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SHE’D FALLEN DOWN THE rabbit hole, just as Alice had when she entered the magical realm of Wonderland.
Susan stood in the center of the impossibly large room, empty save for the small table that stood in front of her. The table looked exactly like the one on the patio of the Jasper Hotel. She’d sat at the table out on the patio for a few minutes after they’d checked in this evening and remembered it clearly—about twenty-four inches in diameter, three feet tall and constructed of durable plastic. This table was filled with bottles of all shapes, sizes, and colors. Each of the colored bottles was labeled with a small white tag that said, “Drink Me,” in neat black block letters.
Her eyes wandered to the fuzzy white walls that were bare of ornamentation. The walls themselves looked like rabbit pelt. When she touched it, however, it had the rough feel of stucco. She scraped her hand along the wall, watching as white particles of powder showered down onto the white floor, only to disappear.
The only other feature of the room was the impossibly small door in the lower corner of the room. So impossibly small that a mouse could barely fit through.
Looking back at the bottles on the table, she knew the scenario—she must drink from the right bottle and only then could she fit through the door to see what was on the other side.
Did she even want to see what was behind the door? She was not sure, but she knew for certain she could not stay in this room among the fuzzy white walls and bright white tiles.
She turned back to the milieu of bottles on the table and her hand reached out, hovering over the colorful necks. Which to choose, which to drink of? Suddenly, a thought occurred to her: what would happen if she drank of the wrong bottle? She tried to remember the story, tried to remember if there had been consequences for drinking the wrong liquid, but she could not remember. She pulled her hand to her breast as if she had been burned. Indecision crept up on her, took hold of her. Now she felt fear in her stomach.
She looked around the room again, seeking a sign, something to guide her, but of course, there was nothing. Just the fuzzy white walls that somehow had shrunk in. Hadn’t the room been larger a moment ago? She was certain it has been larger. She looked toward the door and saw that it was closer, no longer fifty feet away.
That’s impossible, she thought. And as she thought the words, the walls began to slide toward her, to her left and to her right, closing the distance between her another five feet. She looked toward the door again, and saw that, although in the same place as before, the wall to the left had moved, and was now only ten or so feet away from covering the exit. If the wall kept moving it would cover the door and she would be trapped.
The walls moved again and this time she reacted without thinking. She grabbed the closest bottle and drank of it, pouring the putrid liquid down her throat, her only thought that she must find the right bottle that would allow her to get out of the room and into the safety of whatever sanctuary was on the other side.
She threw the bottle to the floor and grabbed a second, a third, a fifth, swallowing mouthfuls of horrible liquids, yet nothing happened. As she drank of the twenty-seventh bottle, she realized that there was still the same number of colored bottles on the table. She plucked several up at once and watched as new bottles magically appeared to replace the others.
Her mind screamed out, although her voice did not. Her eyes looked wildly toward the door that now stood open but was half-covered by the wall on the left. The outside was as black as ink, but she felt a calming aura ooze from the inky blackness.
She drank from another ten bottles when she heard the squeaking sounds—very subtle, almost sneaky sounds. She looked up with a maroon colored bottle poised at her lips and saw the mouse standing in the tiny doorway. As she looked, the mouse began to squeak again, a longer drawn out squeak. The mouse stood on its hindquarters and waved her toward the door. She looked at the bottle she now held and again at the table full of bottles and decided that these would do her no good. The bottles were a distraction, to keep her here until the walls closed in, impaling her with thousands of hard fuzzy-white fingers, each digging painfully into her back and chest, neck and face, arms, and legs.
The mouse began to squeak again, longer, and faster the sounds came from the tiny mouth. It waved more frantically to her as the walls closed again and another quarter of the doorway disappeared behind the wall on the left.
She dropped the bottle and was moving even before it hit the floor with a crash, oozing maroon liquid over the white tiles. She did not turn around to watch it evaporate into the tiles, instead, she ran toward the door and the mouse. And suddenly, the room reversed. Instead of closing in on her, it began to retract. All the walls moved outward. The door, which was about twenty feet in front of her, now moved to twenty-five, thirty, and forty. She ran faster as the walls faded. She could hear the mouse squeaking frantically now, mad squeaks in short bursts. She ran as hard as she could, but the door never got closer, only farther away.
She stumbled, crashing headlong to the white tiles, cracking her knee, her elbow, her head bounced off the ceramic, and her vision swam. She looked again at where the door was, and she could no longer see the inky black opening or the mouse. But the squeaking she could still hear. As the echo of the last sounds from the mouse resounded through her mind, she sat up . . .
And her head snapped to the right, her attention focusing on the patio door. What had she heard? No remnants of the dream remained, except for the sound that issued from the tiny lungs of the mouse. But what she heard was not a mouse; it was something soft and wet rubbing against glass, wasn’t it? And the sound had come from the patio, she was sure of it.
Pulling the blankets back and swinging her feet over the edge of the bed, she stood. She took one step in the direction of the patio when David called out to her.
“What’s wrong?”
“I thought I heard something,” she replied.
He got out of bed immediately and moved around it until he stood beside her.
“What did you hear?”
“I don’t really know. I think it was coming from the patio. I think I heard a mouse.”
“A mouse?” he asked, perplexed.
Without answering she stepped forward and went to the patio doors and he followed close behind. As her hand fell on the drawstring, his hand fell on her shoulder.
“Wait,” he said. “Let me look.”
She stood aside and back. He pulled the drawstring and the draperies separated. Susan hissed out a breath and sat hard on the floor. The patio was empty, but someone had been there.
The words “Stop Watching Me!” were written on the glass of one of the patio doors in black marker, printed backward so she could read them inside the room.