go in.
 
    Just the teensiest little bit. Not even the whole nail tip. I glanced at my trusty companions, to see if they were watchin’. But they were too busy suckin’ down those Kools to pay me any attention.
 
    So . . . I started rubbin’ it again.
 
    This time, my thumb slipped in halfway to the knuckle.
 
    Too, too weird. And, to be honest with ya, at first I thought I was seein’ things. And feelin’ things, both. The stress, you know, causin’ a flashback or somethin’. I mean, it’d been a helluva morning so far—the botched robbery, dead Pez-boy, shoot-out with the cops, then the escape. The alleys and backstreets all leading up to this warehouse. And the keychain.
 
    I thought about Frankie then, wondered what she must be thinkin’. She was probably startin’ to worry—we shouldda been back with her car and the cash by now. Poor kid. No hysterical-ectomy for her. I started rubbin’ the keychain again.
 
    Now, here’s where the story gets a little weird.
 
    I knew there was no way a cartoon rabbit hole could make my thumbnail vanish. But there was nothin’ comin’ out the other side. See what I’m sayin’? I stuck my thumb down that rabbit hole, and it dis-a-fuckin-peared. Looked like I’d tucked in my thumb and glued the keychain where the thumb should be. Heh, only it wasn’t, see? It just wasn’t there, at all. Period.
 
    The sirens were gettin’ closer now. I looked at Willie, then Eggplant. Neither of them were lookin’ back at me, too busy bullshitting each other about how everything was gonna be OK, no one was gonna get busted, etc. You know, Famous Last Words. So, I said ‘what the hell’ and stuck my hand all the way in.
Into the rabbit hole.
 
    And disappeared.
 
 

*          *          *

    No one found me. Ever. No one even spotted the damned keychain. As for Eggs and Willie, I honestly don’t know what in pluperfect hell they must a thought. I mean, one minute I’m there, sitting under all those pallets and skids with ‘em, next minute—and without movin’ an inch—VOOM. I’m Gandhi.
 
    I learned much, much later that the cops found Willie and Eggs after all, on account a all the cigarette smoke billowing out from the skids and pallets, the dumbasses. Even if the cops hadn’t been lookin’ for us, they still wouldda noticed the smoke and called the fire dudes, you know? Stupid fuckers.
 
    And the ironical chronicle is, since they traced Willie and Eggs to the Olds, which was Frankie’s car, she got busted along with ‘em, for conspiracy or some shit. But by the time she went off to prison, her condition had gotten so bad they had to give her the hysterical-ectomy in the prison hospital—for free! So, it all worked out, after all.
 
    As for me, well, like I said earlier, this is where the story gets a little weird. (OK, maybe more than a “little.” Maybe a lot more).
 
    I was . . . out there . . . for a while. Out in space or somethin’. I’m still not totally sure what happened or where I went. (At least I didn’t get arrested, like the Dippy Duo). I just . . . I dunno . . . spaced it, or somethin’.
 
    I remember seein’ nothin’ but blackness for a long, long time. And there were these, like, creatures an’ shit all floatin’ around me. Dead fuckers, too. I saw my dead grandpa Tillman Mandrake, and my dead best buddy from high school, Clayton Day, who got decrapitated when he wrapped his Harley around a phone pole at 88 mph. There were dead dudes and dudettes everywhere. All floatin’ in the other direction, away from the rabbit hole.
 
    Now, even a dumbass galoot like me catches on after a while, you know? So, I watched all these dead dudes floatin’ past and I finally figured it out: I wasn’t about to go in their direction, right? They were all floating toward some other destination, if ya catch my drift. All I knew was, I didn’t wanna catch theirs. So I, like, paddled or swam the other way.
 
    Next thing I know—POOF!—I’m fallin’ outta the damn keychain again. Or, more accurately, outta the rabbit hole. Fell right through the mother and landed on my bright, rosy, All-American ass. On the floor a the warehouse.
 
    Only it wasn’t a warehouse no more.
 
    Ditto for the skids and pallets: all gone bye-bye. A long, long time ago.
 
    I read somewhere since then that there’s these things called “wormholes.” Ever hear a them? They’re like weird little passageways in the fabric a “space-time,” as the science dudes say. You know, like a short-cut through the fourth dimension or some shit. (I also read that there’s really ten different dimensions, but, for our purposes, we’ll stick to four: width, length, height, and Time—with a capital T).
 
    ‘Cause that’s the clincher: Time. Goin’ through a wormhole allows ya to cut through the curvature a space-time, see. Say you wanted to travel from one side a the globe to another: if ya go over the surface, you’re gonna rack up the miles, since the surface is curved. But, if ya snake through a wormhole straight to the other side, ya cut out all that curvature mileage and get there a lot faster. Pretty cool, huh?
 
    That’s because (and here’s where we get to my pre-dick-a-ment), when someone’s travelin’ through one a these wormholes, it’s at or near the speed a light, so time slows down for that person—relative to everyone and everything he left behind. Or so that crusty old fart-weasel Einstein said. And I guess we gotta play by his rules.
 
    Only problem is, it ain’t supposed to be possible, right? I mean, nobody’s ever done it before, ‘cept Your ‘Umble N, and I’m not tellin’ anybody but you. Last thing I need’s a bunch a herky-jerky old farts in labcoats and pop-bottle glasses pokin’ and proddin’ me and askin’ me shit like: “Zo, tell me, Meester Mandrake, vere did chew go?” ‘Cause I honestly don’t know. I got no clue where I went. I just went. Down the rabbit hole.
 
    Good news is, I’m still healthy, hale and hearty, 26 goin’ on 16—or so my girlfriend tells me. Her name, by the way, is Zxing Tau, and she’s just as cute as a button (and has a button to die for, the little scamp). She’s also young enough to be my great-great-great-great-granddaughter. I figured it all out one day.
 
    See, I lost 142 years in that rabbit hole.
 
    Which makes me 168 years old, truth to tell.
 
    But I ain’t. Tellin’, that is. And I’ll kindly ask you to do the same, OK? Thanks. I appreciate it.
 
    And that’s all I know. Life in 2149 is a lot different than when I left it. At least, here in the C.U.P.S.—Chinese United Peoples States, formerly the good ol’ U.S. of A.
 
    See, we lost. They won.
 
    They had more people left over after the bombs. Simple as that.
 
    But, if I have to eat Bird’s Nest Soup and Flied Lice every day for the rest a my unnatural life, that’s all right with me. ‘Cause they finally got cable TV back on (it was off for, like, 80 years after the People’s War), and the Chairman apparently loves “The Beverly Hillbillies.” What the hell, so do I. (Always did like that show. That and “Lost in Space.”) So, things could be worse, y'know?
 
    And that’s it. Thanks for stickin’ around for this here “denouement,” as the Frenchies used to call it (back when there were Frenchies). I’ll bid y’all a fond farewell and leave ya with this invitation: Come have a heapin’ helpin’ of our hospitality . . .
         Take yer shoes off,
                   Set a spell,
                             Y’all come back now, y’hear?
 
 
P.S.—Turns out Chinese folks are absolutely ga-ga for hillbilly music! Especially banjos! Only problem is, I don’t have any money to buy one. But that’s all right . . . 
. . . A new mom & pop store just opened across the street.