Adventures of John: Welcome to Wonderland

Chapter 2

After my confrontation with the caterpillar, I made my deeper into the darker sections of the forest. When it was becoming so dark I began to have difficulty seeing my hands in front of my face, I began to hear voices. I made my way to the voices, and soon discovered that I could see light ahead of me. I soon saw that the light was coming from a small enclosed garden, in the center of which was a long table covered in tea cups.

No way! I thought to myself. This was the best part of the movie!

I walked forward and found two very familiar figures dancing around the table. On was a tattered-looking old hare, with matted brown and grey fur and an old tweed jacket and vest. The other was an older man with a shock of Einstein-like white hair, dressed in a green jacket and orange pants along with an oversized green hat. The March Hare and the Mad Hatter. Which meant that this was…

"The Mad Tea Party," I told myself. "I always wondered what it was really like."

"Who's this?" cried the March Hare. "Get out, get out! No room, no room!"

"Oh, but I would just like a cup of tea," I told him, even though I don't drink tea. "You wouldn't happen to have a cup of tea, would you?"

"Cup of tea, cup of tea?" he asked, or I think it was a question. "We've got a cup of tea!"

"A cup of tea, you say?" asked the Hatter, looking up from the hat he was making. "Please sit down! We have plenty of tea!"

"There's a lot less singing than I thought there would be," I told them. "Isn't this supposed to be an unbirthday party?"

"An unbirthday party?" asked the March Hare. "Now where would you get a crazy idea like that?"

"It's tea time, that's all," said the Hatter. "It's always tea time here, ever since the Queen came and declared we were killing the time. Time didn't like that, you see, and so it's six in the evening all the time."

"Wow," I said, shocked. "That's a lot less fun than an unbirthday party."

"Is it your unbirthday?" the Hare asked.

I thought about it and realized that it actually wasn't. I had come to Neverland on the only day that isn't my unbirthday. Back on earth, it was early in the morning on my birthday. Worst day to come to Wonderland. "Uh, no," I told him. "No it's not."

"Clean cup, clean cup, move down!" the Mad Hatter cried, suddenly tossing my cup away and forcing me out of my seat. I'm just glad that I don't drink tea, otherwise I would have been quite offended at the waste.

"Where is the dormouse?" I asked, looking around. "Isn't he supposed to be at this tea party as well?"

"He's sleeping!" the March Hare told me, opening a teapot to reveal the dormouse fast asleep inside.

"Make it work!" the Hatter muttered as he worked on another hat. "Make it work!"

"Make what work?" I asked.

"Whatever do you mean?" he responded, looking up from his work.

"You were muttering 'make it work'", I told him. "Make what work?"

"The hat, of course," he told me. I didn't get a chance to ask what the hat was supposed to do, as there was another cry of "Clean cup!" and we were all relocated to another section of the table. I tried several more times to ask him about the hat, but all attempts were blocked by mad rambling and more calls of "Clean cup!" Finally I had enough of the ridiculousness and left, feeling quite fed up with Wonderland.

As I walked, I began to hear a small sound very akin to singing, but it didn't seem to have any source nor meaning to it. I tried to understand it, but every attempt failed. As I looked around, I saw a large smile appear in the air above a tree branch. "The Cheshire Cat, I presume?" I asked the smile, not really wanting to go through introductions. "Are you going to materialize now, or are you just going to keep grinning?"

"Oh, you take all the fun out of things," the cat complained, materializing completely. "You should really learn to, haha, lighten up." He followed this statement by beginning to float up into the air, as if he was weightless.

"I am sick of this stupid place!" I told him, my anger building irrationally. "With all you stupid, crazy people! Why can't this be a sensible realm?" Of course, there is no such thing as a truly "sensible" realm, but at the time I wasn't exactly thinking rationally. I wasn't really myself at the time.

"Oh," Cheshire sighed. "I think the maddest one here is you."

That was the last straw. I leaped at the cat, grabbing at air. He had vanished, but I could see a set of footprints leading away, and I chased after them. And so began our chase across Wonderland. Cheshire always stayed just beyond my reach, vanishing whenever I came too close, but always keeping within sight of me. Every time I saw him I launched a bolt of fire at him, which, looking back, wasn't very smart. In my fervor to catch the cat, I ended up barreling through quite a lot of houses, many of which went up in flames.

Our chase ended on the steps to the castle of the Queen of Hearts, where I was quickly surrounded by playing-card soldiers. Cheshire was nowhere to be found, but I had still not gotten over my irrational rage. With a burst of energy I sent the soldiers surrounding me up in flames, which alerted the rest of the castle, bringing hundreds more of the card soldiers to my location.

"I will not have troublemakers in my kingdom!" the Queen declared from a balcony far above. "Off with his head!"

Hearing her, I blasted away the approaching soldiers and flew up to her balcony. "Let's see how you like it!" I told her, brandishing a flaming axe. "Off with her head!"

I was then forced roughly back into my body by my mother shaking me "awake", after which she gave me a list of chores I had to do that day. I quickly recovered from my temporary madness, but honestly, when compared to the chores, that beheading was beginning to look very tempting.