Alice’s Adventure at the End

What Wonderlands may come

Alice sat in her bed, light from an oil lamp beside her. Clocks ticked in the dark, to which there were numerous. Her sheets were tea cream coloured, and her eyes were pale.

Today was the day she would die.

“Is there anything I can get you?” asked her housekeeper.

Alice looked over at her ‘mind growth’ mushrooms she had lost the will to hide from her and the almost finished tarts.

“No, Marie,” Alice croaked, “except maybe some more… tea.”

Marie nodded and left.

Alice breathed in her awareness of her mortality and of the madness that had trickled through her life, now grown wrinkled. Oh, but what wonders came with it. And it seemed, they were not over yet.

“I’m not late, am I?” said the White Rabbit in the waistcoat as he stood in the doorway.

Alice smiled and half-opened her eyes. “Never.”

“Mind if I smoke?” asked the tiny smoking caterpillar as it shuffled on her bedside cabinet.

“I’ve never minded before.”

More and more of her friends arrived, the knight, the unicorn, the tweedle twins, until the room was bursting with the mad. A certain cat grinned at her as they sat on her lap. “We’re all mad here if we missed it.”

They may not have always been her friends, but when the time had burnt away, disputes such as that meant nothing. Nothing but the less potent of madness.

“Alice, we have missed you.” said the White Queen.

“And I you all.”

“Don’t forget your tea,” said the Mad Hatter, bringing her cup, “Now we can celebrate your un-life party.”

The wonderland citizens around her cheered and Alice smiled.

The Doctor put a hand on Alice’s forehead. The housekeeper looked at her.

“Fever, and signs of delirium,” he said, at Alice’s muttered words, “It’s not long until she departs.”

The housekeeper nodded and the doctor left the room.

“Oh mistress, always lost to madness aren’t you?” she said, patting her hand.

It twitched, then grew limp.

The housekeeper nodded again, and left to leave the room, but not before she noticed on the bedside table, a tiny pipe, smoking in several colours.

She said, “curioser and curioser.”