Maddening Wonder -Alice In Wonderland oneshot

  Maddening Wonder


Aren’t you afraid, Alice? Of the needle that’s parting your hair and sinking under your flesh. Can you not sense what’s coming? Do you know of the...Consequences? You won’t belong to yourself anymore, using the chip they implanted in your brain, they can now monitor your thoughts. They’re very scared, Alice, because your thoughts are different, very different. And different, simply isn’t protocol.
Before you walk away from that hospital, look back, and think quite possibly the cruelest thought you can fathom. Scare them a bit more, picture them shiver. You’re not you anymore, you’re simply a story, a story they can read, written of your thoughts. Heed my warning, dear Alice, this might be the end of you. Signed, your writer.

Rabbit holes. Her feet dance across the ground to avoid them as she skips across the field. She hums as she goes, singing a quiet song. “1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8.” She counts her steps as they land, her long blonde hair casting across her gentle brown eyes. She spins around, once, twice, going faster and faster, until the world is nothing but a blur. Dizzy, she falls to the ground in a heap. Giggling softly, she gazes up at the blue, blue sky.

“I wonder...” she murmurs, as a cloud skitters across the sky. It looks rather like a sweet, a candy of some sort. “I wonder if birds eat cloud candy..” she finishes, letting her voice drift away on the open air.
Two day’s it’s been since she was chipped, and she knew nought of the anguish she was causing for the government. Alice’s thoughts were rather strange, they ran in a pattern unknown to technology, a pattern never before recorded. The government didn’t like this, didn’t like it at all. Her hand reaches to block the sun from her eyes as it peeks from behind the candy cloud, she blinks. Today, the sky seemed impractical, strange. It’s been all muddled recently, the sky is an off blue, her shoes simply won’t tie. The air was so quiet, perhaps something was coming, like a storm or such.

She rolls over, cradling her palms beneath her head. Beginning to grow woozy, she eventually drifts off. Dreams? She had none. Alice was awakened by a tapping on her shoulder, she blinks, opening her eyes to find her brother gazing down upon her, nudging her with a leather clad boot. “Alice, wake up..It’s late.” he says, his voice the tilted cadence it always was. She scrunches up her nose, rolling her eyes deep into her head with annoyance as he picks her up, beginning to trudge back the way she’d came, a mile to the house.

   Woozy, so oddly woozy. His name was Pete, and that very Pete began to blur before her eyes, she grasped his shirt. Suddenly, it wasn’t a shirt, it was a tunic, and the tunic rattled with a chuckle, a chuckle, so very maddening. She looked up, and saw before her, not Pete, but a man, a man wearing a scruffy, burnt hat. “Mad Hatter?” she mutters, as he lifts her into the threshold of her white painted house. He tsked, grinning with a chuckle. Mad takes her hand, spinning her in a dizzying circle as she laughs, ignorant of the fact that he wasn’t supposed to be real.  “Alice, Alice. A for Alice, B for becoming, C for CAT.” He mush's the last word together, so the vowel became sharp, like a thorn.

Mad Hatter sets her down, pulling at his hat, he winked, and just as he came, he was gone, and she was suddenly in her room, Pete by her bedside. “Go to sleep, Alice, you’re tired.” he said. She blinked, troubled. “Mad Hatter?” she mumbled, confusion creasing her brow. Pete rolls his eyes, standing up and framing the door. “It’s too late to read to you, how many times have we read that book anyway? Go to sleep Alice.” he says, exiting. She only blinked, flinching at the creaking sound the door made as it shut tight on it’s hinges. “Six times.” she whispers to the shadows of the room.

Alice rolls unto her back, resting her palm on her forehead. A song echoes in the back of her mind, she wonders briefly where she’d heard it. “I invite you to a world where there is no such thing as time, and every creature tries themselves to change your state of mind...*”  The song eventually fades into the depth of her brain. Troubled, she sits upright in her bed, to gaze upon something..Rather unusual.
Two lights peer at her from the corner of the room. They blink once, twice, drawing closer to her bed. Alice pulls the blankets
tight around her, but what difference would it make? She can feel a sudden pressure upon her bed, she scoots away from it, but it follows her movement. Bam! She’s fallen upon the floor, tangled up in her blankets. She shuts her eyes tight, afraid to see the monster. But she can still hear it, it draws closer with a quiet rhythm. Ba-dum, ba- dum, her pounding heart matches the sound of the gentle footsteps. The blanket is pulled away from her face, she opens her eyes, curiosity finally winning her internal battle. She can see...A grin. Hanging suspended, white teeth sharp and catlike, cruelly twisted into a smile. A pair of eyes blink above it, the lights she’d seen before, slitted, like a cats’.

“Cheshire cat.” Alice states, her fear receding. She tilts her head as the creature materializes in front of her, wrapping it’s tail around her quivering shoulders. “A for Alice, C for cat, R is for rabbit, and M, my dear, is for mad.”  The cat says, his smooth voice seeping through his fanged grin. Her brow furrows as Cheshire’s tail wraps around her eyes. “S is for sleep, no need to see the night.” he says, removing his tail. She falls back upon the blankets, drifting off as if some spell had been cast upon her. The cat chuckles to itself, and slinks off into the night as only a cat can do.

She was awakened in the small hours by a tapping on her bedroom door, rubbing her eyes, she stands reluctantly, swaying. Alice staggers to the door, opens it. A rabbit stares up at her, clutching a pocket watch. Funny, that a rabbit had a pocket watch.
“I’m late!” it cries.The creature abruptly turns on it’s heel, hopping down the shadowed hallway. Alice stumbles out of her room, dashing after the tiny figure. “Wait!” she yells, desperately. “I’m late!” the rabbit echoes. They run down the staircase and out the wooden door, through the garden and into the field. Grass encircles her ankles, ticklish and course. Her breath comes in pants, she becomes vaguely aware of the fact that she was ever so sleepy, perhaps due to the hour, or, the tiny computer inside her brain. There was a pounding in her head, and in the first light of dawn there was nothing to be seen, no rabbit. Where did he go? So very sleepy, she could’t think harder on it, ‘else her brain might explode. She wavers on her feet, eyelids dropping further down upon her iris.

   They stay open just long enough to see the ground rushing towards her, she mumbles a quiet protest as her head hits the floor. A sharp, snapping pain inside her skull, and a horrible beeping resonates through her mind, something, something must’ve broke. She lays there, aware of the fact that she’s hit her head, but completely unaware...Of the consequences.
Look inside her brain, and you would see scattered pieces of metal, broken from her fall, or perhaps her madness, will we ever know? The government begin to panic as all the other chips disappear one by one, signals fading into oblivion, all because, of a little girl named Alice, who hit her head.

Alice’s hands grasp the dirt in fistfuls, she pushes herself upright, to catch a hand that was stretched down towards her. “Wha-What happened?” she stammers, as the strange man takes her up in his arms. She realizes he’s not a bit blurry, and that the lingering pain in her head has subsided, leaving a dull ache.“It’s over, and it has begun.” he states, his voice smooth. Alice scrunches up her nose. “What’s over? And what has begun?” she asks the man. The man’s tongue traced his teeth. “Everything.” he answers. Alice blinks, letting her arm fall limp and brush the grass as they walked, for he was an unusually short man. “What do we do now?” she asks.
The man shifts her weight, she notes for a moment that he walks funny. “We delete it from history.” the stranger mutters. She nods, not really understanding. He grins down at her, and the grin was oddly...Familiar in a way.