While gallivanting along early one morning, a pair of friends stumbled upon a box. A similar box on the side of the road wouldn’t have garnered their attention, nor would an identical box in a dump or recycling facility. It was ordinary, to say the least. The box was intended as a cooler, all Styrofoam with protrusions bellied by hollows on either side of the box, presumably to act as handles, and a lid which fit snugly on top of the box. It appeared to have been left there for some period of time. The stickers were long decayed away, and there were smudges of dirt where there ought not be any. The location however did seem odd for such a box. It was top-up near a fallen tree and many more not-fallen trees. There was little brush around, as the not-fallen trees had shaded the ground so thoroughly that no sun-loving organism would be beneath them.

Their first instinct had been, obviously, to assume that there was a chopped-up, soupified dead body inside. Years of watching CSI: Miami and similar shows had told them to disturb as little evidence as humanly possible, and so they tiptoed their way towards the box. Being human however, they disturbed quite a bit of evidence; or would have if there had been any evidence. Trying to ply the lid off with a stick, they discovered the relative weightlessness of the cooler-box. The friends had foolishly jumped to the most extreme conclusion, as they so often did, but they weren’t entirely fools and knew now that there was no body in this particular box. Disappointed but not discouraged they forged on trying to open the box, with no intentions of touching it with their hands for fear of some disease the Styrofoam may be carrying. They soon succeeded by kicking downward on the lower, more boxy part of the box a few times and shoving up under the lid with a stick. To their mild disappointment, the box was filled only with stale air and a few pine needles.

Pushing the box over yielded far more exciting results. The space between the Styrofoam cooler and the fallen tree was occupied by a large cluster of slender-stemmed, blue-bruising, and fairly edible smelling mushrooms. Seizing the opportunity to snap a few pictures before settling down to their lunch of turkey sandwiches (sans mayo) and yogurt, they sat down and pulled out their cameras and brown paper bags.

The completion of their turkey sandwiches and the satisfaction they had taken enough pictures to have a few acceptable ones in there somewhere signaled to them it was time to leave. And indeed, they would have left at that time were it not for a chipmunk which came crawling inexplicably out of the hollow Styrofoam cube. This was a rather odd contrast to the plain scene of two plain girls discussing innumerable plain things.

“I didn’t know there were fucking chipmunks here?” said one of the pair, a girl who was given to cursing frequently and generally the more outspoken of the two.

“Uhm… I didn’t either… maybe it wasn’t a chipmunk? It was probably a mongoose or something. I don’t know,” replied the other girl, who was slightly more reserved and who swore with only slightly less frequency.

They could have continued pondering the possible identities of the animal were it not for the fact their attention was once again stolen by the box producing increasingly curious oddities. Not the most curious of which was a spattering of washed out colors seeping themselves lacily around their now too-vibrant world. Soon thereafter, a man came crawling out of the box. The man would have seemed a welcome and normal addition to the web and other objects now surrounding them, if he was not so remarkable in appearance alone as to make both of the girls wonder if they had been victims of the murder they had previously suspected and were now facing god himself. As the mangod began walking ethereally towards the girls, they were struck by how ludicrous the idea of God crawling out of a Styrofoam cooler was and promptly burst into laughter. Brushing himself off in a rather haughty and condescending manner; the pine needles in the bottom of the cooler had apparently stuck to him on his way out; and frowning only slightly, he instructed the girls to watch out for something which may or may not be coming out of the box after him. He instructed them to tell him if such a thing were to appear, and helpfully added that they would know, without a doubt, when such a thing was to come out because it was his something. He then moved on, stepping along the webbing laid down earlier by the box.

“Well how the hell are we supposed to tell you if something comes if your leaving? We can’t call you or we don’t even know your name or whatever. Hello? Hello??” yelled the outspoken girl after the man, slightly annoyed by his assumptions they would follow his directions without question. For whatever reason, he seemed completely uninterested in elaborating, and continued walking over and around the web. The girls followed him with their eyes for a time, but this even became hard as the web kept swallowing him up and spitting him out elsewhere.

After giving up on keeping track of the man, the quieter girl began to ponder the wisdom of calling this thing a web, for fear of offending it if it were in fact something else. It resembled a web only in its hue and translucency. Other than that it resembled a vaguely paisley pattern in some places, and in others something more akin to the chaos of a carnival, and sometimes faded and opened and closed up into nothing and other times became another object entirely. While trying to decide whether this pattern had always existed and she could only now see it or if the box was explaining the pattern of the world to her by way of a web, her reverie was interrupted by that box once again incessantly producing random objects. The box was appearing to be more and more indiscriminate about what it brought into the world, seeing as this particular object was a pillow. A couch pillow, in fact; one with a palm tree stitched on the front of its tan surface.

Once the girls were thoroughly puzzled with the newest oddity produced by the not-so-ordinary box, their confusion was intensified by the chipmunk, now half the size of a human, seizing the pillow and scurrying in the other direction.

“Uhm, sir? I’m not sure whether this is what you wanted or not, but that..er… squirrel just came and got a pillow from this box. It wasn’t yours, was it?” More-given-to-cursing girl asked the man who was currently out of sight, thinking he must be near enough to hear her, and leaving out her usual swearwords due to more to shock than respect. Sure enough, the man walked up and out of a nearby fissure in the web the girls hadn’t noticed before, possibly because it hadn’t existed only a moment before. Cocking his head to the side, he inquired as follows:

“My girls, do you have any clue as to what would signify something important? I’m certain a couch pillow is of no import where I am from, and I would assume it the same here. If you could kindly only alert me to the presence of something significant, preferably the something I am looking for, it would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks, and do not come calling again unless you have my something.”

“How will I know if it’s your something though? I can’t know if it’s someone’s something if I don’t know what that something is. It doesn’t have your name on it or something?”

“Yes! something. That’s exactly what I said. Now that you understand that, Good day. Tell me if my something comes, and only if my something comes.”

“Why did the squirrel want that couch pillow? And more importantly, why was he so big?”

“Did I not say ‘Good day’? I did not mean, ‘good day for asking questions’ I meant have a good day, and be on your merry way. Though since I’ve wasted so much breath already, I will tell you I certainly have no idea why Julian would have wanted an embroidered couch pillow. You really have no idea what’s important, do you? Why should it matter that Julian is so large? Ask him why he is so large. He’s perfectly capable of answering such trivialities, and much less preoccupied. Now Good Day. Not for asking questions.”

Now thoroughly puzzled, the girls turned their attention back towards the overgrown squirrel, apparently named Julian.

“Why would you want a couch pillow?”
“It reminds me of home. Since I got sucked into this world for the next couple hours.”
“Pfft, don’t be such a baby. It’s just a couple hours. I’m pretty sure you could have survived without the pillow. And wait, what? you got sucked into this world?thisworld?what?thereisonlythisworldandyou’retoobigforthisworld!Youdon’tmakesense!” Said the typically less outspoken girl, though since she was thoroughly confused and frustrated by this squirrel and recent happenings, she was voicing her opinions quite flusteredly and was coming across as making even less sense than the nonsensical squirrel.

“Silly girl, [incoherent mumblings]no concept of time.” Julian said under his breath as he clutched his pillow defensively and walked towards the tree he was nesting under.

“I have a perfectly good concept of time! I know that sixty minutes equal one hour, that twenty-four hours equals one day, that 365 days are equal to one year…”

“SHH! You do in fact have no idea of time. You are explaining trivial things. Where I am from we measure time in thoughts and discoveries and memories and creations. I’m going to rest now, and while away these hours in thoughts which may lead to productions so that they might pass faster.”

“You have that all backwards. You just think that the time passes faster when your preoccupied. It’s just… fucking childish to think just because you’re thinking you’re going to speed up time.”

“Perception”

Mumbling about how it was obviously just his perception and his perception had nothing to do with what was really happening, swearing-girl continued going on and on and on about how she perceived the world. Meanwhile, less outspoken girl contemplated what the squirrel had said. She was perceiving reality she thought. But what if her perceptions were an illusion? She dipped her consciousness towards when she was a little girl and everything moved so slowly when she was bored, and when she was in action or occupied, everything happened far too fast. She began to wonder if she could be doing something for reality to get on with itself, because she was perceiving reality very slowly at the moment.

“What if we want time to pass slower?” she decided to ask Julian, but he had fallen into a pouting sleep on his pillow, and did not respond to her inquisition. At this time, the box chose to produce a clock. Ironic, considering all of the hullabaloo over time in recent moments. Rather wary of the clock, and only vaguely aware that the clock might be someone’s something, both girls silently agreed to approach the clock and investigate it. Investigating should not be conducted by these girls, as demonstrated by the mess they had gotten themselves into by investigating a mere Styrofoam box. Someone only knows what kind of trouble they would be capable of with a clock, and one produced by said box at that.

Upon nearly approaching the clock, the girls were set down elsewhere by the web-pattern. Both rather startled by the newest development and thoroughly annoyed with their newly bruised asses (the web had not been gentle), they stood up and forged once again towards the box and the clock. The clock appeared to have changed from its previous incarnation of an ordinary black-and-white wall hanging clock to a perhaps even more ordinary red standalone clock with bells, presumably to act as alarms, situated on the top. Not entirely sure whether they were mistaken in this observation and having their brains feeling increasingly muddled, they came to the fairly sane conclusion that they were insane.

Just then gravity turned up the intensity and pulled them towards the ground which had somehow situated itself behind them instead of firmly under their feet as had previously been so reliable. Feeling immensely discouraged, they laid flat on the upright ground, and went through the various possibilities of how this story of their trip into the forest was going to resolve itself, or if the apparently increasing gravity would just flatten them and they would rot into the scenery. They thought of all the movies about insane asylums, about virtual realities, thought about the movies resolved in dreams. They thought about this for days within the hours they laid there, everything perceptionally more important, their thoughts racing along ten tracks at once at speeds unimaginable for those stuck in a world lacking webbing and horizontal gravity.

Whilst wandering back towards the thought of how their story may resolve itself, one of the girls recalled a time the two had gone to see a psychological thriller at the local cinema. In her mind, she turned around and passed her eyes over a cutesy movie cardboard cutout,  another cutout of a more action-based film, an advertisement pushing various food and beverage products, and then settled upon an out of-focus poster, mostly blue, it appeared. The blurriness of the image had caught her eye, or her minds’ eye rather, and she began to sift through the thoughts in her head for what it might be. First she found the font of the title, a simultaneously scratchy and scrolly font, and her mind placed it squarely at the base of the poster, in white. Digging further into her mind yielded a girl in a blue dress with blonde hair and an inquisitive look on her face, fairly centered in the rectangular poster. She began to recognize the poster, and immediately [though incorrectly] placed a hookah smoking caterpillar and queen of hearts in the picture and filled the font with the words, “Alice in Wonderland”.

That was it! They were neither insane, nor had their world been turned sideways or cloaked in a web. They were tripping. The girl whose head had trapped all these thoughts voiced the realization that they weren’t insane, and the girls proceeded into giggle fits and an effortless enjoyment of their psilocybin trip before heading back to the car with a crop of mushrooms and their heads moving abstractly through their once again perceptionally same world.