This one goes out to @everyone, yeah you. I like that shirt you're wearing, really brings out the madness in your eyes, it's a good look on you ❤

♦ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ᴛʜʀᴇᴇ ♦
ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴀᴜs ᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴏᴅᴏ ʙɪʀᴅ

| ᴀʟɪɴᴀ |

"ɪs ɪᴛ ... ɪs ɪᴛ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ?"

"How the hell am I supposed to know, Maus? You're the one with the stick, why don't you just ... poke it?"

Words ricocheted inside my head and bounced around the domed walls, mixing with the sound of running water. I was frozen. My muscles asleep and refusing to move as my head pounded.

Louder and louder, the voices moved closer. Until it felt that any second my brain would pop like an over-inflated balloon. There was a light patter of feet, a dull silence, and suddenly a stick that rammed into my abdomen as I squeaked, whining like a wounded animal.

"Well ..." the humble voice stuttered. "It's definitely alive-ish ..."

"I propose we run ... agreed? Agreed." I could hear footprints splashing through the water as the first man broke into a steady jog, and the second took a few steps closer.

"You cowardly, oversized pigeon. Get back here, Dodo!" the second huffed as he nudged me with the stick once more. "And you wonder why you're extinct."

"There's nothing wrong with a strategic retreat, you know!" the first defended.

"That's the coward's term for deserting!"

Poke.

Poke.

Poke.

The man persisted; to this day I don't know what exactly the stick experiment was supposed to prove. But I know it made me angry.

Really angry.

I couldn't even wiggle a toe, but as the frustration bubbled inside of me I found enough strength to reach up. With one fluid motion, I smacked the twisted cane out of the man's hands, listening as the bouncing baton clattered against a puddle and skidded to a stop.

"Well." I could hear the returning "coward" grumble. "She isn't a very courteous dead girl, now is she?"

♦

I awoke to the smell of instant noodles.

Clammy hands propping me up against a stack of milk crates, as a plastic fork of dried chicken and salt hovered inches from my nose. The world around me was warm and comforting. With the crackle of firewood, a quiet hush of conversation, and a soft melody of classical music that drifted off in the distance.

It felt homey.

Dream-like.

And for a second, I could swear I heard my mother's voice.

The world around was damp but warm, as if I'd been washed down the stream and found haven among the mice of the sewer.

I wasn't half wrong, of course, but as a shaky hand spoon-fed me noodles I couldn't focus on anything but the food. Warm broth slid down my throat, coating my empty stomach and leaving me with a taste I hadn't experienced since college.

By the time I'd eaten half of the mug, I was strong enough to hold it; cupped between my hands as I sipped from the brim. The mysterious stranger sat next to me. With a damp fur coat draped across his shoulders, bunny slippers, and a pair of cracked, oversized glasses.

He was short and middle-aged with grey in his brown hair; like a man who'd become a grandfather early in his life. With a soft, kind smile on his square face and a thin pointed nose. He was mouse-like almost, scraggly and small but radiating kindness.

"Howdoyoudo?" he sang, a thick Germanic accent on his tongue, as he leaned in adjusted his glasses as if to inspect me now that I was awake.

"I-I've been better." I didn't know if it was nerves or genuine insanity, but I laughed under my breath before finishing the rest of my soup as he patted my back.

I know I should have been skeptical about letting this strange man comfort me, but it was his eyes. They were sad, but the light of the fire shone in them, and I knew I could trust him.

"I don't expect you to talk now. But later, if you have time, I'd like to know how you ended up in the river. Yes?" He asked, as if he really believed I had somewhere to be.

I only laughed a little harder and gave a nod of my head.

"It's uncanny, isn't it?" A familiar voice spoke, and I was able to put a face to the other man.

"Dodo," the mouse-like man warned, "don't frighten the poor thing. She only just awoke, but yes, I agree."

Dodo, as he was called, was a complete paradox to the mouse. He was tall, at least six-four, with slicked-back grey hair and a perfectly round stomach. His presence was strict, gloomy almost, like your least favourite math teacher. And yet the wrinkles next to his hazel eyes were ones of laughter, not worry.

"Truly baffling," the Dodo said again.

"What?" I croaked, the salt sucking all the liquid from my tongue as I stared between the two.

"Why, kiddo, you're a dead ringer. A perfect pair!"

"An indistinguishable match," the mouse added.

"I don't understand ... To who?"

"Why, to Alice, of course! It's the reason we almost left you there, you know, wouldn't have wanted to bring her here."

"Alice? You mean Alice Liddell? But she's dead."

"That didn't stop you from washing up here, did it?"

"I guess not. Well, thanks for not thinking I was Alice, I guess? And ... Thank you for helping me."

Kindness. It was something few people would have expected to find six feet down and in the cities conduit, but against all odds it existed. It thrived there, in the eyes of a mousy man and his strange bulbous friend.

They were misfits. Abandoned, heartbroken, forgotten. People that had lost everything, or that simply didn't belong up above.

The embers of the fire jumped and popped. A living breathing thing that Maus fed as he tossed more kindling and paper into its belly.

"Everyone needs a friend in Wonderland, Miss ..."

"Alina," I offered, "Adelina LaVella."

"A strong Italian name. For a strong Italian girl." With a bright smile and a glint in his eyes he wiped his charcoal-stained hands on his jacket sleeves and offered me a proper greeting. "Professor Bernhardt Maus, but you may call me Maus."

"A professor? Do you still ... can I ask what you teach?'

"Taught," he corrected with a sad smile. "It's okay, you're not wrong to assume I'm no longer in my field of work; living down here. And the answer is: history. Global and local. I don't like to brag, but if you'll allow me, I have deeper roots of knowledge into this city than most other esteemed academics. But enough about me, what brings you to the city, fräulein?"

A murder. A will. A reason to get out of the print shop for a change. They were all good answers, all answers I wanted to give, and all mostly true. But there was only one I cared about.

"A photograph."

"Oh?" It was like a game to him, as the fire warmed us. He pulled up a crate and sat with his hands on his knees. "Let me guess, following a trail of a fellas' steamy photographs? A sexy Easter egg hunt with a gorgeous Eastern European man at the end? Yes?"

He wiggled a sensual brow. "That would be saucy, wouldn't it?"

I couldn't hold in my laugh. "God no."

"Maus, you buffoon," the Dodo sang as he swatted at the Professor. "She doesn't seem the type to chase after boys. It ought to be a mystery. Show us the photograph, girl."

As I remembered the goons, the colour drained from my cheeks. They had my bag. They had my story, all my ID's, they had photographs of Alice being involved in all sorts of crimes, but ... they didn't have the most important ones.

And luckily, I was a righty.

I looked down at my feet and wondered how far down river my left shoe had gone. Who would find my beaten-up boot on the stream's edge and think nothing of it? Deciding to make my naked toes no longer lonely, I slipped out of my other boot and dumped its contents onto my lap.

The photograph of the manor, my copy of the signed will, and a lozenge wrapped I must have accidentally snagged from Mr. Pucks desk. My only worldly possessions.

Maus didn't seem to mind touching the foot-photo, but as he passed it along to Dodo, the bird-like man treated it with delicate hands.

"I want to know more about this," I hushed, propping up my heels a little closer to the fire and feeling the heat dry them. "I need to know more about it. Do you recognize the building? It's a place uptown, they call it-"

"The Penbrooke Estate." Maus' gaze drifted for a moment. In sadness? Maybe pity? Whatever it was, it was gone a second later as he passed the photograph back to me.

"You've heard about it?"

"I used to tutor the Penbrooke children," he stated matter-of-factly. "At the time it was owned by a man named Doctor Frances Leonetti. He lived there with his wife and three daughters. Such a shame what happened to that poor family, but then tragedy does seem to follow some."

I could feel my blood pressure rise, a tingle in my sweaty toes, and my hair standing on end. I wanted to know more, needed to know everything he knew. After hours of scouring the internet, I'd found bits and pieces of the house in the photograph, only fragments of the life my mother took me away from.

A life I was never allowed to know about.

"Yes, he was a doctor. Graduated some fancy prep school, but it wasn't enough for a rich guy like him, so he wanted to be an architect on the side. He ended up designing half the homes in Wonderland before he got sued for using 'improper building materials.' I didn't even wanna' look up what that meant. But ... I don't remember anything mentioning daughters."

"I don't expect you would, they took their mother's maiden name. Liddell. I'd stay away from that house, fräulein."

"Why's that?" I asked.

"It's cursed," the Dodo sang sweetly. "Father drowned mysteriously, and the mother fell down a well. The girls ended up living in it alone for years. It belongs to the youngest now."

"Or at least it used to ..." I mumbled under my breath.

"Some respect, please Dodo. It's not cursed, just ... bad fortune, that's all. It's unfortunate, the poor girls ... and sweet Alice. I swear, it was all those years alone in that place that twisted her up inside. All bad fortune."

Clapping his hands together, the Maus stole us from our trance, our daydreams of mysterious deaths and forgotten children cleared away as he shot the Dodo a silencing look. "So what's next, fräulein? We would love to keep you here, but I have a feeling you don't belong with us. Someone must be waiting for you?"

Danny.

I'd almost forgotten my life before my murder. I'd almost forgotten the life I lived before Wonderland. As much of a pig as he was, Danny Ehrlich cared about me, and as he boozed away and neglected my goldfish, he'd have to realize something had gone wrong if and when I didn't come back.

"Ehrlich. When I don't show up to work on Monday, I'm sure he'll call the police. They'll come find me."

"In Wonderland? You'd have a better chance following the sewers back to Montana than having the police get involved; or wherever it is you came from."

My lips formed a thin line as I squinted in defiance at the bulbous man. "Then I guess I'm stuck here. No money, no ID's, no clue ... "

Maus placed a hand on my back as he hushed, "No way out ... Unless ..."

"Unless?"

He paused, puckering his lips as if to answer a particularly tricky question. "Well, we have a saying here: The dead may sink, but revenge makes a decent life raft. And if you are in the business for justice ..."

"And you've got nowhere else to be," Dodo added.

"The man with one hat and no head is a friend for free ..." The two said in unison.

In a silent agreement, the pair grabbed me by my arms, lifted me to my feet, and dragged me off so I faced the opposite direction. I stumbled a few steps, until they spun me around and, without explanation, continued on their path.

My bare feet ached with cold as I hopped from toe to toe, stuffing the contents of my shoe into my pockets and struggling to keep up with the two men as they pulled me along with a newfound purpose.

"Where are we going?" I yelped as my head started to spin. Too much movement. Too much sound. I could see the black dots dancing in my vision as I reminded myself to breathe.

"Come now, fräulein. We haven't a second to waste. We'll take you to him, I'm sure he'd love the company. It's nearly teatime, after all."

"Who's he? And where are we going?" I asked again as we turned.

Left.

Left.

Right.

Under dripping pipes, through ankle deep sludge, my bare feet became coated in green muck as I began to slide. But the pair persisted, ranting about him and how it had been so long since he'd had a proper guest.

"His name is Harrison Maddox, but he goes by many names," Maus finally said.

"He's a crazed vigilante with no regard for rules, hygiene, or returning his library books," the Dodo casually added, as I looked between the pair.

"He's a friend," Maus assured, "and he will want to help you."

"Why would anyone in Wonderland help anyone but themselves?" For a minute, a sad look shone in Maus' eyes and I regretted my words. "I mean ... why would he want to help me."

"Because the White Rabbit tried to kill him too."

"Damn. That dude really needs a new execution method ..."

"You don't say? Now, I'm afraid this is where we leave you, fräulein. It was a pleasure to meet you. Few people we find washed up in the river can bring so much light into a room as you."

Maus placed a hand on my cheek, and with one last bittersweet smile, he guided me towards a door.

"Oh, and one last thing. Please take this." He slid off his damp fur coat and draped it across my shoulders. "In case you get cold."

My neck craned from the sudden weight, but I was thankful for the kind gesture.

There was a light with an odd greenish tint that shone at the end of the way, and a shadow that moved in its glow. It could have been construction from the world above, but I swear it was my heartbeat that drummed in my ears as we stepped into the room.

An abandoned headquarters maybe, from a part of the city's subways that never existed. That was where we stood, as Maus knocked on the cement wall.

Decaying furniture was splayed around the room. A foreman's desk, some office chairs and a lunch table, stacked and rotten, formed some kind of twisted throne. It was like a scene in a children's play. As if a gang of fourth graders had been ordered to construct a make-shift courtroom, and they had used whatever they could to make it happen.

The whole thing was bathed in emerald light, the clutter so distracting I barely noticed the man sitting hunched over in one of the chairs.

I took in a sharp breath, Maus knocked again, and my mind raced with questions as the stranger stood.

He was too still to be alive, like a puppet with no one to pull his strings, and yet he lifted his head with just enough movement to catch the odd light and for me to see his face.

He had sandy hair that fell to his neck, with strands that stuck out on all sides, and a slightly crooked nose. His eyes a washed out emerald that danced with flecks of gold, and a smile so wicked, some might even call it mad.

"I think you ought to meet Miss-" Maus began before the ominous man stood, each limb lengthened and lean.

"Miss Adelina LaVella," he spoke in a terrifyingly soothing voice, while snatching a thin fedora decorated with a playing card from the shelf behind him.

"Care for a cup of tea?"

♦

Alrighty ya'll another chapter and I'm sure you have many new questions.

What does everyone think so far? What are the answers you want next? Which questions are burning at the back of your mind? But, most importantly, team Dodo or team Maus ❤

Oh yeah and one more thing ...

...

Ya'll ready to meet the hatter?

Good fun aside I hope you are all staying safe and healthy out there in these times of COVOID-19. Please stay inside if you can, stay active, stay healthy and wash your dang hands. Oh, and pick up your face masks and gloves people, I know this is an apocalypse but that ain't no excuse for littering.

Comment  cowardly, oversized pigeon if you've made it this far.

Don't forget to vote, comment, share, and add White Rabbit to your reading list for more updates!

- Lots of love from this sewer dwelling writer, Allie <3