This farrago of imagination, hallucination and inspired lunacy was put together over a couple of weeks by some really Hoopy Cool Froods from my Friends group. I haven't changed the layout of the text, or the punctuation. It is presented here in its original form. Each block of text was a fresh contribution to the narrative, supplied by someone or other. The layout is an accurate reflection of the original text, and of the singularity of the story, which was put together collaboratively, with no editorial interference whatsoever, by the above-mentioned Hoopy Guys. Try not to make too much sense of the story, nor even of the chapter headings: that way madness lies. Just go with it and ENJOY!

[Thrill seekers: this is probably not the type of Chain Story you might be hoping for, although daisy chains and Walnut Whips are mentioned in the final chapter]

Jabberwock

Chapter One, or By Way of an Introduction

To all intents and purposes, everything was normal. But then there was a shuffling, walking, running kind of sound outside, a murmur from the foot of the stairs, and a sudden, insistent knocking on the door. Somebody or something was in a furious hurry. Clarence was very surprised when he...

...heard the murmur, he hadn't realised that stairs had feet and furthermore, that they could talk (or at least murmur). Shivering at the sudden cold as he hauled himself out of bed, he shambled across the room to the door. He reached up and was just about to pull the bolt across when....

...Clarence noticed a light shining under the door. He stepped back as the door handle turned. He was just about to call out when.....

...the clock struck seventeen and the room turned into some kind of...

Chapter Two - The Wreck of the Narcissus

Ghouls party, with Clarence as the guest of honour. He is introduced to ....

the Head Ghoul and most of the Perfects, the Head's Mistress and a flock of lunatic ravens. They all eat lots of cake, made with only the juiciest brains, and drink tons of fresh, warm blood. The blood was supplied by...

.. Red Cloaks Enterprises. Specialists in Vintage Sanguinary Products......

...joining a team of sixty virgins, strapped into sixty secondhand blood donor machines, to ensure that the blood supply was always fresh, even between kills, (when of course the blood is absolutely at its best).

Clarence noticed a head in a glass jar over by the entrance. 'Who's that?', he asked one of the Perfects, who was wearing a black dress slit so as to reveal most of a perfect leg. It was a pity she only had one. Her title was honorary.

'Why, that's the Head', she replied.

'And what are all those birds doing here?', asked Clarence. 'Why they're his little helpers', answered the Head's Mistress, who had come over to Clarence to...

..examine his veins for possible snacks in between meals. Please relax darling you won't feel a thing, well not much. She bends across him and......

...'if I could just lick your arm a little' she murmurs...she gently turns his wrist to see more clearly...

... only to find a crucifix tattooed on his wrist. She screams and....

...farts, quite disrupting the party. Clarence coughed and spluttered and then...

... ran out for air. Finding himself in another......

dimension entirely, although he could still hear the foot of the stairs murmuring, irascibly. 'That's odd', he thought to himself, 'and there's still a knocking at the door, even though I'm in a new dimension entirely. Should I see what the knocking wants, I wonder? That might be difficult, because I seem to be in...

..drag. If I try walking in these high heels, I'll trip over this gorgeous gown and break my neck."

It was clear to Clarence that whoever was responsible for transporting him to this place must be some kind of psycho, probably with a grudge. He racked his brains, trying to remember what he might have done to deserve this blinging Versace torment. Then he recalled that fateful evening when...

..he was sitting in the cabin of the Narcissus, in a howling storm, with waves the size of the Eiffel Tower, I mean really, really huge, and heavy rains lashing down, out in the middle of the ocean, smoking a pipe, like all tough sailors do, and thinking to himself, 'this sentence is too long and there are far too many commas in it', sort of, when there came a knocking at the door. 'Who or what can that be, in a howling storm, with waves the size of the Eiffel Tower, I mean really, really, huge, and heavy rains lashing down, out here in the middle of the ocean?' he thought, as an iceberg floated past...

...bouncing up and down in the huge seas, I mean really, really, huge seas, huge beyond your wildest dreams, I mean you just won't believe how huge those seas were, like bouncing like I don't know what, like I really, really don't know what, like you'd never believe how much I don't know what, like I don't know what beyond your wildest dreams, when...

the door opened and...

Winnie the Pooh crawled in. Pooh was soaking wet.

Clarence wrapped him in a flannel nightgown, got him to sit quietly, and waited to hear Pooh's story.

"There was a huge rainstorm in the Hundred Acre Wood," Pooh began.
"The water levels kept rising and rising, until they seeped into my house and lifted up my bed (with me in it), and carried me out across the Wood and down to the sea. I didn't dare leave my bed for fear of drowning. I've been floating in my bed on the ocean for days now, and I'm glad that you..."

".....let me in." Pooh sneezed and wiped his nose on his sleeve

"My bed was sinking and just as I go to the ......."

...toilet off the starboard side, this shark comes along and bites the legs off the bed, causing it to capsize, and there I was in the water, in the middle of the night, with my fur all wet and sharks and woozles and, and heffalumps lurking around, waiting for me to drown. But then I saw the light from the cabin of your ship, and I swam towards it and, well, here I am."

Winnie the Pooh looked hopeful and added, "I don't suppose you've got a little smackerel of something?"

Clarence obligingly smacked him with a mackerel. Though he was only trying to help, Winnie the Pooh didn't see it that way, and from then on, their relationship was strained. Winnie the P stormed off into the storm.

Now here was Clarence, in a Versace gown, in a different dimension, standing five foot nothing in his six-inch heels before another door, behind which he could hear stairs murmuring, murmuring irascibly, and something dreadful on the far side of that door was knocking, and knocking, and knocking, with the sound of nails being driven into a Clarence-sized coffin lid.

Clarence wondered if Winnie the Pooh had returned to seek revenge for the mackerel incident. Unable to bear it any longer, he shouted, "come in, damn you!"

The door creaked open. There, standing under the lintel, was...

..a terrible reminder of that dreadful night when the Narcissus went down in the stormy seas, with all handstands on deck. It was...

None other than Winnie the...

...Pooh who looked really mad and furious. He glared at Clarence and...

...pulled out a mackarel! "HA ha!" the maniac teddy bear cried. And now it is my turn!" He walked forward, swinging the smackeral at Clarence who...

...luckily, had his own fish with him. He produced two Skate, tied them to his feet, and made a graceful escape down the iceberg. The ice sloped upwards at the base, and Clarence launched himself into the air, performed a pirouette and plunged into the icy water, vaguely wondering how he'd managed to skate down a lettuce.

Splash! went....

...Clarence, as he went down to feed the fishes, (he was kind like that), and he was just about to go down for the third time in the savage waters when he was washed up on some handy nearby black rocks, feeling like an absolute wreck...

...when suddenly the story folded back on itself and he found himself back in the privacy of his own little room, in a Versace gown, standing five foot nothing in his six-inch heels, listening to the ominous sound of hammers being banged determinedly and threateningly on a Clarence-sized coffin behind the door. It sounded as if Winnie the Pooh was coming for him, as the stairs creaked and grumbled and moaned and swore like troopers.

He decided make a run for it. He ran towards the window, tripped up, and went flying...

through the window. 'Oh dear. I can't fly' is what Clarence thought, just before he suddenly sprouted wings. 'hmm that's new' he thought. He then looked down, and could see that the person knocking on his front door was actually....

none other than...

....his mother-in-law. He shrieked, making an almost girly noise, which caught the attention of the lady in question, who looked up and...

wondered what Clarence had done with her daughter. She hadn't seen her for almost two days and she was getting very suspicious and all this flying about in women's clothing wasn't going to put her off or stop her finding out what had happened to her daughter, oh, no! Whatever he had done, he was going to pay for it and then some! So she...

...kicked Clarence. "You creep!!!" she screamed. "Where’s my daughter?" …Clarence was all confused and had no idea what to...

..do or say. He started scratching his head, wondering what exactly he had done with his wife. It was a bit of a shock really. He had no idea he was married...but he must be if he recognised this crazy old hag who was beating him up as his mother-in-law. He tried hard to remember who his wife was and drifted into his memories, completing ignoring the mad old bat when suddenly....

...out of the blue...

...a pancake came flying through the air and hit him on the head. He lost his balance and went plummeting to the ground. This...

Chapter Three - Christmas Story

..made him think of the song:

although he wasn't sure if he'd got it right, or what it meant. He certainly didn't remember any plaisir. All he seemed to be getting was the chagrin.

And now the dreaded Pancake Gang were after him too, shouting at him to take his wife back, she was as bad as her mother, and was reducing the big tough Pancake Gang almost to tears. On top of that, it had started to snow, pure white fluffy snow just like on a Christmas card. He hobbled and skidded off in the direction of...

Santa's Workshop, where he recognised there were a lot of people even shorter than he was. I'm tall at last! he thought, I always wanted to be tall and now I am...

...He turned round, and towered over the Pancake Gang, who'd followed him into the workshop.

'Take that!' he cried and squirted them with lemon juice, sugar and honey. Immediately the Gang shrivelled up and melted to nothingness, whilst a tiny voice on the wind whispered, 'They're not the same without Robbie Williams...'

'Oy!' yelled a dwarf, 'you can't come in here, squirting stuff around like that! There's North Pole Health and Safety Regulations to consider, up here with all the ice and other hazardous materials which may be lying around'

The dwarf ran up and slapped him with his clipboard on his...

head. Clarence ducked, and looked sheepish for some reason, although he still felt very tall.

He wondered why the dwarf was wearing a clipboard on his head. Then he realised. It was because...

of the fact that the clipboard was in actual fact a mortar board, and in fact...these dwarfs were lecturers in a school. A school of santa claus helpers. Now you might wonder where Clarence got all of this information....and you would be right to wonder. But the sign above the dwarf was really the key factor in defining all of this. It said....

...which helped Clarence work it out a bit. Behind the lecturer he could see an open door to Santa's Workshop, where the dwarfs and elves were working furiously to get the toys ready for Christmas. He wasn't sure why they were furious, but they certainly didn't look very pleased. To the left was the door to the Skhool. He chose the...

Skhool door. Opening it, he saw that Darling Dwayne, the Daredevil Dwarf was lecturing to a full classroom about his harrowing adventures in the woods of Winnipeg, and his battle with the bear that attacked him out of the...

attacked him out of the cupboard in the uni's science labs. Clarence was very bemused by all of this. And he wondered whether he was still asleep, and dreaming this whole thing up, so he banged his head against the door. And ouch it hurt. And no he was still here...but whilst nursing his sore head he looked up, and found the entire classroom glaring at him. "You broke the door! Thats a heavy penalty! Now you have to.....

...mend it because if someone comes along and makes our stairs murmer and lose their feet and want to knock on the door there'll be no door for them and it's not a good no door but a bad no door and we don't have time to spray the lecture hall to get rid of bad no-doors because if we stop lerning even for a second the skhoolteecher will wake up and beat us and...

...and if he sees the bear it'll be even worse he'll go mad cos he carn't bear them and he'll get the other teechers out of the common room, where everyfing's very common, that's why the they have teechers there and...

...bears...

bears in the cupboards, as they were all over the place, polar bears of course as this was the North Pole, and teechers and lecherers sitting in big armchairs, sleeping. Clarence was feeling bewildered by all this commotion, and so...

...he curled up in a ball under one of the desks and shut his eyes very tight, and pretended he was...

somewhere else but he wasn't he was still in the Skhool lecher hall with a lot of angry students who picked him up, (his head hit the ceiling of the little wooden shack), made him mend the door and sat him down at one of the desks to start at the lerning work. The old teecher didn't wake up.

This was all very strange. Clarence found it hard to connect the word 'student' with the word 'work', until he saw that for these students working consisted of staring out of the window at the snow, sleeping off their hangovers, fighting, drawing rude pictures, writing love-letters to each other in their notebooks, shouting at each other, getting drunk, snogging in the corner, and occasionally tiptoeing up to the old teecher sleeping under his black gown and mortar board at the High Desk to see if he was still alive or dead. This reminded Clarence of Uni, (except he still couldn't quite reconcile the words 'student' and 'attendance at lectures'), so he felt quite at home.

Suddenly a bell sounded and the teecher woke up in a cloud of dust that had settled on him and shouted 'OUT'. Everyone ran towards the door, but it wouldn't open. Clarence, not the best handyman in the world, had nailed it firmly shut. The students milled around in annoyance and panic. Then...

...somebody or something outside started knocking on the door...

and there came the sound of bells ringing high in the sky. The other students stared at each other horrified, and then ran to hide under the tables, while the lecturer started bumbling around and cursing to himself quietly. Clarence was quite startled, and not quite sure what to do, so he.....

...whipped out his trusty...

emergency-armadillo

..because thats the one thing everyone needs to carry - as you never know when it might come into use! But staring at it, Clarence wondered.....

if it's true what they say: is an armadillo really crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside?

He stood there (five foot nothing in his six-inch heels), distracted by this thought, when...

when someone suddenly punched a hole through the door....After the initial shock of that happening, Clarence suddenly saw a rather scary face through the hole. Now it wasn't scary in your traditional sense of scary. In fact it was a pretty female face. Long dark brown hair. Pretty brown eyes. But it was scary because it was the face of his wife
and this scared Clarence witless until he gathered himself together and realised it was really the friendly ruddy face of Father Christmas, who was shouting something at him through the hole in the door...

"Get out of the way, you dolt! he shouted, "I want to get to the loo, and you're standing in my way."

Clarence stood aside out of respect for the old man, whose bladder was probably pretty painful for him.

Father Christmas hobbled through to the loo, did his business, then (in a considerably better mood) apologised for his brusqueness earlier. "You have no idea the pressures that weigh on me at this time of year," F.C. said sadly. "Meeting the payroll for the elves alone would be enough to give an old man grey...

hair, and don't mention the reindeer or making sure the toys are ready or having to negotiate all those chimneys all over the world in one night."

Clarence didn't mention the reindeer or making sure the toys were ready or having to negotiate all those chimneys all over the world in one night. He couldn't have, even of he wanted to, for suddenly there came a flash of thunder and a rumble of lightning, and lo and behold...

Chapter Four - The Land of the Ending

he was London Transported by bus without a may I or a by your leave to the Land of The Ending, (otherwise known as End-Land or Land’s-End) where
if you stood on tiptoe and looked West across the sea, beyond England, you could almost convince yourself you could see the outline of America...

..."it isn't Easter yet, but I could have sworn I saw an egg," said Winnie The Peg (no relation) from the wild woods of Canada, who'd stopped being Clarence's cross mother-in-law when she found out her only daughter had been out shopping all the time, and anyway she was married to someone else entirely....

..."There’s loads of yummy chocolate Easter eggs here,” she squealed, her happiness knowing no bounds ...how can that be because I could've sworn that"…

..There was a lot of swearing going on. It got worse.

The giant, shouting clowns and the brass bands playing selections from Jesus Christ Superstar while very drunk and out of tune probably didn't help the mood.

Gradually everyone congregated to the small shed at the bottom of the garden ...

But not before Clarence had made daisy chains for them all, and had eaten his first Walnut Whip.

Then the world outside began to disappear and the shed transformed itself magically into yet another infinite dimension where everyone was free and everything was good and there was no need for arguments or fighting or war or poverty, where everyone got on well and Chelsea never won the Football Premiership ever again.

There were yummy chocolate eggs and Walnut Whips for everyone. This was largely thanks to the little deus ex machina whom Clarence had found resting in the washing machine after working so hard throughout this story, and had made firm friends with…

…and so they all lived Super-Coolly and Hoopily Ever After. I mean really mind-bogglingly Super-Coolly and Hoopily. I mean so mind-bogglingly Super-Coolly and Hoopily that you couldn’t even begin to imagine...