Into the Looking Glass: A Modern Alice in Wonderland

Which one is this? Number 8?

Alright, no comments so far on the last chapter, so I'll just keep posting because I want to

A clicking sound woke me abruptly, and I tumbled out of bed, delirious with fear and confused with sleep. After I’d smacked my boxer-clad ass on the cold white stone floor, and stared blearily at the raindrops hitting the glass window beside me, did I realize that the sound wasn’t a clicking, but a pitter-patter. I sat watching the raindrops race each other to their watery doom on the windowsill, before noticing that I was awake and it was morning.

I stood up, and winced at my sore leg muscles. My mind flashbacked to the desperate running I’d done the night before, and I grimaced. So this was the price for staying alive- sore muscles, and a paranoia that wouldn’t go away.

I looked around the huge room, as big as three rooms in my house at home. Oil paintings of weird creatures and lands I’d never seen decorated the bare white walls, and I saw more runes carved into the spaces that weren’t covered. There wasn’t a whole lot of furniture, just a cream writing desk with no ink or papers on it, but a few leather-bound books. I walked over to them and sat down on the wooden stool (which hurt my ass), but the books were written in gibberish that was impossible to understand. The one book that held any English had mixed-up words and phrases, and pictures of ravens dominated most of the pages. I slammed the book shut and abandoned the desk, before turning and seeing my newly-washed clothes lying on the soft blue cover of my bed. There were even new boxers there, and I quickly changed into the clothes, soft and smelling like sharp pine.

Dressed, I pulled back on my ratty sneakers (which had been cleaned, but not repaired), and headed out the huge wooden door. Outside, the hallway went on forever, red carpet with gold writings lighted up with the natural blue light from numerous glass windows. Careful black ruins were scratched into the glass like cracks, warping the image outside of towers and rainclouds slightly.

I followed the carpet down the hall, continuing until I hit the familiar large entrance hall from last night. The enormous white doors were closed again, and the huge oil paintings were staring at the one person in the room – me. I tiptoed down the carpet, until I reached the magnificent stone double staircase in the center of the room. The stairs were cracked with runes here too, but the glorious crimson carpet covered most of them. I stared down at the carpet, mesmerized by the gold letters covering the entire length of it. Most were weird stick-shapes that I didn’t understand, but I saw the words ‘red queen’ over and over again, along with a gold portrait of a middle-aged woman with curly hair. Her face was creased in emotion, and her mouth was open either in a scream or shout. Her long nose and sharp jaw reminded me of the king in a feminine way, but I forgot about her when light footsteps echoed in the huge corridor.

I stood up to look at the brownie man from last night, wrinkles more pronounced in the daylight and beady eyes revealing a dark brown, not black. A white pupil was the only other colour, and I was a little creeped out by him before he squeaked at me, “Please follow me, Mr. O’Brian, to your fellow companions and His Majesty.”

I blinked at the little man, before he sped off quicker than I thought, and I had to jog to keep up. My leg muscles complained, but I kept my mouth shut as corridor after corridor whizzed past. More creatures started to appear in the halls, clad in clothing that was either modern, or from the late 17th century. About a third went undressed, but no one seemed to mind, and the majority of creatures were the brownie men, dressed in tiny black pants and white suit jackets. I noticed another dominating creature, tiny humanoid figures with large hands and feet. Their pointed ears were almost covered by small white bowler hats, but I could tell that they were all bald. Yellow eyes stared at me as I passed them, the most prominent feature of their face besides their drooping nose. I remembered something about house elves, mostly from Harry Potter, but I didn’t give much thought to the creatures other than the one I was following.