All characters belong to Lewis Carol, Tim Burton and Disney. I will make 0 profits from this work.
Bang!
Crash!
Smash!
She trembled. Her golden locks curtained over her face as she kneeled down, the floor surrounding her littered with glass shards. She was sure that she was bleeding somewhere, but it wasn't of any concern to her. Afterall, how could a cut ever compare to the pain inside her chest?
"Alice! You madwoman! Open this door at once!" The locked door was rattling restlessly, causing Alice to shift from her thoughts to her current state of reality. Oh, she had done it this time. Surely she should be petrified of the punishment that awaits her. Afterall, she had been denounced a "madwoman" by all the locals. But Alice could not care less what they thought. The only thing troubling her was her sanity. Was she, in fact, mad?
Alice had traveled the world - seen things that her neighbors could only ever dream of. After she had sailed and fought restlessly across the continents for a whopping 9 years to make her father's name known throughout the globe, Alice was ready to return home - No, not home as in where she had resided with her mother who only wished to marry her away... Home, as in the place under ground where nothing made sense and yet everything did. Alice was determined to get back by any means necessary, and naturally she resorted to the two means of transportation she had used in her previous travels: The rabbit hole and the looking glass. It was no easy task, however. Unfortunately for Alice, these "portals", for lack of a better word, were both located within the Ascot Manor. She had not been well acquainted with the Ascots since her rejection of Hamish's proposal, so getting to either the rabbit hole or the looking glass would prove to be a difficult task. Due to its location outdoors, the rabit hole had deemed itself to be Alice's first attempt. It would be much easier to sneak around the Ascot's garden rather than searching their manor indoors for the right mirror.
In the cover of the night, Alice slipped silently out her bedroom window and made her way to the Ascot Manor. To her dismay, however, the rabbit hole was nothing more than what the name would imply - simply, a hole dug by a rabbit. In fact, it wasn't even that deep. Certainly no woman could have ever fit through it. So, what gives? Perhaps, Alice pondered, the rabbit hole was only accessible when following McTwisp through it - maybe McTwisp was the key to her arrival, allowing her only to enter if McTwisp or another had sent for her. Nevertheless, Alice remained persistent. She was far too muchy to let one failed attempt ruin her optimism. She had sailed the seas and traveled the world; surely one failed attempt at voyage would not put her at perturbation.
The following week, Alice devised a more complex plan. She was to sneak into the manor and return to the room of which she last used the looking glass. This plan, however, would call for great skills in the area of stealth. Alice was lucky enough to persuade a butler to let her in, insisting that she was a friend of the family who was "welcome to come at any time" - which in her defense was a technical truth, though words such as that seem to lose their meaning after 9 years of adversary and rejected proposals. Upon her entry, Alice figured she had only five minutes before the Ascots where infesting the place in hopes of finding her whereabouts. Alice made those minutes count. Dodging every butler and resident of the manor, hiding in the crevasses of many corridors to avoid detection, she was successful in stumbling back into the room which held the looking glass. Locking the door behind her, Alice lept onto the table and jumped towards the glass.
Bang!
Crash!
Smash!
The mirror cracked upon her sudden impact, and Alice lost her stability. She fell over, causing the table to tumble down with her, along with the various decorative items placed atop the four-legged furniture. It was a disaster. Beads of sweat traveled down the blonde's fair temples. It wasn't often that she found herself nervous, but Alice felt no stronger than a rabbit facing the jaws of a direwolf. She wasn't afraid of the Ascots or the damage she had done to their home - no, this fear was much worse. Alice was worried she had gone absolutely mad. Madder than a Hatter, even!
"No time," she pondered aloud, hushing her thoughts. She had to get out, and it was now or never. A wave of blonde rushed through the doorway, exiting the room faster than a ship at full sail. She darted past the halls, eager to get home - no matter which home, she needed to be away from here. Just as she approached the front doors of the manor, Hamish blocked her exit. She could nearly taste the air outside, but as per usual, the man before her stood as a barrier between her and what she longed for.
"And what on God's green Earth are you doing here, you wretched girl?" He spat, his nose curled in disgust at her presence, as if she was a common house rat who had invaded his home. "You turn down my proposal and then you have the audacity to break into my home?"
"Technically, I didn't break into anything," Alice began. "I may have broken some things while being here, but I did not do so to enter. Your butler-"
"Shut up!" Hamish nearly growled this time. Alice took a step back. She noticed the other Ascots approaching, their faces clouded with more confusion than anger. Hamish, however, was the opposite, his face riddled with an undeniable fury. "You need help. You must be sick!" He said finally, grasping her firmly by the wrist.
"Let go! I am no such thing!" She insisted, before kicking him in the groin. The sudden motion cause him to release her, his hand that once grasped her wrist now holding his lower abdomen in pain.
"You daft slag!" He shouted. Alice ran. She ran. And ran. And ran some more. She ran until her legs gave out, collapsing beneath her. She fell onto the ground, her face meeting the cool grass beneath her, and all faded to black. When Alice awoke, she was in her bedroom. She had wondered if it had all been a bad dream. Afterall, it wouldn't be the first vivid dream of hers that sent her waking in a cold sweat. She arose from her slumber, which she wasn't quite sure the duration of, and exited her room. Downstairs in the sitting room, her mother and sister sat upright as if they had been awaiting her arrival. Their eyes were heavy with emotions that Alice couldn't quite decipher.
"Alice, sit down." Her mother said finally. Alice obliged. "We have become... worried about you. Increasingly so." She confessed.
"Alice, you aren't well!" Her sister chimed in, her words filled with passionate affliction. "We believe you need help. And you know we only say this because we feel-"
"Who are you to tell me if I'm well or not? I feel well, therefore I must be!" Alice protested, insisting upon her childish logic. She was far too headstrong to admit to unwellness or insanity, though deep down she feared it may be true. "You say 'we feel' but you never consider how I feel." She wasn't surprised of her mother's concerns. Afterall, the woman had never understood her own daughter - it seemed that all of Alice's life, her mother had stripped her of, or tried to anyways, all her imaginative inclinations. But her own sister, denouncing her as "unwell", stung. Margaret, who had never quite understood Alice but accepted her, nonetheless, had now turned against her. Alice felt she had no one, entirely alone in this cruel world above that of which she longed for.
Alice could hear her mother and sister continue to vocalize their concerns but it all faded into a barely audible ringing. The dissonance began to hurt, so much so that Alice decided she had to leave the room. It was too much and her mind couldn't take it. Her mind could comprehend talking animals, smoking caterpillars, murderous queens and mad hatters, but this was all too much. She ran back into her room and locked the door behind her. Alice could feel she was losing herself, as if she was bursting at the seams - the last remnants of sanity seeping out of her body like blood from an open wound. Everything ached and yet she felt numb. Was Wonderland real? Had her friends ever existed, or was it all created by her own mad and twisted mind? These thoughts petrified Alice. She couldn't take anymore. In a mad fury, Alice smashed every mirror in her room. The mirror atop her dresser, the long mirror against her door, the small handheld mirrors inside her dresser drawers - even her window - all smashed, with her bare hands.
Bang!
Crash!
Smash!
She trembled. And we're back to where we began.