The Garden of the March Hare

O_o

If one knew not of the tiny hole in between the crooked roots of the apple tree, one would probably pass without even noticing it, and even less the girl curled up inside of it. The girl was Alice. Alice was a rather beautiful girl, 13 years of age, with hair as black as a tar-barrel and dark brown eyes easily compared to a pair of treacle-wells, if there was ever such a thing.
Why Alice was curled up inside this tiny hole even she did not quite know. Had she not things of more important nature to attend to? Had she not computer games to play or TV to watch? Well her parents apparently thought not, and had sent her out directly after lunch, to get some fresh air and sunshine. No online games, or online friends, or MTV or even bloody Ipod for a whole bloody week, just because she had bloody punched bloody Benjamin Disraeli in his bloody nose (and bloody it had been indeed, for it had been a well-placed punch) and he had bloody ratted on her, as if he didn't bloody start it himself.
"Use your imagination!" they, her parents that was, had told her, when she, outraged by this forced exposure to the outside world, had asked what in the name of the white, watch-bearing rabbit she would do outside.
But that was the problem with the youth of today. Well, of that day, at least; their imagination was, of what the previous generation's once was, merely a shivering shell; and since Alice happened to be part of this 'youth of today' her imagination belonged to the 'shivering shell' category.
So now sitting there was all she was up to, and it was boring her. She had tried to read, but the book's pictures were far too motionless and violenceless. And what is the use of anything, thought Alice, without moving pictures or graphic violence? She did not much like books or even the over-all world outside her computer, for that matter, and pretending she did would be like painting white roses red, an obviously pointless doing.
Previously she had also had a deck of playing cards, but since she considered card games 'sucky' she had flicked them all away, all over the garden. She had gotten quite good at it, and was rather proud, actually, that she had managed to hit the neighbors' ever-grinning cat five times. Now she was all out of cards, and in need of action.
"In desperate bloody need of some bloody action!" Saying it aloud and cursing made her feel a little better, but the boredom refused to disappear. For a little while (she had never been good when it came to patience) she tried watching the nearby apple-snakes (she had in fact no idea what snakes they were, but snakes living in apple trees couldn't very much be an orange-snakes now, could they?), but she could only see the one, and it did not do much but stare at the apples.
From one of the lower hanging branches of the tree she managed to grab an apple, looking very sweet and tasty (not to say juicy) draped in a blood-red peel. But looks can be deceiving and no matter how tasty it might have looked, it was sour. Sour in the way that makes your entire face wrinkle and become that of a very tiny and very old person.
Suddenly a voice, high pitched and nervous, reached the hole. Someone was obviously very late, and now Alice wanted to see who. Maybe she could pass some time by delaying this person even more. Surprisingly lithely, considering her otherwise stationary lifestyle, she left the hole, and started looking around, hunting for the source of this high pitched voice. And there it was. A rabbit. A white, watch-bearing rabbit.
"What in the name of the white, watch..." she began, mumbling, but stopped as the irony of the situation hit her, a hit dampened by the fact that the appearance of the white, watch-bearing rabbit had already smashed her across the face with an iron bar.
Standing there, in shock, she saw the rabbit disappear around a corner. With some effort she managed to get herself out of her trance-like state, and started following it. From the ground she picked a sturdy stick. White, watch-bearing rabbits were freaky stuff, and one thing she knew of freaky stuff was that it was best dealt with knocked unconscious by repeated blows to the head.
After barely being able to keep up with the rabbit for nearly five minutes her computer-lifestyle fitness was taking its toll, and she was very close to just giving the whole thing up when it (she believed it to be a him, but she was still not quite sure) disappeared into a rabbit hole with one last "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!"
Breathing heavily Alice looked into the dark hole, just in time to see the white rabbit disappear.
Hesitating, just a bit, she started moving inward, through the darkness, her head filling at an increasing rate by pictures of rabid bats, hares and, for some reason, mice. She could now see close to nothing, and hear only the far-away echoes of the, still very late, rabbit. She crawled, first slowly feeling her way forward with her hands, but then quicker, less carefully.
Suddenly, as she placed her hand on the hard dirt floor of the tunnel, she didn't, as it was no longer there, and with a scream, more from surprise than from actual fear, she fell. And how she fell. Above her was darkness, around her was darkness and below her was nothing but the same thick darkness.
And she fell.

Falling, falling, falling. For the second time that day she felt a wave of boredom hitting her, and she yawned. She had fallen for what felt like hours, and for a moment she wondered how far she had fallen; she wondered what longitude and latitude she was at (and opposed to most other kids her age she actually knew what longitude and latitude was, except from just nice grand words). Maybe had she reached the center of the earth. How many miles that was they had told her in school not more than a day or two ago, but she seemed to have blanked it out, as she had most other things he learnt in school.
At some point during the fall (she must have fallen asleep) the darkness surrounding her had given in, and revealed walls, striped and checked in all the colors of the rainbow, not to say every other color she had ever seen, and some she hadn't. On the walls shelves started to appear, filled with jars containing all sorts of things, from orange marmalade (ironically in almost every color but actual orange), to tiny marbles and dices, to more macabre things, as tiny heads and other shrunken body parts. This probably should've freaked her out, but instead it fascinated her and she calmly noted that this was no 'bloody fairytale'. As the fall began to slow down (a peculiar thing for a fall to do; even against it owns nature, one might say) she managed to get closer to the walls, and get a better look at it.
Between the crookedly placed shelves where even more crookedly placed paintings. Paintings of mouse-traps, the moon, memories, muchness (how exactly she knew that it was in fact a muchness the paintings were of she did not quite know, since she'd never actually seen one) and a whole lot of other thing starting with an M.
Slower and slower she fell, and she wondered if she maybe was coming out the other side of the earth, and gravity was slowly turning upside down, preparing to send her flying right back before she could even get a good look at Australia (or wherever she might end up) and if she would spend the remains of her life just falling back and forth through the center of the earth. The thought was kind of scary.
But then there was a floor. A red and white floor, arranged in a checked spiral. She had landed in a small room, with a diameter roughly the same as the hole she had for the past hours (at least she thought it was hours) been falling through. The room was completely round, and on the walls were the same kind of shelves as when she had fallen.
In a corner (how a corner had managed to sneak into this round room, let alone how it had managed to hide there, was a mystery) stood a small table with an even smaller lamp on it, it's upside-down lampshade making it light up the ceiling. This, to Alice, seemed very peculiar as the ceiling had in fact been her point of entry, and now it seemed to lack any sort of hole upwards.
Alice looked down at her hand, to discover the stick she had picked up earlier. She had completely forgotten it as she fell, but now there it was, ready to be used to club down freaky stuff at any time. "Speaking of freaky stuff", she thought, "Where did that rabbit go now?" She could not see it anywhere in the room, and she could not see any doors. She walked up to a wall, and knocked easily. The wall sounded hollow, and she slowly raised the stick, to bash her way through, but was interrupted by a voice behind her; "Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it's getting!" She turned around, just in time to see the white rabbit disappear in a corridor which she was very certain had not been a moment ago. With her stick held high she started running into the corridor, just to, after the first bend, be met by another empty room. "Where have the little bogger gone to now?" she thought.
Along the walls a massive amount of differently colored doors, but after a quick check she noted that each and every one of them was locked down. She frowned, and turned around to go back to the room she came from, to look for a key, but was, well not so much scared, as she was annoyed, to be met by a solid wall. "Now what?" she thought angrily, and turned around again.
A table. A small glass table. "Must've come from nowhere" Alice thought, "the same place as the corridor came from, and went back to, I guess". On the table was a brass key, and Alice assumed it must fit in one of the many doors. But no. Either the locks were too large, or the key was too small and not once did they seem to match in colors.
She sat down on a chair which had appeared during the time she had had her back turned, and looked at the locked doors with a troubled look on her face. "It has to fit in at least one of the doors!" she said aloud. But the doors seem not to care and the key still did not fit the second time she went around the room.
Then there was a lamp. Every time she turned around there seemed to appear a new object, and now there was a lamp. Alice had not felt in need of a lamp at any time during her brief spend in the room, but suddenly she seemed to have problems seeing, well, anything at all really, and so she hurried to the lamp, before the entire was drowned in darkness.
And as she reached it she grabbed the light-switch and pulled. But instead of being bathed in light, she flew. Well, not as much flew as fell upwards and landed on the ceiling. Now, falling upwards and landing in the ceiling, Alice was not much used to. Not as much as she was to falling downwards and hitting the ground, at least (compared to the number she had fallen in a circle, on the other hand, the times she had fallen upwards seemed endlessly many) and so she clung shakily to the hard surface of the ceiling, afraid of falling down again.
When she finally dared standing up in the ceiling (the floor, from Alice's point of view) the room was once again lit, and now she could see something she before had missed. A door. A small door, accessible only if standing on the ceiling, at the far end of the room.
She walked up to it, and felt the tiny knob. This door also seemed to be locked, but Alice had no doubts in her mind that this had to be the door where the key fit. And fit it did, unlocking the tiny red door. But this only presented a new problem.
Alice was, with her 6.1 foot, taller than most girls her age (most boys too, actually) and certainly much too tall for this 15 inch door. So once again she sat down thinking, this time not in a comfortable chair, but directly at the floor (or ceiling, if you want).
She came up with only one thing: Since the table, the key, the chair and the lamp had all appeared as she had turned around, she thought maybe a bigger door would appear if she turned her back to the small one. It did not.
What, on the other side, did appear was, on the table (now being on the ceiling/floor Alice was not on), a small bottle. she reached up (or maybe it was down?) and got it.
The bottle, marked 'drink me', seemed good enough of a solution for Alice, and since it was, in fact, marked 'drink me' and not 'poison' (she knew very well that if you drink from a bottle marked 'poison' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later) she did drink it.
And suddenly she was not 6.1 foot any more.