Neurotic (Madland Series, Book One)

Philosophy of a Mad Hare

I'm late.

"You're late."

"No need to remind me, my dear."

"How on earth can you possibly be late? You, of all the creatures in the world..."

I watch myself in the lake, my face looking warped and wavy in the reflecting ripples. I bring a hand up, suddenly, as if trying to frighten the body of water.

And it stops. The golden leaves drifting in the cool breeze, the sounds of birds chirping, the rippling waves. All of it, frozen in place, like some sort of twisted game of red-light.

All except for the Feline. "Dammit."

"You would think you would stop attempting to stop-sign me," the young child says with a lazy grin. "Well, I suppose you'll learn eventually."

The child adjusts its gray cat eared headband. "I'm thinking about changing my style. What do you think?"

"What I think," I drawl, "Is that you should be in bed, child."

"Oh, please. We both know I'm older than you."

"It's only by three hundred years, though. That's practically three seconds."

We glare at each other, neither backing down.

The Feline, as much as I love it, is very... unlikeable. That's what I say. It's cute, with messy blue hair and chubby cheeks, but it's literally a demon spawn. It suddenly smiles that creepy grin, the one I pretend to hate but love, and it's clipped on tail swishes slowly, lazily. The hypnotic swaying soon draws my eyes.

"Shouldn't you be going, now? Wouldn't want old Hatter to fire you, would you?" His grin widens, anticipating my reply.

I snort. "I wish he would. Where would he plan on finding another time-lord as skilled as I?" I motion to the still frozen world around us. The Feline simply smiles wider and begins to fade out.

"I wouldn't get so sure of yourself if I were you, Nyxy," The Feline purrs. I can feel my eyes dilating. 

"What the devil do you mean?"

The Feline just smiles once more, before disappearing fully. I curse. "Dammit, dammit, damn it all to hell!"

When The Feline says something, you'd better listen, because it might end up saving your life. For being such an unlikeable person (that's what I say), it does know things. Strange things.

Cursing one more time, I pull my pocket-watch, the gold one, the 'minutes to hours' one, out of my messenger bag. Behind the glass there are numbers one to one hundred in Latin. In the center is the word 'HOURS.' I turn the small dial on the side, and the numbers don't change but the word does, now reading 'MINUTES.'

I move my fingers to the up and down arrows just below the dial. Pressing the down arrows twice, setting the minute hand to the two, I push down on the button on the top of the pocket-watch.

The effect is instantaneous. The world around me blurs in a circle, and then it suddenly stops. I narrow my eyes when I don't see The Feline in front of me.

"Damn him and his immunity to me," I growl, pocketing the watch. 

I then sigh. "Well, as I always say, 'let us not waste time pondering the past.'" Which is stupid, because I can afford to ponder the past, but Hatter insists on each of us having a deep-sounding philosophy. Says it will make us sound wise.

Each of us, as in the Door-mouse (an actual dimensional door creating mouse), Hatter, The Feline, The Caterpillar, Queen Heart, Duchess, and of course, I.

Go ahead. Laugh it up. As you can see, the inspiration for our names is rather... obvious. But I swear it, I had nothing to do with it. Hatter is the one that hunted each of us down, bound us together via contract, and gave us our names. Hatter's the strongest of us all, not to mention our technical savior, so we say nothing about the silliness of our titles. Although, I rather like the saying that comes from mine.

It takes me minutes to get to the location (it could have taken me seconds but I wanted to take the scenic route), and I marvel once more at today's technology. For us, I mean. Humans can't create dimensions. 

There's a brick wall with a single, rickety wooden door. I kick it open carelessly,  sauntering into a dark and musty smelling room. With my advanced eyesight, I can see the room looks like an abandoned basement. I go straight to an old bookcase, in the corner, and- surprise- pull a book off the shelf.

The bookcase immediately splits in two, revealing a hole in the floor about half of my height. I pull out my watch, becoming momentarily transfixed by the swirling gold pattern behind the glass. 

"Don't get distracted, now," I say to myself, pocketing the watch again before jumping down into the hole.