CHAPTER 1: The search for Alice

Have you ever wanted to be in a dream, where untold adventures could be had? Building friendship bonds in the face of death? Where you are the valiant hero and you perish while trying to save everyone? Where you find eternal happiness?

Well, don't. Because it'll be never-ending and I know. Wonderland is never-ending and I'm its creator. And I regret. Whenever anyone sees me, I'm a monster in their eyes, a trash, a regret filled with eternal sorrow because I failed in continuing the story I have created. The story which has trapped its owner until a destiny is fulfilled by the true Alice.

The Queen of Hearts sipped her cherry-flavored wine. Tilting the wineglass, the wine poured slowly into her barely-opened mouth. Then she let go of it. The wineglass seemed to hover mischievously in the air as the Jack of Hearts held a cushion underneath it to stop its fall. He missed narrowly and it crashed onto the ground, shattering into infinite shards, allowing the red liquid to flow onto the red carpet.

The Queen of Heart's eyes narrowed into slits. She laughed semi-hysterically and proclaimed that it was 'off with your head' for Jack. Jack kneeled down, trembling violently, while the Queen stood over him, clutching her sharpened scythe lovingly, her cruel eyes laughing silently in triumph. And the scythe slid cleanly through the Jack's throat, severing Jack's head and body apart, where his blood spilt out immediately like a faulty water hose.

The scythe was once more effortlessly sharpened.

He would not really die anyway. She was not meant to kill him.

Bored, she set aside her favourite weapon and thought about when would Alice come and pay wonderland a visit.

If only I hadn't been so greedy, I would have been the Alice that Destiny decreed. Where are you, Alice? Come out, come out wherever you are.

And the queen smirked bitterly, resting her chin on her knuckles where her arms lazed on the red manchette of the wooden arm rest.

Alice sat, leaning on a tree trunk. Looking at the sky, she murmured, "It's too blue. And I can see a cloud which resembles a rabbit. A white rabbit." Peering down at her older sister, Ariana, she decided to sneak out, to play for a while. She leapt off the tree branch, and with a bumpity-bump, landed on the grassland.

"Oh, I'm going to be late. I'm going to be LATE. I have to hurry. I'm going to be LATE!" a high-pitched voice sounded behind her. Alice turned around, seeing a girl with rabbit ears on her head. A frantically muttering girl. A girl running on four legs instead of two. Alice followed her, although a little hesitantly. The girl with white rabbit ears -'Are they real?' Alice thought-looked behind, and, seemingly alarmed of Alice having noticed her, she sped up. "Wait, don't go. I want to play with you. What's your name, little girl?" Alice asked, still briskly following her. She had to weave her way through branches, tree roots and fallen tree logs. Now in a deeper and darker part of the forest, she was lost.

"I'm going to be late. Where's the burrow? I'm going to be late," the girl shrieked again. "And don't follow me!" the little girl warned, turning her head to look at Alice. Then she bounded into a huge hole which was camouflaged between two gigantic oak trees and likely to have been intentionally dug up, and did not resurface. Alice tilted her head, curious. Where could the hole lead to? Deftly, she threw a small pebble into the massive burrow and looked down. The pebble seemed to fall and fall, until it could not be seen again.

While bending over to look into the hole, her book slipped from her hand. Quickly, Alice tried to catch it.

Alas, it fell into the hole, down and down until it was swallowed up into the unknown territory below. Thinking about how she was already lost and that taking a learning journey beneath the undergrowth wouldn't hurt much, she held her breath and stepped into the burrow.

While falling, Alice seemed to slow down, as if gravity's pull on her had been released, little by little. Also, the air which resisted her below was warm. She looked around. Old antiques, delightful food, and bedroom furniture were falling alongside her. She reached out for an ice cream and licked it. It felt warm and salty. Shocked, she flung the ice cream. Then she sat on a seemingly comfortable couch, which turned out to be a flock of sparrows. The couch dissolved into individual birds that flew in all directions. It seemed that everything was distorted and not what it seemed to be.

After awhile, she grew bored. Looking down, she saw a myriad of colours, so many hues to take in in a single glance that temporarily blinded her. When she regained her sight, she noticed there were huts and tents and buildings, a sign that humans were around. Humans who lived so deep beneath the undergrowth. A place that experienced sunlight without the sun, a distorted paradise underneath the earth that she had never imagined. Directly below her, there was a beach and people were holding hands and dancing in the rays of sunset. It was a heart-warming sight.

But not all places were happy-go-lucky. At a far end, Alice saw a magnificent tropical forest with very tall trees, which seemed to cast gloomy shadows within it. She was sure that only silence was to be expected there. A place where even birds avoided and people dreaded and things never recovered. Shuddering involuntarily, she hoped she would never have to set foot into that place which possibly inhabited dangerous creatures.

Chasing the energetic, frantic little girl had exhausted her and she had wanted to take a little nap, but now, she felt energized and optimistic that she was going to have an adventure here. Alice day-dreamed about making a friend, the little girl from before with the cute bunny ears which she had chased to the burrow. After all, I don't have a single friend. Probably, she would also ask the bunny girl how she could get home.

"Oof!"Alice landed on unceremoniously on her bottom. Strange, what could have reduced the impact of her fall? She had fallen from what, a hundred feet above. Scanning the beach, there was not a soul to be seen to ask for help. Alice tried to hoist her sinking legs from the sand by using all her arm strength to push against safe ground. The effort was futile. All it did was to make matters worse. The more she tried to hoist herself upwards, the more she got mysteriously pulled back into the quicksand, as if a monster lay beneath it, playfully and slowly tugging her leg, until she fell completely into its grasp. Alice gave up resisting. It would only quicken the pace of her sinking.

Looking at the sky the one last time, as the unseen sun's warm orangey-pink rays caressed her face lovingly, she closed her eyes and anticipated her head sinking into the quicksand, completely buried under the quicksand and leaving no trace that she ever existed, except for the bones left below if anybody bothered to clear the quicksand first. She would be trapped in the molten undergrowth beneath an undergrowth. Haha, she thought sarcastically, if this was what people thought before they died, then they had died with smiles on their face...