Chapter 1: "The Merry Hamsters of the Village of Doom"
I knew I shouldn't have smoked those funny-looking hand-rolled smokes I stole from the administrator's office. I fell asleep in my room with the door left open. What a mistake! I woke up with one of the superintendant's nephews on top of me pulling my clothes off. Bloody fat disgusting bloke. I kicked him off, but he seemed to have lost interest having seen me in just underclothes.
"Good Lord! Bitch, do you ever eat? You'd be quite a dish if you had any meat on you anywhere, but who wants to bag a sack of bones?"
Off he tromped. Good! Those smokes had made me woozy in the head, and I fell asleep again only to find myself hurtling down a familiar vertical tunnel. The landing sure wasn't the same, though.
A condom dump. All unused and still in the original packaging. Hallelujah! I'd hit the jackpot. Finally a way to have sex without having to worry about ending up prego. I realized that I might not end up a twenty-year-old virgin after all. My twentieth birthday was in four months. Four months to get properly laid. Not raped, I hoped.
No cat to greet me. I stuffed my apron pockets full of condoms and went in search of anyone in the Gnome Village that I knew to be just down the road. Not a gnome in sight. I wandered past the Gnome Village Mayor's office and marveled at how empty the place was. Out the doorway opposite the mushroom shop two card guards came charging at me shouting, "Search her for contraband!"
Contraband? What? I didn't hang around for the card guards to catch me and ran back toward the chasm with a creekbed full of green, nasty, slimy water flowing through it. There was an air geyser in the center of the creekbed with enough lift to let me float over on my wire-rod fitted dress. I jumped and the two idiot card guards jumped also thinking they would float just like me. Straight down into the slime they went. I sure enjoyed taunting them from the bank while they dissolved.
"Awwww! Guardies fall down?"
It occurred to me that these Card Guards didn't look quite the same as the ones that I had seen on my previous sojourn in Wonderland. These Card Guards did not look like playing cards at all. They were more three-dimensional. If anything, they looked more like old-fashioned cloth or burlap dolls stuffed with sawdust. I conjectured that they might make amusing target practice for my croquet mallet. I wondered just how far one might fly if I hit him just right with the mallet.
Cheshire finally showed up. "Careful, Alice! You're carrying contraband. All those condoms you stuffed in your pockets are illegal. That dump you landed in is for all sex-related objects. The Red Queen and her stooge the Queen of Hearts have outlawed sex in Wonderland. Get caught having fun and lose your head. Get caught with condoms and lose your head. Get caught with a dildo and lose your head. Get caught with one of those new-fangled vibrators and lose your head. Get caught enjoying your own equipment and lose your hands. Are you getting the picture? Sex is forbidden in Wonderland. Even playing with yourself is forbidden. When you consider that there's not much else to do around here, those two Queens have pretty much outlawed fun in Wonderland."
"Is there anything around here that I can use to defend myself angainst these cretins?"
Cheshire looked thoughtful for a moment. "The Gnome Elder had a cage full of pet hamsters that he carried everywhere with him in case Card Guards showed up."
"And just what good is a cage full of hamsters going to do me if Card Guards show up?"
"You have to see what they do to realize that a cage full of hamsters can be your best friends in Wonderland. Let's go find them. The Gnome Elder probably left his pets behind when he saw a full squad of Card Guards coming down the road toward his house. Nobody's seen him for days."
"Well, then, let's go feed his pets. They're probably hungry and thirsty by now."
Cheshire led me to the Gnome Elder's little house and had me crawl in the front door.
"Good thing you're such a stick. If your hips had even the slightest bit of width to them, you'd never make it inside a gnome house."
"Thanks for reminding me that I have no shape, Cat. Rub it in. You're no glamour puss yourself."
The Gnome Elder's pet hamsters were in a standard-sized cage, but there were five of them packed in there. There was no door. Four of them were asleep. One was staring at me.
"Wake up guys! Someone's come to get us!"
Holy fuck. Talking hamsters.
I looked straight into the doorless cage. "You guys hungry or thirsty?"
"We've been getting our own, but thanks for asking. Haven't had any Card Guard lately, though."
"You guys eat Card Guards?"
"Well, not exactly eat..."
"Never mind. Want to come along with Cheshire and me?" I suddenly remembered that cats might like the taste of hamster. I smacked my hand against my forehead.
The hamsters knew what I was thinking. "Don't worry!" said the one that was awake. "Cheshire's an old pal of ours. He knows better than to think of eating one of us. I don't think anything in Wonderland wants to eat one of us!"
I had no idea why these hamsters were special, but I was about to find out.
Cheshire burst into the room. "Alice, Card Guards coming down the roadway! Five of them!"
I grabbed the cage and knelt down to exit the door and run.
"Forget running, Alice!" said Cheshire. "With these guys we don't have to run!" Cheshire looked me straight in the eye and said in the most dramatic tone he could muster, "RELEASE THE HAMSTERS!"
"What?" I stammered.
Cheshire grabbed the cage and kicked the gnome house's front door open. "Do your thing, guys!" he whispered.
The one hamster that was awake poked all of his buddies and shouted, "Fresh meat, guys! Let's go!"
The hamsters leapt out of the cage and bounded down the road toward the startled Card Guards like a pack of starving wolves. I had never seen anything like it.
"HAMSTERS!" screamed a Card Guard. "RUN YOU FOOLS!"
The five hamsters bounding down the road quickly caught up with the Card Guards. Oh, it was a horrible sight. Card Guards screaming. Hamsters leaping. Card Guards knocked down. Hamsters flipping the Card Guards on their backs. Hamsters swan diving...
The hamsters dived into the Card Guards' assholes and squirmed their way up through the Card Guards' digestive systems. The Card Guards writhed on the ground and howled like the two idiot Card Guards who dropped into the slime in the creekbed. In a moment it was all over. Our five heroic hamsters crawled out of the Card Guards mouths and fluffed themselves like birds who had just had a refreshing bath.
"YEAH, BABY! THAT WAS GOOD GUARD!" shouted one hamster. The hamsters came bounding back and bounced back into the cage. One hung up a sign.
"DO NOT DISTURB"
"That never gets old," said Cheshire with his classic grin.
I looked at Cheshire. "That is the coolest thing I've seen since Gryphon ripped one of the Jabberwock's eyeballs out!" It truly was. Sure beat the hell out of Demon Dice.
End of Chapter 1
This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. EA (Electronic Arts) owns the copyrights. And your computer if you install any of their crap.