[+OneOtherLand+

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Chapter One

i ought to be ashamed of myself

For Almira, it never once crossed her mind that something was wrong with her. She was laboring under the impression that if she made it to a hospital, she would be fine, and reunited with her family within a day. Of course, this was all nonesense. But if anyone tried to tell her, she wouldn't have heard it anyway. For, you see, Almira Helen Lissette was blind to the world.

It was a curious sort of numbness with which she wandered through a forest she had never even noticed before, where trees were old and twisted, and no sound was to be heard. To her, there was nothing unnatural about the shapes that moved on the edges of her blurred vision. She clutched her stomach with a detached sort of curiousity at the warmth and stickiness that had formed there. She felt that she was going the right way, but the thought that she could trust her own mind with the state she was in was shocking.

This is the way, she thought, just a little further now...

Something white flashed in her line of sight. She stopped and contemplated what it was she was seeing, for it seemed to her to be just a bouncing white dot darting before her. She smiled in a clumsy sort of way and picked up her pace, following the dot between obstructions, black pillars representing trees, dark tangles for bushes. Her body, however, felt heavy and tight, and before long, she tripped over her own feet and went sprawling on the ground before a towering tree. "Hhhh..." She began, trying to find her voice. "Hhhhey? You...?" She blinked, laying on her stomach, watching the white thing get closer, study her for a moment, then dissapear over her head. "What... are... Uuuugghhhhhhh...!"

She was grabbed, and something long and spiny wrapped itself around her small waist. A searing pain went through her abdomen and she grunted as thorns scraped over a wound in her stomach. All too soon, she felt more vines, for that was all she could figure they were, wrap themselves around her. With suprising speed, they began to pull her into something dark at her feet that she couldn't see, and she screamed and struggled, only to find the vines grip her tighter. She felt as if her essence itself was being squeezed right from her as she was pulled into an empty darkness and dropped into an endless hole. Down, down, down...

†

Alice Ryanne Stanley-Lissette had been a writer. The subject matter of her writings were always far too profound and dark for even her own daughter to understand. She, Almira, humored her mother and skimmed her books, but never really read them. It was not that Almira never appreciated her mother's work, it was just easier to let her think that she understood. Because Almira had always equated an excessive imagination with a sort of latent madness--and not without good reason.

Alice had loved her daughter dearly, and received more than her share of affection in return. Almira was her mother's only child--the baby of the family--and she felt closer to her mother than she did her father. Despite the strangeness she knew lay hidden beneath the surface, Almira knew her mother was a good person, and that she was an intellegent human being. It had seemed to Almira that every imaginative speck in the family gene pool must have gone to her mother, because where her mother could come up with a new bed-time story every night if need be, she, herself, couldn't imagine her way out of the proverbial paper bag. But with that grand imagination came something nobody else would have expected; Alice saw things that other people couldn't.

She remembered cleary her sixteenth birthday. All of her friends were there to celebrate, and her dad had bought her a new car--and of course everyone she knew would be jealous of it--and as she sat there, in that euphoria of lightheadedness that followed making a wish and blowing out the candles, Alice had grabbed her by the arm and, in a sense, wrenched all of her attention away from the present. She knew from the look she was given that she had something important and private to say. So she followed her mother into the hallway, dimly aware of the laughter and talk from the dining room. She opened her mouth and was about to ask what was wrong, when her mother grabbed her by the shoulders and looked down into the eyes that were some much like, and at the same time so unlike her own.

"Aly, you listen to me," her mother began in a serious and frightened tone that acompanied the fear in her great blue eyes and a shiver in her frame. "If you ever happen to find yourself in a strange place, and you are scared and don't know where to go, follow the White Rabbit. He is the only one who won't lead you astray." Her voice was a pleading whisper when she continued, "Promise me you'll follow him! Promise me!" She shook Almira by the shoulders. She gaped at her, wide eyed and frightened.

"Mommy, you're scaring me..." Was all she could say in a choked whisper, tears welling in her eyes as she thought of how tortured her own mother must be by that mind of hers.

In response she was shaken again. "Promise me, Aly! You must promise me. It is important!" Almira's lip trembled and she nodded her head jerkily. Just then, her stout father turned the corner to see where they had gotten to. "The party's still going, Al, you shouldn't keep your guests waiting," he teased. They went back into the dining room and that was the end of that.

Such was Almira's former life. She was pampered and well cared for, and she could be a snotty little churl, but she was a good kid. Her parents had raised her well, better than anyone, who had any idea of how unstable her mother really was, could even imagine. Almira had always had the suspicion that she was the only one who knew something was off about Alice, but she was glad for her all the same. Glad, because she was the only one who knew how special she was.

†

But, somebody found something out, and Almira's life was turned on it's head before she turned eighteen. She somehow escaped. And deep in that hole, in the recesses of her muddled mind, a light turned on and she realized she was the only one who got out safe.

And down, down, down Almira fell, slowly regaining conciousness. She was falling foot first for what seemed like forever, flying past shelves stuffed with books, jars, preserved and withered objects, and abundance of analogous clocks and lit lamps that shut themselves off once she fell past them. If she had fallen in her conciousness, she probably would have been screaming the whole way down, but now that she was awake, it seemed to be a sillly thing to do to scream when there was no one about to help her. The most curious thing about this hole was that it was really warm and brightly painted with checkeboard patterns and polkadots that, for some reason, were at once comforting and sinister. But, being of a simple, calculating mind, Almira couldn't put a finger on why she felt such a way. She just did.

"This place is curious," she said to herself. "I wonder how far it goes?" As if in respose to her question, a few lamps beneath her flashed on and she saw the ground only moments before she hit a pile of straw and twigs emitting a foul smell. She sat up and rubbed her side, having fallen hard despite the cushioning. It was when she touched something wet and mushy that she launched herself away from the pile, having felt the carcass of some small rodent. She wagged her hand, cursing, but then she remembered something.

"Wasn't I, just a few moments ago, like that?" She asked her self, looking down at her middle. Seeing nothing there but the wrinkled skirt of her dress and the pristine press of her corset, she rubbed over the spot where she had felt such pain before. A dark, curly lock fell before her eyes and she hastily brushed it away, wondering why everything was so... Different...

On the opposite wall was a full length, warped mirror which bent her stockinged legs at odd angles and stretched out the stripes in an equally as odd way. She shook her head. Now was not the time to worry about the state of her clothes. She started down a twisting hallway that she hadn't noticed a few moments before and tried to collect her thoughts.

She was turning a bend when she saw something shadowy dart arouund another corner at the end of the hall and a flash of white as it was caught momentarily in the lamp light. She blinked and stopped, hugging herself. She looked around and finally took in the hallway. The walls were a dark red and hung with portraits of creatures as warped and twited as the hall itself. There were cob webs everywhere, and a busted chandelier above her head was covered in them. Sure, it wasn't scary per se, but it was a little creepy. She moved on, thinking about the figure she had just seen speed around this was as she watched her feet over the checked tiles.

Follow the White Rabbit... She blinked when she felt it cross her mind. She then began to run around the twists and turns, ignoring all other turn offs in the hallway from the main one, for something told her she was going the right way. Before she knew it, the hall opened up into a large room, all white but for crimson hangings on the far wall. She made her way right to them, noticing no other feature about the room, and pulled back the curtains, seeing a narrow door there. Realizeing that this had to be the way out, she grasped the doorknob, but cried "Ouch!" and pulled her had away a split second later.

"Don't touch me with your filthy hands!" Came a small and arrogant voice. "Don't tell me you don't have a key!" Almira furrowed her brow and studied the door knob. It was talking to her--in fact, it was looking her right in the eye.

"I am sorry..." She began uncertainly. "I beg your pardon, how rude of me," she said sarcastically, nursing her bitten hand. The door knob sneered at her.

"Well? You're not getting to the garden if you don't have a key."

Almira fumbled in her pocket for a moment, thinking. But, being clever, not imaginative, she brought up the one thing on her mind. "Please, sir, I am looking for the White Rabbit."

†

To Be Continued...