Alice in Wonderland Bullshit

I had always been told to notify friends and close ones before traveling alone. The advice seemed rather silly a couple of days ago when I had every desire to escape the world. ‘I’d rather die alone out there’ was my sentiment, and I set out for adventure in foreign woods. How silly that was.

Shoving some branches aside, I carefully stepped over a protruding root. Dense didn’t begin to describe these woods, but that was the least of my troubles. I shimmied through more thicket and emerged in a clearing. What looked like a giant worm on a fallen tree lazily turned my way.

“Pardon me,” I said softly before retreating into the dense cover.

Had I thought to reach out before leaving, someone might have at least made a call to the local authorities. Maybe they could have found my unconscious body and hauled me to a hospital to break me free from this Alice in Wonderland bullshit I seem to have fallen into, but if I ever got out, I would be sure not to step through weird mist clouds again.

I sighed and sat down on a wooden stump, which shouted unsavory curses at me. Jumping up, I shuffled away from the spot and settled under a tree without a weird face. I rubbed my cheeks, perhaps trying to force myself from the dream instead of wiping away sweat, and looked around the dense woods.

Colorful would be apt as a description; greens and browns were plentiful, but flowers and unrecognizable—probably deadly—plants of blues, pinks, purples, yellows, and more brought the whole place alive. The air was sweet and earthy, and it was hot as hell. I might have assumed I traveled in time if I hadn’t seen a pack of rabbits hunt down a stray wolf. Fortunately, I ran fast away from that scene.

No, I was lost in some nightmare place where common sense was treated not as if it was ignored but had never existed to begin with. To make matters worse, the sun was going down, and I had no way of knowing where I was supposed to go; where even was safe in all this?

I sighed, slapped myself on the face, and pulled my hiking pack forward. Water was still plentiful, but limited would be the only way to describe the rations. I threw the added weight of local foraging guides to the side. Sensing some eyes in the distance, or perhaps just being paranoid, I zipped the bag back up and power walked away.

Waking from this dream any second would be really nice; otherwise, I would have to consider that it wasn’t a dream, and that I had died only to find my way into hell. I took a deep breath and marched through a bramble of vanes, to emerge in a new clearing full of odd furry creatures.

They were small in stature but made up for it in fear factor, with the hundreds of beady eyes that turned my way.

“Um, pardon me,” I said, while slowly backing into the vines. As what I figured was one creature screamed, I turned and broke into a sprint. Not daring to look back, I could hear what sounded like a swarm of angry pursuers on my heels. Grunting and pushing something inside myself farther than I ever had before, I sped up, my legs burning. The noise behind me grew fainter but didn’t diminish in relentlessness.

Trying to avoid tripping over roots, I broke from the dense woods to a cliffside. Shouting, I fell to a seated position and slid over the edge. My hand felt nearly ripped off as I snatched a stray root growing from the side. Some of my pursuers fell to a faraway death of forest below, but the rest must have stopped just in time. As they scurried around above, I pulled my torso up to press my stomach on the root. I was only ever good for one pull-up in gym class, but it seemed one was all I needed for the moment.

The scene below showed dense woods as far as the eye could see. Though where I hung was bright, in the distance, just below, some stationary storm clouds raged over the trees. They didn’t shift or change, but dumped endless water to the ground below. Still, the fact they didn’t move was to my advantage. There was no concern of a storm rolling in for the time being. I turned up to the cliffside and did my best to get a read on what waited above. The scurrying of my creepy chasers had died down, and it seemed quiet. I might have waited a minute longer, but the root—I suppose done with me laying on it—began to pull back into the cliffside.

I scrambled to the top, my only strength coming from the fact it was literally a life-or-death situation, and collapsed on the side of the cliff. I stared at the blue sky while trying to steady heavy breaths. What the hell did I do to deserve any of this? The ground rumbled beneath me, and I’m sure my face turned pale with dread. Turning my head was all I could muster with the strength I had left. The roots from the cliffside ripped from the ground, and the tree looked as if it was scrubbing the human stink off. Cracks formed around it and streaked toward me when the rocks underneath gave way.

“Bloody hell!” I screamed before everything went dark.