Hart In Chains

I was Alice once, not all that long ago. The man who made me Alice called himself the White Rabbit. His basement, he called Wonderland which he had decorated with grotesquely painted scenes from Alice in Wonderland. The one that stood out to me was the painting of Alice at the Mad Hatter's tea party. The Hatter's face was frozen in a toothy grin, his eyes appearing to be filled with a malevolent madness. When I first got there, I huddled in the corner, making myself as small as possible against the wall. That's when he walked in, The White Rabbit, later discovered to be Paul Fletcher, the journalism teacher at my High School. I never took journalism but somehow he still noticed me, took me. My name is Mara Hart, and I was Alice once.