Upon meeting a fellow writer of note at the weekend, a proposal was made to continue the fine night we had been having. Little did we know that the further down the rabbit hole we stumbled, the more adventure would seek us out.
From sitting drinking peppermint tea with the psychotic mega rich solvent abusers of Edinburgh's upper crust to standing in the maelstrom of a bad night in a bad house on what seemed at one point to be the end of the world. Columbus was staring back at us, dothed his cap and put one foot forward into the abyss. Our hearts sank, rose and sank again as we knew it wouldn't end well for the two travelers that only wanted to look in on this house of opulence.
The fat black bodied flies at the base of the building looked over their shoulders at us as we made our approach, before starting anew at the miasma that waved above the trash heaps. For a minute I thought I could see writhing bodies in the muck, a single hand reached out to us as we came upon the intercom, a punished trespasser or a man seeking his luck at recording the insides of what must be the most insane scene in a long time.
Drugs, drink and the occasional violent sexual encounter sprang up sporadically and without warning. Men straying too close to a parlor that held any vice were draw, beckoned or forcibly taken into these warren like vents.
The eye of the storm is the most secure place in a cyclone, which after gaining the relevant provisions is where we set up our base camp. In the eye my friend, where the stretched out angular faces of the rich whirled past with high giddy laughs in our direction, their tongues clicked and whirred and some made the sound that only beaks can, or the chitinous hides of a grasshopper can chirp.
Like in all dens of iniquity there is a prize, a gift or an offering that no man can resist in large volumes. That very instrument of our downfall and rebirth came in the form of a massive yellow teapot. The biggest ever seen, a bright painful yellow shot back at us in the middle of the room. Some men came and tasted the contents and left, never to be seen again...did the dogs, the abyss, the flies or something more sinister envelop them?
To this day I will never know. But all I do know is I drank the contents and held onto the last vestiges of my ever dwindling sanity. The room grew dense and the floor had some how come to meet me with lurching vellocity, my eyes snapped shut as I seen my companion fall likewise from the safety of the eye and into the maelstrom and warp that was a constantly mutating warp of shape and shadow...
Alice tried to fancy to herself what such an extraordinary ways of living would be like, but it puzzled her too much, so she went on: `But why did they live at the bottom of a well?'
`Take some more tea,' the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
`I've had nothing yet,' Alice replied in an offended tone, `so I can't take more.'
`You mean you can't take LESS,' said the Hatter: `it's very easy to take MORE than nothing.'
