Wonderland Hills

When I awoke in the morning and stumbled out to see Chester, I also saw a comfortably normal-looking Hatter sitting at the table with him. They were drinking coffee and talking in hushed tones, which I noticed too many people seemed to be doing around here.

Chester was wearing his usual get-up of his long leather jacket and jeans with no shirt or shoes. He wore a simple chain around his neck that moved ever so slightly against his chest as he breathed.

Hatter was wearing jeans and a bowler hat. Again, no shirt. My eyes landed on his tattoo yet again and I tried to remember where I’d heard that phrase before.

“Good morning,” I said quietly, my eyes on Hatter as I thought over the things that had happened the night before.

“Morning,” the two boys said casually, as if nothing had happened.

I didn’t know what else to do or say, so I was silent as they invited me over and had me eat breakfast and drink coffee with them. They seemed to understand I didn’t know how to handle things at the moment, so they didn’t ask me any questions. They talked casually to each other until I was through and walked away, and then they began whispering again.

After a little while, Hatter came and sat down on the couch beside me as I was reading one of Chester’s books that made no sense to me. I looked up at him, my expression guarded.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“What the hell was that last night?” I blurted.

Hatter sighed. “It’s… ah, it’s madness. It’s my madness. Kicks in sometimes on overload, y’know? When they say I’m crazy, they aren’t just saying I act a bit strange. I’m sure you gathered that by now, though, Alice.”

I didn’t know what to say. “You were screaming. You kept saying ‘it hurts, it hurts,’ and thrashing around when Chester tried to hold you down. Why? What hurts? What takes over you so that you can barely recognize him?”

The Hatter shrugged. “I don’t know. To be honest with you, Alice, I don’t know. All I know is the feeling in the moment.”

“And what’s the feeling?”

“You sure are pickin’ this apart, aren’t you?”

“Can you just answer me, please?”

The Hatter stared off into space for a minute, letting the smile he kept on his face fade as he thought it over. “I feel… I feel trapped. I’m in pain, and I don’t know how to make the pain stop, and it takes over my mind and I lose it. Pain in my mind. In my heart. Like there’s something I had that kept me together, kept me whole, kept me human, and it was ripped away from me. And then my feelings go wild. I feel… sad. Sad and angry and afraid.”

Again, I was at a loss for words as I stared at Hatter. For someone who seemed so confident and cocky, his inner self that he’d let show was both terrifying and sad, and I felt the need to help him. But I didn’t know how.

“Yeah, well, you know, who cares, and would you look at the time, I have band practice.” Hatter shot up awkwardly and began walking towards the door.

I glance from him to Chester. “Thought you said you killed time.”

Hatter turned and smiled slightly, nodding. “Alright, alright. Come with me?”

I glanced at Chester.

“Oh, go on,” Chester said. “I have work to do here anyway.”

I smiled and followed Hatter out of the room and up the stairs into his penthouse, where I recognized the other people in his band sitting about, tuning guitars and setting up amps. Dormouse, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, and March Hare.

“I’ve brought a groupie,” Hatter said confidently, the polar opposite of who he’d been last night. It was like they were different people. “Her name is Alice. She’s staying with Chess.”

The twins, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum (who told me later, “Just call us Dee an’ Dum, miss”), looked me up and town in creepy unison, smiling. Dormouse glanced up at me for a moment, then went back to setting up an amp. March Hare shot up, very much like a rabbit, and shook my hand, introducing himself.

“Hello, Alice. I’m The March Hare. But you can just call me March Hare. Or March. Like a name, instead of a title. Same thing with The Dormouse – or, Dormouse. He’s not being rude, he just needs to warm up to you, that’s all. He’s quite a nice guy. I’m nice too! So’s Hatter. And Dee and Dum, they’re very nice. Oh, I’m rambling again aren’t I? That’s how I got the name. March Hare. Jumpy as a bunny. Bunny sounds more like a girlish term. That’s why I prefer hare, I guess, although I guess it could sound like ‘hair,’ like the hair on your head—” March Hare rambled in a quite adorable way.

“March,” interrupted Hatter. “Take a breath. Alice, there’s a chair over there. You can sit down if you like. Forgive the boys. They get excited.”

I smiled and walked over to the beanbag chair and sat down, charmed by March’s behavior. I drank in all of the details of the group.

Dee and Dum were working on their instruments, flipping their sandy brown hair out of their eyes at the same time in the same quick motion. (It was kind of spooky how they could do that sort of thing.) They both wore black jeans and striped shirts. Dee wore a blue and white striped shirt while Dum wore green and white stripes.

Dormouse wore glasses, which surprised me. He didn’t wear his glasses onstage, I learned later; he found them to take away from his ‘look.’ He was jumping around and adjusting amps with a concentrated and serious expression on his delicate face. He wore a simple black button-up shirt and blue jeans.

March Hare was tossing his dark hair out of his dark eyes. “Boys! There’s a lady here!”

Dee and Dum looked up from their work. “Give us a minute, Marchie, we’re almost done!” they said in creepy unison.

Dormouse stopped working, bowed slightly, then rushed back to work.

“Sorry,” Hatter said, “they seem to have forgotten the exact science to manners. It’s been a while since we’ve gotten the grace of a lady in our presence.”

“Besides Tabitha?” I asked.

“Tabitha is hardly a lady,” snorted Dormouse. “Don’t be deceived by her outer shell.”

The band laughed.

Dee and Dum finally made their way over to me and bowed at the same time, talking to me for a bit. They introduced themselves, telling me which was which and their basics, as if signing up for a job interview. They kept on saying things in unison and finishing each other’s sentences.

“Is this how you always talk?” I asked them in a state of half-awe, half-confusion.

They looked at one another for a moment, before breaking into laughter. Dee clapped me on the shoulder fairly roughly, making me jump a little.

“Sorry, Miss Alice! We have this nasty habit of-” began Dee.

“-Finishing each other’s sentences,” finished Dum, looking at his brother and bursting into more hearty laughter.

“Drives everyone insane, it does!” they said in unison.

I didn’t know what to think, so I just sort of sat there staring at them dumbly. They laughed a bit more and told me that I was “a good one,” before going back to their instruments.

The only person I hadn’t seemed to be introduced to formally was Dormouse, who had just finished adjusting the amps and was leaning against one of the larger ones, his arms crossed. He pushed up his glasses and rested his eyes on me, giving me a polite nod.

“He’s quiet for the most part,” said Hatter, noticing us looking at each other. “But he likes you, I can tell. You just have to get to know him.”

I nodded passively, looking back as the group prepared to play their first song. They all were in their element now, putting every ounce of passion into their instruments. I couldn’t help but smile at their looks of deep concentration, as if lost in another world, even stranger than the one we were in now.

Hatter’s vocals began to sing a haunting tune I’d never heard before, darker and more mysterious than anything that could be heard in the real world – if that’s what my world even was anymore. This world seemed far more real to me than Los Angeles.

“Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, won’t you join the dance
The dance of the black and the red and the white
The dance of the crossroads and stars shining bright
The dance of the lobsters and of higher men
Please dance, this surely won’t happen again.”

I smiled at the group and applauded when the mysterious and feverish song ended, making the band smile and relish the praise they were receiving.

“You’re all really good,” I said, bringing myself back to reality. “You guys are going to make it big.”

“Stop it, you’re makin’ us blush,” said Dum, smiling at me charmingly.

After a few more songs – ranging from beautiful to haunting to angry to happy to danceable – practice ended, and the group slowly dispersed, saying goodbye to each other and saying, “It was nice to meet you, Miss Alice.”

As soon as they were all gone, I noticed Hatter was sitting alone in one of the beanbag chairs, staring out the window at the busy city in the daylight. I approached him and saw he looked sad; fairly lonely and lost in thought.

“Hatter?” I asked, placing my hand on his shoulder.

He turned his gaze towards me and wiped the look of melancholy off his face. It was replaced by his usual confident and semi-cocky facial expression. “So, you really think we’re that good?”

“My new favorite band,” I said with a smile, pulling up another beanbag chair and sitting beside him.

I noticed he was back to staring out the window, lost in the labyrinth that was his mind. I wondered what he was thinking about; why his brilliant green eyes were clouding over with a murky depression. I didn’t speak because I was too busy wondering.

“You know,” he said, as if talking to himself, in such a way it seemed he’d forgotten I was there, “this city is beautiful at night. You think it’s beautiful in the day, but the sun’s so greedy and wants to bathe everything in its own light, and you don’t see that the world sparkles at night. The colors of the lights. More than just a dull yellow like the sun. There’s blues and pinks and reds and greens. I remember when I moved to Wonderland City when I was a lad… I was so mesmerized. I hadn’t seen anything like it.”

I let him talk, fascinated by his words. Though it may seem unimportant, the way he said it made it sound like it was the most interesting thing I’d ever heard.

“But I can’t see the colors as much anymore,” he continued. “I can’t see anything beautiful enough to keep staring at like that. I don’t know what happened to the colors. Everything used to be so colorful and beautiful and wonderful. I don’t understand. Why can’t I be happy? Why is everything so gray and sad? The only time I see the beauty is when I’m singing, now. Music is beauty you don’t have to see, so it works. But I want to see. I want to see and feel more than when I’m humming a tune. I want to smile, I want to see the colors, I want to be happy. I don’t know what happened. What happened to the colors, Alice?”

I stared at him as his eyes landed on mine. He reminded me of a frightened child, lonely, afraid of the monsters that no one was going to chase out from under his bed. He seemed so desperate. His eyes were so full of emotion I had to look away and catch my breath.

“I’m sorry,” I heard him say quietly. He stood up and shook his head. “I think I need to be alone for a while. Sorry if I upset you with all that. Go back downstairs with Chess, I’m sure he’s getting lonely.”

It pained me to leave, but I knew it was probably best to obey. I prayed that he didn’t lose himself again and go into a rampage like he’d done the night before. It scared me. To be perfectly honest, I think it scared him, too. And I think he knew that he was potentially dangerous when he got like that. And I think that scared him – and me – more than anything.

What happened to the colors, Alice?