Chapter 3: The Sleep of the Drugged


The sensation of floating in the air was simply heavenly. Frankie weaved
and bobbed in the gentle wind. He looked downwards and saw that he was
at least a few hundred feet above the valley. Way down below, there were
tiny trees that looked like small bits of broccoli. Among the trees, he
could see some small houses at regular intervals along a river that
twised and turned like a snake crawling through the valley between the
hills. He could also see some smaller roads and a big one on a bridge
spanning the river. As he looked further down the valley, he could see
an area that had far fewer trees but more houses. There were also some
larger buildings.

He spread out his arms, tilted a little and made an arc around the side
of a hill. Then he pointed himself towards the built up area with the
houses and buildings. Then all of a sudden the hills, river and
everything became a blur and the air rushed by him, causing his jacket
to flap violently. And then just as suddenly, the scenery stopped and he
was once again floating in the gentle winds. He noticed that he was
then right above the built up area.

He thought he might as well check it out. So he tilted his upper torso
downwards a bit and swooped down to about one hundred feet above the
ground. He flew around a bit forwards and backwards until something
caught his eye. At the end of a street, he saw a playground, inside of a
chain link fence, with a dark green plastic dinosaur, a sand pit, a see
saw, a slide set and a swing set. It all seemed very familiar somehow
until he realized it was his childhood home. It was the playground at
the end of Wombat Lane!

Frankie stopped his gliding through the air and hovered above the
playground. As he was taking a look at the area, he noticed that there
were kids on the swing set. They appeared to be a ferret boy and a
ferret girl, who looked exactly like himself and Freda back when they
were kids.

While the ferret girl was swinging gently back and forth, the ferret boy
was being a bit more rough. He appeared to be really pushing hard at
every upswing and downswing to get the swing to go higher and higher.
Frankie also noticed that the seat under the ferret boy had a pair of
rocket shaped objects attached to it and there were some wires going
from the rockets to some contraption the ferret boy was wearing on his
shirt.

Frankie watched the ferret boy swinging higher and higher. By this time
he was making a 90 degree angle both back and forth from the bottom of
the swing. Then Frankie heard the sound of an engine. He turned and saw
a black van with black tinted windows go up Wombat Lane. It stopped
right at the playground entrance. Two figures in black suits and black
pants got out of the van. Frankie saw that they looked like dogs with
light tan fur of medium length and floppy ears. They were perhaps of
golden retriever lineage. Both of them were wearing dark glasses.

The two dogs went to the entrance gate of the playground and stopped.
One of them pulled out a small black box with lots of grey buttons. He
pushed some of the buttons and the device made a beeping sound. He
nodded. The other dog nodded back. Then they went into the playground.
The second dog pulled out a device that looked like a black rod of about
six inches in length. He pointed it at the ferret girl. The end of the
rod blinked with a red light and made a strange sound. As that happened,
the ferret girl went limp in the seat of the swing. Her torso fell
backwards a bit and her head dangled down towards the ground. The dogs
then dashed in, grabbed the ferret girl and carried her to the van. At
around the same time, Frankie heard the sound of rockets exploding. He
shook his head. Too much rocket fuel. He saw the ferret boy fly across
the swing set and then make a few very fast circles around the swing.
Then the ferret boy stopped in mid air and plummeted to the ground. He
bounced off the ground, landed again and lay in a heap, limbs pointing
every which way, on the grass.

At that time, Frankie also heard the doors of the van slam. Then the
black van backed out of the dead end, swung around violently and sped
off into the distance. Then he saw the ferret boy come to and make an
attempt to get up. The ferret boy was evidently still in a daze because
all he was doing was rolling around on the ground slowly.

And then bit by bit, the playground scene faded away to a deep grey
darkness. Then Frankie could see some veins and a membraneous flap of
skin with light shining through. He wondered what that was for a moment
before realizing that those were his eyelids. Then he woke up and opened
his eyes.

Apparently, he was back home in his bedroom. Bright sunlight was
streaming through the window. He took a look at the glowing green digits
on his digital clock radio on the nightstand by his bed. It was a
quarter to noon. For a minute or two, he wondered if his visit to the
Lace 'n Love Boutique in the city was all a dream but he convinced
himself that it did happen, except for the hallucinations he experienced
after eating the mushroom. It was then that he also realized that he was
completely naked under the sheets. And for some reason, he had an
erection and felt a bit horny. Perhaps the mushroom was an aphrodisiac
too, he thought. Naw, probably just a knockout drug, he concluded. What
he wondered was how he ended up back home. Who brought him back there?
How did they get through the door? Then he saw the open window and so
that part of the mystery was solved as he lived on the ground floor.
Still, he felt a bit creeped out that someone had undressed him before
putting him to bed. Even his Y-front briefs had been removed, for
crying out loud, he thought.

He saw his favorite yellow and black acrylic jacket hanging on the back
of the chair by the little desk in his room. He got out of bed, still
unclothed, padded over to the chair and took a look at his jacket. There
was a light brown powdery residue on the back of his jacket. That could
be from anything, he thought. He wondered if the yellow sticky note he
got from Smith the snake was still there. He reached into the right
pocket of his jacket and felt around. Hmm... he did not feel anything in
there. He thought for a bit and then checked the left pocket. Bingo!
There it was.

He unfolded the sticky yellow piece of paper. It read "256 Beaver St,
Waretown." Hmm... he knew where that was. The town was somewhere in
Ocean County off the Parkway.

He checked the rest of his jacket. All the buttons were still there. He
straightened out the left sleeve and took a look through it. That looked
okay. The right sleeve was okay too. Then he felt around under the
collar of the jacket and was surprised to find a finger in some cold
sticky substance. He unfolded the collar and took a look. It was some
clear goop with blobs of red that looked like blood mixed in. Euughh, he
thought. He took a look around for a tissue and umm, he guessed he had
better put on some clothes too as his sex was just hanging out for all
the world to see.

So he went to the closet, which was basically a narrow rectangular space
in the wall behind a set of wooden sliding doors. Being a ferret, he
liked to walk around in the closet. So he slid open one of the wooden
sliding doors and dived right in. There were some swishing sounds and a
bit of bumping around for a few minutes. Then he came out of the closet,
no pun intended, in a dark blue pocket tee with a Ski Ferret logo on the
front and a freshly laundered pair of store brand generic blue jeans. He
had also picked up a paper towel from a roll of paper towels in the
closet. So he went over to his jacket and wiped up the goop in the
collar. He then opened one of the desk drawers, retrieved a small
envelope and scraped the light brown powdery residue from the back of
the jacket into the envelope. He placed the envelope back in the desk
drawer for safekeeping.

After that, he checked for any signs of tampering or searching in his
room. He took a look under the bed. All his junk was still there, more
or less as he remembered. He checked all the desk drawers. Nothing
seemed too out of place. Then he noticed that there was a tiny bit of
goop on the top surface of his desk, next to his oddly shaped pencil
holder that he made out of clay a while back. Then he felt his scalp
tighten just a bit. Tentatively, he lifted his left hand to the back of
his head where he felt the tingle and felt around there. There was a
slightly sore lump at that spot. Hmm, he thought, must have been from
when he fell backwards in the back office at the Lace 'n Love. He
wondered if he brained his damage and tried reciting all the prime
numbers below one hundred. He got the first ten or so of the primes
before he couldn't go any further. Oh well, he wavered, he could never
do that anyway.

So, satisfied that all was more or less in order, he put his
acrylic jacket on, picked up the car keys and jumped out the window.
Then there was the slam of a car door and the sound of a car starting
and rolling down the driveway and heading out on the street.