by Robert Hill
instinct yelled at her that her face was about to be lacerated by the surface of her own bathroom mirror. But then she didn’t feel the hard, cracking surface or the resulting jagged shards of the mirror. Instead, she felt as though she had fallen into a puddle of cold syrup. Her face and her hands were stuck in the gelatin of something incongruous with what one would expect when being pushed headlong into a mirror.
She turned her head slightly, just enough to see out of her left eye back to where Raul stood. In his inebriation and shock, he was just staggering there with his mouth draped open like a storm drain gutter.
Then something grabbed Lupita’s hands, which were stuck in the surface of her mirror. It wasn’t like hands or claws that grabbed at her. It was more like that sucking sensation she’d sometimes feel while using the vacuum cleaner when she would test the hose to make sure it was still pulling up dirt from the carpet. But then the sucking sensation increased to what had to be the force of a jet engine, pulling her into the mirror.
She tried to yell, but found her face being pulled into the mirror as well. For an instant she felt Raul’s hairy arms wrapping around her waist, but the pull of the suction was greater, ripping her from his grasp.
Then she was falling, tumbling, and screaming but without any sound coming out of her mouth. Silence and pitch surrounded her, but the sensation of falling, as if she had stepped off the edge of a building, filled her stomach, and Lupita thought she was going to vomit.
Suddenly, she landed in a pool of what felt like cold syrup again. She didn’t land hard, but the whole event had somehow pulled the air from her lungs. It was like Raul had punched her in the gut as she gasped for breath.
As she continued gasping, she suddenly felt a couple of hands upon her, pulling her from the cold syrup. She opened her eyes, finding she wasn’t in her bathroom in Texas anymore, but inside some giant canvas tent lit by flood lamps. She couldn’t make out what was happening, but she could hear people some distance away yelling as if some terrible car accident had just occurred, and she felt … shivering cold.
“Get me some blankets!” a man said. It sounded like …
Then there was a sound of shattering glass, followed by the splash of what sounded like thick mud splattering against a concrete wall.
Lupita turned her gaze toward the sound and saw Raul lying face down on the surface of a silvery platform. She started to move toward him when she noticed that he was trying to raise himself up on his hands and knees, but then she felt someone touch her shoulder. Lupita turned her head back to see Bernie. Bernie Skarpinski, the scientist from Antarctica, was crouching right there where she sat on the cold … ice?
“What happened?” she said to him.
The look on Bernie’s face was like a man who had seen a ghost … slack-jawed and wide-eyed, as he stared at her. But then his eyes shifted as his gaze looked behind Lupita.
“Bernard, what happened?” an older, white female said as she came rushing up behind Bernie from somewhere in the gloom of the vast tent Lupita found herself now sitting.
“Get her a blanket,” Bernie said to the woman, and then he jumped up and rushed toward Raul.
Lupita turned and struggled to gain her feet, her knees feeling weak. She thought of what a newborn calf was like when first borne as it tried to stand, wobbling and shaking from the cold and the weight of the gravity of life.
“Raul!” Lupita yanked herself away from the woman who had come into the tent, and she started toward Raul.
Bernie approached Raul, attempting to grab him and to help him up from the silver platform, but as he did so, Raul looked up and then reached out with a fat hand, striking Bernie in the chest with an open palm. Bernie stumbled back from the blow, slipping on the icy surface beneath his feet.
There was a flood light on a metal pole with a tripod base just off to Lupita’s right that shone onto the platform, illuminating Raul in all of his drunken, shivering state. His jeans and his greasy, gray t-shirt were covered in some sort of liquid film – the same slimy, clear film that clung to her own clothes and limbs. Raul’s body glistened from the sheen that covered him as he swayed back and forth.
“What is this?” Raul asked, rising to his feet upon the platform that rose about half a meter above the ground. “What did you do?”
Lupita saw Raul scowling at her. It was that same scowl he had given her a million times, constant and accusing, even when there was no reason to accuse. It was always there, Raul’s undying expression toward her for years -- his loving gaze perverted into derision, into contempt, into blame …
She grabbed the flood light pole just as Raul was about to stand, and swung it like she was about to knock one out of the park, connecting with the side of Raul’s skull. The momentum of her swing caused her to slip upon the icy surface beneath her, and she slammed hard on her side against the ground at the same time she lost her grip upon the flood light pole.
A thudding sound followed, and someone grunted. Then a woman’s voice, indistinct, yelled out. Lupita tried to roll over, but her side ached, and she felt as if she had a cracked a rib.
Then she felt wool coverings being tossed over her as someone was holding onto her from behind while she was sat upright despite her weak attempt to stop from being moved at all. She tried to look up, but the flood light she had used on Raul was shining in her eyes.
Then the person clutching her from behind leaned forward, and she could see his face out of the corner of her left eye.
“Welcome to Wonderland, Alice,” Bernie said, smiling at her.
Lupita just shook her head, disoriented and shivering, as she replied, “But I’m not Alice.”
Bernie laughed. “Yes, and I’m not the Mad Hatter, but here we are on the same side of the looking glass.”
THE END
And also, Late For Tea, Part Three of The Wonderland Series –
And Coming Soon! Queen Of Hearts, Part Four of The Wonderland Series!
Available now for pre-ordering, ONE SECOND BEFORE AWAKENING, a full length novel by Robert Hill. Release date is July 2, 2014!
ONE SECOND BEFORE AWAKENING is a fantasy/adventure novel which takes place within a compilation of the various surreal subjects and scenes depicted by the great 20th century master, Salvador Dali. It is a world populated by space elephants, drawer people, amorphous cannibals, and the mysterious flower-headed Fates – the very witnesses of past, present, and future. When Drew Anthony finds himself stepping into the midst of a painting come to life, a painting rendered by Salvador Dali, the first thing he wants to do is to find his way out, not end up journeying across a spectacular world peopled by the magical and the terrifying. His odyssey ends up changing the destiny of a beautiful woman, altering the philosophy of the people within this bizarre, painted dimension, and transforming himself from just an average man from an ordinary world into a transformational messiah trapped in a surreal place.
You may also find these stories by the author
AUTHOR’S BIOGRAPHY
Robert lives with his bride, Linda, deep in the heart of Texas where he owns a small legal services company and writes in his spare time. He is a former military paramedic, former criminal investigator, current private detective, and chief bottle washer. He has had various poems and short stories previously published in small press literary magazines, but most notably in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, and most recently with Anotherealm.com. He is also self-published on Amazon.com and Smashwords.com, in both fiction and non-fiction categories.
Website: https://www.roberthillauthor.com
Twitter: robhillauthor
Facebook: Facebook profile
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/robert-hill/56/a6a/22b/
Blog: https://thevirtualunknown.blogspot.com
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