Allison's Adventures in Underland

by C. M. Stunich

  “There's a small library downstairs, if you need a place to read,” Tee tells me, sucking in a long breath and taking a seemingly purposeful step away from me. “You can go into the yard if you want as wells, but don't step outside the fence, not one foot.”

  “After hearing the jabberwocky screeching in the woods? No thank you. Besides, sitting outside in the dark and cold with a book and a corpse? Not my idea of good reading time.” Tee smiles slightly, nods and then climbs into one of the beds, curling up on his side in the flickering candlelight. There are a lot of candles in here, too, dozens and dozens.

  I take a few moments to blow some of them out, my stomach grumbling and protesting at the lack of food, and then drop the pajamas Tee gave me on the foot of the other bed.

  I think I'll eat first and change later.

  Besides, I might not want to admit it, but there's something about the racy little dress that I like.

  But just a little.

  Heading downstairs, I peek into the kitchen and find a man humming as he stirs a large pot of soup, the smell of fresh herbs and chicken broth making my stomach clench painfully. As I watch, he removes a tray of rolls from the oven and sets about buttering them, his thick hands cloaked in white gloves, his round body dressed in a meticulous apron and black slacks. This guy—Pat or Bill, whichever he is—might be a slight bit overweight, but he's got a handsome face and a headful of glossy blonde hair like all the rest of these assholes.

  Maybe it's like natural selection or something? Not enough women to go around, so the guys have to be like extra hot?

  Backing away from the kitchen, I decide to leave the man in peace for a few while he finishes up, ignoring the lazy, languorous laughter from the living room. I spend a few minutes exploring the downstairs and then pause in the dining room, the table already set for four. I guess Pat and Bill won't be joining us then? Makes me more than just a little uncomfortable, the idea of servants and … naked guys as gifts.

  I pause at the dining room window and stare out into the darkness of the woods, the sun quickly retreating into the distant sky and leaving the landscape with a dusty, hazy sort of look, the shadows it casts almost worse than the total darkness that's on the way. As I'm studying the trees and the brightly colored mushrooms that make up the forest floor, I see it again, a flash of white in the darkness, a toothy smile without an owner.

  Fuck, I knew it! I wasn't imagining that shit before, when we were disembarking. There's definitely something there. But once again, I blink and whatever it is … is gone.

  There seem to be two entrances to the dining room and as I stand there, studying the forest and hoping to get another glimpse of whatever was out there, the swinging doors to the kitchen open and the man in the white apron walks in. When he sees me waiting there, he grins.

  “In the mood for some pumpkin soup with a little jubjub bird?” he asks and I feel the corner of my mouth twitch.

  Jubjub bird. Right.

  So it wasn't chicken, after all, was it?

  Some nightmares are so persistent as to become an unreal reality. They're so frequent and so jarring that even though the dreamer knows she dreams, she can't seem to wake herself up. And when those dreams are based in the awful friction of reality to begin with? Well, that just makes things that much worse because waking up … you know there's no reprieve from the boogey man that hides beneath your bed.

  The monsters are real, and they've gotten inside your head.

  After a few hours of restless sleep, dreaming the same dream about Fred over and over again, the one that actually happened, I give up and climb out of bed, glancing down at Tee before moving into the darkness of Rab's house. Pat and Bill left after dinner, but not before letting me know that my clothes had been hung up to dry in the shed out back. Oh, and did I mention that this Bill guy … had a fucking lizard tail?

  Yeah, like, long, green and scaled.

  No joke.

  I didn't even question it. That's the state of my existence right now. I ate soup with bird meat that I couldn't name and I liked it. And I didn't even care that I was the only one at dinner. Nothing different about that. I've been eating alone in my room for the better part of two years. The last time we had family dinner was the night my parents and Fred got in a fight, he stalked off, and then I found him dead in alleyway.

  I pad down to the kitchen and find the leftover rolls wrapped in black and purple striped cloth on the wood topped island. I snatch a few out and head back to the dining room window again, looking for that flash of white teeth in the darkness as I eat.

  Instead, I spot a blue glow from the top of a nearby mushroom—one of those towering, house-sized ones—and hear the shuffle of feet on the wood floor behind me. When I glance back, I find Rab, his eyes bloodshot and his dark hair a tousled nest on the top of his head. But holy damn, if his pants aren't hanging low and showing off … well, everything. Glancing down, I can see the base of his cock, half-hard and tenting his slacks.

  “Caterpillar,” he says, his voice hoarse and his tone laced with irritation. Rab looks down at his low-slung pants and just when I think he's about to yank them back up, he does the opposite, pushing the slacks over his hip and flashing me a whole lot more of his erect dick than I really need to see. But then I see the clock tattooed over his hip bone, the second hand ticking down, the red heart just fifteen minutes away. “Damn it,” he grumbles, lifting his eyes up to mine and narrowing them slightly. After a moment, he smiles, and the expression is wicked as hell. One of Rab's ears twitches slightly and flops in half.

  The urge to reach out and rub it between my fingers is almost overwhelming … I wonder, does he have a little cotton puff of a tail hidden in those slacks of his somewhere?

  “I don't suppose you want to meet Lar, do you?” Rab asks, yawning and scratching at the flat, muscular expanse of his lower belly.

  I swallow hard.

  “Who's Lar?” I ask and he shrugs, turning away and heading toward the front door. I follow along behind him and watch as he slips into a pair of black slippers. My combat boots are already sitting there, so I decide what the hell, and put them on, too. Stealing Tee's coat from a hook, I try not to look too closely as Rab finally reaches down to fix his pants. Not sure if I'm excited about that or disappointed.

  “Come with me and you'll find out,” he says as I shrug into the purple coat and follow him into the frigid early morning air. The corpse is still hanging from the tree, but at least the wind's not blowing so for right now, the body is still, its clothes in tatters, its face swollen and purple in death.

  I look away and stare at Rab's muscular back as he opens the gate and steps aside, waiting for me to follow him out. Tee did say not to leave the yard, but I figure Rab works for the king, too, and even if his motivations are all screwed up, it seems highly doubtful that he wants me dead.

  “You didn't like the red dress I gave you, Sonny? For shame, for shame. I'm sure you'd look brilliant in it.”

  “Actually, I did like the red dress and after all the shit you put me through, I have to say that I stuffed it in my satchel and I'm taking it with me when I leave. You can just tell Mary Ann too goddamn bad—her boyfriend killed my crush and is a serious asshole and she owes it to me.”

  “Mary Ann is not my girlfriend,” Rab says with a husky laugh, his flopped ear standing at attention and swiveling around to face a rustling in the bushes. The humor in his face dies away as quick as it came and he holds out a hand, splaying his palm wide against my belly. The warmth of his fingers teases that little bit of skin between my pants and the bottom of my tank and makes me shiver. “Shh,” he whispers and in the distance, I hear the faintest scream of a jabberwock, not enough to make my ears bleed this time but enough to make the fillings in my teeth hurt. “Mm.” Rab reaches into the back of his pants and pulls out a gun I hadn't noticed he was carrying. It vaguely reminds me of the Queenmaker, with a fuse on the back, but it's much bigger and solid black with gold accents.

  “It d
idn't sound all that close, did it?” I ask as I cross my arms over my chest and follow Rab down one of the three roads that lead away from his house. The one straight ahead obviously goes to the river, but we've turned right and are heading toward the mushroom with the bright blue glow on top of it. It's gills glow, too, but the light coming from above is distinct and concentrated, this Caterpillar guy I guess.

  “Maybe not, but jabberwocky move fast,” Rab says, tucking the gun under one arm and digging a cigarette out of his slacks pocket with his free hand. He takes a match out from behind his ear, reminding me of my lesson with Dee, and lights it up. “Better prepared than eaten alive, I always say.” We walk for a little while before I start to notice bats hanging upside down from nearby trees, watching us with wide eyes that glitter in the glow from the giant mushrooms. “But you can keep the dress. Mary Ann never wore it anyway, and I have a feeling she won't be back for a while no way, no how. She just married her ninth husband, so she'll be busy for a spell.”

  “Her ninth?!” I ask as I rub a hand over my face and find myself under the umbrella of the massive mushroom's blue and white cap. “Jesus Christ, how does she keep up?”

  “Here,” Rab says, gesturing toward something I can't quite see around the curve of the mushroom's stem. I walk a little closer and find a ladder waiting, nailed into the spongy flesh of the giant fungi. “You go first and I'll pretend I'm not checking out your ass from behind.”

  “Wow, you're a real piece of work, aren't you? You think you're clever, coming up with a bunch of lines that make you feel like a real man when all you really are is a shred of patriarchal bullshit?”

  Rab's brows go up and he laughs, his right ear flopping over and partially obscuring his forehead. He tilts his head to look at me with bloodred eyes, smoking his cigarette and letting that evil little smile of his take over his full mouth.

  “Why did you break all those FUCKING DRINK ME bottles anyway?” I ask and he shrugs.

  “Because I could?” Rab says, and I feel my hands clench into fists at my sides. Turning around, I grab hold of the slick, cold surface of the metal and start to climb. At first, it doesn't seem like such a big deal, but when I get about halfway up, I look down and realize why I hate heights so goddamn much.

  The ground is … well, it's fucking far away and it looks hard as shit. If I were to slip and fall from the damp ladder right now, there'd be no one there to catch me. My body would crack against the earth and I'd bleed out from the inside, twitching and writhing in agony from my many broken bones.

  My attention snaps forward and I force myself to keep climbing.

  There's no point in having a freak-out now, halfway up the side of a mushroom the size of a damn skyscraper.

  I make myself climb the rest of the way, crawling through a hole carved into the mushroom's cap and collapsing onto my back on its spongy surface. Staring up at the canopy of trees and the stars beyond, I try to catch my breath as I wait for Rab. My heart's beating so fast, and I'm already freaking out about having to climb down again that I don't even notice the man sitting less than six feet away from my face.

  Sitting up suddenly, I turn my head and my eyes immediately meet the large, blue ones of a man, quietly smoking a hookah … and taking a very keen interest in me and nothing else.

  The Caterpillar and I look at each other for some time in silence. At last, he takes the hookah out of his mouth and addresses me in a languid, sleepy voice.

  “Who are you?” he asks, raising one skeptical brow.

  I just stare at him a minute, taking in the pale sky blue color of his hair, his lazy slouch, the slow moving smile on his pink lips as he takes a drag on the hookah, exhaling colored smoke and making the air smell like fresh blueberries.

  “I could ask you the same question,” I reply as I rest an elbow on my knee and wait for Rab to pull himself through the hole and onto the top of the mushroom. I don't really look out at the horizon, or the sloped edge of the mushroom's cap. Fuck, I'm not even going to stand while I'm up here because knowing my luck, I'd probably trip on one of the big white spots and go tumbling over the edge to my death.

  “You can call her Sonny,” Rab says, the gun tucked back into his pants as he grabs a seat next to the Caterpillar—Lar, I guess is this one's name—and borrows the hookah for a moment, taking a deep drag. I wonder if it's just flavored tobacco that they're smoking or something a little more … interesting? I hope not, sitting up here a good sixty feet off the ground.

  “Sonny?” Lar says, watching me with those wide blue eyes of his, his blue-blonde hair feathering across his forehead and teasing his neck and shoulders with a textured, razored sort of look. At first, I thought he had a blanket wrapped around him, but as I watch, he unfurls a pair of massive butterfly wings and my breath catches in my throat.

  For several seconds there, I forget to breathe completely.

  Lar's wings are sprawling mosaics of color, like two stained glass windows attached to his back, the tips curling softly in gentle spirals. Based on their size, it feels like they should look awkward or out of place, but they don't. They move in these slow, easy sweeping motions, like the man himself.

  My sister's always been obsessed with butterflies—mostly because she finds them cute—but since she's not really much for studying, she also thinks it makes her sound smart to rattle off random facts and Latin names for the winged insects. That's why, looking at Lar's wings, I make the connection between the papilio ulysses or the Ulysses butterfly and his coloring.

  The only difference between his wings and that of the Australian butterfly is that instead of the simple two-toned blue with black edges, Lar's wings are tinged with a dusting of gold.

  “Sonny because the Alice doesn't like being called Alice,” Rab replies and I grit my teeth. Tee and Dee still haven't said anything outright, but it was pretty clear they weren't comfortable letting anyone else know about this Alice thing. “Relax, Sonny,” Rab says, sucking on the end of the hookah and giving me this stupidly wicked little smirk. “The Caterpillar's the one and only soothsayer for the King of Hearts—he knew I'd find the Club Assassin at that party … and he predicted you'd follow me back to Underland after I killed him.”

  “Predicted?” I ask as Lar's mouth lengthens into an almost disturbingly self-satisfied smile.

  “Here,” he says, taking the hose of the hookah from Rab and handing it out to me. He fluffs his wings a bit, sending a light my breeze in my direction. “Have a drag and we'll see what Underland's wild magic has to say about you.”

  “I'm not interested in taking drugs sixty feet up in the air, so … thanks but no thanks.” I flash a winning smile and glance around at the canopy. There are birds up here, a lot of them, in brilliant colors that are easy to distinguish from the shadows. Not only is there the mushroom's glow to illuminate them, but the Caterpillar has a lit lantern with blue glass, the flicker of color I saw from Rab's dining room window.

  “No drugs, just a special herbal blend that'll allow you to see beyond the humdrum of reality. Isn't that right, Rab?”

  “That's right,” the White Rabbit says, watching me carefully, that wicked smile still resting on his face. The way he's lounging, with one knee propped up, elbow resting against it, his chiseled body covered in tattoos. It's almost too much. I look back at Lar instead, but he's not much better. He's wearing a white coat with gold filigree and epaulettes over his shoulders, no shirt underneath. His nipples are pierced with gold keys and he watches me with this easy, laid-back sort of look, like he's got all the time in the world. “It's not a hallucinogen, Sonny, just a little tobacco. The worst it'll do is make you feel lightheaded for a few minutes.”

  “Beyond the humdrum of reality?” I ask, because that's just the sort of nonsense bullshit these people have spouting since I got here. “I don't understand.”

  “Just take a single drag and you'll see,” the Caterpillar says, his wings ruffling softly in the night breeze. He's quite pretty, with his shoulder-length hair and
his lackadaisical smile, just like all the other assholes in Underland apparently. “And if you're worried about falling, don't be. I'll catch you, little Sunshine.”

  “Sonny,” I say with a tired sigh, but really, I'm getting tired of repeating myself. Hell, if these guys want to start calling me Mabel or Ada or George Washington, I'm sort of done with the protesting. If there's one thing I hate, it's repeating myself like a goddamn broken record. “I'm not really into peer pressure, you know?”

  There's a sound, like boots on metal, and we all pause.

  After a moment, Dee's head pokes through the hole in the mushroom and he drags himself up and onto his back, panting almost as hard as I was. Not ten seconds later, there's Tee with a violent scowl etched into his face.

  “I thought I told you not to leave the yard,” is the first thing that pops out of his mouth as he climbs through and stands up, seemingly unaffected by the soaring height of the giant mushroom. His sapphire eyes stare accusingly down at me, and it's interesting to see that he isn't winded in the least.

  “And I thought I was the mistress here and could make my own decisions,” I say and Tee looks away sharply, redirecting his anger toward Rab and Lar. He looks cold without a coat on, dressed in sweats and a tank and boots. I feel a little guilty for taking his, but when I move to shrug it off my shoulders, he looks back at me and holds out a palm.

  “Don't. Keep it,” he says as Dee groans and rolls onto his belly, crossing his arms under his chin and looking at me with a small smile.

  “Have you seen one of Caterpillar's prophecies yet?” he asks, sounding groggy and hungover but also in a good mood, as usual. “They're a real trip.”

  “Something dragged the corpse out of the tree,” Tee says and this is enough to actually grab Rab's attention. He turns his bloodred eyes up to Tee and blinks a few times in surprise, tapping his fingers against his knee. “There's no sign of the body anywhere.”