Down the Rabbithole

I fell down a rabbithole. But that’s not what they say. Well, they do say I fell. First lovely spring day and I was supposed to be listening to my lessons in things I can’t remember, but I ran off instead, and I fell. They say I slipped off the bank, smashed somewhere at the bottom of the riverbed, but how can they make these things up when I was there, I know. That I fell and fell, on and on, surely it must have been some sort of rabbithole, and it was very dark, and sometimes I was upside down, and sometimes I was right side up, and there were other things falling with me—books, umbrellas, tea pots, rabbits—yes, surely it was a rabbithole. A rabbit with a pocket watch, he’s here too, in a room down the hall. I fell so long I can’t remember—perhaps they’re right and I fell asleep, knocked unconscious by the fall, I don’t know, all I know is that when I landed, woke up, whatever happened, the world was different.

They say I lost my mind.

That I see things that aren’t there.

But they come to my room and give me vials and pills and some make me grow larger and larger until my legs and arms are shooting out the windows and I’m calling out for help, and some make me very, very small so that I can escape through the gap beneath the door and into the wild world beyond. Only the paths are constantly changing and I can never find my way.

Where I live now, there are others like me, they say. Like the rabbit with the clock, always late for something and jumping up from the table with a glance at his pocket watch, making a dash for the door. The Mad Hatter and his assistant sing to my un-birthday every day of the week and make a business of fixing watches, cracking open the rabbit’s pocket watch and filling it full of butter and grape jam. They’ve been here a long time, they say. And in their voices I hear, and so will you.

There are other rooms. Rooms full of playing cards—arms and legs affixed to flabby bodies, aces and spades, diamonds and hearts. They shuffle and deal and sing terrible songs of losing their heads. Rooms lorded over by a Queen of Hearts—one day she has us painting the roses red, the next day, white, and some days we play croquet with flamingos as mallets, a rainbow of pathetic little hedgehogs as balls. When I stoop to pet the hedgehogs instead of taking my turn, when I paint the roses the wrong color and cry out in terror that the Queen will chop off my head, they take me away to another room. A room where I’m all alone, but for a grinning set of teeth that appear high up on the wall, at my feet, behind my head. Sometimes they talk to me, ask me confounding questions or accost me with riddles that leave me reeling. Sometimes they only laugh and laugh, a pink tongue appearing as the high pitched sound bounces off the walls, ridiculing my fears that the Queen reappear and command the Ace of Spades, off with her head. But sometimes I wish she’d just take it. Sometimes I feel she already has.

They say I lost my mind, that I see things that aren’t real.

“You’re not real!” I cry. And it’s true. Who ever heard of birds wearing spectacles, with scissors for beaks, or lampshades for heads?

“I want to go back to where everything is real. I haven’t lost my mind, I’ve only lost my way. I want to go home!”

“We know,” they say, “we know.”

But all the doors are strung with alarm bells, and no one ever points the way home.