Author's Note: I know that I haven't closed my rather large casting call yet but I went over the earlier version of this story and characters other than Stress and my own white rabbit (thank you, David) don't appear until chapter 4 – or maybe 3 if I could work it. So I might as well get another chapter out. Woot.

Disclaimer: No, I do not own Disney's live action musical: Newsies. No, I do not own Lewis Carroll's novel, Alice's Adventure's in Wonderland, nor Disney's cartoon version of Alice in Wonderland. I own Stress, her cat Ashes and her fixation with hopping.

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Curiouser and Curiouser

June 9, 2006

Stress has accidentally stumbled into the wonderful world of Newsieland.
Will she ever get back home to New Jersey? Not if the Queen of New York has her way.

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Throwing her arms up in surprise, Stress found herself tumbling down a dark hole. But the dark didn't last that long and, as she continued to drop, gravity seemed to fade away. She was falling, yes, but falling ever so slowly. Time began to drag.

With an exaggerated expression, she glanced at her left wrist, wondering if time really had just decided to stop. However, her wrist was naked; she had forgotten about losing her watch the week before. She dwelled on the missing timepiece for a few seconds before being struck by what could only be described as a brilliant idea. She started to flap her arms excitedly, hoping that the motion would fly her back up to the mouth of the hole.

It didn't work.

Maybe the idea wasn't at brilliant as she first thought it was.

Rather than look upwards and face her fleeting freedom, she turned her gaze down. While it wasn't as dark as it had been when she first began to fall, she couldn't make out anything below her. It seemed only to grow darker again the farther she went.

It was then, as she stared into the dark abyss that threatened to swallow her up – whenever she got around to falling all the way, of course --- that she began to panic. "What if I never stop falling?" she asked herself out loud. "Or, what if I keep falling until I reach the center of the Earth? I'll be burnt to a crisp."

Now, being burnt to a crisp was not an option. Her poor Irish skin couldn't even handle being outside in the sun for more than a few hours before she was lobster-red. She tried to aim her falling more to the right. Maybe, if she was lucky, she could find the edge of the hole and hang on. Then it would just be up to her to climb up.

Using the little light she had, Stress made her way closer before stretching her hand out and groping around. But, rather than find anything that could be used as a foothold or a ladder, her fingers made contact with a light switch or, at the very least, a hard rock that was shaped like a light switch.

She switched it up. The rock shaped like a light switch moved. A light came on.

She was so surprised – and blinded – by the sudden light that she didn't notice her surroundings straight away. She raised a hand up and rubbed her eyes twice before looking around. She did a double-take and then a triple-take. Floating alongside, around and directly below her were a shelf of books, an old grandfather clock, a bowl of fruit – hey that apple has a bite mark in it – and various other odds and ends that she was now trying hard to duck. It didn't matter that they were falling at an even more exaggerated pace than she. That clock looked heavy. "This is weird," she said to herself, dodging a hairbrush, "I always thought that dark holes underground would be empty." She shrugged. "Shows how much I know."

As she slowly passed the bookshelf, her hand shot out and reached for a book. At least I'll have something to read as I fall to my fiery doom. That was before she saw which book she had grabbed. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. "Of course this darn hole would have to have a sense of humor," she muttered and tossed the book over her shoulder.

In her distraction, Stress used more force to throw the book back than she should have. The momentum caused her to turn a flip mid-air. However, the flip did not had enough umph to complete so she found herself drifted downwards, face-down.

As she remained upside down, she began to wonder where exactly this hole would lead her. She, conveniently, refused to believe that she would end up in the Earth's core. The book she had found had given her an idea and she was much fonder of fantasy than science. "When Alice fell down the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland, she ended up in Wonderland. Since I fell down a newsie hole, where will I end up?" Then she shook her head. She may believe in fantasy but she wasn't that much of a loon. A newsie hole? I think I've seen Newsies one too many times if I think I fell down a newsie hole.

She was just about to debate whether or not this hole would lead to China or Australia – for, she was a historian not a geography major – when, all of a sudden, the bottom to the hole appeared out of nowhere.

Because she was still heading downward with her head first, she banged it on the floor. The sudden contact – and the return of gravity – caused her to flip around so that she was lying flat on her back. "Ouch," she muttered, slowly sitting up. She was just wondering who it was she was going to sue when a figure in the distance caught her eye. Her pain momentarily forgotten, Stress got up. Even though there was a good deal of floor between them, she recognized the hop. It was David.

"Hey, kid," she called after him, brushing imaginary dirt off her jeans – it's a habit – before hurrying after him. "Yo, wait for me!"

And despite the distance between them, she could make out a faint response. "It's getting late." Then he was gone followed only by the slam of a closing door. She couldn't believe him.

"Ew, rude much? I fall down that weird ass hole just to speak to that kid and he tells me 'it's getting late'. He'll wish it was much later when I get my hands on him," she fumed as she stalked forward, barely noticing her surroundings now. She was in a tunnel of some sort, but a tunnel with pink and purple polka dots. When she realized the awful print, she was even more careful to keep her face straight. The garishness of it all hurt her eyes.

Muttering slightly under her breath, she kept going forward. If anything, she was going to get some answers from this David and then make him bring her home. Hell, if he could go hopping around her backyard, he better be able to leave this underground place to bring her back.

With every step she took, Stress was more sure that this hole mess was the hopping boys fault. Forget that she was the one who was so nosy that she went chasing after him – he shouldn't have been out hopping around where anyone could see him to follow. Yes, it was all his fault.

Just when she had decided that she was nothing more than an innocent bystander, Stress arrived at the end of the tunnel. Actually, she was still going full force ahead when she slammed into a large brown door. That's when she knew that she had reached the end of the tunnel. With a wary eye, Stress took in the door. "Hmmm… Looks just like my closet door," she remarked as she reached for the door handle.

But, when she opened the door, all she find inside was another, albeit smaller, red door with an identical handle. She opened that one just as determinedly.

And found another door. It was smaller, lighter in color – it was a nice lavender shade – and had a golden knob. By now the girl was – understandably – getting frustrated. She stamped on the black and white checked tiled floor once before turning back to the door. She bent down slightly – it was about half her height -- and swung it open.

There was another door. She cursed under her breath to find a door about a third her size, white in color, with a black knob and matching keyhole. She tried to open that door, though she had no idea how she was going to squeeze her big butt through the small opening, but found that – unlike the three other doors – it was locked. "Fine," she said, speaking to the offending door, "I didn't want to open you anyway." Pouting slightly – she really did want to open the door – she crossed her arms and turned away, intent on trying to find another way out of the tunnel without dealing with nesting doll type doors.

There was one small problem, though. During the time she had spent opening the three doors, a wall had sprung up behind her, effectively trapping her in a small room that only led to that one door. Once she realized that she was trapped, Stress started to bang on the wall. "That ain't fair," she yelled, "you can't just trap me here like that."

When the wall gave no indication of moving – at that point, she wouldn't have been surprised if the wall grew a mouth and apologized to her for her troubles before disappearing – Stress turned back to face the white door. She jiggled the handle violently, and when it didn't give, she slumped against the wall in frustration. She tucked her head in her lap for a few minutes and sat still, all the while wishing she was back in New Jersey. Even her sister's dance recital would be better than this.

And that's when she heard a loud thump.

At first she thought it was David, hopping again. But, when she lifted her head up, she did not see the boy. "You're not David," she acknowledged when it was not the newsie-looking boy but a waist-high glass table that had joined her in the small room.

"That's weird," she murmured as she stood up and walked over to the table in order to inspect the new arrival. Wait? What's this, she thought before extending her hand and reaching for a glass bottle – a glass bottle filled with a blood-red liquid, she saw – that had just popped into existence when she approached the table. The bottle had been sitting atop a white card and she lifted that up with her other hand. In ink as red as the liquid inside the bottle, two words were scrawled on the card. Drink me.

She almost laughed at the order. "Yeah, sure," she said as she placed both the card and the bottle back down. "Like I'm gonna drink out of a bottle that appeared out of thin air into a room that I've been trapped in after falling down a newsie hole. Whatever you say," she said before returning to the corner she had been pouting in. It was a good pouting corner.

It was after she had resumed her earlier pouting position that she heard the thump again. She lifted her head warily and gave the table the evil eye. "What do you want now?"

The table just glistened innocently amidst the artificial light that was flooding the room.

Stress stood once more and just stared at the table and the bottle still resting upon it. Shrugging, she reached out and picked up the bottle and the card again. She stifled a giggle when she read the card. It had been amended and now read: Drink me, please. Well, I can't argue with a polite bottle, can I?

With that weird feeling in the pit of her stomach that said that she would probably regret her actions later, Stress removed the stopper from the glass bottle and began to swallow the contents. Within three gulps, the bottle was empty. "Mmm," she said, licking her lips, "tastes just like chicken."

When nothing happened after she downed the bottle's contents, she shook her head and wondered why exactly her tummy had tingled. What was I expecting? To pull an 'Alice' and shrink down to three inches tall? Whatever.

Strangely enough, once she had finished her thought, the tingle in her tummy erupted into a rumble. She clutched her abdomen nervously, already regretting drinking that stuff. It really had looked like blood to her. Great, I'm probably gonna turn into a vampire now.

But, rather than go all Lost Boys, something else happened.

True to her earlier expectation, Stress began to shrink.