Don’t Fall Down The Rabbit Hole

Warnings: mentions of smoking/vaping, concepts of insanity

The young girl, who was not so young anymore,

Sat on a hard, wooden chair that was pulled

Into a likewise square wooden desk.

Smoke blowed around the place,

Windows cracked open.

A man stood in the corner

Watching the blonde girl with

A look of boredom across his face.

His cigarette posed between his lips.

The young had pretty blonde hair

And pretty fair skin.

She called this man the caterpillar

For that what he was called in her head.

Of course the man had no clue who she was,

For he as never had the chance of meeting her,

It was all his dread.

“Who are you?” said he.

He didn’t sound amused, nor entertained by the lady.

“I don’t know, sir, I think I have entirely changed who I am since breakfast.”

The man blowed more smoke from out his vape.

“What do you mean by that girl,”

His voice ringing out sternly and with authority,

“Explain yourself at once.”

The young girl looked at the man across the desk,

Her eyes wide.

“I can’t explain myself, because I am not myself, I am someone else.”

The man only nodded and turned back his head,

He called out some words and new persons came on in.

Alice was then politely taken away from the office once again.

She was sent back to her room, where she laid down to rest again in her cot.

She waited for the first dawn of light, she didn’t know for how long.

Until the women once again came with their white outfits and coats.

They got her from the white sheets and dressed her up in that plain blue dress.

And sent her back out into the world in the walls she was trapped in.

She walked around all by herself until she came upon a hall,

That spanned out far and at the end only two ways to go.

A man came out from a door,

Looked at her and quickly walked forward.

A cat like grin on his tortured features.

The girl politely asked,

Since she was confused on where to go,

Which direction she was supposed to travel though.

The man with the cat like grin pointed on direction

And smoothly sailed his words,

“That depends where you would like go,

In that direction,” He said pointing to the left,

“Is where the dining hall is, where you will find my friend the hatter.

Makes splendid hats, he does.”

Now waving the other direction,

His words once again sailed,

“In this direction is where the doctor goes too and from.”

The hare, the young girl thought.

He smiled a quite devilish smile and added with a quick bow,

“Visit either,

they are both mad”

The girl took a scared step back and with a scared look

Whispered such strange words,

“But I don’t want to be among mad people.”

The man took another step forward towards the scared girl,

His voice quickly went down to a hushed whisper,

“Well you can’t help that, we’re all mad here.

I happen to be.

And so are you.”

The girl rose her voice once again

To the normal,

“How do you know I am mad?”

The cat like man frowned at the girls

Lack of judgement,

“Well you must be dear, or you wouldn’t have come here.”

The man who reminded the girl of a cat

Pointed to the sign that hang above the Gates.

“Institute” it read.

The girl looked at the sign and only nodded her head,

And then simply looked off and walked away,

Going towards the left.

She made it to the dining hall just like the man said.

She tried to look for the this mad hatter like he proclaimed.

She spotted a strange looking party,

Seated at a long table.

The plastic cups and dishes that was offered from the chef

Lined up from each person that sat at the table.

The ‘doctor’ so the man claimed sat in one seat,

While the mad hatter sat in the next.

Then a small, short man sat next to the hatter,

Chairs pushed together.

He resembled, she thought, to a dormouse.

She sat down among they table,

And they looked at her like she had gone mad.

The ‘doctor’ looked at the hatter and then

Pushed his plastic cup towards her.

“Have some wine,”

He brought an encouraging tone.

The girl looked around the table but there was nothing

But the dull tea that the cooks offered.

“Why there is no wine that you can offer.”

The ‘doctor’ stopped talking to the hatter

And then looked at the girl, “Well there isn’t any that’s why.”

The lady sat there with a shocked face,

“Well then it wasn’t very nice of you to offer any if there aren’t any there.”

The ‘doctor’ sniffed his hare like nose, and matter of factly stated,

“It wasn’t very nice of you to sit down without an invite.”

The girl sat there dumb-founded and feeling rather embarrassed,

Her cheeks flushing an interesting shade of pink.

To move on from the conversation,

She quickly started talking about the lady that watched over all the girls.

The one with the red apron that had the black heart at the bottom,

Who had black hair that sat upon her head in a tight bun, making her face seem

Oval shaped.

The young girl stated that she heard her saying something

About “off with there heads,” to a young girl with

A sparkling, sharp looking headdress on.

Although the conversation was all misheard.

Far away from that very table stood the Caterpillar,

As the young lady called him,

Or as everyone else called him the superintendent.

He watched them the girl at outwardly sighed.

For this wasn’t his first Alice that fell through the rabbit hole.

♧⌞⌝⌟⌜⌞⌝⌟⌜⌞⌝⌟⌜⌞ ⌞⌝⌟⌜⌞⌝⌟⌜⌞⌝⌟ ♧

This is for the fables challenge of modernize a fable or fairytale. For this challenge I did Alice in Wonderland because I have always been really enchanted with this story (no matter how creepy I found the author to be) and thought this piece was always open for a lot of ideas. I also had a lot of fun making this and that was one of the reason why it happened to be so long.

#moderntale

♧⌞⌝⌟⌜⌞⌝⌟⌜⌞⌝⌟⌜⌞ ⌞⌝⌟⌜⌞⌝⌟⌜⌞⌝⌟ ♧