S ome of the TV crew rolled their eyes at the man’s reply. Others laughed at the unmatched confidence and acting.
But something about him was so original. The way he said the words.
An uncomfortable silence swept over the university. A silence that spread to every TV set in every home all over the world.
Who was this man, really?
“M-my name is Lewis Ca-car-roll.” The man bowed in front of the camera. “A-and I’ve come to bestow my b-b-beautiful madness u-u-upon this world.”
The silence stretched for a few more seconds.
It was like staring at a clown. No one was sure what to expect. Should they have panicked and ran away, or just laughed and said, ‘Haha, of course you are! ’
Too many so-called Wonderland Monsters had been to London lately: the creepy Cheshire, the Muffin Man, and the Mad Hatter with his rabbit bomb last week. It had become impossible to dismiss someone claiming he was one of them.
A few kids managed to break the silence, coughing bubbles and flowers from sucking on the hookahs.
Those bubbles weren’t pink. They weren’t blue. They weren’t green.
“Why are the children coughing... red bubbles?” the young reporter asked.
“Silly me. I forgot,” the priest said, stepping back into his flying car and pulling a lever that pumped air into more balloons. “Our Hookah of Hearts, which has already sold more than six million pieces all over the world, well, it’s not just a hookah.” The balloons began to take off again. “This hookah holds a deadly disease like nothing you’ve ever seen.”
Faces began to redden, confused by the man’s continued speech of madness.
Was he joking? Why would the Dodo Corporation send a loon like him to represent them?
“And I repeat”—his smile broadened, too wide to be benevolent—“a deadly virus like nothing you’ve seen before. It should start working in a few hours. Within three days,”—the automobile hovered above the ground—“this world as you know it will end.”
What once was silence escalated to ascending grunts of panic. More children kept coughing. Parents worried, watching him escape into the sky. More people in the world couldn’t believe what they were watching on the news.
“Who are you?” a reporter screamed at the floating priest.
“I told you. My name is Lewis Carroll,” he said from high above, looking like someone sweet and colorful in the middle of a never-ending nightmare. “And I am a Wonderland Monster.