HatterXReader(SyFy Alice):Part 3

Your body jerked as your clammy hand slipped from the bottom of the wooden crate box that held you suspended miles above what looked to be an expanse of a fresh water lake. You were now falling suddenly, screaming with terror as you watched the surface of the water loom towards you at light speed. You hit the surface of the lake with a ringing gunshot sound. Your body was instantly plunged into freezing cold water that seemed to seep straight through your skin, making your bones ache with the chill. You kicked and thrashed about wildly as you tried to push yourself up towards the surface. You hadn’t had enough time to suck in a deep breath of air before you had sunk into the icy depths below. Your lungs were feeling the searing pain of the primal need to breathe. You opened your eyes instinctually, but the world around you seemed to smear. Your eyes burned instantly as they tried to adjust to being underwater. You blinked furiously as your arms and legs tried to push you closer to the top of the lake. Your eyes finally adjusted somewhat to the water all around you and you could see that the light of the surface wasn’t that far away. With a fierceness you weren’t aware you possessed, you kicked your tired legs as fast as you could and you flailed your arms rapidly like an underwater hummingbird.  

You breached the surface of the water like a lighthouse buoy. You sucked in a glorious gust of air that rattled your lungs and made you temporarily lightheaded. Your eyes burned as you tried to blink the last remnants of water from your vision. You didn’t think it was possible, but you were made even colder by the feel of the warm wind whipping your face while the rest of you remained submerged in the frozen icebox that was the lake. You let yourself bob up and down in the water for a few minutes while you tried to collect yourself. Your heart was going a mile a minute and you were afraid you were going to give yourself a heart attack if you didn’t calm down. Wouldn’t that be ironic? You survive a near death experience just to end up killing yourself out of blind fear. You closed your eyes and counted to ten while you took steadying gulps of air through your mouth. Once you felt you had regained your composure for the moment you opened your eyes again. You were treading water in the middle of the clear lake. The sky above was dotted heavily with swollen grey cotton ball clouds. On both of your sides were mountainous peaks covered in what looked to be like miles and miles of thriving green forestry. You saw that there was a shore in front of you, but it was impossibly far away. If you tried to swim to it you would get worn out and most certainly drown before you even reached the halfway point. Feeling grim, you swum around towards the direction you had been carried from. There you could see the massive industrial city looming behind you. You had been correct earlier when you had guessed that it was a collection of cities, built on top of one another. From here it looked kind of like a beehive made out of skyscrapers.    

Relief washed over you like an unseen, but comforting blanket when you saw that the distance between you and the concrete jungle of stacked buildings was within reasonable swimming distance. You steadied yourself and focused on the task at hand. It would be hard on your body, but you could do it. You had to do it. Resolved, you spread your arms out wide and began to glide through the water like a dolphin. You kept your eyes glued towards your goal of the dilapidated iron city ahead. You swam for what felt like hours. Your every muscle screamed at you in anguish, but you kept pushing yourself forwards. In a vain effort to keep your mind off of the excruciating pain you kept mentally telling yourself, “just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.” You kept up the ridiculous mantra until finally you came upon a small thin canal that lead up directly to the outskirts of the suspended city. You surged forward and followed it blindly, desperately hoping to reach it before your muscles finally cramped up and rendered you helpless.  

You swam up the little channel of water until you reached a strip of solid concrete sidewalk that had small squat houses in various stages of decay and disuse lined all along it’s edges. You made your way to the edge of the hard pavement and you used the very last of your strength to pull your body over the side onto the solid ground. Your waterlogged clothes clung to your skin and felt like heavy stones. You laid there on your stomach panting with exhaustion for a few seconds. You almost didn’t even care that your cheek was resting on a dirty sidewalk…almost.  

Beside you, you heard a high pitched squeaking sound and you quickly lifted your head to see a fat ugly street rat caught in a small wire cage not even three feet away from your face. You thought the rodent was nasty until you caught sight of the man that was standing behind it and that was currently staring down at you suspiciously with a small rusty dagger gripped tightly in one hand. He looked like a worn down homeless person. He had long scraggly dark brown hair with streaks of grey running through it. He wore a faded dark grey bowler hat that made his long pale face look even more sunken in. His face had a few days of overgrown beard stubble and his sallow skin looked to be covered in a film of weeks old filth. He wore layers of mismatched worn and torn frayed clothing. He had on a charcoal grey long coat that went to his feet and cut off crocheted gloves that left his fingers bare. Frightened, you forced your tired pleading body up to a standing position and you held your hands out in front of you in a splayed “stop” like position. The vagrant looking man took a startled step back as if you were the one who was holding a knife instead of him. His dark and beady eyes surveyed you nervously. Panicked, you made yourself stand up straighter and tried your best to look in control of the situation and un-intimidated of him and his weapon. “Don’t you even think about it buddy,” you said breathily when he tried to take a small step forwards.  

His small black eyes landed on your shoulder and he stated, “You’re an oyster!” Reflexively you looked down at your right shoulder. You had forgotten that the light from the beetle-shaped airship had branded you with a hunter green tribal tattoo of a crustacean. You had thought it looked more like a weird shaped lobster at the time, but now that you looked at it, it did indeed resemble an oyster. The fidgety strange old man hoisted his small knife higher in the air as if he needed protection from you. “Just put the knife away,” you told him forcefully. It was obvious he was more afraid of you than you were of him, but the fact of the matter was that he was currently armed and you were not. The skittish man backed up even further. He quickly tucked his little dagger into his coat pocket as he said, “I don’t want nothin’ to do with you. You hear? I am a working man. I don’t want no trouble.” Then he bent down towards his feet and grabbed another small wire cage (this one though was thankfully empty) and what looked to be a mesh fishing net. A mechanical soaring noise sounded from a distance and you both jerked your head towards the air above the water where it was coming from. To your dismay it was another giant beetle airship that was carrying long ropes of thick wooden crates just like the one you were trapped in previously. Your pulse thudded hard in your chest at the sight of it slowly lumbering its way towards you. Like before the force of the machine made the very earth under your feet rumble and shake. You held your breath as it leisurely passed right over you without stopping. The wooden crates dangled right in front of you and they rocked back and forth ominously.

Did it notice me? you wondered nervously to yourself. Thin grimy hands locked onto the biceps of your arms in a shaking, but firm grip. The old street person had a hold of you and you felt his rancid breath hit your face as he whispered fervently, “If they see us together we both be dead!” Then as quickly as he had grabbed you he let go and began scampering off through discarded boxes and depleted metal machines. It looked as if you were currently on an long deserted fishing dock of sorts. “Wait sir! Please, I need directions!” You called after his retreating form. He was the first signs of life you had seen in this city other than the refined man in white and the men in black suits who had kidnapped Alice.  

“Go away! I can’t help no oyster!” he yelled back at you like a crotchety old man. “Wait! I’ll pay you!” you called out desperately. Your fingers quickly fumbled to your damp jeans pocket where you were happy to see that the little bit of money you had stashed in there earlier that morning was still there. It was a little wet and curled, but you deftly began to use your numbed fingers to unfurl it. “Look, I have some money!” you cried. The dirty old man stopped in his tracks and turned around slowly. He traced his steps back towards you hesitantly as his beady little eyes zeroed in on your trembling hands. “What’s that?” he asked. “Uh,” you looked down at the crinkly paper between your fingers and then brought your gaze back up to his weathered face, “Twenty bucks.” The man wrinkled his nose in confusion and said questioningly, “bucks?” Clearly sensing his twitchiness you spoke quickly, “I am looking for a girl who was kidnapped and brought here recently. If you help me find her it’s yours.” Then you held out the wrinkled up twenty towards him. “An oyster like you?” he said while flickering a timid glance at your outstretched hand and back up to your face. A little confused you nodded your head once and rolled the cash between your fingers as you answered, “Yeah.” He reached out and took the money from your fingertips and then he brought it up to his withered looking face. First he sniffed it distrustfully then he brought it to his lips and without a moment’s hesitation he licked it. “Uck,” he made a disgusted face and turned to look back at you. The old homeless man was odd to say the least, but he didn’t seem dangerous and he was the closest thing you had to help you find Alice and get out of this weird run down foreign place. Feeling a bit better at the prospects, you raised your outstretched hand again in a handshake gesture. “Hi, I’m (your name).” you announced with a smile. The scruffy looking man’s dark eyes got a bit wider and he stared at you a little too intently. “Look you are kind of freaking me out,” you said honestly as you retracted your extended hand. “The girl that I am looking for; she is probably locked inside that flying beetle thing. Do you know where it is headed?” The old man’s face cracked into an excited grin as he pointed at you with a knobby dirty hand. “You, come with me!”  

Just like that he turned and trotted deeper into the broken down fishing shack. He then turned around and motioned with his hand when he saw you just standing there. “Quick, quick!” he called out. Not sure you should go with him, but thinking what choice did you have, you followed after him. He led you up a creaking rusty iron staircase that shook with your weight. You were afraid at first, but the metal contraption didn’t feel like it would give out on you. Up, up, up you went until you felt like you were stories above where you started out from. You were so high up now that you could no longer see the canal of water below that had led you here. You pursued the hunched and erratic street person as he nimbly darted through a labyrinth of hovering sidewalks identical looking to the ones you chased the man in white on. All the while you had not seen a single living soul or sign of life in this hollowed out ghost town. Finally you came upon another cross section of sidewalks that happened to have a red vintage British telephone box like the one Clark Kent changed into Superman in. Past the random telephone box was a white building that looked almost the same as all the other falling apart buildings, but this one was different thanks in part to a small latticed in porch that had a red horizontal electrical marquee board with the words, “Tea Shoppe” in bright red lights repeating over and over at the top of it. It was the first sign of real human habitation you had seen in this place. Adrenaline coursed through your veins and over rode the painful exhaustion your body was currently suffering.  

The man stopped suddenly and took shelter behind the red telephone box. You stopped behind him and watched curiously as he took out a small red bandana. Without warning he took hold of your right arm and wound the bandana around your shoulder like a makeshift bandage. “Hey,” you yipped affronted by his sudden grabiness. “Thanks, but not thanks, I’m good,” you protested as he began to tie the knot over your shoulder. “They see this oyster, you dead.” He replied cryptically. Then he brought his long drawn face up to meet yours and instructed in a rush, “First I go. Count to ten and then you go. Got it?” His dirt caked hand let go of your forearm and then he turned to hobble away. “Wait, what’s in there?” you called after him. Without stopping he shouted back, “A man who knows!” You watched as he darted across the cross section like a scampering rat. “Knows what? Wait!” you cried, but it was too late. He was already to the concrete stairs leading up to the white latticed porch. You watched helplessly as his dark slim figure disappeared behind the doors inside. You glanced around nervously, but still saw no signs of activity anywhere else. You did as the odd man had told you and you anxiously counted to ten before you hesitantly brought yourself out from behind the vintage telephone box. Feeling a sense of foreboding you made a mad dash down that last strip of sidewalk up to the hard steps and white washed little porch. As you approached you saw dim lights coming from the thin strips of windows. Consolation at the proof of working electricity and the promise of other human life warred with a buzzing sense of fear of the unknown within you. You weren’t sure what exactly was beyond these unobtrusive looking doors, but you were certain that there was no turning back once you passed them. You had to find Alice and then find your way back home where you both belonged. You took one last steadying breath for courage before you reached out and opened up those doors.

To be continued…

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Author’s Notes: Goodness it has been too long hasn’t it?! The real world has a special way of interrupting my imagination. But I am back for now with this little update for you guys. So not much really exciting happened in this chapter, but eh, it was a lead up chapter to the Tea Shoppe where the ever scrumptious and amusing Hatter is. So consider it a necessary evil. And in case you were wondering, yes that was an obscure reference to Finding Nemo in there at the beginning. Why? Because I’m weird like that. Don’t question it, just go with it lol. Lately I have been listening to a lot of chill out fantasy like music to help me get in the mood of the highly modern and out there world of Alice. I was wondering if maybe I should post a playlist of the songs that inspire me in my journal, but I wasn’t sure if that is just something I should keep to myself or not. What do you guys think? Would you be interested in an Alice playlist? My music choices are eclectic to say the least though. Lol. Any who I hope you at least found this semi-enjoyable even though we only got to meet Ratty this time. He is an interesting old coot at least. Be sure to check back soon for the next chapter for more Wonderland goodness. Again a special thanks to LikeSoTotally for giving me the heads up that the show is now on Netflix Instant View so if you have Netflix and want to brush up on your Alice knowledge or if you haven’t seen it at all then you can find it there. If you don’t have Netflix but are still interested you can find the full DVD on Barnes & Noble’s website
Until next time guys,
          Fox