What you're about to read is the story of a girl who had a fantastic journey through a land of strange things, though things aren't all as they seem. The things you're about to experience will be strange and disturbing, and most certainly twisted. But don't worry dear children, it's all part of the fun. If up is down and wrong is right, the what follows must be nothing but good. So keeping that in mind, let's take a look into the magical and frightening world of...
Wonderland
Prologue: Into Madness
When Orihime opened her eyes she was falling, the wind rushing passed her face as she got ever closer to something shimmering in the distance. Or maybe the Shimmering was getting closer to her she couldn't tell; there was just blackness in all directions around her, with the occasional random object floating passed her: a teapot, a rat's tail, a severed hand, a playing card (one of the Hearts suite, she couldn't tell which), and a bloody kitchen knife. They were moving slower than the wind felt against her cheeks, though for some reason she could bring herself to find any of this odd. She knew it wasn't normal for this to be happening, but at the same time it felt like things were supposed to be this way.
More objects flew passed her, now at varying speeds. She didn't pay them any mind though, since the Shimmering was getting closer. (Or she was getting closer to it.)
Soon she reached the Shimmering, coming to a smooth stop right above it. It had looked like water before, but she could see it was clearly black, like tar. It wasn't tar, as when she drew her hand through it, it moved and felt just like water. She drew her hand out, and it was stained black. She hope it wasn't toxic.
As she held her hand out in front of her face, she thought she saw something moving on the other side of the Shimmering, something white. The White Thing looked vaguely human shaped...maybe they could tell her what was going on. She reached down to the Shimmering again, this time trying to reach clear to the other side.
A moment later she felt herself passing through the Shimmering, emerging upwards into a room with four crooked walls with white and black stripes running down them, splotches of blood splayed on them at random.
"Quite homey, isn't it?" a voice said from behind her, "My compliments to the decorator." She turn around, intent on learning who the new speaker was; maybe they were the White Thing from before.
She saw a man standing behind her, not much older than she was. He was handsome in a rugged kind of way, if one liked that sort of thing. He had strange blue hair, but that didn't surprise her. (She was getting the impression that nothing would shock her much here.) He was standing to the side so she couldn't see all his face, and he was halfway in the shadows (What was causing them?), but for some reason his eery, maniacal smile seemed to have a luminosity of its own.
"...Well?" he asked expectantly.
"Excuse me?" she said, tilting her head to the side.
"I just paid you a compliment," he said, tapping the side of his head, "you're supposed to say 'thank you'. Don't you know anything?"
"Do I know you?" Orihime asked.
"Sort of," the man shrugged. He bowed with a grand flourish, "You may call me Grimmjow, my Princess. And might I say, you're looking lovely today."
He stepped to the side, revealing a full length mirror. In the mirror Orihime saw her reflection, only it was upside down.
"Oops," Grimmjow said, turning the mirror halfway around, "had the darn thing backwards!"
Now her reflection was was the right way up. She was wearing an old dress, like something out of England in the early 1900's, but so ratty and threadbare that it was a wonder (Hehe, geddit?) that it was still hanging on her shoulders. Her chestnut brown hair hung limply over her shoulders, with a little bit of blood matted in it. She was missing her left eye, which was the source of the matted blood.
She brought her left hand up to her empty eye socket, feeling some blood that hadn't congealed yet.
"Ooh, that's bad; you might want to cover that up," Grimmjow winced. He ripped a bit off of what remained of one of the sleeves of Orihime's dress and tied it around her head so it covered her missing eye, "There we are!"
"Thank you," she said, giving a small bow. "Um, could you tell me where this is?"
Grimmjow suddenly began cackling wildly.
"You don't know?!" he asked, trying to compose himself enough to speak clearly. "Why Princess, this is your world! The world of your own creation; your own person Wonderland!" He spread his arms open in a grand flourish.
A smile crept onto Orihime's lips.
"So where do you want to go first?"
"Well," Orihime said, "I saw a White Thing in this room before, I'd like to know where that went." She regarded him in his all white attire (white pants and a white button up shirt that he left open), "That wasn't you, was it?"
"Oh you must mean the little Rabbit," the man said, holding out his hand palm up; on it appeared a little image of a girl in a simple white tattered sundress. Her hair was short and black, and one thick lock of fell between her eyes and across her face. "She was here a minute ago."
"Where did she go then?" Orihime looked around, not seeing any doors. The only things in the room beside herself and the man were the walls and the blood on them. (The mirror had vanished as well.)
"Why out the door, of course!" Grimmjow said, turning Orihime's head to the side.
A metal plated door stood on one of the walls, with a small slider a third of the way from the top. Orihime walked over to the door and opened the slider, peering through the small window.
"It's all black," she said, looking back at Grimmjow. "I can't tell what's there."
"Have you tried going through?" he asked. "The only true way to know what is in a place is to go there and see for yourself." He turned his face to her, revealing the right side of his jaw was missing. It was bone now, with a few bits of rotting flesh hanging in the empty cavity. "Who knows? It might be fun..."
Orihime gripped the door latch.
"Of course," the man followed up, "it could be dangerous; it is your world after all."
She slid the latch open and tugged on the door, causing it to swing open with a creak. "If it's my world, then nothing in it can hurt me," she said, definitively.
Then she stepped forward, soon disappearing into the consuming darkness.
"Good luck," Grimmjow said, starting to dissolve away, "you're gonna need it..."
to be continued...
