In the span of five seconds, a worm much bigger than all the rest swooped up from under the hare and threw him into the sky. A magnificent circus performance, acrobat without his tightrope, he was doing all sorts of tricks while he was in the air. She saw him spin at least five times and did a kick, all to land perfectly on the head of the worm. She was awed though Bernie was unimpressed, one gave an applause and the other was nothing but tepid; it’s not scarce that Alice is left impressed by the little things. However she thought that this grand attraction was worth a cheerful crowd. His brown fur almost shone under the sunlight, between each strand waved a pride far too big and challenged its radiance. He wore a mangy orange jumpsuit and repulsing red boots, a blue tie desperately clinging around his neck. He readjusted it (and somehow it didn’t change its place, he really only shook it around to seem cool, that much was obvious) and cleared his throat.
One mighty cough and the hare – whose name Alice definitely remembered – announced his message. “Tis I, Terrific Terry!” His left hand pushed a fist to the sky and the other rested on his hip, like a sword of absolute ego hoisted on his belt.
Unsurprisingly, Alice remembered it as ‘Harry’, and Bernie whispered: “Terrible Terry at best.” She’d much rather keep that ‘Harry’ to herself and avoid the chagrin it would bring her. Their surroundings were suffocating and the girl was unable to understand how or why, every second only painted the word ‘Wonderland’ on the tip of her tongue. She wiggled about between the slimy beasts; it’s hard to understand whether she was attempting to free herself or to do the jig of the earthworms. She was washed with relief once Bernie had taken notice and pulled her up. His tug, despite his scrawny forearms, was able to pull the lady from the gaps of utter pink-hued disgust. She stood on the worms and stumbled, spinning herself round from the slippery damp skin of the giant creature. After a while Alice finally stood her ground and the soles of her shoes got used to the texture, she hopped on one head, then the other, and so on until she reached the hand of Terry. This was a silent act, she didn’t plan a single thing, and now the poor white rabbit was stuck drowning in a pool of worms.
To this he protested, as he should, Bernie waved a desperate arm in the air and yelled “insane, insane, insane” about fifteen times over. And to that Terry responded, as if to drown out his friend’s judgements, “she’s wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!” All the while Alice only enveloped herself with the thoughts in her mind, as always, “too loud, too loud, too loud,” and a handful of other things like how odd, how absurd. Reality is absurd. As she understands, reality is fickle. Changing, constant. It is never certain until the time she wakes and sleeps again. Her youthful mind was unable to grasp it, but so was the mind of the smart rabbit, and the crazed hare’s cortex. If only there was someone else who understood her? The acrylic blue in the sky seemed to paint it so.
Drowning in the rumpus, Terry’s grasp on Alice had loosened and she slipped like spiders down a drain. Did she? No, surely she didn’t. The worms weren’t all that slippery now. She was pulled. Pulled, but by what? She didn’t know, before she could find out darkness had clouded her vision as fast as a cat’s leap, and she felt the warm fur wrap around her head like apocalyptic bandages.
