Into the Looking Glass: A Modern Alice in Wonderland

Ch. 7 :D And more coming!

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Spit bugs are not an attractive bug, especially when you’re walking through a sea of them in the early morning. I saw them everywhere, and a small collection of them started on the jean of my legs. I used some of the greeny-gold tall grass that they resided on to wipe them off me and stumbled quickly after the others that were walking zombie-like in front of me.

At almost 7 am, we were tramping through the endless sea of waving grass, accompanied only by the stupid spit bugs and ourselves. Any direction we looked, there were just more hills of grass, though we never looked behind us. I was personally sick of the sight of the black fortress behind us, home to a trio of lunatics that were preparing for an imaginary war.

I snorted through my nose, and hurried after the others again. It was eerily silent, as we didn’t want to make any noise to alert our escape, but it was still too dark for anyone to see us. The rising of the sun was darkened by the heavy blanket of clouds that had rolled in overnight, and I was grateful that the weather seemed to favour our route of action. Nonetheless, the darkness was helpful in only some ways. We all had to stick together closely; otherwise we’d leave one behind and wouldn’t be able to tell. In the muted dark light I could only make out shapes, forms of people moving that I was forced to follow, since I was at the back of the herd. I didn’t dare make any noise to break the boredom of moving for hours on end, because being bored out here was extremely better than being locked back there with the insane creeps.

The clouds grew less dark as we walked, but there was no sight of the weird forest or city of hills that we’d seen the day before yesterday. All I could see was the bloody vanilla-scented grass and those damned spit bugs, but I knew that it was somewhere in this plain.

My spirits dimmed considerably when I remembered the endless night of arriving here, and I could recall, in flashes, walking for hours and hours and hours. Would we have to walk twice that long, because we’d left our insane and bitchy guide behind us with the rest? Maybe we’d only walk half the amount of time, because though we were sluggish with sleep and the early morning coldness, we had a lot more energy from a night’s rest.

But none of that would matter if we got caught. I looked at the huddled forms of my group members, and then snuck a look back. The black fortress stood impossibly tall and menacing behind me, and I noticed the gargoyles that I’d missed earlier. They seemed to sneer at me and my attempt to escape, before shifting their stone wings and settling back down onto their perches.

Wait. Did I really just see those gargoyles move? But that was freaking impossible, gargoyles were stone statues – not living stone statues.

I whipped my head back at them, but couldn’t see any movement behind me. I relaxed a little, chalking off the weird vision to me still being half asleep. But before I could turn my head back, I thought I saw another flicker of movement – this time at the servant entrance we’d sneaked out of, instead of the non-living statues. I tensed, still walking but slowing down to get a good look.

I still couldn’t tell if the door had moved or not, and no figure was racing after us in the background. I didn’t blame myself for being paranoid, but without proof of the movement I couldn’t force the others to go faster.

The walk seemed to last for eternity, with the silence of no wind and the muted light turning everything in sight into that weird dream effect. Only the coldness of the morning seemed real, biting into my face and neck and causing me to shiver over and over again. I had to stop numerous times when I noticed the amount of spit bugs growing on me, but other than that we stayed at a consistent walk. I longed to speed the others into a light jog, but Riley would snap at me for forcing her to do early morning exercise, and then we’d have a fight when we were supposed to stay together. It wasn’t worth the risk of breaking us up; unless I was absolutely sure something was on our trail.