Episode 75.4
The Hatter stood inside the clock room.
The left side of his face was his own—pale and sweating; the right side was painted in stark whites and blacks.
A paper tag dangled from his oversized hat: 00:00:00 - 2s.
He held his violin, the bow arrested two inches above the strings.
"Your Majesty," the Hatter stammered, his voice cracking. "The salted butter. The unsalted..."
He couldn't finish.
"Borrow a second," the Hatter muttered to himself.
No second volunteered.
"I can't freeze the seconds to death in their cradles!"
He walked toward the gears.
Esplanade wind slipped past them.
He kissed the butter.
He dug out a lump and smeared it across the bow and strings.
His hands warmed them.
One. Two. He chanted.
Miracle.
None came.
The strings had already been incapacitated, butter muffled.
Danse Macabre moaned inside the resonating chamber—smelled of seconds and butter, of tea and toast, of Esplanade and tide.
"Precisely not."
Film rolled.
The Hatter looked round the tea table.
The March Hare buttered his toast.
Then another toast.
Salted. Unsalted.
He took a bite.
Crrrr-h-nch—the sound splintering.
One borrowed second shattered.
It was still six o'clock.
It was the Hatter’s. The March Hare’s. Alice’s.
The Dormouse's.
Not the Tower's.
"But if the Tower is arrested," Alice said, "and we are here at six—"
She looked at the toast. At the Hatter. "Then there are two different Danse Macabres."
No one answered.
The March Hare cut the toast into two.
A quiet staccato hitched in his chest. He was snickering.
Then snapped it back.
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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