Chapter 1
It had been seven years since Alice had fallen down that unnecessarily large rabbit hole, and she had checked for it every day since, but on every occasion, the hole had been away. One would naturally think that it had been filled in or the whole previous experience had been an illusion of sorts, but Alice was so sure it had been a real, for want of a better word, adventure... why else would someone visit the same, hole-less, spot every day for seven years, looking for a hole?
You may be wondering why Alice gave up on her endless search for Wonderland? Well, during the 2555 days of incessant hole searching, Alice had been visited by countless doctor's, therapists, psychologists, and whatever else her concerned mother could think of and all of them had come to the same conclusion. It was just the frantic Mrs Liddell who refused to believe each and every one of them.
Everyone who Alice's mother had called, noticed the same things; the fact that a well brought up child such as Alice would spend a couple of hours every day looking for an imaginary rabbit hole; the fact that the only thing the child ever drew, (even now at the age of 19), were strangely ludicrous pictures of tall hatted men, floating cats with smiles too big for their faces, smoking caterpillars and many more things an upper class child shouldn't even dare imagine; the fact that a lot of these drawings were not on paper but instead, scratched onto her bedroom walls. All four of them, every roughly embedded eye staring ominously at the place Alice's head would lie on her pillow. Every doctor would ask Alice and Mrs Liddell the same questions, and one of Alice's answers stood out tremendously. Most of the answers she gave were strange but this one was imparticularly odd. Every doctor would eventually ask, "Is their anything you're afraid of, Alice?"
To which, Alice's trembling responce would always be, "...Jam tarts.."
Every doctor had been confused by this answer and had inquired about it to Mrs Liddell. She would always say, "Ever since she came back from that non-existent rabbit hole she's been terrified of them. I can never keep her on the subject long enough to find out why but I'm sure I once heard her say, 'Off with her head..'"
But the one thing that really frightened Mrs Liddell, was the occasional drips of blood she'd find throughout the house, mostly congregating in Alice's bedroom... The pale child never seemed to acknowledge or, at all, suffer from these cuts and no one could be sure what was causing them.
Eventually, Mrs Liddell had to accept the fact that something was definitely wrong with Alice. However much she loved her dear child, she was inclined to heed the many doctor's advice, and admit her to the local lunatic asylum for housing the insane.
For almost a year now, Alice had been sitting alone in the corner of her soft, padded room. Strapped into a straight jacket. Occasionally being fed... She was often heard mumbling through the small set of bars on her cell door by the nurses. It wasn't unheard of for them to listen in but they always heard the same few words... "Hole... gone.... Hatter... knows... why..."
There had been investigations into who 'Hatter' might be, be it a person, but as yet, no one had discovered anything of use.
Mrs Liddell had not come to visit Alice in the asylum. Not once. She said to one of the nurses that it would be too difficult to come and look at her mumbling, shaven-headed little girl behind bars. And one would imagine that, as time progressed, it would become even more difficult. You see, not only did the asylum take care of the insane, but it also inflicted insanity upon them. When Alice lived at home with her mother, even though she barely spoke, she was still perfectly capable of speaking in perfect sentences. Almost a year later, she struggles to release an audible syllable.
Every now and then, the patients that seemed to have some sort of method to their madness, were visited by one of the doctors, who would try to talk to them about their problem and the reason behind it. It was a rare occasion when a doctor actually found out something useful, and practically a miracle if a patient was ended up being cured, but they tried their hardest.
