Behind Sanity

Chapter Thirty-Two

                                                                     Behind Sanity

                                                                 Chapter Thirty-Two

                                                                               1

The man strode into the asylum, the sounds of his shiny shoes bouncing off the walls of the dimly lit corridor.  Nurses greeted him as he walked by, bowing their heads humbly as if he may have been the pope.  He hadn’t been here in several months.  As soon as they saw him though, they knew why he was here.  Someone had asked him back.  They needed his help.  There was a very sick patient in need of his healing abilities – again.

He stepped up to the dingy office door and entered through it as if it was still his own, casually pulling a file from a drawer after thumbing through the names.  What type of progress had this girl made?  It had, after all, been quite a while.

                                                                                 2

Alice awoke slowly, her head spinning.  Where was she?  Strange.  She had been knocked out, yet she had not woken up in the asylum.  She was still in Wonderland…somewhere…  Certainly, she was not in the land of Red where she had been rendered unconscious.  All she knew was that she was lying down on a long, hard table of sorts.  It was terribly uncomfortable, made of some hard slab.  Her head was swimming so that the ceiling was churning and she could hardly bring it into focus.  What had happened to her?  All she remembered was being hit in the back of the head by something.

She managed to lift her head slightly, rolling it to the left where she saw a small table with clutter on it, but most of all she saw the pair of large syringes.  In black letters running across the glass of the tubes, she managed to read the words: INJECT ME.  Aside from a milky, yellow film coating the inside, the tubes were empty.  Had they been used on her?  She didn’t like the thought.

Something moving across the wall towards the direction of her feet caught her attention.  Lifting her heavy head up further, she saw two large white ears and the round top of a black hat.  Finally, a face emerged from beneath them, looking up at her from where he was walking across the wall.

“It’s time to get up now, Alice,” he said.

“Rabbit!” she said happily, though she could barely make him out for her spinning vision. “I’m glad you’re alright – though I must admit I am a bit confused.”

“About what?”

“Why are you walking on the wall?” she asked, squinting her eyes to better comprehend the situation.

The rabbit shook his head.

“I’m not on the wall, Alice.  You are!”

“What?”

Looking around, she could see that he was right.  She was on that strange table, but it appeared to be true; she was the one on the wall.  As soon as she noticed this – as if gravity was reminding her of its law – she slid off the table and landed on the floor with the rabbit, sinking low to gather her swimming head.