won·der | (wŭn'dər) | n. An event inexplicable by the laws of nature; a miracle.
land | (lănd) | n. An area or realm.
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Chapter 1
Down the Laundry Shoot
Chaise away all the funny things
Down the Rabbit Hole
And
Another world a waits behind
That little door
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Land
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Tick Tock Tick Tock
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"How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail"
A lone girl straightened up on the mattress she laid on, a curved silhouette against the shadowed back light of the closed curtains. Her blue shift crinkled in protest as she further moved her slender legs to dangle over the edge of the white bed.
"And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale"
She rolled her ankles, smiling at the popping sound they made, and slid off the mattress. Cropped pink hair lay in feathery tassels around her head as she turned towards the glass-viewing window that made up the front part of the room.
Pressing her forehead against the glass, green eyes watched as the nameless people passed without so much as a glance in her direction. Raising both hands, she pressed them against the cool surface. Each breath fogged the clear barrier in front of her features.
"How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,"
She watched as the doctors, nurses, and numerous patients walked by. They're not other or fellow. She doesn't belong here. She's not one of them.
"And welcomes little fishes in,
With gently smiling jaws"
"Disgusting," she breathed through clenched teeth.
Pushing herself off the glass, she walked away from the window and sat down on the carpeted floor. Her eyes raked up and down the white walls, as if maybe she missed something in the numerous examinations of them. She hated the color white. It made her mad.
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Tick Tock Tick Tock
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"Dinah," her voice bell-like, "What are we going to do today?"
A beat of silence.
"But we already broke the clock last time," her brow furrowed, "Besides, they'll just replace the thing with another one, not to mention we'll get in trouble again."
Green eyes flashed as she tipped her head back and laughed, "Yes, off with their heads!"
I sit in Dr. Kabuto office on the pretty velvet couch that I love to stroke.
Sobeautifulsobeautifulsobeautiful
Dr. Kabuto sits in front of me. A clip board and pen in hand. He pushes up his coke bottle glasses.
"Good morning Sakura," he squints his eyes and smiles.
itssodisgustingandvileandputridanditmakesmewanttop uke
"How old are you Sakura?"
Always straight to point. To ask questions.
To try and understand something that is out of your grasp
I smile.
"I am 28 today."
He scratches down something on the clipboard. Looks back up.
"No, try again."
I am getting annoyed
"I am 28."
He pushes his glasses up his nose again. I want to break his glasses. I want to break his nose.
"You are 17, Sakura."
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
"No, I was 17 last Wednesday."
sostupid
More scratching down.
so very stupid
He brushes his sliver hair away from his face and looks at me again. Eyes set.
"I heard you broke the clock in your room yesterday."
Dimwit
"Yes. It was annoying."
You are annoying
He leans back in his chair and studies me.
"You are not Sakura Haruno today, are you?"
So. He. Finally. Gets. It.
"You are her today."
Uh. Oh.
I smile.
"She is me. Me is she."
Dr. Kabuto sighs in frustration.
"No, there is only one of you."
WRONG
"Your name is Sakura Haruno."
WRONGWRONG
Scratching on paper.
"I'm upping your dosage to three times a day from now on, until I can see some improvement in your behavior."
WRONGWRONGWRONG
SOveryWRONG
"We'll meet again next week."
No we won't
"Until then, Sakura Haruno."
I laugh.
WRONG
Sakura stretched out against the floor. She let her head roll to the side, brushing away the pink tendrils that fell in her eyes, so that the viewing-window, along with the door beside it, was in sight
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Tick Tock Tick Tock
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She supposed that sooner or later one of the nice men would come and serve her lunch, and then maybe one of the doctors, (probably Dr. Kabuto), would escort her to the velvet couch that she loved to stroke, while asking her meaningless questions that she still had yet to answer right.
Sakura watched the glass.
And then it would be back to her room where dinner would be waiting, along with her medicine in a plastic cup (where did all the time go?); the nice man would come back, fetch the tray (cup now empty), and tell her goodnight. For the next couple hours she would lie on her bed and have idle conversation with Dinah, as she played with the pills that Dinah told her never to take.
Through her muddling, the sharp sound of a click sounded crisp through the quiet room. Slowly, the metal door opened, the bottom dragging along the carpet.
Sakura sat up, waiting for whomever to enter. Her green eyes watched as it finally came to a stop and lay against the wall behind it. No one entered.
Cautiously, she stood and made her way to the opened door, bracing herself in case one of the doctors or nurses bustled through. But, as she looked out the window, there was no such person insight. Nor were there anymore nameless faces passing by.
Her pale hands reached and grasped the doorframe, feeling the cold metal surface under her fingertips.
Sakura looked down the hallway to her right, and then to her left. Both times getting the same result. No one was there. Not a single nurse or doctor walked along the tiled floors, and not a single patient stood behind the fellow viewing windows like her own.
A loud voice then echoed down the white corridor, shattering the still silence, "I'm late, I'm late, Oh God! I'm late!"
Sakura didn't even have a moment to blink when an orange figure whipped past her. Bracing herself on the doorframe, she realized it was a fox, no, she corrected, a boy.
Dinah urged the pink haired girl forward, a twinge in her chest that pulledpulledpulled, and before she could elaborate on such a decision, she was already running down the hallway, barefoot, after the strange figure.
As she rounded the first corner, Sakura caught a glimpse of an orange tail of a fox trailing after a boy with blonde hair.
"Wait!" she called out, "You, boy! Stop!"
The fox-boy, as she had named him, appeared not to have heard her, and continued running down the hall and around another corner.
Sakura tried to speed her pace up, determined now to catch up to him. She rounded the second corner and stopped abruptly in her tracks, her voice lodged like a rock in her throat. The tall blond haired boy, with the foxtail, stood several paces in front of her, looking down a laundry shoot. He grabbed the sides of the bin, and to Sakura's alarm, jumped in.
Confused, she willed her legs to move towards the laundry shoot, hesitating at the thought of orange leaping right back out. Dirty hospital shifts, like her own, littered the ground around the blue waste bin.
Peering down into the darkness, Dinah urged her to fall forwards.
The pink-haired girl abruptly stepped back. She never questioned Dinah. Never. Dinah knew best. She always had. Always staying by Sakura's side, when others wouldn't. Providing her with a life that wasn't quite solitude. So why did she not believe her now? It's just a simple laundry shoot, she thought, right?
Her body, ignoring her internal conflict, stepped up to the basket again, reaching her hands out to grasp the sides. Giving in, she pushed down the clawing of mistrust in her chest and seated herself on the metal bar that made up the surrounding edges of the shoot.
Her legs dangled over the darkness below, the darkness that now caressed her feet and ankles, hands waiting to pull her in.
"Of course I trust you," she whispered to the silent question, "I will do anything for you."
With a breath, she pushed herself forwards, towards unseen hands, as her own let go. Sakura couldn't stop the image of herself plummeting towards a mirror, as darkness overtook her vision.
"I will do anything for you."
(WonderlandAwaits)
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disclaimer: i do not own naruto, alice's adventures in wonderland, or "looking glass" by hypnogaja.