ENJOY EACH SECOND
He tended its gears with the best butter.
Slinging a bucket over his shoulder, always whistling, he worked under the golden dome every day.
It had never missed a chime.
One afternoon, the March Hare screamed.
The gears had stopped rotating.
The Hatter and the March Hare blamed each other over the butter.
Unsalted ensured steadiness.
The time drowned beneath layers of speed and steadiness.
He missed his number at the Queen’s concert.
He was to perform Danse Macabre—a command performance after twelve strokes of midnight.
For that, he had rehearsed many nights in full dress.
The Hatter painted his right face a pale, skeletal corpse.
The Georgetown sea breeze stirred. Low thrum of the tide hit the seawall at the Esplanade.
Sun set. Moon rose.
Yet the stage remained pitch bright—no violin wailed.
No skeletal corpse rose.
Then, a splash of violent crimson.
The Queen rose.
"You! Time murderer!"
“A Time murderer?” the Hatter murmured. “How can you kill what you butter?”
Wonderland held its breath.
Within the breath, the Hatter heard:
the sound of every second he'd ever skipped, suffocating and kicking beneath layers of butter.
The cloud fidgeted. Whee shrilled. Images blurred.
The Hatter was distorted.
His cap slipped.
The stitching pulled. ENJOY EACH SECOND unraveled.
ENJOY
ENJO
ENJ
EN
E
And then into nothing.
“Precisely not,” said the Hatter at the tea-party.
"ENJOY EACH SECOND."
"I stitched it to remind myself."
He looked at everyone.
"It was on the cap, two seconds ago."
Previous Episode: Touching The Absence
A surreal chapter in Alice’s digital dreamscape.
This post is part of an ongoing original metafiction series exploring identity, systems, and absurdity through a digital Wonderland.
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