Alice in Wonderland - With Enchanted Snowmen, a Fortress, and Magical Cigarettes
Friday night, I had the worst Alice in Wonderland dream ever. It went something like this.
About five years ago, something terrible happened in the land. A famine, a flood, an attack from a neighboring state - whatever it was, it was devastating on a large scale. One of the people affected took charge and led all the surviors away from the worst of it all, and he built a huge fortress, all black on the outside. It was like a castle - one of the real ones, with walls seven feet thick and a door twenty feet tall. It reminded me of that book The Looking Glass Wars, which was a terrible twist on Alice in Wonderland and you should never waste your time reading it.
Anywho. So in the dream, I had a five-year-old daughter and was knocked up with another kid (a boy), who was going to be born soon. I looked like I'd eaten a lot, not like I was pregnant. There were all these techno-medieval outfits (talk about genre crossing - like this but with more silvery metal). We had gone to live in the fortress, along with some guy to whom I was supposedly married, but he was kind of foppish for my tastes. Maybe it was the clothing speaking.
When we arrived at the fortress, we had trouble getting in. There were multiple doors to each side of the big castle-y door, each one with a screen door and a regular-ish door, made of metal. Each one had a keypad with a different code. I had no clue how to get in, but I finally broke the code and we all marched in. (They really should have given us a code, as they were expecting us.)
The main entrance was tiled in black and red, with coat-of-armor flags sticking out from the walls and people walking about like it was a market. We discovered that after five years of living there, everyone had become disenchanted with the fortress. They didn't feel safe anymore; they felt imprisoned. There was a lot of dissent, and things were rather uneasy.
But we didn't leave. We had heard good things about the leader of this place and figured he was taking care of it, so we moved in, going up the slow, enormous elevators to find our room.
Except we never made it there. Somewhere along the line, Foppish Husband disappeared, and it was just me and the little girl. I spoke with several people, trying to quell the dissent and stop the rebellion from happening. We went outside and saw that the Enchanted Snowmen were lining up to battle some kind of dragon thing, in a yard that looked just like my grandparents's. The snowmen had bits of black metal built into them, as partial plates of armor and something that looked like a headband.
A person near me said, "Don't worry. The snowmen are a great defense. The dissenters will have to use fire as a last resort, and this battle will take a long time."
And then the dissenters used fire. Right away. Like you would against an army of mobile snowmen.
We ran for the fortress. And I started feeling labor pangs, which are more like bad gas in a dream. Painstakingly, I typed in the code and ran across the black and red floor to the elevator.
Just as it opened, an Enchanter stepped out into the market-esque hall. He was a cross between Edward Scissorhands (with real hands) and Dream, from The Sandman. Creepy, thin, darkly clothed but pale, and with a good humor on his face that made my potential fate even more creepy.
I shoved myself into the elevator and pushed the "door close" button, but it only half-worked, because the doors were made of two odd parts. One was a sliding curtain that needed to click into place at the top and bottom - it had slid over and left a five-inch gap between itself and the wall. The other was one of those old brass criss-cross gates, which needed to close on the outside and was still partially open, and I could see the Enchanter walking toward me.
I tugged frantically on the doors and managed to close them, and the elevator moved slowly upward. When it finally opened, I saw my daughter standing in the hallway, her back toward me and looking out the window. The tile here was black and white, and rubble was everywhere. She still wore her shiny black and white party dress, her favorite, which she wanted to wear for moving day. I called for her and she turned. Before I could run to her (as well as you can when you're in labor), an Enchanter stood in the hallway, looking exactly like the other one I'd met.
He pulled out a cigarette, which I knew meant certain doom - that was how he readied and used his spells. My daughter turned to face him as he put the cigarette to his mouth and, instead of breathing in, breathed out. A puff of cinders appeared before him.
I yelled for my daughter to get out of the way, to run, to move. But she was too frightened, and the Enchanter's (invisible) blast sliced her left shoulder. Then he disappeared.
I'd started running to her side before he even cast the spell, but didn't reach her till he was gone. Her sleeve was perforated, as was the shirt beneath it. But I think she was okay. And I was still in labor.
And then I woke up. Apparently puppy chow gives me weird dreams. If anyone wants to turn this into a movie, I'll totally sell you the rights.
About five years ago, something terrible happened in the land. A famine, a flood, an attack from a neighboring state - whatever it was, it was devastating on a large scale. One of the people affected took charge and led all the surviors away from the worst of it all, and he built a huge fortress, all black on the outside. It was like a castle - one of the real ones, with walls seven feet thick and a door twenty feet tall. It reminded me of that book The Looking Glass Wars, which was a terrible twist on Alice in Wonderland and you should never waste your time reading it.
Anywho. So in the dream, I had a five-year-old daughter and was knocked up with another kid (a boy), who was going to be born soon. I looked like I'd eaten a lot, not like I was pregnant. There were all these techno-medieval outfits (talk about genre crossing - like this but with more silvery metal). We had gone to live in the fortress, along with some guy to whom I was supposedly married, but he was kind of foppish for my tastes. Maybe it was the clothing speaking.
When we arrived at the fortress, we had trouble getting in. There were multiple doors to each side of the big castle-y door, each one with a screen door and a regular-ish door, made of metal. Each one had a keypad with a different code. I had no clue how to get in, but I finally broke the code and we all marched in. (They really should have given us a code, as they were expecting us.)
The main entrance was tiled in black and red, with coat-of-armor flags sticking out from the walls and people walking about like it was a market. We discovered that after five years of living there, everyone had become disenchanted with the fortress. They didn't feel safe anymore; they felt imprisoned. There was a lot of dissent, and things were rather uneasy.
But we didn't leave. We had heard good things about the leader of this place and figured he was taking care of it, so we moved in, going up the slow, enormous elevators to find our room.
Except we never made it there. Somewhere along the line, Foppish Husband disappeared, and it was just me and the little girl. I spoke with several people, trying to quell the dissent and stop the rebellion from happening. We went outside and saw that the Enchanted Snowmen were lining up to battle some kind of dragon thing, in a yard that looked just like my grandparents's. The snowmen had bits of black metal built into them, as partial plates of armor and something that looked like a headband.
A person near me said, "Don't worry. The snowmen are a great defense. The dissenters will have to use fire as a last resort, and this battle will take a long time."
And then the dissenters used fire. Right away. Like you would against an army of mobile snowmen.
We ran for the fortress. And I started feeling labor pangs, which are more like bad gas in a dream. Painstakingly, I typed in the code and ran across the black and red floor to the elevator.
Just as it opened, an Enchanter stepped out into the market-esque hall. He was a cross between Edward Scissorhands (with real hands) and Dream, from The Sandman. Creepy, thin, darkly clothed but pale, and with a good humor on his face that made my potential fate even more creepy.
I shoved myself into the elevator and pushed the "door close" button, but it only half-worked, because the doors were made of two odd parts. One was a sliding curtain that needed to click into place at the top and bottom - it had slid over and left a five-inch gap between itself and the wall. The other was one of those old brass criss-cross gates, which needed to close on the outside and was still partially open, and I could see the Enchanter walking toward me.
I tugged frantically on the doors and managed to close them, and the elevator moved slowly upward. When it finally opened, I saw my daughter standing in the hallway, her back toward me and looking out the window. The tile here was black and white, and rubble was everywhere. She still wore her shiny black and white party dress, her favorite, which she wanted to wear for moving day. I called for her and she turned. Before I could run to her (as well as you can when you're in labor), an Enchanter stood in the hallway, looking exactly like the other one I'd met.
He pulled out a cigarette, which I knew meant certain doom - that was how he readied and used his spells. My daughter turned to face him as he put the cigarette to his mouth and, instead of breathing in, breathed out. A puff of cinders appeared before him.
I yelled for my daughter to get out of the way, to run, to move. But she was too frightened, and the Enchanter's (invisible) blast sliced her left shoulder. Then he disappeared.
I'd started running to her side before he even cast the spell, but didn't reach her till he was gone. Her sleeve was perforated, as was the shirt beneath it. But I think she was okay. And I was still in labor.
And then I woke up. Apparently puppy chow gives me weird dreams. If anyone wants to turn this into a movie, I'll totally sell you the rights.
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