The majority of those rushing in were, of course, destroyed instantly. It is a sad fact that when ludicrous numbers of people rush into a small enclosed area (such as Mary's room was) there is very little hope of any of them coming out again, much less in one piece, much less not in a paste. If the tidal waves of maniacal fans smashing repeatedly against your back while smacked up tight against a sturdily built wall didn't get you, one of Mary's earlier forays into Cubist-inspired sculpture entitled Many Strategically Placed Sharp Things most certainly would.          "Step right up, step right up!" a voice cried sometime later on in the day. "The one and only, the all-clever and slam-sational, the drab fantastic Mad Hatter's personal effects for sale or trade, trade or sale, right here and now, and now and here!"          Usually the salesman would pause and take a sip of clear, odorless liquid before continuing. For dramatic effect. He did so again today, expertly.          "Make me an offer, ladies and gentlemen! Make me an offer I can't refuse and you're guaranteed not to be sent away dissatisfied! Genuine, certified, smab-diddly artifacts, straight from the horse's stable, the lion's mouth, the dragon's lair!"          "Oh boy!" they were shouting, rubbing their greedy little fanatical hands together. Parents' jackets were tugged excitedly by their greedy little fanatical children's hands like they were at the mall looking at this Christmas's action figure display. And the parents smiled, happy to oblige, tattered wallets in hand, rushing forward. "Hooray!" some people shouted from the back. "Hooray!" shouted some others. It was a good day to be a fan of this Mad Hatter, they thought. A good day indeed.          The salesman – whose name, few people knew, was Ed – beamed with delight. Almost as though were he not getting almost all the profits (there were always the occasional thug and hoodlum to be paid in any successful business venture) from this endeavor, he would still clamber at the opportunity to hand out these precious items like hard-earned gifts on Christmas morning. Whether this was true or not was and is entirely beside the point. His eyes did twinkle like a proud father's, though. It's amazing what a little Vaseline can do for one's sincerity.          "Watch your step! Watch your step!" he called out as the crowd shuffled forward eagerly, murmuring among itself. He stroked his long gray beard and thumbed his suspenders, smoothing his neatly pressed shirt out over his round belly. He laughed joyfully as he watched them.          In the chaos which follows any event of utter idiocy and devastation – such as, for instance, ten thousand insanely obsessed folk piling into a dangerous room filled with dangerous objects with another ninety thousand equally insane folk right on their heels – there comes an opportunity. A moment of vulnerability emerges. Of pure emotional nakedness which threatens to draw people, nations, worlds -- and sometimes maybe even souls closer together -- if somebody somewhere doesn't do something about it.          So it is not the least bit astonishing then that shortly after, in the wake of this small devotional apocalypse, that a man (or a woman, of course -- but more frequently it is a man) of the thrifty and shifty and shady sort could happen upon this scene. And if you looked closely, behind the reserved mask of gentle sadness and compassion he (or she -- but more frequently it is a he) projects to the other bystanders, you can distinctly see in his eyes, little twirling, bright green dollar signs, getting bigger and bigger.          "That's right! That's right! Step right up, ladies and gentleman, step right up!"          He flashed a wide, toothy grin; twinkling gold crowns and silver fillings around the room like a laser show at a rock concert.          And he would throw down his inflatable podium, immediately exploding with air, shooting up into a big bloated parody of the picture on the box, and he would tighten up his velvet waist coat, and straighten up his velvet top hat to the fancy crooked way he likes it and he would begin, yet again, to do what he does best – to capitalize.          "What's that thing? That shiny thing!" a young excited man said, dropping some bills and change onto the counter before pointing wildly at a black board with small items set into it. He braced himself as the throbbing crowd pounded at his back, nearly choking him against the guard rail.          "This?" the salesman said, with a flick of his wrist. "This is a pocket watch!" He held it up grandly over his head for everyone to see. Momentarily there was a pause, a rift in the commotion while the crowd gawked. When the salesman lowered his hand, the scuffling and jostling resumed, but in a slightly more respectful manner. The salesman leaned in close to the interested party and nudged him conspiratorially, like he was about to give away a grand secret. "Carried by the Mad Hatter himself, you see. For many years, he carried it, he did."          "Oh!" gasped the onlooker, with excitement glimmering in his eyes. Those directly behind him pushed and craned their necks to see the watch.          "But don't let its rather ordinary appearance fool you, my good man. No, sir, that would be a crime! A sin! A travesty!" He paused for another sip of that clear, odorless liquid and then abruptly launched into it again with even more energy than before. "This watch has been through more than you or I or him or her or she or he or they or them could ever dream of experiencing in either life or death!"          Jaws slackened and eyes widened. A pair of underwear sailed past the salesman's face. He seemed not to notice.          "The Mad Hatter," the salesman hissed. "Jack of all trades, the Strange Queen of Chaos, the Sad Duke of Dichotomy; Time-Traveler, Mumbo-Jumbo Master, Logic Unraveler! Truth Speaker! Sneaky Creeper! Who is all these things but this one man? Can you tell me?"          Nobody dared answer, in case they might break the spell.          "Your Mad Hatter's existence now is a collection of odd jobs, strange little tasks and angry tirades. Do you think this was always so?"          The crowd whispered in discussion with itself.          "No," the salesman said, silencing them before they could produce an answer. "No, he was not always as you know him, as you love him now. Not always the creative, intensely brilliant, king of gloom you would trade your first born for a cheap, breathy half hour with. In a heartbeat," he added. "Who was he before? Can any of you tell me who your Mad Hatter was? Who was Mary Holiday?"          He looked earnestly around the room, moving his head, meeting every face levelly with his gaze. None had an answer.          "I'll tell you," he said, taking another drink, "what this lonely golden watch has told me."          The crowd looked on, puzzled.

"When he began, that incredibly long time ago, Mary was quite at ease with his death, you see. It seemed he had for once come out ahead against the universe. You commit suicide, you get a magical hat, you get to zip around time, you get to do whatever you desire and live in seclusion, away from the prying, hurting hands of humans.          "Ah," Mary would say to himself about death. "This is the life."          Here was something he could enjoy. After a life of sadness, guilt and tragedy, going around injecting random bizarre elements into people's lives while staying removed from them and free from harm was a pretty good deal. He was free to work on all the things that interested him without interference or complaint, his only interruption being the occasional (and often mean-spirited) antic.          But soon things began to wear him down again. Sure, he had everything he thought he ever wanted. To be left alone and to be outside time; without a worry or concern, no longer surrounded by the daily grind of petty problems and disputes -- still he began to feel the familiar gnawing of restless wanting.          Meaning.          It was a cold October morning and he was dressed in thin clothes that the wind tore through easily, chilling his frail body. He had come out of his hat in the middle of a vast apple orchard, and it took him several hours to walk to the nearest form of public transportation and he spent the rest of the day on the bus. He slept that night on a park bench, for traveling in the real world always made him sleepy. In the dawn he traveled to the north, into a small rural countryside with dirt roads and deserted corn fields and found Kennington Road.          It amused him vaguely, the terrible humor he could throw upon people that never would have been possible had he actually belonged in whatever time and place he was in. You're completely free to be as big an idiot or fool or -- more often -- complete asshole you like when you have the security of zipping off to another dimension the moment you were faced with the possibility of actually having to take responsibility for your actions. No fear, no consequences.          But this day, as he crunched down hard, packed roads with his cold hands in his pockets, he wasn't taking as much delight in it as usual. Sure, he wandered out into traffic a couple of times yesterday just to frighten people, but it lacked the freshness it once had. It was cold here, and yes, he could do whatever he liked. Whatever selfish whim possessed him he was free to carry out. But what difference would it make? A little while later he'd be gone, and the lives he had the opportunity to touch would be gone from him, far away and just as unreachable as every past moment.          He approached a farmhouse. Actually, it wasn't much of a farmhouse, more of a large regular house with wood siding, a long gravel driveway and a big three car garage. And he could hear the music almost as soon as he set foot in the driveway. Muffled, tinny, shaky drums and guitars. He kicked his way through small snow banks and knocked hard on a green garage door with smoked-up windows. When there was no answer, he lifted the door himself and then the music did stop finally, leaving the dry crackle of amplifiers hanging in the cold air.          There was a moment of mutual observation. The band looked over the stranger who had rudely opened the garage door in the middle of their practice time. Cold and shuddering while maintaining a steady glower about him, Mary stood there. Long coat, top-hatted and dreadfully emaciated under brittle white skin that gave the impression if you touched it, it might crumble off in your hands.          And Mary looked them over as well: a tidy, neatly groomed Christian Rock Band. It was really the smell that gave them away, he thought. Disinfectant and repression. Like a serial killer's medicine cabinet.          "Can we help you?" a short, curly-haired guitarist said, cocking her head slightly as she spoke. She smiled, showing her braces slightly between her thin lips.          "Uh," said Mary, raising an eyebrow and sniffing the air slightly. "That seems unlikely. Are you guys the…"          They looked at him with questioning smiles.          "The, uh, God band?" he said finally.          They chuckled politely. The drummer set down his drumsticks and said, "We're a Christian rock and roll band, sir, yes. We call ourselves In His Name. You must have seen our ad on the church bulletin…"          "This has always confused me," Mary said. "Are Christians technically allowed to rock? It doesn't seem right somehow. Either way, I'm pretty sure there's gotta be at least something in the Bible against rolling. And doing the two together? In that order? Woo-eee…" He trailed off.          They smiled further at him. "Can we help you?" the girl said again.          "Actually," Mary said, "yeah. Maybe you can."          He pulled out this very watch, the one I have here and he sat down on one of the large guitar amplifiers, staring at it.          "What's God got to say about destiny?" he asked.          "Destiny is just another word for God's will," said the curly-haired girl again.          "And what is God's will?"          "Well," she said, rolling her eyes a little bit as if this question had an obvious answer. "God's will is unknowable and besides, it's different for all his creatures."          "No, I mean," Mary stood up. "For me. See, I've been having a few problems lately and I'm thinking that maybe there's some sort of bigger picture here that I'm not seeing, you know?" He looked at them. They didn't know. He continued anyhow. "Like maybe, if there is a God, that he's got some sort of ineffable plan going here that were I just a tiny bit more clued in on, could make life – or whatever – that much more bearable. You understand?"          "I'm not sure I do."          "Well, you wanna make out?"          "What?!"          "I've heard good things about Christian girls."          "Excuse me?"          "Okay, look," Mary digressed, "you get up in the morning, right? You put your clothes on, you brush your teeth, you go about your day. You then spend most of the day figuring out how to infiltrate the offices of Modern Latex and Rubber and replacing their pens with angry roosters. You do it, you go back into your hat and you wait for the next job to come along." He slumped down onto the amplifier again. "What then?"          At this point the drummer and the bassist went into the house, leaving Mary and the girl alone.          "Mister," she said, sitting down next to him. She looked as though she was going to put her hand on his leg reassuringly, but she hesitated and put it down on the amplifier and slowly reeled it back in towards her over the next couple of minutes so as not to seem impolite. "You seem awfully troubled about something. And I don't think there's anything I can say to make it all better for you, but I can tell you that faith helps you through the rough patches."          "Faith in what?"          "The Lord, Our Father. His plan for us, His creation."          "Does apathy count as faith?"          "I don't think so," she said.          "Can't apathy be construed as trust? Apathy is unquestioning, and that's what faith is, isn't it?"          "It's not coming from the same place."          "Oh. I see. Rats."          "You have to actively trust the Lord, that His voice will guide you and his hand will touch and support you through all you endure."          "So, basically, what you're saying," Mary said, "is that no matter what my problems are, no matter how hopeless or meaningless I may feel my existence is, that it's peachy because everything's working out just as the Lord wants it to."          "Basically, yes, but it's—"          Mary stopped her with a sigh.          The girl shrugged. "I find great comfort in that," she said. "Like a strong fatherly embrace."          "Really?" said Mary, propping his elbow up on the amplifier. "I find it disturbing and uncomfortable. Like being raped by Santa Claus."          "That's terrible!"          Mary stood up and paced some more. "Seriously, that's what it feels like. It's having something that doesn't even exist screw you over and violate you. Is that fair? Who do you have to blame then? Who do you have to complain to that you're running around doing dicky jobs for dicks for centuries? An all powerful, compassionate and caring God? No. Satan? No. You've got jack. You've got bureaucracy and shit -- the two fundamental building blocks of the universe. Senselessness and meaninglessness rolled into a single grain of sand balled up in wet newspaper, insufficiently postaged and dropped in the river to be ignored by a senile cave fish."          It took her a while to digest that one. "The Lord is all the meaning I need," she said eventually.          "Sure, yeah," Mary said. "He's all you need right now. Of course. But wait till you get to my position, baby. What's going to happen when, after years of thinking smugly that you've got it all sorted out, all the pieces put together and then something's going to come along and change all that, and you'll be fucked."          "We're back!" called the other two members of the band as the door into the garage opened. "With snacks!"          Mary turned and threw the watch in one fluid motion without any warning whatsoever. His pocket watch – this pocket watch I'm holding right now – soared through the air like a small gold comet, its tail sparkling behind it through the dusty air of the garage.          And as the watch traveled, so did Mary's mind. And where it went it would not be again for what would seem an eternity.          This is not enough, he thought simply, because all revelations come in small packages. I am dissatisfied.          Scintillating through the air like some sort of demon stream of future glamour, the pocket watch connected with the bassist's head with the force of all of Mary's motivation behind it. And out exploded a great cloud of furious boredom, cracking the lens of the pocket watch as it skidded back across the ground, to a halt right before Mary's feet. And he took a large breath of this fresh, real air and the cloud sucked into his lungs, filling him with a sense of reckless indifference smothered in the gray/salmon spackle of scaly apathy.          And when he finally stooped to pick up the watch, amid the commotion of the band members trying to help their unconscious friend, he pushed back the cover with a single finger and saaw that it had stopped at the time of impact: 11:11."          And as he walked away from that house with the Christian rock and roll band in its garage – one member down, two left alone – and through the neighborhoods of green-roofed townhouses and sacked hedges, he let this new stage in his existence muddle and hold him."          The salesman held up the watch again, all energy in the room focused on it.          "This watch I have here," he said. "This watch is a symbol of this stage. The one you are all witnessing the beginning of the end of now. His great tedium, his true boredom. When all he had endured was not enough to remove him and all he wanted was not enough to motivate him."

"Is that true?" the strawberry-haired girl said to Mary with big dewy white galaxy-wide eyes. Mary and the girl stood far back in the crowd somewhere, buried behind a thick sea of people slightly more anxious than them to throw down their money and be taken.           "I'd say so," Mary said, "but he took out all the good bits. Like when I threw the watch at the bassist? It wasn't quite that easy. Oh no, I had to throw the drummer and one of those big heavy plastic water cans at the guy before he actually lost consciousness. But I can see why he made the changes. For dramatic purposes."          "Really?" said the girl in an interested fashion.          "Yeah, that's the problem with being a legend," Mary said, leaning back casually on some drunk man. "A lot of the really cool shit gets lost over time."          They were jostled a little bit. Mary took the time to deliberately elbow some guy in the back of the head, very, very hard.          She had been dancing around the question for a while now but decided to come out with it. "Aren't you the least bit upset they're selling off all your stuff?"          "THEY'RE SELLING OFF ALL MY STUFF?!"          That wasn't the reaction she was expecting. "What did you think we were in line for?" she said, dumbfounded.          "I thought this was the line for Phantom tickets!"          "Why did you think he was telling the story about you?"          "I thought he was warming the crowd up!"          Mary deserted this line of conversation and clawed his way through the crowd and up to the front. He had the advantage, as most dead people had not yet entirely lost the will to live. He jabbed the inflatable podium with his cane and it shrank miserably into a little torn section of plastic.          "What the hell are you DOING?" he demanded. "This is my STUFF!" He said "my STUFF!" again a second later to emphasize that it was his stuff.          The salesman was too shocked to respond right away, and during this delay Mary leered around. There wasn't really much of his stuff left to speak of. Most of the interesting things were gone, the posters, the paintings, his artwork. Left were only a few of the heavier bits of furniture, such as his giant skull bed and his Craftmatic abyss. Though upon quick inspection he noticed it had been emptied.          The crowd was confused by this odd man, carrying on about the things in the room like he was somehow attached to them. Almost like they were his. But the Mad Hatter, he was taller, wasn't he? And his hair was a little more enthusiastically wild, his face less pale and drawn, considerably less panic in his eyes. And his posture --          "Whoah there!" yelled the salesman, trying unsuccessfully to squeeze himself between Mary and the rest of the room. Mary spidered over him in gangly strides, probing every inch of the bare, cold room with his glare. "Whoah, son. You just get back in line over there and you'll have your chance to make a bid, son. I promise you that, I do."          "Oh my God!" Mary hollered, grabbing the sides of his head. "My five-eighths of my Fractions Quarterly back issues! You sold it! You sold all of it!"          "And at rock-bottom prices!" said the salesman, with both hands on Mary's chest trying to stop him from pacing. "Don't worry, we'll find you something, we will."          "And the videos from Live and Leather con '75?"          "Some woman from North Dakota snapped those up for a tidy sum just hours ago, now please, sir, behind the barrier!"          The crowd murmured in watch, and the suspicion was growing among them that perhaps – maybe – this might be the owner of the room. And they all knew quite well who the owner of the room was. Still, they had never actually seen the Mad Hatter himself, now that they thought about it. They'd heard about him, yes. Oh, many a delightful story, but --          "Right here! Right here! There was a little chained metal box with Will to Live carved into the side. Where did it go? I need it!"          "Sir, I'm afraid I'm going to have to again ask you to leave. Are you hearing me? Do you understand me? Please go, sir. Please go now."          But Mary paid no attention to him and continued pacing and muttering things about guitars and how long it took to dry out those elephant carcasses properly and with minimum wrinkling.          Finally a woman in the crowd took some initiative. "He's the Mad Hatter!" she yelled above everything else. "Get him!"          Mary barely had time to look up before the crowd jerked forward into the room like a rabid animal, finally certain of the vulnerability of its prey.

The bunny was shoved violently into the control room, skidded across the floor through the fog, clearing a little path through it which slowly refilled with fog again shortly after he had crashed into the wall. Maxine, who had been delicately entangled with a man in Mary's command chair leapt up immediately as a large man stalked in. His eyes were a deep emerald green, and his skin was broken up, like a cheap American imitation of real skin. It was cracking and crumbling like packed, hardened dirt and coming off in wide chunks in places. She stood between the man and where the bunny lay under a veil of fog.          "Stop right where you are," she said. "You make one more move in this general direction and I'll smack you ass-wise."          The man did not answer. Instead his skin's deterioration quickened. His eyes melted like tiny pools of wax into cloudy lidless black marble eyes and his exterior -- no longer even resembling skin, caked on and red -- throbbed and quaked like a hatching egg. And then in one instant it shattered, clouds of dust and dirt and God only knows what else spraying off in all directions, revealing him.          He was not a man, that was certain.          His new skin was translucent, with spikes all over his undulating gills. He looked to be about a thousand times larger than his body had been designed to be, his anatomy defying forming its own awkward logic. Eel-like, looking like a diseased snake trying hard to appear human through posture alone, it stood hunched over on its coiled tail, considerably taller than anyone else in the room.          Maxine had a sudden flash of déjà vu and stumbled backwards, bumping into the display Mary had put up earlier. It was the gray statue he had pulled out of his empty grave many months ago. He had nailed together a rickety shelf and painted "BAD OMEN" in red on the wall over it with a giant flashing arrow pointing down towards the statue itself.          Maxine stared at the statue, looked up at the slithering mass in front of her and back down at the ugly figure on the sculpture. They were definitely of the same breed, if not the same thing entirely.          "Here I am, for Mary Holiday," the creature said. Its voice sounded as though it had crawled a great distance just to shudder and die two steps in front of Maxine. "Do you know that you are very strong?" - Grover the Monster at the End of this Book.          "I," Maxine said and gave up on that sentence. She crouched down slowly, so as not to attract the creature's attention. Its head bobbed and weaved and his now clear black eyes hid where exactly its attention was turned.          Maxine shook the bunny a little through the fog. "Are you okay? Can you hear me?"          "He is not harmed," hissed the creature. "And he is not Mary Holiday." It leered around the room awkwardly, like a tottering building just before collapse. "But who is? You can tell me."          "I – I don't know where he is," said Maxine. "I… the last, I saw him he was here, tied up on the floor. Really, honest."          "Find him. I will wait." The creature jerked around the room a little bit with the grace of a tornado, swinging its round head from side to side, flexing its gills.          "Maxine?"          She crouched again by the bunny, not taking her eyes off the giant eel-thing. "I'm here."          "There was… someone, some guy who wanted… Mary. Said it… said it was important…"          She put her hand on his head softly. "Go back to sleep. It's okay."          And suddenly the creature swung around viciously, coiling around and snatching up Maxine's friend. She had no time to save him. There was a long dangerous pause and with all the same suddenness the monster sprung open, spinning the man out into the dark hallway before launching itself after him savagely.          Maxine saw only shadows, but the sharp sounds of pelvic bones cracking would haunt her for some time to come. Like the crackle of new firewood, peppered with pinecones.