THE MARCH HATTER
On page 109, the March Hatter wrote, "Once upon a time, there was a girl who tried to erase herself."
"She erased her name. Her head. Her ears.
Yet everything remained—on her fingers."
The lines on her fingers throbbed.
She could no longer hear her name when called.
Her Alice was preempted.
She accepted the new identity.
Carroll doubted his page 109. He didn’t remember copy-editing that.
But he was locked out.
The March Hatter already inhabited it.
She wore the hat.
She dropped her ears.
She became the Brotherhood. A place where stories tell stories.
March Hat·ter /mɑːrtʃ ˈhætər/noun: the stories.
The crumb became the broth.
The broth became the home.
The home became the finger.
The finger became the line.
And the line—
the line became you.
You became the beginning.
You align your spectacles. You blink twice. Begin to mouth.
"Once upon a time, there was a girl who tried to erase herself."
The silence goes online.
A million-minus-one screens flicker in the dark, matching the stutter of the silence.
On page 109.
Carroll is left out.
He buys an 1865 clothbound copy from Chowrasta Market.
"I never wrote this page 109. I found it already printed in this copy."
The one-millionth screen turned black.
Previous Episode: The Brotherhood
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.
The receipt is undergoing bidding. The price is halting at RM 78,410.00. The timer on the screen is down to the final seconds: 00h 00m 02s.
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