Petibone (Fantasmical 2024)

11. Which way to go?_ Retold

Prompt: You stepped into your favorite story as a villain. Time to fight with your fate; after all, we all know how villains usually end.

**

I found myself on yet another mission that Luther, my messenger companion, had refused. This has become my habit. I was walking towards the southern regions, apparently with a routine message, nothing special, and I wondered why he hadn't liked this job. Then I remembered the forest I had to cross and the oddities people discussed.

I wasn't superstitious, but I always wore an amulet around my neck as if it could protect me from everything. In fact, I no longer even remembered exactly what I was protecting myself from.

At first, the forest was ordinary, but it became darker and gloomier, as if the plants were no longer so full of life, and the usual rustling sounds were absent. It felt like I was utterly deserted where evil spirits lurked. I can scare myself, too, because the forest wasn't that desolate. Only a little light filtered through the dense foliage.

The vegetation was also drooping at the base of the trees, with small bushes and mushrooms. All sorts of them.

After a while, I had to be careful not to step on any of them. Then, when I couldn't avoid stepping on some oddly shaped and colored mushrooms, I got a bit scared because they emitted a dense powder. Something milky that scratched my throat.

But I didn't know exactly what was happening to me because it felt like I was asleep, on some kind of journey, passing people whose voices I could hear from afar, but I couldn't see them:

"Could you please tell me which way to go?" asked a little girl's voice.

"It depends on where you want to get to," replied a deeper voice.

"Oh, it doesn't really matter," repeated the little girl's voice.

"Then it doesn't matter which way you go, Alice," the deeper voice encouraged. "Just go, go until..."

"Until I get somewhere," Alice finished.

I thought about what a strangely familiar conversation it was, and the name Alice was also quite familiar. The conversation moved further away from me as if I were going somewhere, but I should open my eyes, yet I couldn't.

"It's tea time?" I heard another voice. Now, I was very curious about what was happening around me, so I sat up, forcing myself to open my eyes.

At first, I could only see vaguely, and then, as the shadows became sharper, I felt I was really traveling, as if I were in a carriage. A golden ornate carriage, carried by people, I saw their heads beside me, struggling. But they didn't look like people; they looked more like playing cards. Their bodies were like playing cards, and only their limbs and heads seemed human.

I looked around, and we were heading towards a garden. I also looked back. Behind us were many such cards walking after me, and behind us, the towers of a bright palace were visible.

In the garden, there were beautiful rose bushes, mainly red, in the distance, some white ones, and bushes with roses that were half red and half white. That was quite peculiar, and since we stopped and I could examine them more closely, I saw that three cards, with a paint bucket and brush, were busy painting the white roses red.

When they saw me watching them, they dropped what they had and threw themselves to the ground.

Now everyone was standing and staring at them, the crowd of cards, but there was also something else, an extraordinary white rabbit, nervously looking at his pocket watch and a completely flesh-and-blood little girl.