Wonderland

by Marie O'Regan

  And after that, for the longest time, nothing—and Alice started to relax, to think the hole had been a one-off, or an accident, or a glitch. Her birthday came and went, and then Trish’s birthday, and then Christmas—and she stopped even looking for the hole, she began even to doubt she’d seen one in the first place. Which is why that spring morning when she opened the front door to set off for work and saw it there, gaping at her on the front step, she shrieked out loud the way she did. Unexpected, and so rude too, to invade her personal private property like that.

  It wasn’t there when she returned home that night, and that was good. But after that Alice started to see the hole regularly—if not quite every day, then at least three or four times a week. Never in the same place, which was irritating, because it meant Alice always had to be on her guard. In the car park, on the pavement, just outside the bank. One time she found it in the lift at work, slap bang in the middle like an oily stain, and leaving her nowhere to stand—and that was annoying because she had to climb the stairs for seven floors, it quite wore her out.

  Still, she wasn’t frightened. She could see what Dom had meant. Cosy and snug, the hole was always cosy and snug. And warm somehow—Alice never wanted to get close enough to check, but she detected a warmth from it anyway. Or maybe she just felt warm inside when she saw it, a happy warmth that spread through her from top to toe, like when she had a nice hot soup, like when she took a nice hot bath. It was comforting.

  And yet, something was wrong. She couldn’t sleep well. Her stomach would suddenly clench painfully. She found herself short of breath, and it’d make her dizzy, and she had to stop and calm down and force air in and out of her lungs so she wouldn’t pass out. She couldn’t work out whether these symptoms were a consequence of the hole—or whether the hole was a consequence of them. Which would be worse? She didn’t want to blame the hole. She liked the hole. She’d decided to like the hole. But she thought she should take further advice.

  She went to the doctor. She asked for a full check-up. She was going to be very brave, whatever bad news he had to give her. He told her she was fine. She could drink a little less, and smoke a little less, and a spot of exercise now and then wouldn’t do her any harm—but, for her age, for her size, for her condition, she was in rude health. “But how are you feeling otherwise?” he asked her gently. “Are you happy in yourself?” Alice just stared at him blankly.

  Alice supposed she was happy, or happy enough. She’d go to work, she’d come home, she’d feed herself, feed the cat. Dinah was now so old, impossibly old. Dinah couldn’t walk any longer, she was a spider dragging herself across the floor, and she’d glare at Alice balefully and ask to die, why wouldn’t Alice just let her die? And sometimes Alice would watch the telly, if there was anything good on.

  One night Alice wakes with a start, and there is the hole, mere inches above her face. Defying gravity, hanging over her. And at first she can’t actually see it, she just knows it’s there, she can feel the inviting warmth, can feel the now familiar clench of her stomach. Her eyes adjust. She can make out its shape. Its contours. How black it is, oh, it is so black, blacker than the easy darkness of the room, blacker than all the black there ever was.

  If she were to raise her head, just a fraction, she thinks her nose would scratch it. If she sat upright—she mustn’t, she mustn’t—if she were to take leave of her senses and sit bolt upright, then her head would be absorbed, and she’d be lost, she’d be lost forever.

  She takes a deep breath. Tries to calm herself. Another breath—not too deep this time, she doesn’t want to suck the hole closer.

  She decides to slide out from under it. If she does it carefully, maybe the hole won’t even notice. Maybe the hole is asleep. (The hole is not asleep.) If she shuffles gently to the left. (The hole is not asleep! The hole is watching her. The hole is smiling down at her, all that’s there is the smile.) She shuffles, and then stops dead. There is another hole. There is a hole on the pillow, it’s almost kissing her cheek. She’ll shuffle to the right. Don’t look up. Don’t look at the smile. (“I’ve often seen a hole without a smile,” thought Alice, “but never before a smile that is a hole! How absurd!”) She can’t shuffle to the right. She can’t shuffle to the right, because all of the right is a hole, everything around her for miles and miles is a hole, the hole is all there is.

  Oblivion all about, and rabbit holes on every side. “It isn’t fair,” thinks Alice, “it really isn’t fair at all!” And it isn’t fair, and it’s never been fair, and you’re in a pretty pickle when you realise that the only thing you ever did that made the slightest scrap of sense was to get lost in Wonderland when you were too young to appreciate it. And know that you had adventures, there was a time there were adventures in your life, and they were wild and they were untamed, and you didn’t hold on to them hard enough, you let them go, the adventures now are all done. “Bother,” says Alice out loud, and she does it so all the holes can hear her too, what does she care any longer what rabbit holes think of her? “I shall go back to sleep. And if I roll over to my left, then so be it, and if I roll over to my right, then so be it too. And if I cough or splutter or snore and by doing so jerk my head upwards, then I hope it’ll be quick and painless. I’m not going to worry about death ever again.”

  The next morning she finds herself alive, and that the holes have vanished in the sunlight. But she is still fierce and determined. And it feels good, it feels almost childlike, it’s as if something has been recaptured that she lost years ago. She swings her body out of bed, ready to confront the day. It winces in protest. She ignores it.

  She phones Trish one last time. She doesn’t know why, she supposes it’s to tell her she loves her. But as she starts to do so, it occurs to Alice she’s told her this before, and many times into the bargain. If Trish doesn’t know already then surely she never will, and there’s no more to be said about it. Trish sounds frazzled. “Can I call you back, Mum? I’ve got my hands full at the moment!” In the background Alice can hear her granddaughter crying, yet another baby that failed to turn into a pig. “Goodbye,” says Alice.

  Alice tidies the house, she wouldn’t want to leave a mess behind her. Then she feeds Dinah, puts on her best blue dress, and leaves, locking the front door behind her. She sets out to find her hole.

  But the frustrating thing about holes is, you can never find one when you want one! She goes to Sainsbury’s, but there are no holes in stock. She studies the pavement on all sides, she stares up at the empty space just above her head. Alice knows she could go home, and try again some other day—but she doesn’t want to try another day, she’s had enough of patience, if she’s going to yield to the tender mercies of the rabbit hole it has to be now or never. And suddenly she remembers where she’s sure to find one.

  It’s rush hour on the A1, but it’s always rush hour on the A1. Alice parks the car, and then tries to cross the road to get to the middle of the roundabout. The central reservation is grassy and the green of it seems to shine out of the grey like a beacon, it’s a bit of nature and it looks absurd amidst all the tarmac and all the traffic. Cars slam their brakes and blast their horns as Alice runs towards it; she nearly gets hit; she doesn’t.

  When Alice can’t find the rabbit hole she thinks she’ll die of disappointment. She’ll just lie down on the grass and die. But it seems to call to her, and she sees it at last, it’s grown over with weeds. She picks them away, and there it is, the opening is a perfect circle, she’d never realised that before. The ground is saying “o”, the hole’s a mouth opening wide in surprise and delight to greet a long-lost friend.

  Alice cannot fit inside a rabbit hole. But she’s a girl who can do six impossible things before breakfast, and she hasn’t eaten that morning. She sits on the edge, and lowers her legs into the void, she leaves them dangling there for a minute or two. Then she wriggles in further, it’s a snug fit. She’s up to her stomach, she’s up to her neck. Little Alice clinging to the side, still not sure whether s
he wants to commit to this new adventure, whether to let go of the world and all that’s within it. She wonders why she thought the hole would be warm. The hole isn’t warm.

  And she feels a hand grasp hold of her foot. Trying to pull her down.

  The shock of it makes Alice kick, but the hand won’t let go. It’s grabbing on to her, and not she thinks in spite, it’s such a little hand, the hand of a little girl. And then she feels another one, and this is on her ankle. And a third hand, pulling at her thigh, and a fourth, and a fifth.

  It should go without saying, but not all the Alices survived. Some fell down the rabbit hole and they just kept falling, and no one knows where they might have ended up.

  For just a moment Alice tries to escape, to heave herself back out of the rabbit hole and into the waking world. But this is just a reflex action, surely. She falls, of course she falls—and we mustn’t feel sorry for her when she falls, and joins her sisters beneath the ground. This is what she wanted. This is what she always wanted.

  5

  And this is how the story goes, and how it always goes.

  Alice fell down the hole, and she forgot whether she was an old woman or just a little girl. And was there really much difference between the two anyhow? Either the hole was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her and to wonder what might happen next.

  But presently she neared the ground, and she could see that there was a table there, with a little bottle marked “Drink Me” standing upon it, and there was a tiny wooden door leading to who knows what. And Alice thought, “I’m quite sure that’s a very good adventure, but it doesn’t have to be my adventure. I shall find another one to call my own.” So she refused to land, and just kept falling.

  She fell for a very long while. Time dragged by, as time always does, even in Wonderland, even down rabbit holes. “Well,” said Alice, “I’ll just have to find something to keep me busy in the meantime!” She saw a job centre floating past, and when she went inside they asked whether she could type; fortunately, Alice was an excellent typist. And with typing one thing always leads to another, and before Alice knew it she had fallen in love and was getting married.

  And that was good, because it’s a far distance to fall, and it’s so much better to do it with a friend. And before too long, there were three of them falling, they had a little daughter, and sometimes Alice was so very happy with her new family that she nearly forgot she was falling at all.

  The daughter kept getting bigger, and getting older, and becoming an adult, and Alice thought that was so very brave, an adult seemed an awfully baffling thing to be! And one day the daughter hugged on to her rather tightly; “I’m sorry,” she whispered, “I’m so sorry.” And Alice didn’t know what she was apologising for, but forgave her anyway. The daughter gave her a smile, and it was the most beautiful smile in the world—and then she fell alone, harder and faster and out of sight, and Alice never saw her again.

  When the husband hit the ground it was far too sudden and far too early, and Alice barely had time to say goodbye before he wasn’t there any longer. And that seemed a little cruel, and maybe just a little rude. But Alice didn’t have time to worry about that, because she was still falling. Still falling in spite of herself, falling all alone—just because he’d hit the bottom it didn’t mean she had to. Just because love dies, it doesn’t mean you can’t go on.

  It should go without saying, but not all the Alices died. Yes, some fell foul of the Red Queen and got their heads chopped off. And some fell foul of the big C. But many fell down the rabbit hole and they never quite managed to find the bottom.

  They just kept falling, forever and ever, and their lives were sometimes happy and their lives were sometimes sad. But their stories kept on going, and no one knows how they ended up.

  There Were No Birds to Fly

  M.R. CAREY

  “If you follow the rules,” the woman said, “you’ll live a whole lot longer.”

  What are the rules, then? I asked her. I didn’t know what she meant by that, and it scared me. I don’t like things being too rigid. I like them to flow. Everything that’s beautiful flows, in and out and round about itself, stopping only for a moment to make a pleasing shape against the sky, then moving on, endlessly.

  “You look like you’re wearing a dress,” the boy said.

  It’s an apron, I said. And then, to the woman: What are the rules? What did you mean when you said there were rules?

  “Later,” she said. “If we get out of this.”

  But…

  “Later.”

  All six of us ran across the bottom of the field, keeping our heads low so the hedge would hide us from anyone standing up on the embankment and looking down. The hedge and its knife-edged shadow, made by a full moon hanging low in the sky. A harvest moon.

  There were things much closer to us, of course. On the other side of the hedge, a stumbling, moaning thing muttered, “Poor Tom’s a-cold!” and then laughed. The laugh had a crazed, despairing undertone to it. I saw the hedge bend down where the thing leaned against it, and I smelled the stale coriander stench of bedbugs. But the thing had no interest in any of our party, and made no move against us.

  Four of us had no idea where we were heading. The woman, Bridget, had suggested a drainage culvert on the bank of a stream where she and the scarred man had been hiding. They had gone out scavenging, she said, and picked up the boy and the other woman—I had heard her name given as Chetna—along the way. Chetna had taken an injury to her head. Her speech was slurred, and she seldom said anything that was relevant or sensible. The other man, who called himself Carter and carried an automatic pistol, was a stranger to all of them, but he agreed to accompany them when the drainage culvert was mentioned.

  “That leaves you,” Bridget said to me. “You’re welcome to come with us, too. We’ve got a better chance if we stick together, right? Are those weapons in the bag? Tools? What?”

  Tools, I said. The tools of my trade. And yes, I’ll come.

  I wanted to, very much, but it wasn’t as though I had a great deal of choice in the matter. Carter was clearly suspicious of me, but the pull was very strong, so I knew I was close to my source. To move away, or even just to stand still while they left, would have been like swimming up a waterfall.

  So we ran, and we hid, and we ran some more. And somehow, in the dark, we ended up losing our way. We went among houses, most of them in ruins, and past the remains of a vast, dead thing like a whale with soft, tentacular legs and a mosquito’s face, the spear-like feeding tube at least fifteen or twenty feet long.

  “There’s no stream bed here,” Carter said. “I’m sure of that.”

  “I have to go to bed,” Chetna mumbled. “It’s getting so late.”

  “There are shops,” the boy said. “Look.”

  He pointed. A sign ahead of us said SPAR. It might have been a shop sign, to be sure. Or possibly the first four letters of a prayer. Spare us, Lord. Spare us, O Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world.

  Does the Lamb of God ride in the back of a small rowboat, looking owlishly over its tiny, round spectacles and crying “Feather!” from time to time? Is that the Lamb of God I’m thinking of, or just some random sheep or other? I don’t know anymore, if I ever did.

  The shop was attached to a petrol station, and it had been ransacked. A trail of blood showed where the assistant had been dragged out from the little serving booth and carried away. Whatever had taken him had left his fingers behind, neatly snipped off and laid along the counter in their original order, with the two thumbs facing away from each other at the centre of the array. I saw the scarred man sweep them off onto the floor of the booth so the boy wouldn’t notice them.

  “Let’s see if there’s any food,” Bridget said.

  Surprisingly, there was. We found tins of tomato soup, baked beans and sweetcorn. We had no can-opener, but at Bridget’s suggestion I used my chisel to prize holes in the lids
. The chisel came most readily to my hand. There was a completeness to it, a rightness that I liked, though at the same time I instinctively pulled against it. I knew where it had come from, of course, and what it meant.

  When I was done, we tilted the cans and gulped down whatever came out. It was quite the feast. There were exclamations of delight and satisfaction.

  “I can’t shake the feeling that I know you,” Carter said to me.

  That was significant information, and a hopeful sign. I filed it away. I don’t believe we’ve met, I said. But perhaps I’m wrong. It will come to you in time, no doubt.

  “Look at this,” the boy said. He had found a newspaper, many months old. The headline consisted of two words: THEY’RE HERE. The adults stared at it in silence for a little while, presumably remembering the time when that had seemed like a cause for excitement or joy. Before we were ruined.

  “Is Nurse Delia here?” Chetna said. “I need to go to bed now.”

  “What do you miss the most?” Carter asked. “I miss driving. I had a Citroën Picasso, with a massive windshield that curved right up over the front seats. I used to take it out into the country on weekends so I could feel how high up the sky was.”

  “I miss my brother, Robert,” the boy said. “He got eaten by this… thing, with great big teeth.”

  I looked up at that.

  What kind of thing? I asked. The woman glared at me, but I ignored her. What kind of creature was it, boy? And what kind of teeth? Do you mean tusks, by any chance?