Dream of Alice: Althea Pines

Dream of Alice

Althea Pines

(by : Danish songforalthea
SMP Negeri 3 Sindang Indramayu )

Summary:
Have you ever had a dream within a dream, or jump from one dream to another?
Alice is a young girl whose dreams seem neverending. She'd wake up only to realize she's in another dream, and another, and another. By this point, she's forgotten the last time she truly woke up. How many dreams - or nightmares - will it take for her to finally reach HER reality?

It was another of those days, another flitter of the eyelids as Alice came back to consciousness. Her body lay on a soft coat of grass spread across the land, whether she turned to the left or the right her vision was met with the same view, the only difference being the placement of the flowers that are sprinkled along her environs. A stretch was due, she thought, with her expression prideful and determined, and pulled her hands up in the air while she roused herself to sit up. Her blonde, almost vibrant yellow hair was blown back by a gust of wind that hit her face aggressively, so much that she needed to readjust the black bow that she had clipped behind her head. It feels real, it always does, but she’s aware that this was all an illusion of the mind.

That’s not what she was able to focus on, as her eyes were immediately locked onto the animal— an old rabbit that was pacing to and fro with such swift movements. He donned a yellow tuxedo with purple pants, crooked and tiny spectacles with a frame made of gold that barely fit his comically ginormous face. His shoes were that of a clown’s and his ears would twitch nervously with almost every step. His mouth twitched out words occasionally, but the only thing Alice could catch was “oh, my globe!”

With frail whiskers and coat white as the arctic, there’s no mistaking it.

“You!” She called as she gave herself a push to her feet and waved her hand in a desperate gesture. “You, there! The white rabbit Vernie!”

shoes got used to the texture, she hopped on one head, then the other, and so on until she reached the hand of Terry. This was a silent act, she didn’t plan a single thing, and now the poor white rabbit was stuck drowning in a pool of worms.

To this he protested, as he should, Bernie waved a desperate arm in the air and yelled “insane, insane, insane” about fifteen times over. And to that Terry responded, as if to drown out his friend’s judgements, “she’s wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!” All the while Alice only enveloped herself with the thoughts in her mind, as always, “too loud, too loud, too loud,” and a handful of other things like how odd, how absurd. Reality is absurd. As she understands, reality is fickle. Changing, constant. It is never certain until the time she wakes and sleeps again. Her youthful mind was unable to grasp it, but so was the mind of the smart rabbit, and the crazed hare’s cortex. If only there was someone else who understood her? The acrylic blue in the sky seemed to paint it so.

Drowning in the rumpus, Terry’s grasp on Alice had loosened and she slipped like spiders down a drain. Did she? No, surely she didn’t. The worms weren’t all that slippery now. She was pulled. Pulled, but by what? She didn’t know, before she could find out darkness had clouded her vision as fast as a cat’s leap, and she felt the warm fur wrap around her head like apocalyptic bandages.