Hell In Wonderland

2. Wonderland?

Please, no,this is the one thing I don’t want. I don’t want to be insane. I want to be normal, there’s nothing more in the world I want more than sweet sanity and humanity.

I’m falling. The pocket watch still grasped tight in my hand. Everything was everywhere. Furniture, instruments, lampshades but nothing with technology. I keep thinking things will slip from the crusty dirt that’s holding onto them, but they didn’t they were held securely. I screamed as I fell through the never ending hole. I would die when I hit the bottom, it was a certain. It’s basic knowledge and common sense. Surely Demi had seen me fall, surely she would have tried looking for me.

I’m mad, I’m like my mother. This is just a dream; this is just my overactive imagination playing tricks on me. There is no white rabbit in a waistcoat or a white rabbit with soot on its face in a singed waistcoat. This is my mother’s storytelling and death taking its toll, or maybe I was just born mad. Maybe it was passed down, like a disease.

I didn’t like being called mad, but then again, who does? But I’m not actually mad, it’s only my reputation that is making me sound like I am. I’m not mad, I’m not mad, I’m not sure if I was trying to convince myself or anyone who could hear my thoughts, not that anyone can. So in other words, I was trying to convince the small and sweet part of sanity I have left. No, you not like your mother, it’s your reputation, you’re not crazy…says the person falling down the rabbit hole.

I screamed even harder as a nicely carved and very old table slipped and almost fell on me. I realised that it had food and cutlery and was set up exquisitely. It fell, but nothing seemed to fall out of place, it toppled down, almost fell on me, catching up to me, then slowed down to the pace I was falling. I didn’t know how, it just did, I guarded my face before it hit me, but it didn’t. I can’t explain, but nothing from the table fell off despite being upside down. It then slowed more and I fell faster until I heard a crack. I closed my eyes, expecting instant death. But I was alive; I barely felt anything other than a small crack as I fell through something. I thought it was the dry dirt but I opened my eyes and awoke in a grand yet very small ballroom. I stared in wide eye shock, not able to believe where I was. It seemed so familiar, like a place my mother described at the start of her journey.

Okay, this is definitely a dream, but I may as well play along. I tried to remember what my mother told me she did. She said something about cake and some sort of drink. I was normal size in this room, and I walked over to the table and looked at the small key lying on it. , I then looked at the pocket watch still held tight in my fist. I opened it and looked at the time it had, but I couldn’t read this watch, something about it made no sense to me.

I shook my head in frustration and kept it clamped in my fist still. I examined the small key on the table, studying it. It was so small I had to squint to see the intricate pattern carved on it properly. I put it down on the table and looked at the small bottle with a tag on it.

‘Drink me’ it read, I undid the cork, and looked at the clear vial. My mother said something like this happened to her, so I drunk a few sips and I had the strangest feeling, I shrunk. A couple of drops spilled on my clothes, and my clothes shrunk with me. My mother wasn’t as fortunate and had grown out of hers when she shrunk in her stories.

I looked around, looking for some way to escape, it was hard to do as I was the size of a mouse but I walked around the room, looking for an escape. Halfway around the room I got to a door, I looked through the key hole, and saw light, saw daytime. I ran back to the table where I had saw a key. But I left it up there. Damn, I tried to climb the table’s leg, but I kept slipping.

I sat and looked around for anything I could use to get to the top of the table. Nothing, there was nothing. I then saw something, a small glass box with a cake inside it. Ran they’re looking at it. It read ‘eat me’ and just like the simple instruction, I followed it. I grew, my mother had told me about this, about edibles that make you grow and shrink.