This was originally only going to be the first two chapters - but it had promise, so here is chapter 4. It's kind of a filler chapter - Hatter's first impressions of Alice's world. Hope you like. More to come. (Please review).
The bright, swirling, crazy colors, accompanied by the feeling of plummeting (not falling... it was too fast for falling), was extremely disorienting, and Hatter thoroughly forgot to breathe – if there was even any air to breathe in the vortex.
He flew out of the looking glass, feet first (thankful that he had thought to jump in rather then dive), but his heel came down on a loose piece of tile, that skidded out from under him, so instead of landing upright, he landed with a hard whack, flat on his back on the cement floor, gasping for air like a fish out of water, and wincing in pain as yet more bruises were added to his tally.
He lay there for a long moment, even after he had recovered his breath, staring at the rusted pipes and cracked cement ceiling above him. He wasn't in Wonderland anymore. He was in Alice's world. And if that wasn't hard enough to wrap his head around, he was in Alice's world six weeks before he and Alice had even met.
He felt a twinge of that same panic grip him, but fought against it. He could do this. He could do this, because he had to do this. And the fact that Alice had come to Wonderland and met him, and changed his life, was proof that he had been successful. Or that he would be successful...
Finally, he picked himself up off the floor, taking a long moment to straighten his back. He almost laughed, imagining that at the moment, he probably looked a tad like Charlie when his sacroiliac flared up. He'd miss that crazy old knight, that was certain.
He scooped up his pack, and retrieved the fedora, which had rolled away after his ungraceful entrance. He dusted himself off, and set to work at his first task – being to find his way out of this warehouse.
Thankfully that task did not prove terribly daunting. A couple of turns, a flight of rusty metal stairs, and he had reached the doorway opening to a narrow road, lined with metal boxes.
He hesitated, peeking his head around the doorway before venturing into the alley. Then, staying close to the metal boxes (even though the garbage in them smelled terrible), he made his way slowly to the end. He stopped, still slightly in the shadows, and stared out into the city – the oyster city – Alice's city.
It was nothing like Wonderland. For starters, it was extremely noisy. There was a constant hum and roar, and a distant pounding. And there were people everywhere, and everyone seemed to be in a terrible rush. And there were cars, which moved at frightening speed. He had seen pictures of cars before, in books, but he had no idea that they were so fast or so loud. Cars were impractical in a city not built on the ground.
But this city was. Everywhere he looked, the buildings grew out of level ground, not out of the tops of other buildings. There was not a bridge or a drop to be seen. He had never even imagined anything quite like it.
"Why can't you build your cities on the ground?"
He finally understood Alice's question, gasped out as she had clung to the ladder, so many levels up from the ground.
His curiosity sparked, Hatter grinned. Time to explore, he thought to himself as he stepped out of the alley and into the street.
Literally, into the street, and right into the path of a bright yellow taxi. The man behind the wheel stopped the car inches from Hatter, then leaned out of his window, screaming what Hatter could only imagine were obscenities at him.
Hatter darted back against a wall. He recalled Jack vaguely mentioning something about sticking to the sidewalks. Taking a deep breath, he started to walk again, watching the cars, and making damn sure he didn't step in front of one again.
Hatter's stomach had been growling for a good couple of hours when he found something that drew his eye - a low building with large plate-glass windows, and painted on one of the windows was a promise of "All-Day Breakfast." The same silly grin that had appeared and disappeared nearly a hundred times that day, split his face again. Breakfast always had been his favorite meal of the day, and the thought of breakfast for supper thrilled and amused him.
He had expected his server to be named Molly, after all, that was the name on the store. Instead, the pleasant, middle aged woman who served him wore a pin that said "Tessa".
She had handed him a plastic sheet, with a list of all sorts of food, followed by their cost. Hatter had stared at it for a while, trying to figure out what he wanted, but finally he had turned to Tessa with a charming smile, and asked her, "What's the best?"
She had returned, a few minutes later, with a tall stack of pancakes, topped with a ball of real butter, and a jug of syrup. Hatter could not remember the last time he had tasted anything so delicious.
Tessa watched with amusement as the young Brit in a black fedora plowed through his third plate of pancakes. Where was he putting it all? The man was fairly slight, though well built, and it certainly surprised her how much food he was putting away.
He finally looked up, and sighed with contentment.
"Anything else for you, hun?"
He had taken a couple of scones ("For later."), and had counted out some paper money for her, remembering what Jack had said about leaving a tip. He had balked at first at the idea of giving extra money to someone, just for doing their job, but Jack had explained that a lot of people who served others didn't get paid very much, so the tips were needed. In the end, he had actually left Tessa a pretty big tip, but he had liked her. She might be a useful ally in this strange town.
...
The hotel room was small and plain, and the spread on the bed looked to be of questionable cleanliness, but Hatter felt a bit relieved as he locked the door behind him, and leaned against it. He was exhausted, more mentally than physically. There had been so much to take in, so much to learn about the city. Good and bad. At the moment, he just felt overwhelmed and overstimulated.
There were so many shops here, where you could buy almost anything you could imagine. He had spent hours just wandering, amazed, through a supermarket. He had found a store with a large collection of hats (which had pleased him immensely), although many of them looked simply ridiculous (a "cowboy" hat for example), though he had picked up a couple of "caps", and another fedora, brown this time.
He had ridden an escalator for the first time, watched children playing on a fantastically colorful and intricate series of ropes and bars and slides in a park (and once they had gone, had climbed onto it himself, ignoring the sideways glances he got from passers by), and had breakfast for supper.
But he had also nearly been hit by a car more times then he could count, spent much of the day crushed in a crowd of people (which had made him very uneasy – more than once he had to break free of the crowd by dashing off between buildings to catch his breath), been yelled at and honked at, been accosted by beggars, and gotten thoroughly lost over and over again.
Tomorrow, he knew, he needed to find his landmarks – Jack's building (which was, thankfully, right across the street), Alice's home, the "dojo", which is where he knew Jack would be spending much of his time, and a few other places that Jack had mentioned that he had gone. And tomorrow, he knew, his task of following Jack would start in earnest.
After removing the offending bedspread and tossing it in a corner, Hatter got undressed and lay down on the bed. He thought he would fall asleep quickly, but instead he found himself listening to all the strange noises going on around him – this city was loud, even at night. He could hear cars rushing past outside, someone having a coughing fit somewhere in the building, and a loud wailing siren, as yet another "emergency" vehicle rushed by (he had been so startled the first time he had heard one that he had dived and hid, but began to realize that they were very common in this city).
"Alice, think about Alice!" he said out loud into the empty room. He pictured those big blue eyes, framed by dark lashes. He finally understood what he had seen in them the first day. The "where the hell am I", the confusion, the shock, the wonder.
He had felt all that and more today. 41 more days until he could see her again. He sighed and burrowed down into the covers. At least, until he could see her in person. Caterpillar had said nothing about seeing her in his dreams.
