PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION BUS, OXFORD
I wake up shaking in my seat. Yes, I am in a seat, and on a bus. Not the one in my dream, but a real one, outside of the asylum.
"Bad dreams?" The Pillar rests both his hands on a cane next to me. We're sitting in the front seat of the bus. I crane my neck to see the driver. He isn't a rabbit. Instead, it's that mouse-looking dude who must be working for the Pillar. He is wearing an Irish hat this time.
The sun is shining feebly outside. I think it's the next day already.
"I dreamt of a school bus." I rub my eyes, checking out my modern Alice outfit. "Am I still dreaming?"
"Hit the brakes, please!" the Pillar shouts at the bus driver, who hits the brakes abruptly. Cars screech, and people honk their horns behind us as I almost bang my head on the pole.
"Does this feel like a dream to you?" the Pillar says and signals for the driver to proceed.
"You stole a public bus?" I furrow my brow.
"Rich people steal poor people's houses and lives. I can't borrow a public bus?" He shakes his shoulder, sincerely annoyed by my remark.
"How did I get here?" I touch my head. I am not hurt.
"I had to sedate you, and dress you up." The Pillar looks out of the window. "The Mushroomers helped me."
"Why would you do something like that?" I am dizzy and enraged by the Pillar dragging me out here. "I told you I am done with the world outside. I am not the Alice you think I am."
"There is something you have to see." The Pillar knocks his cane on the floor. "Stop here!" he says, raising his cane. I notice he never addresses the chauffeur by name. "Take this." He tucks a notebook in my lap. It looks like it belongs to a child, and has pink and yellow roses on the cover. It's a little smeared with ashes or something, though.
"What's this?" I open it up and flip through it. The notebook is girlish. Its pages are filled with drawings of a young girl in a blue-and-white dress. At one point, the girl is fighting a Cheshire Cat, then the Mad Hatter, and the Jabberwocky. It's basically a young girl's reimagining of a twisted Wonderland. The Alice in the drawing looks uncannily like me.
"It's Constance's notebook," the Pillar explains. "She drew all these three years ago when she was seven years old."
"So what? The girl looks a little like me. It doesn't mean I am the Alice she wants. I look pretty ordinary, like any other girl on the street."
"That's not the point. Constance had this book with her when the Cheshire kidnapped her. Her mother called and asked for it since it was left in the fireplace in Christ Church."
"Her mother called who?" I ask.
"Doesn't matter. She said Constance asked for you to deliver it. The girl wants to see you one last time. That's her house." He points to a two-story middle-class house. It's mostly gray but in a lovely way.
I stare at the house and then at the notebook. The truth is, I love Constance. I actually miss her, and it's only been a day when I only talked to her for ten minutes.
"All right," I sigh. "If that's all, I will deliver it."