Affe #202

About Affe mit Waffe Deprecated

Everything happened on a golden afternoon. Lewis Mandroll was lying on the summer meadow enjoying his afternoon nap when he was rudely awakened. Someone had rushed past him, cursing loudly, and tripped over his face. Lewis rubbed his nose in pain and looked after the troublemaker. From behind it seemed like a white-tufted-ear marmoset, but he wore a tailcoat and kept glancing frantically at a giant pocket watch. Lewis shouted angrily after him, but the marmoset was out of earshot. He didn't want to take the slap just like that and rushed after the other monkey to confront him, but at the foot of a large banana tree all trace of the other primate was lost. The only thing that stood out was a hole in the ground that appeared to lead to an underground passage. Lewis frowned, monkeys lived in the treetops, otherwise at best on the ground. Going underground wasn't their preferred way. He approached and eyed the entrance suspiciously. Just as he decided to let it go and get back to his nap, he felt the ground give way beneath him. With an embarrassing shrill scream, he fell into the bottomless blackness...

When he woke up again, he didn't know how much time had passed. Surprisingly he hadn't seriously injured himself apart from a few bruises. He looked around the room: There was an old wooden floor beneath him and a series of doors of various sizes were built into the wall on one side. Unfortunately, the largest was only big enough for a small marmoset to fit through. On the other side of the room the whole wall was a bar. Since he didn't have any other choice, he went to the bar. There he sat down, but no bartender was in sight. Just in front of him on the counter was a row of small bottles with liquids of different colors, all labelled with the words "DRINK ME!". Lewis opened the first bottle and sniffed it cautiously – the white drink inside was definitely a Piña Coloba. He then examined all the other glass bottles: Bloody Monkey, Baboonhattan, Gorilloni, Chimplet, Mangarosa, and Mint Mandrillep. They all smelled fine, but why they were bottled was a mystery to him. Perhaps the reason was the absence of the bartender. He settled on the Gorilloni and took a big gulp. He was fine at first, but after the second sip he felt light-headed and slightly dizzy – and then the bottle in his hand started to get bigger. Suddenly Lewis realized that it wasn't the bottle getting bigger, but that he was gradually getting smaller. The bar stool he was sitting on also kept getting bigger and before it was too high, he hastily jumped to the floor. As he stood on the floor and looked up at the bar counter, which now towered over him like a mountain, he growled in displeasure. He should have put the Gorilloni on the floor first...

However, it obviously had one advantage. He was now even smaller than a marmoset and would fit through the door – after it had taken him hours to finally cross the room. He used the second smallest door because he couldn't open the others because of their large sizes. After stepping through, Lewis was on the other side in the middle of the forest. Surprised, he turned and saw that the door had really led him out of a tree. Just as he was deciding which direction to go, a Cheshire Wombat appeared on a branch. It told Lewis he was invited to a party and should leave as soon as possible, pointing to a house at the end of the clearing. In the same way it appeared out of nowhere, the wombat gradually disappeared again, leaving only the grin to float in the air of its own accord. Lewis thought he had often seen a wombat without a grin, but never a grin without a wombat. However, since this was no reason to linger, he set off.

When he arrived at said house, the next surprise awaited him. They had been expecting him for some time. The impatient host, a lion-tailed macaque, wore a large top hat with a ribbon that read "In this style 10/6". He pushed Lewis into the chair at the head of the table and told him, they finally wanted to celebrate his special day, because today was his unbirthday. The macaque uncorked a bottle of champagne, served him cake, and poured him tea. After that, he began to add rum generously into the tea, while changing places on the table at all times. Lewis felt dizzy again, though he didn't know if it was the tea this time or the monkey hopping around, babbling personal remarks, asking unanswerable riddles, and reciting nonsensical poems. Hours later he asked politely whether evening was approaching, and teatime was over. It was revealed to him that they would have tea – and rum – all day long because time stood still forever, at teatime. Tired of being bombarded with riddles, Lewis said it was the dumbest tea party he had ever been to and started drinking the rum straight from the bottle. Unconsciousness plunged him into blissful oblivion.

When he woke up again, he was back in the meadow, under the big banana tree – but now there wasn't a hole to be found anywhere. Maybe he shouldn't have drunk all the booze his monkey friends offered him yesterday. "Well," Lewis Mandroll thought, "life, what is it but a dream?"

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