Chapter, or rather Entry, Next. In Which Our Hero is Further Befuddled
(and lunaboca returns with this)
>and put himself square in the middle of....
Piccadilly Circus. Which was odd, as he had distinctly been thinking Pantagonia.
The smells and sounds of the London street market were overwhelming. Hell, after a few months on the Fox Ward, the smells and sounds of his own house were overwhelming. This was like landing on Mars. A cacophony of street musicians, hawkers, hacking smokers, cell phone bleaters and auto horns rose and fell like a Dante symphony. Ansel stood amongst it all, stock still, a skinny, fuzz-headed archangel.
Suddenly he felt a pull on his pajama sleeve.
"Pardon. Err. Yes now. You were looking for something?" A short whiskered fellow of indeterminate age and distinctly whiskeyed aroma was shoving a handbill at him.
"Uh-- no-- well, I don't think so-- I mean, no thank you." Ansel tried to wave him off. Not to be discouraged, the grizzled man rolled the leaflet into a tight cylinder, popped it into Ansel's startled mouth, and disappeared into the crowd.
Ansel stood staring at the tight knot of people standing where the man had departed. I am going to close my eyes, he thought, and wake up back in my room. Or at the hospital. Or something. This is clearly a drug-related delirium I am experiencing.
And he did close his eyes, but the very real nudge of the becoming-soggy handbill against his tongue convinced him to reopen them.
He was no longer in London. At least he didn't think so. The noise was gone, and the crowds, and yes there were smells, but different: exotic ones, faintly spicy. He was in what appeared to be an alleyway. Tall brick walls on either side. The road also brick, or cobbled stone.
He removed the handbill from his mouth. Unrolled it. It was a blue piece of paper, empty except for some tiny type in the middle. It read:
www.verything.org
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