Alice is Not In Wonderland

Alice, Alice, Heart and Soul, Lost Her Mind Not Long Ago

    It was snowing when I first saw the butterfly. The outline of its wings was this electric blue color that reminded me of blue raspberry lollipops and the inside was so thin it was almost completely transparent. The top and bottom wings looked as if they were fused together, as if it was simply a caterpillar that had stabbed two crystal hearts into its back. The butterfly was flying like it too. Maybe it was the cold. Its wings were erratically jolting around and it seemed to be going up and down more than it was moving forward, but I couldn't take my eyes off of it. It was like I had spent my entire life in grayscale and this was the first time I was seeing color.
    All of the sudden the butterfly somehow realized it knew how to fly and took off towards a field of trees standing where I could have sworn there was a freeway the last time I looked. I glanced over my shoulder. There was a four lane avenue a block behind me but that wasn't exactly what I remembered being in front of me. The metallic black and grey buildings with their concrete pillars and foundations rose into the pale blue sky and caught the midday sun in their windows on all sides except for the park to my left. It was nothing but perfectly manicured lawns and colorful structures I could never tell were supposed to be odd playgrounds or modern art that stretched for a few blocks ahead on into where the city met woods. I laughed to myself. I'd lived in this zip code–let alone this city–all twenty-five years of my life and yet apparently I can't even remember where the streets are.
    Turning back around to focus my attention back on the absolutely beautiful butterfly and there seemed to be more trees than before. There were more shades of brown and green now. Now, there was a dark green bush accented by its red berries and a tree that seemed to tower above the rest. I started running after the butterfly, enamored by its wings. I could feel the air rush past me as I sped up, but the wind seemed to come in odd bursts that only hit either my left or right shoulder, and nothing else. It felt like I was bumping into people, but I glanced behind me and there wasn't anyone until the end of the block where the city returned to its usual overcrowded clusters waiting to cross the street. The wind whistled like people were crying out when you bump into them too, but there wasn't anyone there so it couldn't be that. There seemed to be more trees then when I first saw the butterfly but then again I wasn't exactly paying attention to anything else.
    I stopped short when I heard someone scream behind me as if they had just witnessed someone about to be run over by a car. I spun around, trying to see who had screamed and if they needed help. But there was no one there. Thinking it was maybe a train whistle somewhere in the distance, I spun back around. My attention was back on the butterfly.
    However, all I was able to see was the butterfly shatter into a thousand tiny crystal pieces, or maybe pixy dust, that floated to the ground before disappearing like snow around it. I didn't care what it was called, all I cared about was that the butterfly was gone. Its shards and snowflakes fell in tandem to the ground before melting under the heat of the city. That feeling overtook me so much I started to cry. I didn't know where the butterfly came from or how it had died in that way, but it felt as if I had just watched the best thing in the world die in front of my eyes.
    "It's okay, those guys love to do that. They're still there, you just can't see them anymore. It's like a game to them." said a voice behind me.
    I spun around, but I didn't see anyone. Confused, I craned my neck to look around the trees that seemed to slowly switch from a cluster of trees to a dense forest every time I looked away.
    "Ahem, down here," the voice said, significantly more annoyed than before.
I was expecting a child or maybe someone with dwarfism, but instead I was met with an anthropomorphic rabbit.
They were leaning against the blueish grey cobblestone wall that lined the corner of the park. The wall was only a few feet high, but next to the rabbit it came to shoulder height. The grass was slightly overgrown from where a grounds worker had been lazy with the edger that seemed to be tickling the rabbit's long floppy ears. They was dressed in some kind of tweed waistcoat that was probably originally the same chestnut brown as the tree trunks behind them, but it was so faded that it resembled those old couches people toss outside with a spray painted Free Couch sign, like one sitting in my musty apartment I obtained that very way. The bulging green pockets on either side seemed to be given the same treatment and the rabbit's whole body exuded impatience that was somehow endearing.
"Oh I'm sorry. I was looking for someone . . . taller"
"Well I imagine you're used to that," the rabbit replied. It was hard to tell if what I had said had made them less annoyed or more. "It's a penny come quick they pull whenever they find newcomers. Someone stabbed one while it was invisible a while ago and found out. It was quite the discovery. Something about light fractals and mirrors and their Tom and Dick humor."
I didn't fully understand what the rabbit was saying. It must have been talking in some unfamiliar dialect I'd never heard before, but it was strangely funny. I started to laugh as the rabbit retrieved a gold old-fashioned pocket watch from one of the green pockets in the rabbit's waistcoat.
"What are you laughing at-Oh my stars and garters, I'm late. You should probably stick with me. This place isn't fun if you're not from here and it's getting dark anyway."
I glanced up at the afternoon sun still high in the sky right as it quickly sank behind the horizon and the sky ran through its colors in a few seconds. Bright blue to charcoal black in the blink of an eye. I looked back at the rabbit to see if maybe they could explain that too, but they were already hopping away at a surprisingly fast pace.
Everything felt wrong and right at the same time. There was a part of me that knew something was off; that something was wrong with my mind or someone had been snuck something into one of the drinks I had at that bar last night. But there was another part of me that told me this was real, that I had stepped out of my own world where there was nothing but an interview for a sucky job waiting for me and into a better world. Whether or not it was really true or not, I really liked the idea that this was a new world that I had the honor to enter and my old life I was already desperate to escape was over.
We sprinted for a while through the darkness. I had remembered it being a full moon just a week ago, but I must have been mistaken because it was a full moon that night as well. The moon glinted off of the shiny white coat of the rabbit and danced along the wall to the park we were running along. We were towing the line between the complete woods and the park and its skyscrapers in the distance. It was an odd sensation to see. On my left was thick woods with trees and thick enough you could build a decent sized house by hollowing them out and every shape, color, and size of leaf you could ever imagine a tree to have. Some of the leaves were spiky and dark green while others were the size of my palm and had flecks of blue in the granny smith apple colored leaves. You could only see three or four trees back before the different branches and shrubbery completely covered my view. And on my right was the same cold cobblestone wall and its medium green lawn. It was easy to see which was the more interesting side.
I kept trying to catch up to the rabbit to ask him where we were going or how much longer it would take to get there, but no matter how much faster I ran the more the rabbit seemed to speed up. I guess that makes sense considering rabbits were built to run while my incredibly unatheltic body most certainly was not.
The rabbit finally took a second to catch their breath and I was able to catch up with them.
"W-where are we going?" I panted, as the rabbit pulled out their watch again.
"Right here my dear. The queen will be here soon and she'll be quite glad to see you. I'm afraid it's not the Fielding Hotel, but I can promise it's safe. Even if it is just short of the sheet."
The rabbit took off down an alleyway before I could ask them what they meant by the queen or a sheet. I knew they had said to stay there, but my curiosity had gotten the better of me. My mother had always chastised me for doing that as a child, but I gave in once again.
I took off after the rabbit and tried to speed up to catch up to them, but they were way to fast for me to even have a shred of a chance. I chased them as they made a sharp right turn into the woods. As we twisted around various trees and shifted direction multiple times, I knew I wasn't going to be able to make it back to where the rabbit had told me to wait. But I didn't care anymore. I felt truly free for the first time in my life. I felt a strange joy I didn't know was possible.
So, I didn't turn back. I kept running after the rabbit and with every pounding step against the dirt a little bit of reason left my mind.

———

Cockney Rhyming Slang "Translations":
Throughout the story the rabbit character uses several pieces of a certain manner of speaking that comes from a somewhat old-fashioned dialect used by lower-class people in London called Cockney that uses slang words based on if the actual word and the slang word rhyme. Thus,
Penny Come Quick → Trick
Tom and Dick → Sick
Frog and Toad → Road
Short of a sheet → in the street