Ad Continuum...

The rather old garlic smelling overly educated British doctor and his bright young apprentice, unprepared for the sight awaiting them, enter the bathroom and, upon seeing Dunk Rappingtin lying there, pass out themselves. The extremely attractive apprentice is the first to come back to her senses. She rolls over groggily and catches sight of her beloved doctor seemingly unconscious. Thinking quickly, she pats him down, reaches into his left coat pocket and removes a tiny brown paper bag full of raw garlic. Swooning was something Dr. Frizwal did quite often (this is the last time you get to pick out character names!!) so Murgatroyd Potkettle the lovely Assistant knew how to take care of him. She stuffed his cheeks with about 12 cloves of garlic, then forced his mouth shut and waited. He awoke within seconds and began shouting orders in his thickly accented feeble voice, (all the while chunks of half-chewed garlic are spewing from his mouth) "Get out of here, young woman!! This is no place for a lady!!" Murgatroyd dashes into the living room and decides to have a seat safely out of sight in the corner. There are loud splashing sounds and intermittent splashes of water coming from the bathroom. On the left side of the chair, she notices a tiny round wooden knob. The design etched into it is quite intriguing and she can't help reaching out to touch it. As soon as she does so, a muffled rumbling noise is heard and the fireplace rotates halfway, leaving a gaping hole that stretches infinitely into the darkness. Her eyes widen in surprise and she lets out a tiny gasp. Throwing caution to the wind, she vaults from the chair.

Glancing furtively over her shoulder, she grabs the flashlight off the coffee table and flies, quick as an oily monkey down a water slide into the thick dark tunnel to the Unknown. Crawling into the narrow brick hallway, she shines the light down the endless looking three foot tall passageway, but could see no more than ever-going bricks. Starting off her new and unpredictable adventure, she can't help but wonder how Hipocken was doing reviving Dunk. But not even her love for treating the ill could hold her back from finding the other end of the hidden hall. Creeping through the passageway was more difficult than she had anticipated, but curiosity was too strong a motivation for the uneasy crawl to stop her. After twenty minutes of wading through the dusty cobweb lined brick passage, she came to a split in the tunnel. Choosing the left, as it became tall enough for her to stand up that way, and continued at three feet the other way, she stepped into the bigger hall. Standing upright was exactly what she needed after crawling for twenty minutes. Inside the quite large underground room was old, rickety wooden furniture. The sight of what must have been some sort of hiding den amazes her to the point that she lets out a "WOW!" that echoes around back in the tiled bathroom where Dr. Frizz is, without any niggle, institutionalizing Rappingtin. He puts a patient's robe on Dunk and helps him outside into his van. Dunk keeps blathering on about his hair being unsightly and tries to comb it with anything his grasping fingers come in contact with (further solidifying in the doctor's mind that he is doing the right thing...). After calling for Murgatroyd and getting no reply, he jumps into the van in inappropriate haste. The good old doc shakily inserts the key into the ignition and turns it, and the van putters to a start. They rumble down the road at a blinding speed of 43 MPH and two and a half hours later come to the mental hospital where Dr. Frizwal has Dunk Rappingtin commited.

Rappingtin is brought into the main room of the insane asylum and introduced to none other than that dark and dastardly schemer himself... Hilbesenter! **the audience shrieks in insane horror and unspeakable torment at the very mention of his name as the da da da duuuuhhhmm music reaches its screeching crescendo** He is sitting at a little table, well apart from the rest of the slobbering, muttering nursing home type individuals. There is a chessboard in front of him with odd pieces scattered across its surface. He invites the inebriated Dunk to join him for a game... MEANWHILE in another place entirely, Murgatroyd wanders around the huge cavernous room listlessly. She begins to get bored with the entire idea and wishes she had never left the Professor. Suddenly, she hears a faint noise coming from the opposite side of the room. Carefully dodging the furniture, she strains everything she has to figure out where the noise is coming from. oops. Strained a little too hard. Though rather embarrassed and glad she is alone in the room, she continues searching. There!! In the corner was a tiny hole near the stone floor - barely large enough for a mouse to squeak through. Murgie flops down in the dust and tries to see what's on the other side. Unfortunately, her allergies get the best of her and she lets go a ricocheting "AAAAAAAACCHHHHHHHHOOOOO!! Everything grows deathly quiet. Traitorous sneeze! Now the occupants of The Other Side know of her existence!! The passageway she came through is instantly barred by a huge slab of rock!! There is no escape!

The ground begins to shake and an odd beeping like a moving truck backing up is heard as one of the walls opens to create a way to The Other Side where the ever-so-quiet noise was coming from. The beeping comes to a stop as the wall slides fully open to reveal the Other Room. It's dark, and now silent, and practically calls the naive and un-cautious girl by name. So she takes a brave step over into the new room. At the exact same time, Dr. Hipocken re-enters the home of Mr. Rappingtin, as he's come to his senses and realized he left poor Murgatroyd behind. Looking around, it takes a little more than a few seconds for him to notice the fireplace opened and the secret passageway exposed. He, with great difficulty and several odd pops and crunches, crouches down and enters the tiny hallway. It was very hard for him to crawl through it on his stomach, but he certainly could not leave Miss Potkettle alone in such a place. As the doctor slowly begins his long crawl, Dunk, after being waved to by Hilbesenter, asks one of the nurses why he's the only patient not wearing the issued hideous and uncomfortable pants and shirt. She answers in an unconfident voice, "We take all of his clothes and give him only the standard issued apparel, but every morning he comes out in something else, and the uniform can't be found in his room!" Realizing that this is not the every day usual patient, Rappingtin carefully walks to the chess table and sits down. The bright striped white shirt takes hold of Dunk's sight. Hilbesenter grabs the scuff of his striped shirt and says, "I got it real cheap," with a slight hint of a snicker in his voice. Dunk notices that a scrawny little skittish guy is peeking around a rather large man, and spying on him. He turns back to Hilbesenter and asks, "Who is that little freaky guy?" with a gesture to the miniscule spy. The reply creates new questions; "That's Loco!" shouts the over-dressed psycho. Dunk, being lunatistically minded at the time, continues the questions. "Loco? What's that mean?" A fitting question in a mental hospital. "Loco is his last name. Coo-Coo Loco, that's been his nickname for so long now no one knows his original name," elaborates Hilbesenter. Head swirling with the reasons how one could get such a name, Dunk is becoming irritated by this Loco. Almost as irritated as Miss Potkettle is intrigued by the missing voices in the room she's entering. Coming into the main part of the enormous multi-dimensional room, she starts to see vague, shadowy figures moving around. In abject terror, she screams at the top of her lungs. The screech is heard by the doctor, who is still fighting his way through the micro brick tunnel. The shriek's echoes almost synchronize with Dunk's yelp of fit at the scrawny Coo-Coo. With all self-control and sanity lost, Dunk stands up and tells Coo-Coo Loco to get away. But to his unawareness, Loco is quite into dramas and therefore plays along with Rappingtin who is not at all playing. Poor Dunk, in his delusional state, tells Coo-Coo to leave before getting shot. But this only excites Loco more, and he jumps out from behind the big fellow where he was hiding. Rappingtin, pushed too far, pulls his hands up and *Bang! Bang! Bang!* with his thumbs straight up and his first two fingers pointed right at Coo-Coo Loco and the other two fingers partially bent as to make a gun with his hands keeps yelling BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!, jerking his hands up alternately, so as to imitate guns backfiring. Loco, lost in his new character, slaps his hands sequentially upon his torso with every bang. Dunk jumps into the air in a roll just as Murgatroyd turns her screaming into chasing. Running around like a kid hyped up on sugar, she chases the elusive shadow-like figures around the room. But they allude her grasp time and time again. She chases one into a corner and reaches out to take hold of it, but it narrowly escapes. Dr. Hipocken, hearing the sounds of the chase, starts to move faster. Pushing and pulling himself as quickly as he can through the passageway, he slips on a puddle of slime and hits his face on the already too close brick floor, right as Rappingtin rolls back on his feet and lets out another round of drama bullets. *BANG! BANG!* he floats left to right, right to left, the whole time his hands jerking up and down crazily. *BANG! BANG!* Coo-Coo, still clutching every drama bullet hole, starts to sway and rock. As Loco hits the floor, Dr. Frizz pulls himself off of it and finally comes to the split in the narrow way. As the left way has been blocked off, he's forced to take the right. It wasn't much longer before he came to the entrance to the room Murgatroyd has become trapped in. He crawls in and stands up to find himself to be the only person in it.

The frazzled, aching Professor starts his search around the room and the effects of the tranquilizer dart instantly wear off as Dunk snaps out of his psychotic cowboy state and realizes something that has been nagging the back of his mind for the past ten minutes. The shirt Hilbesenter was wearing was one of HIS!! He'd bought it 2 weeks ago at a yard sale and put it in his top dresser drawer - or so he thought. "What in the world?!" Dunk and Murgatroyd utter simultaneously. Murgie has run **SMACK!** into Dr. Frizz and clutches him desperately in relief of fright. A high pitched screaming splits our eardrums and shatters glass in the Ward. "Professor, please - stop screaming. Your breath is about to wake the dead." (still being rather stout from the garlic.) Hipocken realizes he's the one emitting the girly sounding wail and snaps his mouth shut. "Terribly sorry, my dear. i've been so worried about you - where on earth are we?" His bleary eyes catch a glint of iridescent silver in Murgie's hands and says, "Good heavens! Is that a torch you have there?" She looks down in surprise. Carefully prying her fear-stiff white knuckled fingers open, she sheepishly clicks it back on. "Why ever were you running about in the darkness wailing like a banshee when you had a light the entire time?" Murgatroyd doesn't say a word. Then Frizwal remembers she once told him how she'd been riding her new bike down a steep hill and got up too much speed. Instead of using the brake, she dropped her mouth open (causing the sudden distasteful watery death of scores of teeny bugs) and gripped the handlebars, wheels turning faster and faster, unable to stop or jump off, totally paralyzed by fear, until finally crashing into the front door of her house, impaling her cat to the wall and becoming covered in flying fur. He just sighed and patted her blond head. "It's alright Ms. Potkettle." Just then, their meager light flickered, faltered, and went out altogether. (definitely not powered by the Bunny.) She grips his hand and bites her lip to keep from bawling like a spoiled baby. From across the expanse, a noise is heard - like the lights coming on in a football stadium. The unlikely pair are stunned and momentarily blinded as brilliant light stings their eyes and thick metal bars drop over their heads. When their poor eyes finally adjust with shooting pains and curses, they are standing inside a 6x6 cage in a wild madman's laboratory. A figure is gliding toward them, halting to press a neon pink button, then continuing on his purposeful stride. Back at the asylum, Hilbesenter's wrist watch begins beeping and he jumps up from the table. Dunk is watching however and gives chase as he runs down the hall toward the janitor's closet yelling, "That's MY shirt!!" The menacing boy advances.