Week 13 Story: Alice After Wonderland

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The hallway of the mental Asylum Alice was trapped in.

Image of Abandoned Mental Asylum in Italy.

    You've all heard the story of Alice in Wonderland, right? Well I bet you never heard what happened to her after she returned from Wonderland. 

    In the days after Alice woke up from her dream of Wonderland, people blew off her outrageous story of smoking caterpillars and Cheshire cats. They thought these dreams were just dreams of an airheaded young woman who could not entertain herself any other way. As weeks began to pass, Alice would still make offhanded comments out of the blue. Once, she saw a moth passing and exclaimed, "Oh Absolom! How nice it is to see you are no longer a caterpillar. I hope to see you again soon!". Alice frequently made these comments around others and her family knew she was not getting any better. They finally sat down one night and agreed to take Alice to the mental asylum, ironically named the Red Queen's Mental Health Institute. 

    Alice was admitted to stay as long as necessary to stop these crazy comments she had been making about "Wonderland" and the "Hatter" and all of her other imaginary friends. She did not really understand what was happening and thought that her family would be back very soon to pick her up from this strange red palace. One day, a woman with bright red hair, a dark lab coat, and a strangely large head that was unproportionable to the rest of her body walked into Alice's room.

    "My name is Beth and I am going to be your doctor during your stay at this Institute. I believe you're suffering from delusions and extreme nightmares. You can't seem to tell what's real and what's fake. I'm going to start you on some medicine that should help with the delusions. If that doesn't help we might start electroshock therapy or we'll just have to cut off your head hahaha!" the doctor laughed at her own joke, shaking her head.

    Alice was looking at the doctor with wide eyes, disbelief evident on her face. A deep understanding passed through Alice and she knew without a doubt that she had just encountered the red queen for the second time around.

Author's Note: I took Lewis Carroll's original story Alice in Wonderland and made a sequel to it. Nobody really knows what happened to Alice when she returned home other than thinking her entire trip to Wonderland was a dream. I changed the outcome of the original story by making Alice seem like a delusional girl who could not get this idea of Wonderland out of her head. She was almost obsessed with it to the point where everyone thought she had gone crazy. When her family takes her to the mental institute, a real life "red queen" is Alice's doctor. It is at this point that she hopes for a savior from this woman's wrath but does not expect to come out of this situation better than before. Alice is resigned to her fate.

Bibliography: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865).