Door Introduced Itself/28

Meanwhile, the door—dangling above like a vast book, loaded with at least three inches of life-knowledge—seemed to recall its purpose. It groaned forward, “I’m here.”

Beside it, the window drowsed by a dozing mouse, half-idling, half-deciding— hesitating whether to power itself up or hibernate once more into glassy sleep.

Altogether, it would require only halffff an inch, the flick of a too-keen wrist, and the room itself would gather its poise and tip back upon its handsome collar and twirling mustache.

“Oh dear! Do mind your angle,” cried the door and window together. “We can’t all be Piza, and you aren't its master, you know — standing upright keeps our magnetic appeal, like a prince out of a story book.”

And yet Alice endeavored to make sense of it all. “The one I stepped on, it must be the floor,” she reasoned. “What a muddle to walk about, like a lopsided wander-wand —ah, I daresay I’ve gone and broken it altogether.”

Alice nearly cast a die to decide the size of her flick. It quivered so eagerly, itching to etch its name into history. And now, one small flick from her; one tremendous flip for the world.

The tipping room, uneasy furniture, and dozing mouse all held their breath—balancing, barely, on a single trembling pin.

 Alice Nearly—

Smothered Eveyone

Coming up next--

Window Took Over

⊥Iᗺᗺ∀ꓤ ˙M.

Exit Windows...

A surreal chapter in Alice’s digital dreamscape.

A Tilted Service/27

A quiet calm had settled in, Alice thought—until a faint clatter above confirmed differently.

High above her, a steaming teapot stood upon a three-legged table, sending milky, lavender-scented embraces through the air, quite undecided whether up was still up—or had absurdly become down.

Beside it, a plate of warm buttery biscuits perched—rounds of tempting round smiles tumbling downward, yet insisting they were rising to greet Alice instead.

All of it hovered above her—on the floor, as though a service had been set, promptly neglected by Wonderland itself, and only remembered a second too late after the sip of “DRINK ME” Red Magic.

“The ceiling… or is it the floor?” Alice asked the air, forcing her thoughts into a C-for-Ceiling, E-for-Floor knot. She was so flustered that the proper F had slipped out of her mind entirely, leaving poor E to do the job—while the aroma rose like a mischievous siren she very much wished to ignore.

“Perhaps I ought to give the room a little tilt—just a small one—and rotate the whole thing round,” she mused, tilting her body. “I do hope I can.”

What a wonderfully silly thought that was—forever silly, forever evolving, and somehow... forever.

Forever Brilliant, 

Wonderlandsome

Coming up next--

Door Introduced Itself

One Small Flick by Her,

One Giant Flip For The World

A surreal chapter in Alice’s digital dreamscape.

How Many Alices Make an Ending/26

Every cinematic and acoustic beat — a minute in time, a forever in feeling — yet I captured them all before they thinned away, unwitnessed by the future Alice.

The forever feeling, however, settled in — heavy, like a rock too loyal to its gravity.

Alice was unsure whether she felt lighter or emptier for having played one of the most vigorous and exhausting movements she had ever stumbled into.

"Oh, not truly!” exclaimed Alice. Something most peculiar had occurred — enough to make the Mouse, tail a meter long, stand goggled and mouth wide open.

The tiny room had turned upside down — like a somersault caught mid-air; like a chrysalis dreaming itself half-caterpillar, half-butterfly.

Three upside-down mirrors shimmered, replicating into a thousand more — Alices upon Alices, each blinking back, unsure which was real — or if any of them were — or perhaps thinking all at once. The more they reflected, the less they knew.

Somehow, it felt like a compromised finale — Wonderland’s own peculiar sort of resolution: mischievous, unsettled, entirely its own.

And Alices kept breathing.

All Alices had converged into one—complex, quiet, and still running somewhere beneath the silence.

Coming up next--

A Tilted Service

Gravity? 

Furniture had opinions.

A surreal chapter in Alice’s digital dreamscape.

The Laughter Concerto/25

The sensation grew—and grew further—until Alice, curled tight into a big, stiff question, could not answer herself anymore; her thoughts slipped out of key, her soul revolving into resonance.

Her body trembled at high frequency, each tremor small but relentless, vibrating the walls, her face flushing crimson.

She burst into wild, uncontrollable laughter—louder than thunder before a storm, louder than applause after a finale.

The laughter came in waves—each swelling fuller, sharper, more radiant than the last—reverberating through the narrow space, focused at first, then multiplying, until the concerto and her laughter, first mingling, then fusing, became a single compound propagating like viral code, reprogramming the space thou by thou.

The wafloings quivered beneath it; the chemistry remixed itself into a self-generating echo, bouncing and twisting, too fierce for so small a room to bear.

The echo struck a perfect sforzando; the tiny room shook, released its strain, and snapped back into order. 

For a moment, everything hung suspended—the breath, the soul, the very atoms of her being. Then, Alice exhaled — — — a long afternoon of breath letting go.

A great silence followed—the echo neatly cached by the Wonderlandian system, which sensibly went into sleep mode.

A Concerto Entered Sleep Mode 😴

Coming up next--

A Compromised Finale

Lighter or Emptier?

Which Alice Was Real?

A surreal chapter in Alice’s digital dreamscape.

Alice In Concerto/24

Bill — balancing himself rather bravely upon such limited surface — gave a bow. 

Relaxed, he stood tall, grounded both legs, and began moving his mighty little hands as though tuning invisible strings with a thrilling accelerando.

Alice’s breath came quick and low. “Pray—pray don’t do that!”

The words seemed to dissolve between the strings the second they left her mouth.

Bill only tightened his hold, his fingers moving with dreadful precision — each trembling vibrato a ghostly pluck along her nerves.

Alice wanted to still herself — to not breathe, not feel — yet her whole being betrayed her, executing the emotion she had meant to close, and tuning itself, helplessly, to Bill’s tremolo key.

Bill pressed on — fingers bowing, rocking, trilling.

The rhythm spiralled into dazzling runs and tumbling scales, streaming through her ribs as if her body had become an unwilling instrument of his tune.

It was alive.

I could almost make out the piece — ah yes, Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D major, unmistakably — each phrase unfurling with fevered brilliance, a beta build of beauty that made Bill’s pride almost too exquisite to bear.

And Alice, poor girl, seemed to feel every note without ever quite hearing it.

A Concerto Only to be Felt By Alice... 

Coming up next--

The Laughter Concerto

Laughter Dares, 

In the Concerto?

A surreal chapter in Alice’s digital dreamscape.

The Wriggle/23

The background command knocked — as though the wafloings had finally received their signal, and Alice’s thought had remembered its turn.

A shadow, slender and oddly familiar, slid forward from where the Rabbit had vanished.

“A patch — from the Rabbit?” Alice queried. “Or a bug, in disguise?”

“Oh dear — Bill! You’ve escaped the pool!” cried Alice, as the little figure stopped, fixing her with that unnervingly steady look.

“How were those one-meter Mouse’s tales you once clung to?” Her mouth brushed the wafloings — breathless but bright, as though speaking through a screen to her long-lost friend.

The steady look held its silence.

Was Bill performing a system scan — convinced that no bug could hide as long as the cursor kept blinking?

He stood upright, his tail anchoring him to the floor — miniature enough to maneuver neatly in the cramped space. He offered Alice a widening grin, bright as the cursor that refused to cease its blinking.

As ever, Bill said nothing.

Even a broader grin, by all available philosophy, would scarcely have improved the situation; his silence was the only thing that wasn’t blinking.

With a sudden wriggle, Bill scrambled up Alice’s arm and slipped sideways, clinging to her ribs.

The Steady Look Held Its Silence, Yet Told Not A Tale... 

Coming up next--

Alice in Concerto

A Concerto? 

One to be felt...

A surreal chapter in Alice’s digital dreamscape.

Folded Within Her Question/22

“I wish I could be smaller,” Alice thought. “Foolish me; the room would swallow me whole again.”

The air creaked before her self-chiding was quite done — frantic rubbings, squeezings, and pressings rose through the tightening space — from not very far, to near, to closer — until it was right beside her.

That was when the White Rabbit came into the picture, breathing a thick coffee smell, as though he’d just burst from a café in someone else’s dream. The scent bounced back and forth, looping with his auto-playing idiom: “I’ll be really, really late—so really late!”

He brushed against her skirt, jerked, and wedged himself toward a tiny pinprick of light. The glow widened and brightened; with a flick and a shimmer, he was absorbed altogether—as though minimized into a secret taskbar only he could see.

The light dinged once—and was gone.

Silence hung in its place.

Alice, still folded within her own precarious loop of question, sighed—though in such tight quarters, even sighs had to be rationed.

“When I used to read fairy tales,” she murmured, “I fancied such things could never happen—and now here I am, right in the middle of one.”

The murmuring echoed, then faded—leaving only the faint hum of thought still tangled in the ends of her hair.

The Wonderland system dinged once... 

Coming up next--

The Wriggle

Whose wriggle, 

in such a tightness?

A surreal chapter in Alice’s digital dreamscape.