Behind Sanity

Chapter Fifty-Four

Behind Sanity

Chapter Fifty-Four

1

                When Alice finally found herself, she was in a strange place – stranger than she’d ever seen.  It was not reality, though she was sure that it was not Wonderland either.  The scenery was as stark as she’d ever seen, stretching far and wide into an endless distance.  The ground was barren and dry, only cracked dirt as far as she could see.  Everything seemed hazy here, and a great wind teased her hair and playfully tossed the plain, white gown she wore.  The line of the horizon was blurry, and she could not distinguish whether it was day or night.

                If it was in neither of the two worlds she knew, she couldn’t even begin to guess where she was, only knowing that she didn’t feel fully there.  The wind seemed to make her hair float in space easily, as if there was no gravity, and she could not feel the texture of the ground as she walked across it with bare feet. 

                Perhaps then, she thought finally as she stepped forward into what was eternity personified. This is death.

                It was only somewhat of a comforting thought, though it was not exactly as she had ever imagined death to be.  She’d imagined a nicer, more peaceful place (though how she could ask for a more peaceful landscape than this empty one was beyond her).  She’d wanted her parents to be there so she could rush into their arms and have them forgive her and tell her everything would be fine now; she would never have to worry about anything again.

                Instead, this was what she had been given: a wasteland all her own to walk endlessly and never rest.  If Life was a bitch, she couldn’t even think of a word to describe Death.

                But that was before she saw the doors, seeming to appear out of the nothingness ahead.

                There were so many that she couldn’t count them at a glance, and even when she came to walk amongst them, she couldn’t number them all.  They were simply doors, however, hanging in space, their hinges attached only to air.  They seemed to move around a bit, tilting back and forth and making her dizzy. 

                A thought came to her then, as if a bird had swooped by and dropped it into her ear.

                This must only be a halfway point between death and eternity.  Through one of these doors must lye my true fate.  But, which one?

                As if going back to her childhood in the delightfully confusing place Wonderland used to be, Alice knew that the only way she would know where the doors would lead was if she opened them.  It seemed impossible, hanging in space as they were, but there was no doubt in her mind that they would open up into some fantastic unknown.

                She gripped the first knob of her choice, somehow surprised that her fingers even wrapped around the handle, and giving it a jerk, and peered inside.

                Her eyes were greeted with the interior of a room, small and old, but not unpleasant.  It was still and quiet, peaceful, but she wasn’t quite sure it was where she wanted to spend her eternity.  She was just about to close the door when a man walked onto the scene, and though it surprised her, she could not look away.

                The man was wearing rather drab clothes, his style horribly outdated.  He walked in, humming lowly to himself, seeming rather cheery actually.  Alice didn’t recognize the man, but her eyes would not leave him.  Was she looking in on someone else’s eternity?  Someone else had chosen to live inside a drab little room all alone…