Adventures of John: Welcome to Wonderland
Chapter 1
My adventure began not in Wonderland, but in a distant realm beyond the edges of Faerie. It was an icy realm, home to a race of yeti-like creatures with massive horns which are highly coveted in many realms. I was busy hunting the creatures so I could trade one of the horns with a dwarf for a magical harp that I could trade with a gnome for a magical music box which I could trade with an elf for a certain golden sphere when I saw it. I was searching for the dark slit of the creature's horns against the white snow when I caught something quite out of place. Running across the tundra was a white rabbit in a vest and overcoat, holding an oversized pocket watch.
"No," I told myself. "It can't be." But it was. As I neared the rabbit I could just hear his shrill cries of "I'm late, I'm late, I'm very very late!" over the icy wind. But what on Earth was the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland doing here?
I moved to follow him, but then stopped myself. "Remember what you promised yourself," I reminded myself. "No more places from Disney movies. Remember what happened with Peter Pan?"
But of course, I ignored myself and went after him anyways. Flying through the snow, I barely managed to catch up enough to see him vanish down a hole. Well then, I thought. Down the Rabbit Hole. And so, I followed him and jumped down, crossing into Wonderland.
The journey passed quickly, with various things passing by me too quickly to see. I guess that's the problem with being a guy. When you're falling down a portal into a magical world, you don't have a dress to slow your fall. But when I finally stopped, I found myself in a tree stump in an ancient, wild-looking forest. Scattered among the trees were mushrooms of every shape and size, which I made sure not to eat. No point in me accidently shrinking myself.
As I looked around, I quickly forgot about the rabbit. He wasn't really what I was there for anyways. I was there for adventure! And so, I ventured into the forest, ready for anything…
…Except being berated by a flowerbed. As I was walking onto the forest, I heard a crunch, and then a series of high-pitched screeching.
"Lily!" shrieked one.
"No!" shouted another.
"Monster!" cried the last.
Looking down, I realized that I had accidentally stepped on a small white lily. I crouched down to pick it up, but pulled back when my hand got whipped by a rosebush. "Don't you touch her!" the roses cried. It was then that I realized who was screaming. I had just stepped into the middle of some sort of wild garden, and these were the flowers. Possibly even the same ones Alice met on her adventure.
"I am so sorry," I told them. "Is there any way that I could help?"
"Haven't you helped enough?" one of the roses cried. "Get away from our garden!"
They then proceeded to whip me around the legs, flowers both thorned and not doing their best to do me in. "If you don't stop this idiocy right now," I told them. "I will set fire to each and every one of you!" I held up a ball of molten flame in my hand to show them I was serious. That shut them up. I then walked away, making sure to heal the small wounds left by the thorns on my hands and legs.
I kept walking, trying to remember all the things I had seen in the movie. What had Alice encountered after the flowers?
"Ahem," called a voice. I looked around, but saw nothing. "Down here!" Looking down, I saw a small mushroom, and on that mushroom was a caterpillar, only three inches long. I could see a haze of smoke floating directly above the mushroom, obscuring my vision of the caterpillar, so I blew it away.
"Do not do that!" he demanded, barely keeping hold of his mushroom. "Your breath is strong in more ways than one."
"You're a little small to be insulting me, short stuff," I told him. Looking closer, I saw that the smoke had originated from the caterpillar itself, using some strange device. Then I remembered. "The hookah smoking caterpillar," I laughed. "So, what now? Are you going to quiz me on poetry or something?"
"Do you look down on me?" he asked angrily, puffing smoke.
"Well," I told him, "it's a little hard not to when you're barely three inches tall. Not a very good height, is it?"
"I am exactly three inches tall, and it is a very good height indeed!" he corrected, smoke shrouding him.
I blew away the smoke again, once more nearly knocking the caterpillar off his mushroom. "You are aware that I could easily step on you, aren't you? It isn't very wise to argue with someone over twenty-five times your height."
"And you are aware that it is unwise to argue with someone over a hundred times your intellect, aren't you?" he shot back. That was the final straw. Call me skinny, fine. Call me nerdy, awesome. But no one, no one insults my intelligence.
"I think you need to stop smoking," I told him forcefully, bending down. "It has obviously addled your brain." With that I flicked him off his mushroom into the nearby grass, which I made sure to step in thoroughly. Did he survive? Yes. But at the time I was more interested in venting my anger than anything else. If I had really wanted him dead, I would have disintegrated him on the spot. Lucky for him I didn't really want him dead. So, I continued on my adventure, wondering what Wonderland had in store for me next.