Victims in Wonderland

“Tell me, Alice,” she asked, pen on her paper. “What do you remember most about your dream?”

“Oh, but it wasn’t a dream,” I replied. “It was all very real.” I was getting irritated. Is every therapist this idiotic? Does everyone have to be so skeptical? “What I saw, felt, did… It was all very real…”

“Just start from the beginning, then,” she urged me.

It was in that moment that the memories came flooding back, as if it were all happening again. “You might want more paper,” I told her, handing her a notebook.

Every fiber of my being was telling me to turn and run away from her— she was much too beautiful to be real… as if she noticed my mental struggle, she bade me to follow her— and I did, just like I was under some spell. I moved towards her, to the corner she’d disappeared behind at the end of the street, but stopped before turning it and told myself: She isn’t real. Yet, I still kept moving towards her. I had to find her. I didn’t have a reason, and I didn’t care. My body— mind, soul, conscious, and subconscious— needed to follow her.

What are you doing, Alice? I wanted to stop. I wanted to turn around. I wanted to run. But instead, I turned the corner. I’d followed her into a cemetery. There was a path leading up to the hill she was crouched on… She was in front of a head stone, staring into the hole where a body should have been, but there was nothing but blackness— pure emptiness. She was wearing a black cloak and her moon-soaked red hair stood out against the darkness like blood on the street. She looked up at me, and all I saw was her piercing green eyes and her sinister smile. She slowly lifted her hand and a pointed finger reached in the direction of the headstone.

R.I.P.

Alice Jane Lidell

1907-1927

Frightened, I tried turning away, but something in her gaze held me in place—looking in her eyes at that moment made me feel like my feet had been sewn into the ground.

“And did you?” My therapist interrupted, hopefully for the last time.

Annoyed beyond belief, I responded with: “Can you just let me finish?”

Catching on, I hope, she returned her pen to her paper.

I walked over to the edge of the grave, mortified that I was actually doing this, and let myself fall in. I closed my eyes and tried to scream, but nothing came out. I fell for what felt like forever; eyes closed, hair blowing all around me, no air in my lungs…

I awoke with the worst migraine I’d ever had. It was dark and my eyes took a while to adjust, but once they did, I saw that I was in a room full of mirrors— the walls, ceiling, and floor. Where I’d fallen, there was a pool of blood and shards of broken glass. I walked over to the wall to get a better look at myself. I had a gash from my hair line down to my chin.