Well, greetings, everyone! So, I've been on Fanfiction for a whopping eleven years! It's pretty obvious that Alice in Wonderland is my favorite thing to Fic about. I've always loved the story and Tim Burton's versions just won my heart. I feel so at home when I watch them. So, I give you, this beautiful story. This, literally, is a very, very personal version of myself ending up in Underland. Will it stick to the original plot? I'm not sure yet. But I promise you that I will make it as interesting as I possibly can. I don't think anything like this has ever been done before. Like I said, this story is going to get very personal with me. But I hope that some of you darling readers can connect with some of the issues I have, and that you come to realize that you are not alone. So, without further ado, allow me to take you into my life….
~I'm so tired of being here, suppressed by all my childish fears~
*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
It seemed that the only true sound I could focus on was the beating of my own heart. Sitting in my favorite Tudor-style armchair, ear pods in my ears, a copy of Bucklands Book of Spirit Communication lying open across my lap, one could say that I was enjoying a quiet evening of reading and music.
Such was not true.
Thunder boomed outside the window I sat in front of, lightning flashed, and tears streamed slowly down my cheeks. Not a single sniffle escaped my nostrils; I had always been a silent crier.
I was hurting beyond no doubt. The pain was so deep that I was surprised that my heart could even beat properly. I felt lost, abandoned, unloved, alien, even.
It had been this way for as long as I could remember.
My days were spent forcibly pushing through long hours at a job that was often marked "not good enough," by my family. At work I wore a fake smile and used a faux voice, which was disturbingly more high-pitched than my regular drawling deep tone. I would work any shift I was asked to, even would take doubles. My coworkers and I would laugh and joke about perverted manners that were inappropriate to be joking about, but it lightened the mood and it made the days go by quicker. Anyone who saw me at work presumed me a happy young woman, galumphing about with her close-knit coworker family.
Until it was time to punch out.
No one cared after you punched out. No one laughed or made jokes, no one even hardly acknowledged me when I was off the clock.
My evenings were anything but easy. In fact, they were emotionally draining and often left me thinking about suicide. I had been raised in the home of my grandparents, who were both old-fashioned and, oddly, not close-knit at all. The three of us each went our own separate way when we all gathered at home after working hours, and the house became a depressing mixture of television noises, computers dinging and dogs click-clacking across the kitchen floor.
And I'd be in my room, in the total darkness, listening to whatever music didn't presume to annoy me at that time.
I wiped at my tears with the black sleeve of my oversized tunic hoodie and I sighed. A flash of lightning illuminated what the candle burning in my windowsill did not, and I sighed. I checked my iPhone screen. It was midnight. I pulled my pods from my ears and listened. My playlist had run-out over an hour ago, and I had been sulking with silent earphones in. I slammed Bucklands closed and tossed it on the floor. Save the rolling thunder, the house was eerily quiet.
I knew that it was safe to sneak down to the first floor, so I did.
I had a bad habit of midnight snacking when I was down, and such a habit had caused me to grow into a lovely, curvaceous size twenty-two. I had always been big, been born that way, and a lifetime of shitty events, being abandoned by my parents and crushingly everlasting depression had caused me to grow not only in height, but in weight as well.
There were days that my weight bothered me to no end, and I'd purposely starve myself for the sake of my own satisfaction. And then there were the days that I somehow managed to strike up a small streak of confidence and I would flaunt myself under frilly dresses and wear dark eyeliner. It truly depended on the day with me.
But on this night, I dug in the freezer until I found my favorite cherry ice cream. I flipped the top off, sunk a spoon in, and shoved a huge mouthful in, not giving a single shit about what anyone- or my own thoughts, for that matter- thought of my size.
The ice cream was beyond delicious, and I swear that it could silence my inner demons with every bite. I was enjoying it thoroughly until the all-too-familiar feeling of being unworthy due to my size began to creep up on me, and I tossed the half-full container angrily into the garbage.
You're too fat, Kateen, no one is ever going to love you.
"Fuck you!" I hissed, quietly, so as to not wake my grandparents. I violently whipped my spoon into the sink.
Tears escaping my eyes once again, I moved to the bathroom.
I slid out of my clothing, and did my best to avoid the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door, for my own naked reflection often set the voices in my head off, and I went to the shower and turned on the shower head. The water began to pour out and soon the bathroom was full of hot steam. I pulled the hairband from my dyed hair, and whipped my head, causing the frizzy mess to scatter about my shoulders.
Like midnight snacking, one a.m. showers was among the things that kept me distracted from all the horrible things my mind said to me. It was also a plus because I could cry in the shower and no one would notice.
The hotness of the water was beyond welcomed on my cold skin, and it bestowed a soothing effect over me almost immediately. I felt every cell in my body relax and soon, I felt as if nothing could bother me. I was untouchable, relaxed, suppressed, and content.
The bathroom door then creaked slowly, causing me to jump. My head was full of shampoo, my fingers entwined in the half-dead tendrils, and the steam was so thick it was like a layer of fog that settled over the bathroom. I paused.
"Hello?" I asked aloud.
No answer.
Either one of my grandparents would have answered me.
Suddenly, without any forewarning, the bulky head of my white German shepherd, Mystic, peered around the corner of the walk-in shower. Her mouth was open and she was panting.
"Oh," I scoffed. "Mystic, you scared mommy," I told her. I sighed again. "I'm sorry, baby, did I wake you up?"
Almost as if she could understand me, she curled her body up and lay down in front of the shower.
If that would have been a burglar, you would have died because your fat ass can't run.
I punched a fist to the side of the shower. "Shut the fuck up, no one asked you!"
The voices could come out anywhere, and at any given time. They had always been there, and there were many times in my life that I had been able to suppress them, but, as I grew into the adult world and started my job, I was unable to escape them.
No one understood me. Or, that's how I felt, at least. I had tried to explain what it was like having a voice telling you all these horrible things to my grandparents, but they hadn't understood, and had claimed that "I had power over my own mind." I had given up long ago on trying getting them to understand me.
Ignoring the internal comment, I finished shampooing my hair.
I was just about to reach for the faucet handle when something really peculiar happened. The stone floor of the shower began to rumble, Mystic's head shot up from the floor, and all of the steam that lingered in the bathroom gave a loud whoosh and sunk to the floor.
Mystic then got to her feet and let out the most aggressive snarl I had ever heard.
I may had been deeply spiritual, and I may had been living life as a practicing pagan, but of all the experiences I had with spirits, nothing matched this.
I quickly turned the water off, and grabbed my large towel. I tied it around me as Mystic bound from the bathroom.
"Mystic?" I asked.
I stepped into the living room to meet the eerie dead silence of a sleeping household. I quirked a brow curiously. Around the corner, I heard Mystic's nails clatter across the kitchen floor, and she let out another deep growl. I hurriedly wiped my feet on the carpet, to assure that I wouldn't slip in the kitchen, and I half-jogged to my dog.
Mystic was standing at the door to the cellar, her tail erect, teeth bearing, and her hair standing up on the back of her neck. I literally had never seen my dog so pissed off at something.
Impulsively, I whipped open the cellar door and Mystic took no time to bind down the stairs into the darkness. I wasn't afraid of the dark, I welcomed it, actually, so I immediately followed her, taking no time to think twice about it. She was barking fully by the time I reached the bottom of the steps.
Our cellar was sectioned off into two rooms. The first room was full of our odds and ends, coolers, extra shelving, tents, furniture, fishing equipment, our faux Christmas tree, and the large chest freezer that we always kept stocked in case of emergencies. Mystic was not in this room.
She was in the other room, which was much larger than the first. That room had ceiling-high shelves full of totes which I had not a damn clue what was in them.
As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw Mystic's figure at the back of the room. She was snarling deeply and was braced to attack at any given moment. I thought at first she had seen a spirit, for our house had been built in 1860 and had seen many deaths, but a spirit proved not to be the case whatsoever.
In the pitch black, my vision caught something florescent green. I gasped. A glowing smoke, like substance then began to travel outward from a dark, circular point in the center, and the room came alive in green light. Mystic backed away slowly, refusing to let down her guard. Soon my eyes were afire and I began to make out figures dancing about the smoke. Not quite sure how to react, I stood as I was, clutching to the door to the room. The smoke then dispersed more, and began to just exist and didn't move an inch. It began to swirl around a black hole in the floor as if it were a whirlpool.
"Mystic," I said to my dog. "Come," I beckoned.
Mystic gave no way and remained in her stance.
I felt the air become hazy and a sudden chill spread up what bare skin of mine was showing.
It was like I was trapped within a dream all of a sudden. I felt this urge to inch forward, which I did. I lost all control of my body, and soon, my bare feet stepped right into the fluorescent smoke, which danced up my legs and swirled around me in a pattern. Mystic's barks were so loud now that they became indistinct.
Pulling.
That's what I felt, a strong, pulling force.
I could not turn away.
Step-by-step I made way to the center point of the smoky ongoing.
It was there, in the middle, that I felt my feet lose their sureness, and the entirety of my body sunk downward, sending me plummeting into the blackness.