“Who are you?”
All three women spoke in unison, “This is Wonderland!”
“You’re mad.” Alice choked on her words, trying to cover herself with her hands.
It only seemed to draw their attention to her body even more.
“We’re all mad here.” The cat man laughed and it sounded like a scream. The three women were already off the bed, heading toward her. Alice backed up against the wall, the cool stone chilling her behind, but the door didn’t open.
“Come play,” the blonde whispered, sliding an arm around Alice’s waist.
She found herself on the bed, stretched out at the end in front of the man with the top hat, while the three women crawled over her like cats, stretching out, licking with their pink tongues, rolling against her softness. She couldn’t keep track of all of them, hands and limbs and hair. She knew only sensation-the soft press of a mouth between her thighs, the sweet suckle against her breast, the honey taste of a pussy poised over her tongue.
Alice moaned and came, and came, and came again. She had strange visions of the man in the top hat watching, his cock weeping at the sight of them, his eyes mad with lust. The man beside him howled like a tomcat who’d found a female in heat on the other side of an impenetrable fence. They were all three raging mad, trying to get to the mass of women soaking in one another’s pleasure at their feet.
“Check in here!” The door swung wide and Alice lifted her dazed head to see the Red Queen stalking toward the bed. Her wild eyes widened at the sight of Alice spread-eagle on the bed, the three women still working hands and tongues and fingers in her orifices. The queen’s guard burst in behind her. “Here! She’s here!” The Red Queen pointed at Alice and screeched, “And she’s stolen my tarts!”
“I didn’t steal anything,” Alice insisted indignantly, trying to sit up in the midst of the soft, supple flesh pile they made together. But the women whimpered and looked around with worried eyes and sat up to clutch each other as the Red Queen raved. It took Alice a few moments to understand.
“You stole my tarts!” The Red Queen insisted, waving her finger at the women until, one by one, they climbed off the bed and went to kneel at her feet, head down.
“Off with her head! Off with it, now!”
“Off with my…what?” Alice felt as if her blood had turned to ice.
The guards grabbed Alice without another word, one at each arm. She tried to walk but they were too tall and dragged her to the door. The Red Queen followed, the three tarts falling in line behind her.
“I say!” called the Mad Hat Man. “Don’t forget us here!” But the door was closed behind them and the guards were dragging her down the hall before she could hear him say anymore. Poor Caterpillar, poor Cat, poor Mad Hat Man. She wondered who might come along to release them. Certainly someone, and soon. This place had to have rules. They had safe words, after all. That proved something. It had to. They might get kicked out, of course, after being with the queen’s tarts, she surmised. That was apparently against the rules.
And she’d been with the queen’s tarts, hadn’t she?
Oh yes, she most definitely had.
“Tweedledee.” The sound in front of them drew Alice’s attention. There were two men coming toward them, filling all the available space in the hallway.
“Tweedledum.” As they got closer, Alice could see they were both naked, their bellies so rotund and pendulous they obscured their privates. They were twins, had to be, with the same moon faces and wide smiles. They were also holding hands as they came down the hall, making an impenetrable wall of flesh blocking the way.
“Tweedledee.” The one on the right would say this, and the one on the left would echo it with, “Tweedledum.”
The guards stopped. An impasse.
“Out of our way!” The Red Queen waved from behind them. “Get!” The two brothers looked at each other, behind them, then back at the queen, incredulous. There was no way they could turn around. Even if the two of them went single file, they wouldn’t all squeeze past. The twins grew very distraught, mumbling, tweedledumtweedledee tweedledumtweedledee tweedledumtweedledee over and over, their hands flapping at their sides like trapped birds.
“Oh for heaven’s sake!” The Red Queen threw up her hands and pushed against the wall to her left. A door opened and Alice watched in wonder as another hallway appeared. How did anyone keep track of where anything was in this place? She wondered. But she didn’t have long to ponder the question because the hallway led around into another, and that one let them into a great hall where food and sex and games had all melded into one great orgy of excess.
Alice winced as the guards dragged her to the front of the room, depositing her without ceremony on the floor in front of two large thrones. They were silver, not gold, high backed and upholstered in red. The Red Queen huffed past Alice, sitting in one of them and reaching for a long cord beside her chair. She pulled it, but nothing happened.
“Please.” Alice spoke, still trying to cover herself, everything about her trembling.
“Let me explain.”
“Verdict now, explanations later,” the queen snapped. “Did you or did you not steal my tarts?”
“I didn’t steal them,” Alice protested, glancing over at the women. “They rather stole me.”
“What say you?” The queen turned to the trio but they just shook their heads, quivering together.
“This is just a formality.” The queen waved Alice’s protests away. “I saw you with my own eyes. Collar her.”
Alice didn’t know what it meant until one of the guards fit a red collar around her throat and snapped it closed. She clawed at it, but it seemed to close seamlessly, like everything else in this strange place.
“Now!” The Red Queen pointed at Alice and one of the guards pressed her down to her knees. “Off with her head!”
This isn’t happening, Alice thought, but the flash of a blade behind her made it very immediate. One of the guards was holding an old-time executioner’s ax and it looked very real.
“Wait!” There was that word again, but this time Alice didn’t speak it. Wade burst into the room wearing a white robe trimmed in red and silver, something similar to what the Red King had been wearing when she met him. And where was the king anyway?
She wondered, glancing around the hall. The place was full with bodies, writhing, moaning, piled on top of one another, but she didn’t see him.
“I call for mediation.” Wade stepped between the guard and Alice, grabbing her upper arms and bringing her to standing. She had never felt so safe and leaned back gratefully against him. “Where’s the Red King?”
“Mediation?” The Red Queen snorted and waved her hand. “What do we need that for?”
“For fun of course.” The Red King appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, his robe only half-closed, although he was trying to fix that. He grinned and winked at Alice and she instantly relaxed. “The girl has to solve a riddle. How’s that, my pet?” He raised an eyebrow in the queen’s direction.
“Oh fiddlesticks.” The Red Queen turned her nose in the air, waving the idea away.
“Wait.” Wade took a step toward the Red King. “If she solves it, we crown a new king and queen.”
Both of the king’s eyebrows rose. “That’s quite a wager.”
“I believe in her.” Wade looked over at Alice and gave her the smile that made her melt into little puddles.
But she couldn’t do this. Solve riddles? It was insane. “Wade…”
“So be it!” The Red Queen’s eyes brightened as she looked at Alice. “Solve the riddle and you will be the new queen.”
Alice gulped. “I’ll do my best.”
“Tell me…” The queen leaned forward on her throne, her lips curling into a wicked smile. “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” Alice blinked, frowned, and looked over to Wade for help. If she failed, what did it mean? Were they really going to chop off her head? And if she solved it, well what did that mean? Is this what Wade had meant about being together, forever? Or was this part of the test?
She tried to think of any way the two things could be related but couldn’t come up with anything. A crowd had gathered around them, distracted from their own distractions by the queen’s proclamation. Finally, Alice had to admit defeat. Ravens and writing desks had nothing in common. They were going to cut off her head and she was never going to see Wade again.
She swallowed hard and met his eyes, blinking back her tears. She didn’t regret dying for him, not really. She just hated to disappoint him. More than anything, she wished she could be back home snuggled under her down comforter with Dinah while Wade made pancakes in her little kitchen. Thinking of home made her remember Maddie, and how she’d never see her again either. Her poor sister would always wonder what had happened to her.
And that’s when it came to her. Maddie and her solid belief in science was going to save her life in this strange, surreal place.