A to Z Blog Challenge - W is for Wonderland Fiction

 * Today is Letter W of the daily A to Z Blog Challenge *

W is for... Alice in Wonderland
Short Fiction....

I’m using story prompts from “Story Prompts that Don’t Suck.”

Prompt 612-Use three things in a story –a bucket filled with a mysterious pink substance, an unopened letter, an elderly white horse. (I used two.)

Return to Wonderland

By C.A. Verstraete

She must be dreaming.

   Melody looked in the bucket again. Whatever it was looked slimy and was colored a Pepto-Bismal pink. Just thinking of it made her stomach hurt.

   What was she supposed to do with it?

   The letter.

   She grabbed the envelope tied to the bucket handle. An ivory-colored paper sat inside. Written on it in a hard-to-read script were two words: Drink Me.

   Eyes wide, she looked around again, expecting to see a dessert laden table and a talking rabbit from her favorite story, Alice in Wonderland. It was s place she’d always wished she could visit. Nothing greeted her eyes but a dim sky and dark shadows in what looked like a forest.

   Yes, she had to be dreaming. Had to be!

   Melody pinched herself. “Owww.”

   She felt that, so it must be real, right?

   To drink or not to drink?

   She could stand here all day or do what the note said.

   Taking a deep breath, she picked up the bucket, tipped it to her mouth, and drank. The stuff was thick, but good. It tasted like strawberry.

   She drank her fill, set the bucket down, and sat to wait. Soon, the sky began to lighten. The shadows faded revealing bright green trees surrounded by flowers in a rainbow of colors.

   “Ohhh! It’s my story. It’s real!”

   It’s only when it got to full sunlight that Melody saw the table. At each place sat a familiar figure—the rabbit, a playing card soldier, the red queen, and others. It’s only when she got up for a closer look that she saw their heads sitting on the plates in front of them and began to scream.

   Then she looked down and saw the blue dress she had on and the swordsman standing at the head of the table. One place remained open for the main character, Alice. Her.

   She screamed and ran, soon realizing there was no way out. She found herself trapped by the paper forest and flowers around her.

   Melody looked up in horror at the laughing face staring down at her over the edge of the page.

   Her wish of being able to go inside her favorite book had come true in the worst possible way.

© C. Verstraete  http://girlzombieauthors.blogspot.com  372 words