The Cheshire Cat seemed anxious and wailed his descant to the low,
oppressing ceiling as he paced along the frigid paving slabs. His ever-
present grin seemed strained and torn, his skeletal spine rippling like
liquid. Alice knelt and rested her palm gently on his crown.
"What is the matter?" she inquired.
Abruptly, the skull beneath her trembling fingers evaporated. Starting at the queer sensation, she felt her gaunt frame tremble even more. A noise like her mind being ripped from her head apart wrenched at her ears and her sight was hindered by a rippling, billowing sheet of ashen silk. She crumpled like paper and pressed her hands to her thrumming ears with as much effort as she could muster. She remembered screaming, although her voice seemed puny compared to the great sound. The smoke writhed and wrapped her in the silk, clogging her senses with a substance thicker and more pungent than perfume. Ricocheting fragments of stone struck her thighs and her bare arms. She quailed under the onslaught. Battling unconsciousness, she watched a grim shadow erupt through the silk and loom before her. Patting the floor for her knife, she seized it and thrust her shaking feet on the floor to support her body. Straining to look upwards and licking away blood crusting already on her lips, she recognised the shape but did not speak the name. Most of the room had gone. Little to be said. Replacing it was a figure that shook Alice's heart like a quiver having just released a last bow of stability. A huge nose like many warts moulded together framed by two cheeks resembling sacks of ruddy potatoes beneath two eyes shedding moisture in streams to relieve the pupils shot with scarlet was the first she saw. Then teeth like an assortment of gravestones jammed into fleshy, yellowed gums expressed in a grimace or a grin, either of which was just as intimidating. Then a body so distorted and gruesome it could not be described. Alice felt like weeping at the sight of it. The nose was sniffing, inhaling huge streams of air that disturbed the hair sprouting like weeds from the nostrils. The graveyard declared in tones like a door creaking shut and slamming with a full stop, "WHY, WOULDN'T YOU MAKE A LOVELY COURSE? SLIGHTLY SCARCE, BUT DELIGHTFUL ALL THE SAME. JOIN ME FOR BRUNCH, MY SWEET, AND I SHALL CRUSH THAT FRAIL FRAME OF YOURS LIKE A CARROT ON A STICK!" Alice jammed the soles of her feet into the fissures of the stonework and clambered to her feet. Everything seemed drunken, like she was submerged in water. She patted the floor and seized the sliver of metal, staggering back to a reasonable balance. She licked the blood already crusting on her lips and brandished the knife at the nose. "You filthy ogress! I am not here to be threatened with carrots and sticks! And besides, I only take brunch with decent, respectable individuals who care to bathe every so often!" she declared brazenly to the nose. The Duchess roared her scorn and stamped her great feet, scattering tremors across the remaining fragments of floor. One of these tremors sent Alice sprawling and rolling along the stone. Bewildered, giddy and aching, Alice allowed her momentum to fizzle out of existence before she lay there motionless, trying to focus her failing sight on something solid, and hardly registering that she was in a position of terrible peril. "HOW DARE YOU!" the Duchess bellowed, "HOWEVER, IF YOU WILL NOT REPSOND TO AN INVITATION, THEN I MAY BE INCLINED TO APPLY MORE FORCEFUL PERSUASIONS..." "No, you shall not!" cried Alice, staggering wildly to her feet, inspired by some curious adrenaline that could have been fear, rage or a combination of the two. "I shall be driven to take routes I should not want to similarly, you despicable creature! And we may not be a match for size but I have means that you could never imagine!" The Duchess let out a bolt of laughter comparable to thunder, sat down heavily on the floor and proceeded to rock backwards and forwards with globules of fluid streaming down her ruddy cheeks and into her palms. Despite this disheartening reaction, Alice was not deterred and she sprinted towards the great bulk. As the Duchess wept with laughter, slight, able little Alice clambered first on to her foot clothed in a reeking leather boot, along her great calves scored with varicose veins like tributaries, her boulder-like knees, her fleshy thighs, and then seized two handfuls of her dress, jamming the knife laterally in her jaws, and continued to lever herself up in this way. The Duchess, a victim to mirth, now began to notice. When she saw Alice clutching at the folds of her dress, she shrieked and hurriedly stood, swiping at Alice with paws of course maroon fabric bulging at the joints. Alice clung on grimly and tried to conceal herself in the folds of the dress, which there were little of, her grip rigid, but she could not progress any further until the Duchess had ceased her onslaught. Which she would not do for a very long time. The huge ogress flailed and flung her limbs about in such a way that the fabric swung violently beneath Alice's faltering grip. With a final scream of triumph, the Duchess succeeded in tossing Alice from her. Alice wailed and cried out as she spun and revolved endlessly in the air, dreading what should halt her descent. The far wall broke her journey. It broke her also.
Alice was doubtful that she should wake to anything less than Hell. Indeed, this was in her extreme hopes. But she had once established the fact that you could not feel anything in Hell, for Hell was not of this feeling, miserable world. Such was her disappointment when she woke to a hard mattress, undeniably solid, and a pair of orderlies trying to feed her toy rabbit.
Her eyeballs felt dry and crisp. It hurt to blink, but not as much as it hurt to see those bullies tormenting her poor rabbit. She felt also a mush dribbling down her chin. And with the knowledge that she could not feel and therefore was not so much as in Hell as in the grey, drab, wailing place her other half inhabited, she snapped with despair.
The orderlies had long ago relinquished their efforts to persuade a spoon to enter Alice's rigid frown. Slightly intimidated by her but seeing only pointlessness at their dejected offering of care, they had taken the soggy pulp of rabbit with a missing eye that was Alice's treasured toy and were feeding that. Of course, they assumed that Alice was asleep.
Alice's dazed and unsatisfied hopes were now rearing in angry objection. The image of the hated Duchess reigned in her mind. She seized the spoon from the Duchess, for it was surely trying to bring a portion of her to the teeth inhabiting the Duchess' mouth. And then it would be crunched and moulded to inobscurity. And that would not do, Alice told herself.
For lack of any better weapon, Alice arced the spoon through the air and succeeded in scoring a line along the Duchess' cheek. She heard a very audible scream of agony and cried out in conquest. Then, her hopes of Hell were replenished and she felt such agony of depression that her humble weapon turned upon her and dug into her wrists, seeking a source of blood.
Let me bleed, pleaded Alice to her subconscious, Let me hurt. Let me feel the agony of my doomed kin. Please, please...
When she next awoke, the Duchess was standing over her, a huge shadow like a blackness that haunts the Sun, and she was embracing her tightly, so tightly she feared her lungs would not operate. She saw a huge gaping space, that surely had to be Hell in its darkest form, and felt the knife in her hand. She remembered the scream of agony and thought of persisting with her onslaught, if only to hear that again.
So she gripped the handle and buried the blade into the gruesome thumb by several inches.
This time the scream was so deafening and piercing Alice could not hear. She felt her mouth issue a descant to the scream, for her ears felt as though they were blazing with flame. She slashed blindly with the knife, trying to use her sight instead of her disabled hearing to seek her target. She crawled up the bridge of a nose, not wondering how she got there, and knelt at the very peak; altering her angle and stabilising herself, she lifted the knife high in both fists and drove it hard, harder than rock, into the monstrous blinking eye.
Again, again she was flung across the room, and she could feel the vibrations of the Duchess screaming and shrieking, plodding around in agonised circles and nursing her weeping eye. Alice then seemed to float to the stone, which offered slight relief. It took longer than she anticipated, but she felt breezes beneath her dress helping her down to the ground like a helpful hand. Her petticoats and slips ruffled and fluttered until she reached the ground with a gentle thud. When she next looked up, the Cheshire Cat was crouched beside her, watching the carnage the Duchess wreaked in her agony. Alice watched too.
The little vial of pepper the Duchess had obviously been meaning to flavour her light mouthful with released itself from her grip and flew across the room towards Alice and the Cat. Alice scampered out of the way and the Cheshire cat evaporated to appear several feet off. They watched it crack, smash and splinter into tiny fragments on the floor, the grains of pepper showering the room in sooty snow. Among the shards, the Duchess staggered and fell, evidently unconscious, her face bloody and scarlet.
The Cheshire Cat padded over after a while and tentatively licked a spot of blood from the floor. Recoiling with distaste, he sauntered over again.
"She is dead," he confirmed.
"But...I barely even grazed her!" protested Alice breathlessly.
"She died from searing pain. No being is able to withstand such pain for such a time." He looked sideways at the corpse, pupils sliding to the side of his skull. "I would offer compliments and congratulations but your skills at defeating such a beast were badly misjudged."
Alice gasped. "What do you mean, dear cat? There she lies deceased and you do not offer me a victory?"
The Cheshire Cat grinned even further; "She is not a victory for your skills, Alice. I would not crow as yet." And he strolled away.
Alice pursued him. "Well, what now? Do we seek the Red Queen?"
"We do not seek her. She is the very air itself."
"But that makes no sense."
"Oh, but it does."
"No it does not, you silly cat. Speak sense, for once. All your riddles are quite perplexing."
"Ah; you can hear me, yes?"
Alice started. Surely moments before, her hearing had been destroyed. She lifted her hands to her ears to confirm what he said.
"That is the Red Queen's doing. She does not want her prize to be harmed as yet. She is not angry at her small defeat: the Duchess was a small agent. There are greater obstacles to overcome."
"A small agent. Ha!" cried Alice, "How do you know all this, cat? You are not in allegiance with her, are you?"
"Alas, I was chosen also to be moral and virtuous like yourself. What would a hero be without a few allies?"
"Who is this hero? For I am a heroine. And I am saving myself, you have said. Surely that is not a heroic virtue?"
"Maybe not; maybe so. This is your imagination."
"And you are real enough, cat."
"That, I consent."
"Indeed."
They walked in silence.
Across this vast room Alice plodded, hardly feeling any company from the Cheshire Cat. Occasionally, he reappeared to deliver a riddle to direct her to a slightly different location. "Behind this door lies a peril worthy of Death...any welcome shelter from the Queen's guard...notice the acid steaming on the stone: a battle commenced here..." This did not offer any consolation.
As she progressed, the room seemed longer, one more step and the wall seemed further away. The huge cavernous hall was immense and seemed to swell, perhaps with her depleted energy and exhaustion.
"Oh! but I must stop, cat!" she lamented, falling back to squat on a shard of rock fallen from the ceiling. "This journey has no merits. Surely if I was to just turn back..." She inclined her head to look from the direction she had just come. It seemed just as laborious and far away as all her other sides. It seemed like she was seeking the horizon. "Oh, this will not do." She stood wavering. The cat reappeared on the stone she was just sitting on, his endless smirk irritating Alice's senses enough to scream at him.
"Cat! Help me, why don't you! When I need help, are not allies supposed to be of some assistance? All you do is spout riddles and pad around invisibly until you see fit to reappear again. How am I supposed to find my way out of this room before dying of exhaustion? Tell me that!" The cat stared at her, unblinking.
"I am not supposed to be straightforward, child. Neither is your task. Try travelling in a direction she won't expect." And he evaporated again.
"Oh, I despair!" Alice cried, flopping to the stone once more. She felt sobs welling in her throat but restrained them. This is no time for acting like a spoilt child deprived of a luxury, she thought to herself. Think logically.
Think logically. She thought of how her governess always stressed how you could find your way by the sun in distress.
"There is no sun in this place. It must be far, far underground," she muttered.
Then she thought of north and south, east and west, and thought she had surely found the answer. But she had no way to tell which way was which. She grew horribly confused. She looked to the ceiling. She looked to the floor at the stone she was sitting on. And then an idea came to her.
She stood on the stone and craned and stretched as tall as she could go, batting the ceiling with her hands. But the ceiling was solid, as she had previously thought it was crumbling to relinquish the slab of stone. She paid closer attention to the stone. It was grey, like granite, and twinkled slightly. Alice tried to budge the stone and it inched its way across the floor. Triumphant, she pushed and strained, and inch by inch it budged and budged. Underneath was a hole, barely large enough to fit her hips inside.
"I dare not go down there," she said, "I fear I shall be stuck with no method of getting out."
The cat appeared again by her side, looking down the hole. "It would not be impossible, for there would be no competition, would there?"
"No, I suppose not."
"Well, there you are."
Alice sighed and sat herself down, dangling her legs in the hole. She could see nothing there except her ankles.
"Oh dear," she muttered. And she fell down the hole.
Eventually, she realised she was screaming as she fell down and down into a blackness that was so hard to bat away with her flailing limbs. The hole did not grow any smaller, but allowed her to slip through with an occasional collision with the wall. It did not stop for a while. A long while. And she began to think back in the space to where she first pursued the white rabbit down the hole, for it seemed so long ago.
"And there he was," she told herself, "in his dapper little waistcoat, clutching a pocket-watch. He scampered down that hole and I chased him, crying, "Wait! Wait, Mr. Rabbit, sir!" I was so very young then. I fear I am old before my time."
Then her pleasant fall halted abruptly with a floor.
"What is this floor doing here? I am quite dismayed for I was almost enjoying myself, reflecting on past experiences." She was disgruntled and sulked as she ambled along. "Indeed, I think that is quite rude."
"What is the matter?" she inquired.
Abruptly, the skull beneath her trembling fingers evaporated. Starting at the queer sensation, she felt her gaunt frame tremble even more. A noise like her mind being ripped from her head apart wrenched at her ears and her sight was hindered by a rippling, billowing sheet of ashen silk. She crumpled like paper and pressed her hands to her thrumming ears with as much effort as she could muster. She remembered screaming, although her voice seemed puny compared to the great sound. The smoke writhed and wrapped her in the silk, clogging her senses with a substance thicker and more pungent than perfume. Ricocheting fragments of stone struck her thighs and her bare arms. She quailed under the onslaught. Battling unconsciousness, she watched a grim shadow erupt through the silk and loom before her. Patting the floor for her knife, she seized it and thrust her shaking feet on the floor to support her body. Straining to look upwards and licking away blood crusting already on her lips, she recognised the shape but did not speak the name. Most of the room had gone. Little to be said. Replacing it was a figure that shook Alice's heart like a quiver having just released a last bow of stability. A huge nose like many warts moulded together framed by two cheeks resembling sacks of ruddy potatoes beneath two eyes shedding moisture in streams to relieve the pupils shot with scarlet was the first she saw. Then teeth like an assortment of gravestones jammed into fleshy, yellowed gums expressed in a grimace or a grin, either of which was just as intimidating. Then a body so distorted and gruesome it could not be described. Alice felt like weeping at the sight of it. The nose was sniffing, inhaling huge streams of air that disturbed the hair sprouting like weeds from the nostrils. The graveyard declared in tones like a door creaking shut and slamming with a full stop, "WHY, WOULDN'T YOU MAKE A LOVELY COURSE? SLIGHTLY SCARCE, BUT DELIGHTFUL ALL THE SAME. JOIN ME FOR BRUNCH, MY SWEET, AND I SHALL CRUSH THAT FRAIL FRAME OF YOURS LIKE A CARROT ON A STICK!" Alice jammed the soles of her feet into the fissures of the stonework and clambered to her feet. Everything seemed drunken, like she was submerged in water. She patted the floor and seized the sliver of metal, staggering back to a reasonable balance. She licked the blood already crusting on her lips and brandished the knife at the nose. "You filthy ogress! I am not here to be threatened with carrots and sticks! And besides, I only take brunch with decent, respectable individuals who care to bathe every so often!" she declared brazenly to the nose. The Duchess roared her scorn and stamped her great feet, scattering tremors across the remaining fragments of floor. One of these tremors sent Alice sprawling and rolling along the stone. Bewildered, giddy and aching, Alice allowed her momentum to fizzle out of existence before she lay there motionless, trying to focus her failing sight on something solid, and hardly registering that she was in a position of terrible peril. "HOW DARE YOU!" the Duchess bellowed, "HOWEVER, IF YOU WILL NOT REPSOND TO AN INVITATION, THEN I MAY BE INCLINED TO APPLY MORE FORCEFUL PERSUASIONS..." "No, you shall not!" cried Alice, staggering wildly to her feet, inspired by some curious adrenaline that could have been fear, rage or a combination of the two. "I shall be driven to take routes I should not want to similarly, you despicable creature! And we may not be a match for size but I have means that you could never imagine!" The Duchess let out a bolt of laughter comparable to thunder, sat down heavily on the floor and proceeded to rock backwards and forwards with globules of fluid streaming down her ruddy cheeks and into her palms. Despite this disheartening reaction, Alice was not deterred and she sprinted towards the great bulk. As the Duchess wept with laughter, slight, able little Alice clambered first on to her foot clothed in a reeking leather boot, along her great calves scored with varicose veins like tributaries, her boulder-like knees, her fleshy thighs, and then seized two handfuls of her dress, jamming the knife laterally in her jaws, and continued to lever herself up in this way. The Duchess, a victim to mirth, now began to notice. When she saw Alice clutching at the folds of her dress, she shrieked and hurriedly stood, swiping at Alice with paws of course maroon fabric bulging at the joints. Alice clung on grimly and tried to conceal herself in the folds of the dress, which there were little of, her grip rigid, but she could not progress any further until the Duchess had ceased her onslaught. Which she would not do for a very long time. The huge ogress flailed and flung her limbs about in such a way that the fabric swung violently beneath Alice's faltering grip. With a final scream of triumph, the Duchess succeeded in tossing Alice from her. Alice wailed and cried out as she spun and revolved endlessly in the air, dreading what should halt her descent. The far wall broke her journey. It broke her also.
Alice was doubtful that she should wake to anything less than Hell. Indeed, this was in her extreme hopes. But she had once established the fact that you could not feel anything in Hell, for Hell was not of this feeling, miserable world. Such was her disappointment when she woke to a hard mattress, undeniably solid, and a pair of orderlies trying to feed her toy rabbit.
Her eyeballs felt dry and crisp. It hurt to blink, but not as much as it hurt to see those bullies tormenting her poor rabbit. She felt also a mush dribbling down her chin. And with the knowledge that she could not feel and therefore was not so much as in Hell as in the grey, drab, wailing place her other half inhabited, she snapped with despair.
The orderlies had long ago relinquished their efforts to persuade a spoon to enter Alice's rigid frown. Slightly intimidated by her but seeing only pointlessness at their dejected offering of care, they had taken the soggy pulp of rabbit with a missing eye that was Alice's treasured toy and were feeding that. Of course, they assumed that Alice was asleep.
Alice's dazed and unsatisfied hopes were now rearing in angry objection. The image of the hated Duchess reigned in her mind. She seized the spoon from the Duchess, for it was surely trying to bring a portion of her to the teeth inhabiting the Duchess' mouth. And then it would be crunched and moulded to inobscurity. And that would not do, Alice told herself.
For lack of any better weapon, Alice arced the spoon through the air and succeeded in scoring a line along the Duchess' cheek. She heard a very audible scream of agony and cried out in conquest. Then, her hopes of Hell were replenished and she felt such agony of depression that her humble weapon turned upon her and dug into her wrists, seeking a source of blood.
Let me bleed, pleaded Alice to her subconscious, Let me hurt. Let me feel the agony of my doomed kin. Please, please...
When she next awoke, the Duchess was standing over her, a huge shadow like a blackness that haunts the Sun, and she was embracing her tightly, so tightly she feared her lungs would not operate. She saw a huge gaping space, that surely had to be Hell in its darkest form, and felt the knife in her hand. She remembered the scream of agony and thought of persisting with her onslaught, if only to hear that again.
So she gripped the handle and buried the blade into the gruesome thumb by several inches.
This time the scream was so deafening and piercing Alice could not hear. She felt her mouth issue a descant to the scream, for her ears felt as though they were blazing with flame. She slashed blindly with the knife, trying to use her sight instead of her disabled hearing to seek her target. She crawled up the bridge of a nose, not wondering how she got there, and knelt at the very peak; altering her angle and stabilising herself, she lifted the knife high in both fists and drove it hard, harder than rock, into the monstrous blinking eye.
Again, again she was flung across the room, and she could feel the vibrations of the Duchess screaming and shrieking, plodding around in agonised circles and nursing her weeping eye. Alice then seemed to float to the stone, which offered slight relief. It took longer than she anticipated, but she felt breezes beneath her dress helping her down to the ground like a helpful hand. Her petticoats and slips ruffled and fluttered until she reached the ground with a gentle thud. When she next looked up, the Cheshire Cat was crouched beside her, watching the carnage the Duchess wreaked in her agony. Alice watched too.
The little vial of pepper the Duchess had obviously been meaning to flavour her light mouthful with released itself from her grip and flew across the room towards Alice and the Cat. Alice scampered out of the way and the Cheshire cat evaporated to appear several feet off. They watched it crack, smash and splinter into tiny fragments on the floor, the grains of pepper showering the room in sooty snow. Among the shards, the Duchess staggered and fell, evidently unconscious, her face bloody and scarlet.
The Cheshire Cat padded over after a while and tentatively licked a spot of blood from the floor. Recoiling with distaste, he sauntered over again.
"She is dead," he confirmed.
"But...I barely even grazed her!" protested Alice breathlessly.
"She died from searing pain. No being is able to withstand such pain for such a time." He looked sideways at the corpse, pupils sliding to the side of his skull. "I would offer compliments and congratulations but your skills at defeating such a beast were badly misjudged."
Alice gasped. "What do you mean, dear cat? There she lies deceased and you do not offer me a victory?"
The Cheshire Cat grinned even further; "She is not a victory for your skills, Alice. I would not crow as yet." And he strolled away.
Alice pursued him. "Well, what now? Do we seek the Red Queen?"
"We do not seek her. She is the very air itself."
"But that makes no sense."
"Oh, but it does."
"No it does not, you silly cat. Speak sense, for once. All your riddles are quite perplexing."
"Ah; you can hear me, yes?"
Alice started. Surely moments before, her hearing had been destroyed. She lifted her hands to her ears to confirm what he said.
"That is the Red Queen's doing. She does not want her prize to be harmed as yet. She is not angry at her small defeat: the Duchess was a small agent. There are greater obstacles to overcome."
"A small agent. Ha!" cried Alice, "How do you know all this, cat? You are not in allegiance with her, are you?"
"Alas, I was chosen also to be moral and virtuous like yourself. What would a hero be without a few allies?"
"Who is this hero? For I am a heroine. And I am saving myself, you have said. Surely that is not a heroic virtue?"
"Maybe not; maybe so. This is your imagination."
"And you are real enough, cat."
"That, I consent."
"Indeed."
They walked in silence.
Across this vast room Alice plodded, hardly feeling any company from the Cheshire Cat. Occasionally, he reappeared to deliver a riddle to direct her to a slightly different location. "Behind this door lies a peril worthy of Death...any welcome shelter from the Queen's guard...notice the acid steaming on the stone: a battle commenced here..." This did not offer any consolation.
As she progressed, the room seemed longer, one more step and the wall seemed further away. The huge cavernous hall was immense and seemed to swell, perhaps with her depleted energy and exhaustion.
"Oh! but I must stop, cat!" she lamented, falling back to squat on a shard of rock fallen from the ceiling. "This journey has no merits. Surely if I was to just turn back..." She inclined her head to look from the direction she had just come. It seemed just as laborious and far away as all her other sides. It seemed like she was seeking the horizon. "Oh, this will not do." She stood wavering. The cat reappeared on the stone she was just sitting on, his endless smirk irritating Alice's senses enough to scream at him.
"Cat! Help me, why don't you! When I need help, are not allies supposed to be of some assistance? All you do is spout riddles and pad around invisibly until you see fit to reappear again. How am I supposed to find my way out of this room before dying of exhaustion? Tell me that!" The cat stared at her, unblinking.
"I am not supposed to be straightforward, child. Neither is your task. Try travelling in a direction she won't expect." And he evaporated again.
"Oh, I despair!" Alice cried, flopping to the stone once more. She felt sobs welling in her throat but restrained them. This is no time for acting like a spoilt child deprived of a luxury, she thought to herself. Think logically.
Think logically. She thought of how her governess always stressed how you could find your way by the sun in distress.
"There is no sun in this place. It must be far, far underground," she muttered.
Then she thought of north and south, east and west, and thought she had surely found the answer. But she had no way to tell which way was which. She grew horribly confused. She looked to the ceiling. She looked to the floor at the stone she was sitting on. And then an idea came to her.
She stood on the stone and craned and stretched as tall as she could go, batting the ceiling with her hands. But the ceiling was solid, as she had previously thought it was crumbling to relinquish the slab of stone. She paid closer attention to the stone. It was grey, like granite, and twinkled slightly. Alice tried to budge the stone and it inched its way across the floor. Triumphant, she pushed and strained, and inch by inch it budged and budged. Underneath was a hole, barely large enough to fit her hips inside.
"I dare not go down there," she said, "I fear I shall be stuck with no method of getting out."
The cat appeared again by her side, looking down the hole. "It would not be impossible, for there would be no competition, would there?"
"No, I suppose not."
"Well, there you are."
Alice sighed and sat herself down, dangling her legs in the hole. She could see nothing there except her ankles.
"Oh dear," she muttered. And she fell down the hole.
Eventually, she realised she was screaming as she fell down and down into a blackness that was so hard to bat away with her flailing limbs. The hole did not grow any smaller, but allowed her to slip through with an occasional collision with the wall. It did not stop for a while. A long while. And she began to think back in the space to where she first pursued the white rabbit down the hole, for it seemed so long ago.
"And there he was," she told herself, "in his dapper little waistcoat, clutching a pocket-watch. He scampered down that hole and I chased him, crying, "Wait! Wait, Mr. Rabbit, sir!" I was so very young then. I fear I am old before my time."
Then her pleasant fall halted abruptly with a floor.
"What is this floor doing here? I am quite dismayed for I was almost enjoying myself, reflecting on past experiences." She was disgruntled and sulked as she ambled along. "Indeed, I think that is quite rude."