"So, my dear," coughed Alice, letting her hair down and reaching into her satchel, "how are things?"
"Good as ever I suppose," I replied.
Her great-grandmother kept her head down as they ventured through the Tulgey Wood, her voice at almost a near whisper.
"It seems a pity that we cannot speak so loud, but I only do so because the GPS coordinates will start to play soon."
Annoyed, Susan responded, "GPS coordinates? This is a fairy-tale world, not a silly simulation."
"More like a simulation, and less like a 'fairy-world,'" explained Alice. "Really, hadn't your mother taught you anything? This is not one of your fairytales. I have had MANY descendants, not just you. You know what happened to them?"
Susan went slack-jawed, thinking this through. It was true that there were no discernable relatives. Anytime Christmas or another holiday would roll around, her mom would act as if she had no clue what anyone was talking about.
"It's a tricky business," explained Alice. "Being on the inside of the Earth? It's why so many people had tried to make stories. They're in the business of warning others you see. Take one wrong move, and you've stepped into someone else's story. Why, there is the Underworld on the other side of this chess board. Oh no..."
A purple mass began bobbling up and down above us, before finally revealing itself to have a loopy and twisted grin.
"It's him," whispered Alice, cowering.
A giant smile appeared above us, flashing his brilliant teeth and staring at us all wide-eyed.
"Why, it's only the Cheshire Cat," I said, recognizing his ears and whiskers anywhere.
"That's not just any cat," said Alice. "He's one of the game bosses, and you will have to play."
Susan felt herself fall off the horse while Alice rode off on Starlight into the distance. She brushed the dirt off her dress and stared up. Cheshire had gotten bigger now.
"Tell me little one," said Cheshire, "Why is it that you are so keen on escaping to anywhere but your reality? Why not stay in the present of where you are?"
Susan rolled her eyes.
"Reality is B-O-R-I-N-G! Really, if you were in a day of my shoes, you would see how utterly despicable it is. The most fun I can have been watching the squirrels chase back and forth up and down the trees. Really, there are better ways to spend one's time."
"Like writing? I do see that you've written a lot of poems in your notebook. Tell me dear, why do you want to become a writer?"
Susan thought for a moment and said, "I don't want to be insignificant."
"You can't help that," tsked Cheshire. "Really dear, we are all utterly insignificant. If you think of us as people that go ahead and leap off the page as heroes of the story, you are going to be for a lifetime of disappointment. Tell me, WHO ARE YOU, and why are you here?"
Susan thought for a moment, then started to cry.
"OH GOD, not this again! Really, tell me more...."
"I think... I think.... I think I am not real."
"What makes you say that?" implied Cheshire, staring harder at her.
"I think I'm a character in someone else's story," confessed Susan.
"REALLY? I am highly interested in this, please go on."
"I.... I.... am in the fanfiction of a 14-year-old girl. Someone who is so bored with her life. She decided to write this story in order to feel more interesting than her other friend, a girl who had actually completed a story. She wanted to up-end that girl by writing a story that was better than hers. So, she created this Mary-Sue character. She named me after her... Sue..."
The Cheshire Cat smiled so wide it looked as if he would crack his teeth.
"Now this is the real riddle, you know you are not perfect. You know you are a character in someone else's play. So, tell me, who are you? What's really going on?"
Susan was able to see clear as day that the author herself was frustratedly typing onto the keys of her computer, staring off into the sunset of the far-off pasture longingly, wishing she would enjoy the sunset rather than do a story that she wasn't sure she should be completing, asking herself, "Who are you?"
The girl did not answer, but she continued to hear the click-clackety of keys as they pounded against her desktop computer keyboard.
Susan held her head in pain and started to moan loudly, rocking herself back and forth as she came to terms with her creator. There was no escaping this terrible story no matter how hard she tried. A story, invented by a girl who wanted so badly to believe in happy endings, who would do anything to change the bad parts of her life and make them into something good. Even if there was nothing good that was coming.
In and out, her breath float again like the stuff of dreams. She saw herself in a long trail of stories, and those stories were stretching out like little constellations etched into the night sky - visible for one moment, gone the next. Who's to say what is real, and what isn't? Time seemed to etch on, but Susan could see very clearly that it was like a sieve. This would not go on forever, so she was determined to make the best of the time as it was allowed. The Cheshire Cat was long gone now, and she wasn't sure of why Alice had said that she was afraid of the creature.
It was like a plot-hole. Susan suspected this story was full of a lot of plot-holes, but she had to do her best to get through them as she could and make the best of each different situation. The one way she could keep the story from ending was to go ahead and prolong it for as long as possible. Which is how she sees the Door Mouse again, walking past her briskly, as if not wanting to talk to her.
"Hello?" asked Susan.
The Door Mouse does not respond, just simply turning her head away from Susan as if she does not exist.
"Hello? I need to find my great-grandma Alice."
"I have no clue who that is," chimed the Door Mouse. "I have no clue who you are either, so I suspect that you had better go ahead and leave."
"What do you mean you do not know?" asked Susan. "We were just talking 10 seconds ago."
"I do not recall," commented the Door Mouse. "Really, I do have a faulty memory. I'm going to work all the time with the White Rabbit, and then I have to go ahead and stop for tea which always puts me to sleep. Really, there is no end to my torment. The White Rabbit talks a lot about this too. The passage of time."
The Door Mouse sighed at this thought to herself, then seeing the animals staring at the ocean, began to go ahead and run.
"Stop!" cried Susan. "Wait a minute, I don't understand. Why is time so important?"
At the beach, there were a variety of animals all muttering to themselves, looking extremely cross. A Dodo Bird was standing there, pacing back and forth, then looked up and saw Susan.
"You're here!" he shouted. "Everyone gathers around, there's a storyteller in our midst."
Susan wanted to correct them but remembered that she wasn't sure quite who she was nor how she got here, so she just nodded her head.
"Tell us, what is a story?"
Susan thought about this for a while, but she felt as if everyone's eyes bore into her skull. So, she simply answered, "A story is a morality tale. You have your characters, and each character stands for something in that tale. The characters move from one polarity to the other, and then they find their solution at the end."
"That sounds brilliant!" said the Dodo Bird. With that, puppets fell from the sky. They had distinctly human forms, resembling the friends that Susan knew so well (Margie, Taylor, Justin, Henry, Nicole, Caroline), but their eyes were completely blank. Their arms moved up and down like they were moving things and doing silly movements like waving their hands or picking their nose. "This begins the Caucus Race. Everyone, choose your characters. On your mark, get set, go!"
The Kings and Queens of Wonderland found themselves moving in a frenzy all over the beach. Some, like Justin, flopped up and down in the water like a seal. Taylor was doing a flip on her head, trying to do a handstand. Henry was waving his arms back and forth like he was doing the hula dance.
"Aren't they so much more entertaining this way?" commented one of the animals.
Everyone agreed with this statement, and soon the animals were in cahoots laughing their head off in laughter saying, "Humans are just so much fun."
They handed themselves prizes (which Susan found absurd), but none of them seemed to remember that Susan was there. They just let the puppets dissolve into the sand before walking away from the scene. Susan stood there, still seeing the visible outline of Henry, washed away in the sand.