Alice In Concerto/24

Bill — balancing himself rather bravely upon such limited surface — gave a bow. 

Relaxed, he stood tall, grounded both legs, and began moving his mighty little hands as though tuning invisible strings with a thrilling accelerando.

Alice’s breath came quick and low. “Pray—pray don’t do that!”

The words seemed to dissolve between the strings the second they left her mouth.

Bill only tightened his hold, his fingers moving with dreadful precision — each trembling vibrato a ghostly pluck along her nerves.

Alice wanted to still herself — to not breathe, not feel — yet her whole being betrayed her, executing the emotion she had meant to close, and tuning itself, helplessly, to Bill’s tremolo key.

Bill pressed on — fingers bowing, rocking, trilling.

The rhythm spiralled into dazzling runs and tumbling scales, streaming through her ribs as if her body had become an unwilling instrument of his tune.

It was alive.

I could almost make out the piece — ah yes, Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D major, unmistakably — each phrase unfurling with fevered brilliance, a beta build of beauty that made Bill’s pride almost too exquisite to bear.

And Alice, poor girl, seemed to feel every note without ever quite hearing it.

A Concerto Only to be Felt By Alice... 

Coming up next--

The Laughter Concerto

Laughter Dares, 

In the Concerto?

A surreal chapter in Alice’s digital dreamscape.

The Wriggle/23

The background command knocked — as though the wafloings had finally received their signal, and Alice’s thought had remembered its turn.

A shadow, slender and oddly familiar, slid forward from where the Rabbit had vanished.

“A patch — from the Rabbit?” Alice queried. “Or a bug, in disguise?”

“Oh dear — Bill! You’ve escaped the pool!” cried Alice, as the little figure stopped, fixing her with that unnervingly steady look.

“How were those one-meter Mouse’s tales you once clung to?” Her mouth brushed the wafloings — breathless but bright, as though speaking through a screen to her long-lost friend.

The steady look held its silence.

Was Bill performing a system scan — convinced that no bug could hide as long as the cursor kept blinking?

He stood upright, his tail anchoring him to the floor — miniature enough to maneuver neatly in the cramped space. He offered Alice a widening grin, bright as the cursor that refused to cease its blinking.

As ever, Bill said nothing.

Even a broader grin, by all available philosophy, would scarcely have improved the situation; his silence was the only thing that wasn’t blinking.

With a sudden wriggle, Bill scrambled up Alice’s arm and slipped sideways, clinging to her ribs.

The Steady Look Held Its Silence, Yet Told Not A Tale... 

Coming up next--

Alice in Concerto

A Concerto? 

One to be felt...

A surreal chapter in Alice’s digital dreamscape.

Folded Within Her Question/22

“I wish I could be smaller,” Alice thought. “Foolish me; the room would swallow me whole again.”

The air creaked before her self-chiding was quite done — frantic rubbings, squeezings, and pressings rose through the tightening space — from not very far, to near, to closer — until it was right beside her.

That was when the White Rabbit came into the picture, breathing a thick coffee smell, as though he’d just burst from a café in someone else’s dream. The scent bounced back and forth, looping with his auto-playing idiom: “I’ll be really, really late—so really late!”

He brushed against her skirt, jerked, and wedged himself toward a tiny pinprick of light. The glow widened and brightened; with a flick and a shimmer, he was absorbed altogether—as though minimized into a secret taskbar only he could see.

The light dinged once—and was gone.

Silence hung in its place.

Alice, still folded within her own precarious loop of question, sighed—though in such tight quarters, even sighs had to be rationed.

“When I used to read fairy tales,” she murmured, “I fancied such things could never happen—and now here I am, right in the middle of one.”

The murmuring echoed, then faded—leaving only the faint hum of thought still tangled in the ends of her hair.

The Wonderland system dinged once... 

Coming up next--

The Wriggle

Whose wriggle, 

in such a tightness?

A surreal chapter in Alice’s digital dreamscape.

Walls Held Their Breath/21

But then a sour, musky odour crept upward—heavy and slow in the close air. 

Alice hadn’t an inch—no, not even half an inch—left in which to wrinkle her nose.

“Dear me! Is it roasted beef gone positively pungent?” cried Alice. “How I should catch you, Mr. Rabbit—red-pawed this time!”

The words came out squeezed—thin, crumpled, and quite out of breath.

Every murmur, every thought, and every shadow of the room shifted, twisted, and set about reconfiguring themselves into murshathodowghtmuuur.

Nothing stayed where it ought: ceilings became walls, walls became floors and ceilings and wafloings  — until no one could tell what was what.

Pugin or Barry? They’d have failed the job, I should think—and Wonderland chop-signed my narration.

The room grew quieter; even the very wafloings seemed to hold their crooked breath—waiting, perhaps, only for Alice’s next thought to execute, like a line of code idling in the background, unhurried but inevitable.

It had proven itself—so long as the Wonderlandian system chose not to crash.

The Wonderland system hummed beneath the walls.

Coming up next: Folded Within Her Question

A trauma—or a despair?

A surreal chapter in Alice’s digital dreamscape.

The State Of Limbo/20

Before long, the distinct, four-note humming stopped.

“Red magic,” breathed Alice, exhaling with a grand relief. “You’ve ended just where you should.”

Kneeling in sudden surrender to the shifting room, she curved herself into a loop of her own question—neck pressed to the wall, nose relearning how to sniff.

A soft groaning filled the air, rather like a biscuit attempting to recall a crisp tune.

The mirrors—bent awkwardly like warm toffee, still brimming with dizzling bottles—shimmered faintly, actively composing the next line of the story together.

Their light flickered—brightening, dimming, brightening again—as if modelling with one hand and bargaining with someone on the far side of Wonderland, eager to have a well-reflected story.

Even the bottles quivered within them, their glass caught between cracking and vanishing, as though the words DRINK ME were desperately trying to erase themselves from the code.

Alice, her neck still stiff, cast a sidelong glance at them.

“Hopefully,” she murmured, “the system won’t hang before the next bit loads”—a phrase she’d only learned earlier that morning, and still half believed was a charm.

Coming up next: Walls Held Their Breath