"Alice! This is your mother! Come here right this minute, young lady!" Cried her mother once again from the little herb garden. She crossed through the white picket gate and onto the grass. Raising a hand to shade her face from the sun, Helen Kingsley peered toward the tree where Alice usually resided for hours on end. She wasn't there this time, probably ran off at first sign of trouble. Helen shook her head, gathered the skirts of her white dress, and stepped back inside the cottage.

Alice ran through the woods as fast as she could. Tripping over rocks and roots was no possibility for she knew these woods better than the creatures inhabiting it did. She knew far enough back in the woods was an old well. At least a hundred years old. It dried up long ago and was of no use to anyone so they boarded it up long ago. Recently, the boards had mostly rotted away.

Alice panted through her open mouth as she ran through the forest for nearly fifteen minutes. At last however, the well came into view. Made of large old stones with a top of wood to cover it, it looked like a wishing well, but the original bucket was long gone. The shingles on the old roof above were covered in decades-worth of moss.

With her fingernails, Alice pried what remained of the boards off the lip of the well and leaned them against the side next to her. The well rose to about her hip and she leaned unsure over the edge to peer down the stone tunnel to hell.

Looking around the base of the well she located a good sized rock, she had to wrap her whole palm and fingers around it, it must have weighed a pound or two. Leaning over the edge once again she held it arms length out over the middle of the opening and dropped it down to the darkness.

1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8...9...

An echoing clack rang out and as the rock hit the unforgiving surface of the bottom. One could probably die if they jumped down there, Alice thought. Pausing, she thought of her father. If she jumped down there and snapped her neck and died, would she see him again? Maybe it was a chance worth taking, there was nothing for her to do in life anyway, no one would miss her.

Alice climbed unsteadily onto the lip of the well.

And jumped.

Alice closed her eyes and let gravity pull her to her death. The air rushed past her face and her hair flowed behind her like a flame when you blow on it. She braced herself for the impact of the ground but it never came.

Her eyes flew open and she saw the well before her seemed to have no end. An eternal blackness pushed out before her. 9 seconds of falling definitely went by. A scream clawed its way out of her throat as she plummeted farther and farther down the hole.

Did this tunnel lead to the very core of the Earth? Would she fall through to the very other side of the Earth? Does the hole lead to hell? These are all questions she asked herself.

Remembering her 16th birthday, Alice recalled how her father had given her a telescope. she had begged him and begged him for months for the darn thing. You can imagine her glee as she opened the box with the beautiful silver telescope. She had received the nautical kind, the kind that folds and inverts itself so it fits in your pocket. The same telescope was hidden in the folds of her dress in a secret pocket for carrying such things.

When you look through a telescope you see the world seemingly forever, places you could never see as far without. This is how she felt as she went deeper and deeper down the hole, she was going farther down and down than she ever though she could.

Alice flinched as she felt something hit her face. 'What was that?' She whispered to herself but the sound was choked away from the rapidly passing air. Once again something hit her. It felt small and hard, but not hard like stones, more like coins.

More and more of these small objects hit her, seemingly as if they were suspended in the air and she was falling on them. Reaching out her hand she tried to catch one. After a few missed she succeeded. She could not see what it was because of the dark but she felt over its familiar surfaces and grooves.

"Why, its a button!" She exclaimed, releasing the button back into the air. "They're all buttons!"

Up ahead Alice saw a light. A flickering light.

What would a candle be doing down here?