Beware the Jabberwock... [Closed]

[melissaphilia]

Longwood Place used to be an elementary school. Now there was just a bunch of old people living here. The three story brick building overshadowed the back parking lot. Alice got out of the car and looked up at the structure. Blue and yellow balloons bounced and swayed where they were tied to the framework of the awning that led up the stairs and to the entrance. Someone had tried to bring a little cheer to the place. It didn’t work. Alice wondered if the building was disappointed with its sad history. To be a school children didn’t want to go to, and then to be a home for people who were just waiting to die. Pathetic.


“Come on,” Margie said to her. Alice looked at her older sister. She looked elegant in a soft pink dress with scalloped hemlines. Her hair was carefully twisted into a top bun, shiny and smooth with hairspray. She clicked up the stairs in her white heels. Alice looked down at herself, managing to look somewhat presentable in a blue lace romper with a peter pan color and black flats with ankle straps. It wasn’t as “formal” as the invitation had strongly suggested, but it was all she could find in her closet. Alice huffed and followed her sister. A flyer was taped to the door. A pixelated photo of a tea cup and a colorful swirly font read “3rd Annual Tea Party.”


“This is going to be boring,” she said under her breath as they entered the foyer. Margie heard the grumble and glared down at her younger sister.


“Don’t you dare let Mom hear you complain.”


Alice crossed her arms and bit the inside of her cheek. The room to their left was a sitting area. Vintage wingback chairs were arranged around an electric fireplace, which wasn’t on. Piano music and voices came from the dining room through the open door to the right. Everybody was already seated and enjoying themselves. Alice and Margie wove through the room and found their mother and grandmother seated near the piano in the corner.


“Hi, sorry we’re late. We had trouble deciding what to wear.” Margie said, kissing both women on the cheeks before taking her seat next to their grandmother. Alice sat between Margie and their mother and tried not to look too guilty. Their mother looked at Alice knowingly anyway.


“I’m glad you could make it,” Gram said, smiling at them. The tables had been decorated with alternating clothes the same colors at the balloons outside. Every setting had a delicate china tea cup and matching plate and silverware. A flower arrangement adorned the center of every table, and a long desk at the back had been designated for desserts. Three-tiered trays with tarts and a silver platter with cakes and baskets full of cookies. Alice got up from her seat and took her plate with her. Over at the desserts, a woman around her mother’s age placed a single petit four on her plate. An older gentleman with shaky hands went for one of the tarts. Alice grabbed two of everything and then turned to observe the room.


The living assistants were going around offering tea with pitchers of cream and sugar bowls. The pianist was a young man in a suit and a look of almost pained focus on his face. Out in the hallway two kids ran by, their high-pitched laughter echoing after them. Alice checked to make sure her family wasn’t looking after her before she slipped around the corner and disappeared from the party.

 

[SparkleBreaker]

Crossing worlds wasn’t the easiest and with all the known gates heavily guarded by the queen’s goons it was even more of a challenge. The hatter had crawled out of a hole. If one were to look as he had climbed into this world it would have looked similar to the undead rising from the depths of the earth. The portal, luckily, was in a garden that had been forgotten many years ago. No one was there to witness the strange man, dressed just as bizarrely with his mustard yellow dress shirt, deep mossy green vest, dark brown paints with matching leather shoes and a top hat, also dark brown, with green and brown shiny ribbon wrapped around it. An ace card and a feather from a jubjub bird was tucked in the ribbon.


The outlandish foreigner was quite on the handsome side, if you could look pass the whole ensemble he was sporting. He seemed to be in his early twenties and started making the trek into town to find Alice. Fate must have been written in the stars as he saw a car drive by with dear Alice inside.


“Alice? Alice. ALICE!” The name grew louder each time he said it as he went through the emotions of spotting her and confirming that indeed it was her. Bouncing and waving his hands in the air he called out trying to get her attention, but only got the pedestrians on the sidewalk along with him staring at him like he was a loony that had just escaped the psych ward. “What you gawking at?” he snapped, feeling their heavy gazes leave as they went on about their business.


Tailing the car was an excruciating task. By the time he had caught up, found the car, Alice was already inside the large three story tall building. The hatter got strange looks as he weaved through the building, dirty, panting and sweaty from his journey. Only a few orderlies had seen him since he came in the back way and he wandered the hall until he saw the familiar face he was looking for.


“Pssst. You mind grabbing me some of those cookies? I’m terribly hungry from my journey.” A smile grew on his face as he spoke, hoping she would be happy to see him.

 

[melissaphilia]

The building’s structure was u-shaped. At either end of the long hallway was a set of double doors that led to the spiral stairwells. Alice went through the doors at the west wing and up to the second floor landing and paused to look out the window. She could see the edge of the parking lot, and the tops of buildings downtown between the trees. She took a bite out of one of her tarts and turned to go. From the corner of her periphery, something brown and green disappeared out of sight. She tried not to let her heart stir. Don’t, she warned herself. It’s not, and you know it. It’s impossible.


She moved away from the window and went up to the third floor. The old classrooms had been renewed into furnished bedrooms. Alice wandered up and down the hallways, trying to get herself lost. There was nobody up here; everyone was downstairs at the party. She finished her tart and wondered if her family had noticed she was gone. She sighed and returned to the main hallway. The building had been installed with an elevator. She pressed the down button and waited. From behind, someone psst at her.


“You mind grabbing me some of those cookies? I’m terribly hungry from my journey.”


Alice spun. Mustard and moss and leather. The rich smell of Tumtum trees. His voice. Her eyes traveled from the plush feather in his top hat down to his beaming face. He was here, a splash of wild color against the desaturation of this world’s reality.


The dessert plate slipped from her slack hand, scattering crumbs across the carpet.


“Hatter…” She ran to his arms and felt her heart hammer against her ribcage, trying to free itself and conjoin with his. Hints of earl grey and vanilla and cinnamon clung to his clothes. She squeezed his torso harder, feeling the burn of tears in the back of her throat.


“I missed you.”


She reluctantly pulled back and looked up at him, easily a head taller than her. He was blurry through the film of tears in her eyes and she quickly dashed them away. It had been years since she had last seen him. He hadn’t changed much.


“I have so much to tell you. How are you here? Is Rabbit with you?” Alice twisted her head, looking for any sign of the slender white-haired girl. Her beautiful ruby eyes. She and Hatter were the only ones around. When she looked back at him he was still smiling, but it no longer reached his eyes. Sadness and worry had moved in. Alice frowned.


“What is it? What’s wrong?”

 

[SparkleBreaker]

The familiar voice addressing him in such a happy tone made his heart leap. Alice was met with open arms that tightly wrapped around as they embraced. The familiar scent of her floral shampoo filled his nostrils. Hatter could feel her arms tighten around his torso and he simply rested his chin briefly on the top of her head.


“I missed you too.”


The hatter only pulled away when she did, a grin plastered on his face from ear to ear. Briefly, he forgot why he had risked his neck to get there and all the troubles in Wonderland. The peaceful moment whizzed by when Alice asked if the White Rabbit had come along.


The smile never faltered, but his dark chocolate brown eyes filled with sadness as his Alice twisted to see if their friend was there as well. The hall was empty, but the two of them.


“Alice . . .” What was transpiring in Wonderland was awful. The Red Queen had risen once more, twice as powerful. That was the least of their worries. Then there was the jabberwock. An awful ,vile creature, but he would have to get into that at a different time.


“Our friends have been captured by the Red Queen Alice. I need your help; you are the only one left that I could go to.” The smile was now gone as panic moved in. It had been quite some time now they’d been in the Queen’s clutches and Hatter was out of ideas on how to break them out and had little allies. Everyone that helped Alice had been targeted by the Queen.

 

[melissaphilia]

“Everyone?” She whispered. Alice felt her body turn cold with fear. Rabbit… She thought of hers friends, scare and alone and trapped somewhere inside of the Queen’s castle. Were they hurt? Or worse? Terrible images of her friends bloodied and broken assaulted Alice’s mind. She tried to fight it, but her worry was overwhelming. This is all my fault, she thought. Alice shut her eyes with guilt. Time worked different between their worlds. And Hatter was here. How long had it been? Did they think no one was coming for them? Did they blame her? Did Hatter? No. He had come all this way. They knew they could trust her. She had to get them out. She couldn’t let them down and leave them to die.


Anger and determination burned away the fear. Alice clenched her hands into fists.


"Red..." she growled. "I should have killed her when I had the chance." She needed to calm down. Her mind was racing, trying to come up with a plan. First things first. They had to get back to Wonderland.


Her phone buzzed in her pocket just then. Alice snatched it up and glared at the screen. She had a text from Margie.


Where did you go? Gram is asking for you and Mom is getting mad.


Alice cursed. She’d almost forgotten her family was downstairs. She would have to leave them. What could she say to them? They would never understand. Alice had made a promise to herself to never, ever mention Wonderland to them or to anyone else in this world. No one ever believed her anyway, and she only sounded crazy when she tried to talk about them when she was a little girl. She’d learned that lesson the hard way. No. They couldn’t know. There was no time to explain anyway. They needed to go. Now.


“Come on,” she said to Hatter. She shut her phone off and raced down the hallway to the staircase. The elevator would drop them off right in the middle of the hallway. They couldn’t risk being seen or caught. With Hatter close behind, she leaned over the railing to make sure no one was coming up. When she deemed the coast clear, they went down. Despite everything Alice smiled. First the first time in a long time, she was happy. She was going home.


They paused at the bottom of the stairwell. Crouching beneath the door windows, they peeked out to see who was around. Only a couple of the in-house assistants refilling their carafes with hot water. It would be risky trying to go out the front door. Maybe the basement? There had to be a back door somewhere.


“How did you get here?”

 

[SparkleBreaker]

“Everyone” he repeated somberly. There was more he wanted to add, but Alice was already taking the news hard. The list of friends and when they were taken would do no good at this time. A brow rose in surprise as she was quick to anger, wishing the Queen’s death. Initially, that was how he felt and he didn’t blame her, but it wasn’t until he cleared his head did he come up with a suitable plan.


Just then, there was a buzzing coming from her pocket. Hatter’s brow crinkled in confusion at the contraption Alice was glaring at. Their worlds were so different from one another. There was no time to ask what it did as the device was put away as quickly as it was taken out. Alice was darting down the hall and he was right behind.


The coast clear, he charged down staircase, following behind Alice. The reason behind running all of sudden unclear, but he had an idea it had to do with the gadget that had buzzed earlier. Hidden behind the door, he peeked along with Alice to see what was on the other side. A few people with the same attire were on the other side, working. Hatter turned to her with an answer.


“Back door next to the boiler room.” he said, taking her hand and getting to his feet. “This way.” he said, leading her down the hall and taking an abrupt left. Quarter of the way down the hall he could hear soft voices so he flattened himself against the wall until the workers had passed. “Almost there.” The door was only two more halls away. Once they maneuvered their way through them, they were at the back of the building and Hatter pushed opened the door next to the boiler room.


“Alice, exactly why were we hiding from everyone inside?” he asked, confused over the situation. Alice’s family was a mystery and he didn’t know they were inside.

 

[melissaphilia]

Alice let herself be led down the stairs to the basement. Her blood was rushing, her mind racing. She squeezed Hatter's hand, trying to ground herself, to remind herself that he was here, this was happening, she wasn't dreaming. Her breath hitched in her throat as she recalled her mother trying to soothe her as a child.


"It was just a dream, Alice. No more nonsense for tonight."


Alice flattened herself against the wall next to him as they waited for the voices and footsteps to pass. When it was safe again they continued to the door next to the boiler room. It led outside, to the brightly lit front lawn. Flower bushes lined the property, extending down to the main road. Alice shut the door behind them and stopped, her hands pressed flat against the warm metal. She knew there was no time to wait, but... she hadn't even said goodbye to them. The last time she had faced the Red Queen, she almost hadn't survived. Wonderland could be dangerous. What if she didn't come back?


"My family..." Alice started. "My mother and sister don't know about you. About Wonderland. I mean, I told them about you. I tried, when I was younger. They didn't believe me. They thought I was just making it up for a while. And then, they thought maybe I was sick. Delusional. Mom took me to see a doctor. As a kid it was easy to make me believe that maybe I had dreamed it all. But then I went back, and I knew. It was all true, all real." Alice looked at her friend. He was a strange and beautiful thing, and she loved him. She loved them all. This isn't a dream, she thought. The Hatter is real, and so is Wonderland. And Rabbit, and our friends. We have to save them.





"They can't know about you. They don't understand. They're upstairs, right now, looking for me. I-I have to leave them. Rabbit, the twins, Cheshire. They need me. They need us. We can't waste anymore time. And time is different here than it is in Wonderland. Who knows how much has past since you've been here in this world. The longer we wait..." Alice stopped. Her throat was closing on her, her eyes burned with the threat of more tears. When did she become such a crybaby? She used to be stronger than this, and braver. Wonderland was more important than some stupid tea party. Hopefully her family would understand, one day.


"Alice!" The voice of her sister echoed from around the corner of the building. Alice sighed. Their chances of getting away unseen were gone. She smiled. They would have to run. Good thing she didn't wear heels. Unlike Margie.


"Alice, are you out here?"





"Come on!" Alice dashed away out into the open grass with Hatter close behind her. They were seen in moments.


"Alice? Alice! What are you doing? Who is that? Alice, come back!"

 

[SparkleBreaker]

The Hatter listened to everything Alice was telling him. Not surprising anyone hadn’t believed her when she spoke of Wonderland. The human race was far from understanding and knowing that other worlds around their own existed. Time exactly wasn’t on their side, Alice had a point, but her watery eyes only made him want to comfort her and tell her everything would be alright. Their friends were going to make it out and in time this would just be a faded memory.


A stranger’s voice ruined the chance of any comforting words to come out as Hatter twisted to look in the direction the voice came. A woman, in a soft pink dress was shouting for Alice. Must have been a family member and going off on how young the lady looked, he would guess her sister was out looking for her.


“Coming!” Hatter sprinted behind Alice, one hand keeping his hat firmly on his head.


Instantly they were seen tearing through the grass to get away. The woman sounded awfully angry as she made demands for Alice to return. Hatter couldn’t help but smirk as they disobeyed. Once some buildings were blocking them and some distance had been put between them and their pursuer he ran along slide Alice.


“What one is closer? The hold you’d fallen down or the mirror?” The mirror was another gate way and he knew where it was in Wonderland, but never having taken it to this world, he didn’t know where it was here or even if it was in reaching distance.

 

[melissaphilia]

Margie's words carried after Alice as they ran from Longwood Place. She tried to focus on her friends to keep the guilt at bay. One thing she knew she could count on was that Margie would not tell their mother that Alice had run away with a strange man. It would worry both their mother and grandmother too much, and Margie couldn't do that to them. But would Margie tell them something else instead? That she hadn't found Alice, that she was still unaccounted for? Alice couldn't be sure. She tried not to worry too much about it. There was nothing any of them could do about it now. By the time they left to find her--if they found her--she and Hatter would hopefully be traveling through the rabbit hole and on their way to the Red Queen's castle.


After a good while of running, Alice slowed down and realized Hatter was trying to ask her something.


"Huh? Oh. Uh, probably the hole." The original mirror belonged to her grandfather. Alice had gone away to school the semester following his death. When she returned home for the holidays, her grandmother had moved out of her home into Longwood and sold almost everything in the old house. She'd tried to search for it, but hadn't been successful. The rabbit hole, on the other hand, was in the park, which was only a short distance from where they were. Up ahead she could see the road traffic of Main Street, and the shop fronts where people often went to shop or eat lunch.


"I know where one is. I imagine they're all being watched though?" Alice had also started taking self defense classes. She'd signed up when she returned from her last trip to Wonderland. But a good right hook wouldn't do much against the Queen's Deck. If they got captured... Alice blinked.


"Wait," she said out loud. "Maybe that's not such a bad idea." She looked at Hatter, who had glanced at her questioningly. She backtracked.


"If Red's army is waiting for us when we go back, what are the chances they've been given orders to take us alive rather than just killing us right then and there? She took Rabbit and everyone hostage, but she didn't kill them. As far as we know, anyway. She needs them to get to me. But what if we go to her? I've escaped from her castle once, I can do it again. And this will take us right to our friends. Unless they have been given orders to kill us on sight, in which case this whole plan is crazy and stupid and is a sure way to get us and everyone killed. Once I'm out of the way there's no reason for her to keep the others alive. Oh, Hatter, what are we going to do?"


By this point they had reached Main Street. They stopped at a crosswalk and waited for the sign to turn green. It was warm out but breezy. The clouds overhead were traveling quickly, passing in front of the sun every now and again. Alice sighed and gripped her phone.


"It's a risk we have to take," she concluded. If they tried to kill them, they would fight. If they took them captive, they would find a way out.

 

[SparkleBreaker]

Slowing his pace, Hatter stayed alongside Alice. A trip down the hole it shall be. Much easier one than climbing out of it, something, thankfully, he wouldn’t be doing anytime soon again, if ever. It seemed they weren’t too far as he recognized the intersection up the road he had gone through not long ago.


“Yes, they’re all heavily guarded.” he replied, twisting to look over his shoulder to see if the woman from earlier was still pursuing him. That is when something strange Alice had said caught his ear and he turned to look at her in confusion. “That’s a good thing?” he mumbled to himself right before she started her explanation.


Hatter didn’t like the plan at all, not that it was bad one, just risky. The idea of willingly letting the Queen get her hands on them put fear in his heart. The fact was they were mostly likely to get caught when they returned anyhow. The idea was weighing heavily on him. He only let out an exasperated sigh in response as saying I don’t know just didn’t suffice at that time. Seemed Alice had made up her mind as she was determined to do if for their friends, despite the risks.


“Once you’re caught she’ll most likely be all like off with their heads.” he pointed out, not seeing why any of them would be kept around once Alice was caught. “We might not even get to see them.” Another unnerving fact that they’d be thrown in front of the Queen to meant their fate. Scratching the back of his head he gave her an uneasy look. Unfortunately, he had a one track mind this whole time. Get Alice. Nothing was planned for their return and now he wanted to kick himself for it.


They had made it into the heart of town now. Everyone was going about their busy days, but he could still feel eyes on him as he wasn’t dressed like everyone else. However, none of that bothered him as they continued to the portal.


“You sure about this?” he asked, not sold on the plan, but if that is what she wanted he was willing to do so as he hand no other alternatives to offer. The lack of allies not behind bars was going to hurt their odds at not being caught and also left them with no place to go if they escaped the deck when returning. “If you’re sure, I’m in.” he said, making up his mind they had no better alternatives.