Wow, I really didn't expect such a great response to this story! Thank you all so much!! Well, this chapter isn't quite as long, but it keeps the story moving! I particularly like the father...he's an ass, but he's a slightly lovable ass, all in all. So, without further rambling chitchat... I present a very short, dank, and foggy Chapter Two.
Enjoy!
Once Upon a Golden Afternoon
Chapter One – The Marionette on Monday
The world spun faster, it seemed, once Alice arrived at the Marionette School for Proper Young Ladies. Though, it wasn't nearly as lighthearted and carefree as the Principal might have wanted her parents to believe, and the adjustment had been particularly hard on Alice the first week.
Alice's Father had dropped her off on a cold Monday morning, a drizzle of rain coating the world a gray and misty gloom. Fog hugged the great mansion and the suburban London streets like wool so not even the sun could peek through the stuffy clouds.
Alice yawned.
Her father cleared his throat sternly. "Now, you will be on your best behavior while you are here, understood?"
"Yes father," Alice mumbled sleepily.
"You will write to your mother every week, postmarked by the following Monday, and tell her what a wonderful time you are having whether or not you are having it. Understood?"
"Yes father," the young woman replied. It was an automated response from years of tortured lectures and scolding with a wooden paddle. She dared not to look up into her father's ruthless steel eyes, and instead trained them on her own scuffed black shoes.
Finally, her father rang the doorbell. It echoed into the house like an ominous demonic rattle, quaking the dust bunnies from their furniture hideaways. Father and daughter stood in morose silence.
Then finally, "Alice?" a crack in his stern baritone. A waver.
It made her look into her father's overcast eyes. "Yes father?"
"I…" but Alice's father was a lawyer, and he wasn't used to warm and comforting words. "…Make sure you polish your shoes. I expect to be able to eat on them the next time I visit."
For the remainder of his life, that would be the warmest thing he would ever say to his youngest daughter, and sadly it would be his last.
The great mahogany doors opened to a tall and brittle woman, crow-like and gray. She examined the father and his daughter, and silently took Alice's suitcase from the doorstep. The graying crone nodded to the father, and the father nodded back. Silent yet stern. Then the woman sank into the darkness, and expected Alice to follow.
He squeezed Alice's shoulder, turned on his shining black loafers, and retreated to the black carriage awaiting him. Alice heard the carriage door open, then shut, and the clop of hooves as it rode away. A cold, dark lonesome ate at her stomach like a great gobbler and left her insides cold.
"Follow me, dearie," the old crone's voice, withered until it ground like two stones together, drifted from the dark hallway beyond.
It'll be OK, Alice. Go on.
Hesitantly, she stepped into the yawning white door, and followed the Madame down a sleepy hallway filled with dour-faced men.
Continue? Or No?
