Okay, this one is actually rather old. I published it on a fictionpress account a while ago but someone commented that it fell under the category of 'fanfiction' more than original fiction, so, we shall see. As always, read and review, hope you enjoy.

It had been a long time since Alice had first dreamed of Wonderland, and nearly as long since she had thought of it. At the age of eight, it was rather difficult to believe that her mind had been capable of such lucid, fantastical thoughts and ideas at the time, but now, twelve years later, she couldn't seem to get the place out of her mind long enough to copy her chemistry professor's lecture on polyatomic ions without wondering if such things existed in that mystical realm that lived in her head.

On this particular golden afternoon in April, Alice sat in class, her large blue eyes glazed over as she doodled absently, staring longingly out the window rather than watching the demonstration of carbon combustion at the front of the class. The prosaic ticking of the clock, accompanied by the drone of her teacher's nasally monotone made for a wholly soporific atmosphere, and she caught herself several times beginning to nod off.

Gradually, however, she found herself unable to keep her heavy lids from closing entirely and unwillingly drifted into a fitful slumber. Her dream world was familiar, yet somehow not. She knew that the world that she was looking at could be no place other than her beloved Wonderland, but something had changed about it. The landscape of the world was no longer the gorgeously lush garden of colour that it had once been; the very trees seemed to have sensed the evil in the atmosphere, their trunks bowing and their branches becoming sharp, reaching tendrils that would scratch and pull; none of the creatures that she had known as a child seemed to be around anymore, but through the darkness of the forest she could have sworn she saw a pair of glowing yellow eyes glaring at her out of the shadows.

"Hello?" she inquired to the void, aware that nobody was likely to answer. She hadn't thought about this place in so long that she wouldn't have been surprised if all of her former 'friends' had died or simply disappeared.

Alice jumped with surprise when she heard an answering voice - a gentle 'hello' from within the trees. Alice stepped cautiously forward, peering around the trees for the source of the voice but found no one there. Disappointed and a little unsettled, she turned around with her hands on her hips, only to find herself nose-to-chest with a tall male figure dressed entirely in black and capped with a tall top hat with a card sticking out of the hat band.

"Hatter!" Alice exclaimed, stepping back quickly and giving the man a thorough once-over. While she herself had grown up, the Mad Hatter seemed to have aged backward. Instead of a bumbling old man with a screw lose, she found herself staring at the stern yet handsome face of a young man with ginger hair and a smattering of freckles across his nose. "You've changed, what happened?"

The man smiled tightly, though it resembled a grimace more than anything else, his dark eyes remaining fixed upon the girl. "You've changed as well, Alice. For the better, it seems. I'm glad to see you're not wearing that ridiculous dress anymore," he replied, inclining his head very slightly and neglecting to answer her question. "We've missed you."

Alice returned the smile uncertainly, taking an involuntary step backward. There was no inflection of emotion in the Hatter's voice, as though he were reading a slide on the sort of bacteria that might live in a pond rather than greeting an old friend. "Well, um, where is everyone else?" she inquired brightly, smiling in hopes of eliciting a spark of the old, remarkably nutty Hatter that she had once known.

Hatter smiled widely this time, the smile still not quite reaching his eyes, though there was something malicious in it. "They're right this way, Alice, waiting for you. We're going to have a tea party to celebrate your return," he told her, removing his hat and gesturing with it toward a gap in the trees.

Alice was not looking where he was pointing, however. When he had taken his hat off, she had seen something she wished she hadn't - a large section of the back of his head seemed to be missing, leaving a gaping hole through which she could see all manner of clockwork and turning gears. She stumbled backward into a tree, her mouth open with horror.

Hatter gazed at her, somewhat confused for a moment, then reached back and ran his fingers over the gap in his head. "Oh, this?" He grinned, a glimmer of what Alice recognized as his old insanity showing briefly as he ran his fingers gleefully over the whirring cogs of his mind. "The Queen fixed me up proper; you see, I was quite mad. When things started changing, so did we. Very unforgiving world Wonderland has become. You can't so much as take tea without some ungodly critter going for your jugular." His maniacal grin vanished just as suddenly as it had appeared and he made a grab for her arm, the sleeve of his black tail coat drawing back slightly from the white glove on his hand and revealing several inches of metallic skin. "Time for tea, we mustn't be late!"

"No!" Alice shouted, turning tail and fleeing into the forest. She could hear the Hatter chasing after her but she didn't dare turn to look. He was closing in, she could feel it, heard his vaguely metallic footsteps growing closer. She was sure that he would catch her, grab her, pull her away -

Alice sat bolt upright to discover that the classroom had emptied out, leaving her alone in the classroom with the professor, who seemed to have been watching her, amused. She stood up quickly, gathering her belongings and exiting the room as quickly as she could, avoiding eye contact with her professor as she scampered past his desk and out the door. As she hurried down the hallway, she was certain that she heard I'm coming to get you, Alice, echoing through the hallway, but in her current state, she couldn't truly be certain of anything. Perhaps a walk in the school's immense garden would clear her mind…