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You stared warily at the knavish attractive man with the straw top hat who stared openly back at you from his seat. His slightly stubbled face was impassive and he stayed relaxed in his chair as he said, “I run the Tea Shoppe”. You took in his sienna colored tight fitting leather jacket with it’s large folded over lapels across the chest and neck. It was at total odds with his maroon dress shirt he wore underneath with paisley printed hues of orange and gold. He also had a matching maroon tie loosely and crookedly draped around his neck. He wore matching dark maroon pinstriped tailored dress pants with short leather ankle boots the same color as his jacket. Once again you thought that any other man wearing such a haphazard and clashing outfit would look absolutely ridiculous, but this man defied normal beauty standards and made it look put together and snazzy. As you gawked at the mysterious man in front of you the dirty homeless man unceremoniously took hold of your right arm and began to unwind the bandana he had placed around your shoulder just before you both entered the building.

The homeless man pointed at your oyster tattoo as he looked at the seated man and said eagerly, “See!” You drew your arm away from him and kept your eyes on the man in front of you. The attractive man in the hat stood up gracefully in one fluid motion and he began to pace leisurely around his makeshift office. “How did you break out of the scarab?” he asked conversationally in his slightly cockneyed British accent. He had his back turned to you as you asked, “The beetle thing?” He made an assenting “uhn” noise in reply as he turned around to face you again. “Well I used my hairpin and…” you trailed off and held out your hands in an all encompassing gesture to indicate in no words that that’s how you came to be here. “Wow,” he replied as he ducked his head at you in acknowledgment as he leaned against his desk. You suddenly became self conscious of the fact that you were still water logged from your swim in the lake. Your hair was choppy in thick wet strands and every now and then you could feel a water droplet fall down your neck. Your jeans and t-shirt were thoroughly damped and clung to your skin heavily. Your boots felt slightly squishy beneath your feet as well. Feeling just as grungy as the homeless man beside you, you felt compelled to point out the obvious, “Well as you can see I’m drenched.” The good-looking man before you gave you a blatantly obvious appreciative stare. Feeling awkward at his unrepentant gaze you kept talking, “This place…where…what is it?”

“Oh, Wonderland.” He answered simply with an elegant flair of his hands pointing upwards towards the ceiling. “Wonderland?” you repeated skeptically “That’s a story in a kid’s book.” The attractive man’s boredly amused face became somber as he replied back flatly, “Does this look like a kid’s story to you?” After a tensed pause you answered him back seriously with a simple, “No.” The man then easily pushed himself off of the desk’s edge and began striding casually towards you while picking back up his earlier conversational tone, “It’s changed a lot since then.” You watched him as he drew closer and asked, “So you are saying that it was real?” As soon as he stood directly in front of you he pointed with one hand that was now holding a small magnifying glass, “You Oysters don’t know how to find us so…excuse me,” he said while gently taking hold of your right arm and inspecting your shoulder where the tattoo was with the magnifying glass, “So you tell yourselves we don’t exist and quite frankly I’d like to keep it that way.” Affronted by his slightly accusatorial tone you demanded, “Why am I an Oyster? Because of this?” you indicated your new hunter green tattoo and looked back up at him. He was maybe a head taller than you were. He scrunched his face up and pointed with his magnifying glass lazily at your shoulder. “That’s not gonna come off.” You gazed down at it dismayed and then back up at him. “Sorry,” he said playfully and not a least bit actually apologetic while he gave you a broad yet forced smile. With a slight nod of his head he continued, “Only people from your world turn green when burned by the light,” he turned around and strode back to his desk to put down his magnifying glass all the while still talking, “It’s the suit’s way of branding their catch and they call you Oysters because of the shiny pearls that you all carry inside.” When he said suits your mind instantly flashed back to the dark suited men who had drug Alice away. “What do you mean pearls?” you asked as he turned around and made his way back towards you. “She’s looking for a girl who was kidnapped. Go ahead tell him.” The homeless man suddenly interjected. The handsomely rakish man ignored your question so you decided to do as your homeless friend instructed. “I’m looking for my friend Alice.” The old man seemed to startle at the name and then he turned toward the other man practically vibrating with excitement now. The younger man’s dark eyebrows shot up for an instant as he said, “Wow, really?” He then began to circle you slowly, eying you up and down, while he held out his arms tauntingly and made a low “wooooooo” sound like a ghost. As he came around almost full circle he sidled up next to the homeless old man and clasped him around the shoulder amicably with a broad impish grin before returning his attention back to you. “Ratty here, has brought me a girl looking for Alice,” he paused and then said in a tone dry with sarcasm, “Of legend.”

The homeless man, Ratty, started to stare at you intently with an eager smile as if you were a winning lottery ticket. You looked back at them both and confused you asked, “Who?” The young man inhaled as he drew his arm away from Ratty and said, “The last um,” he looked down at his hand with a slightly disgusted look as if it were now dirty from touching the old man, which it probably was, before he started circling you slowly again in the same path he had earlier, “The last time a girl, called Alice, came here from your world…she brought down the whole house of cards. Oh yeah,” he finally stopped in front of you and locked his dark eyes onto yours as he leaned in saying, “Made quite an impression.” He then turned his head towards Ratty who was hovering gleefully a foot away at your side and said, “Although it was a hundred and fifty years ago. So it can’t be the same girl. Oysters don’t even live that long.” Ratty was now face to face with the man in the hat and replied, “I still want a good price.”

At the sudden shift in topics you grew restless. “Wait a minute, I am not for sale,” you emphatically told both of them while slightly shaking your head “no” back and forth. The younger man didn’t even look back at you he just raised his hand and pointed his index finger at you to be quite while keeping his eyes locked on Ratty. They seemed to be communicating with their eyes for a few seconds as Ratty looked back at him intently with his eyes clearly showing that he was not about to back down. Finally the younger man turned toward you and indicated his head towards Ratty in a “what can you do?” sort of gesture before he started striding back towards his desk. You watched silently as Ratty began to slowly trot after his heels. “Not on the grass.” The man in the top hat called out behind him just as Ratty was about to cross the dirt to grass threshold. Ratty immediately stopped and began to jostle backwards until he was solely on the loose dirt side. The man in the hat continued past his desk towards the teal tinted windows on the wall. You quickly saw that they weren’t windows as you had previously thought, but were actually teal opaque squared glass cabinets. He slid one of the small glass doors aside to reveal a few shelves holding rows of small clear bottles with liquids that looked exactly like what was being sold outside in the main room earlier. The only difference was instead of black tops these ones had silver ones and these bottles had no labels. He picked up a bottle with a small amount of pacific blue liquid in it then he looked back at Ratty. Seeming to have thought better of it he put it back and reached for one containing an equally minimal amount of bright reddish pink fluid.

He turned back around and said cavalierly while holding the small bottle out in front of him with two hands just like a magician does when he’s showing the audience an object he’s intending to later make disappear, “Here we are. Mmmmm,” he said cheerfully while he came around the desk before holding the bottle up in one hand and saying, “Pink Nectar, filled with the thrill of human excitement.” Your stomach began to drop a little as you watched the attractively disheveled dressed man stalk across the room slowly like a predator. He continued on showily, “Fifty Oysters were drained of every last drop of hullabaloo just so that you, Ratty could taste what it feels like to win just once.” He now stood in front of the grimy homeless man and he pulled the bottle out of Ratty’s reach as he tried to grab it. The charismatic man lost the playfulness of his voice and instead instantly adapted a much sterner tone while locking eyes with Ratty and baring his teeth in a false smile. “Warning, don’t take it on an empty stomach and only one tiny little drop at a time otherwise the experience might burst your shriveled up little heart. Got it?” Ratty nodded eagerly like a child answering “Got it.” as his eyes glued onto the bottle in the other man’s hand. “Good. Go.” The young British man dismissed Ratty with a look as he handed him the bottle. Ratty grabbed it joyfully and practically skipped out of the room leaving you alone with the mysteriously charming man now standing a little ways in front of you.

He sniffed his now empty hand and made an adorably disgusted face before looking back at you and saying in a childish way, “He really smells.” Unfazed by his sudden aloofness you restlessly shuffled your feet, preparing to make a run for it if you had too. You were not going to be sold off by some drug addicted homeless dude with a rodent’s name to a flashy smooth talking drug dealer in a short top hat. “Oyster’s were drained? What do you mean drained?” you asked him with a note of challenge in your voice. He paused for a few seconds as his dark eyes shifted down towards the floor before he changed the subject in a congenial tone, “So Ratty tells me you’re looking for someone?” You were a little peeved that once again he had ignored your question, but you were worried about Alice so you dropped it and decided to see if he could help you find her instead. “Her name is Alice Chase.” The man in the hat began walking away from you and towards his desk where he grabbed a tea cup and began to sit down. Annoyed by his turning his back on you, you began to step forward as you said, “She was taken by a man with a white rabbit on his lapel.”

The man was just about to cross his legs before he stopped upon hearing your last sentence. “I see,” he said as he took a small sip of what you thought looked like normal tea. You were relieved it didn’t look like any of the brightly colored liquids that were in the clear bottles. It was one thing to have a conversation with a drug dealer, but quite another while he was getting high. “The white rabbit is an organization controlled by the suits. They travel back and forth through the looking glass and banish people from your world to ours,” he explained in his lilting cockney accent. “Why?” you asked peering at his profile as he sat there perfectly poised and sipping his tea like any average British gentleman. “To use. In the casino.” He answered automatically before taking another elegant sip. “Use?” you repeated, letting your displeasure and wariness of the word enter your voice.

The man seemed to realize what he had just told you and began to spit some of his tea back into its dainty saucer before setting it down on the clear desk in front of him. He turned to you as his voice took on a disarming tone. “Did I say use? Slip of the tongue. They’re fine,” he smoothly stood up then and took a few small steps in your direction, “They keep them alive and…moderately happy.” The more this man talked the more worried you became. Things weren’t looking good for you or Alice at the moment. “How do I get to this casino?” you asked. He pressed his smooth lips into a line with a shake of his head before he said, “That’s the thing,” his previously upbeat voice dropped an octave and became flat, “You don’t. Way too dangerous. But,” He began to step towards you know with larger more casual strides as his tone once again changed to a persuasive pitch, “I know some people who..Well know some other people... If you know what I mean?” He grinned down devilishly at you as he came to step merely inches in front of you. He locked his dark gaze onto yours as he said, “One of the privileges of running a,” here he leaned in close to you as if he were going to kiss you but he stopped just short as he said, “Tea Shoppe.” His lips had caressed the p’s in shop making them more pronounced sounding all the while making his lips look like they were puckering up for a kiss. The suddenness of it startled you and made you give a little jump. He flashed you a cheeky smile before dropping it and backing off a bit saying, “Lighten up.”

Then he playfully held up his finger in the universal “wait” gesture right before he turned his back towards you and jauntily strolled over behind and a little to the side of his desk where a clear armoire that seemed to be full of coats with a small shoe rack at the bottom stood. You hadn’t noticed it much on your first initial sweep of the room. He pulled open the two clear double doors with a flourish as he looked back at you with an impish grin as he announced, “Tadaaaa!” You ignored the flip in your stomach and stared back at him with an impassive face. No matter how good looking or suave this man might be he was a drug dealer and you were pretty sure he had just sold you to Ratty for a tiny amount of reddish pink liquid. “You,” he said while taking off a gorgeous plum colored velvet lined female’s half trench coat off the rack. He turned it around to where the front faced you as he began making his way towards you while continuing where he left off, “should wear this. It’ll cover the glow and stop you from catching a cold.” You imagined that the “glow” he was referring to was some kind of slang term meaning your oyster tattoo. He stopped about a foot in front of you with the beautiful half coat dangling harmlessly between his hands like a peace offering. His face was washed of all of its usual ruefulness as his dark eyes looked at you sincerely. You didn’t know what to make of that so you said awkwardly, “I have a little money…but I understand you don’t use that here.” His expression turned jovial again as he excitedly said, “Pieces of paper?” His eyebrows rose up as he paused before continuing on mockingly, “Pointless.” You blinked in exasperation at the man’s often changing nuances. He was the strangest and hardest to read man you’d ever met. “Then why would you help me?” you queried as he once again took to circling you. He stopped right at your back, but you refused to turn around to face him. You could feel his eyes on you and it made your spine begin to tingle. He leaned close to your shoulder, without touching it as he said slowly, “Do I need a reason to help a pretty girl who happens to be very wet?”

You instantly whipped around to eye him cautiously. Everything about him seemed to scream of his untrustworthiness and your doubt must have shown in your face because his eyes narrowed as he said bleakly, “Oh, I see. You don’t trust me.” His pale full lips scrunched up in annoyance. “Fine,” he said tersely as he threw the gorgeous coat onto the back of the square bubble lined white couch. After he looked you back in the eyes as he began again with his accent getting even more cockneyed, “I am genuinely hurt. Do you know why they call me Hatter?”

You looked up at him and after a few seconds realized he was expecting a real answer. “Because you wear a hat?” You looked pointedly up at his light colored straw woven top hat. His dark eyes shifted to the side as if he had forgotten about it. “No,” he now began to circle back around you towards the way he originally came from, “because I’m always there when they drop the hat.” You had turned with him as he circled you slowly. You didn’t want to give him your back again. He had now come full circle and was standing directly in front of you again like he had before when he was talking about running the Tea Shoppe. He leaned towards you the slightest bit as he said, “So to speak.” Only his accent having thickened made it sound more like “So a speak.” He pointed at you again, a habit of his you seemed to notice- “Philanthropy,” he called out while he began to turn and stride back towards the large comfy looking chair you had first seen him in while gesturing broadly with his arms, “Generosity. You can call it what you will, it’s who I am,” he stopped just behind the white chair and stared emphatically at your eyes as he continued, “And right now looking at you there, there’s nothing I want more than to help you find…” he trailed off as he moved his hands in a “help me out here” gesture. “Alice,” you answered flatly. “Alice!” he repeated animatedly, “And return you both to your charming world of children’s stories.” You stared at him leaning his arms casually on the broad rim of the back of the large white chair. “I don’t believe you.” You said coldly to his face. He confidently strode out from behind the chair back towards you again. Honestly, you didn’t think the energetic man could sit still for more than five minutes. “I know what you’re thinking,” he pointed at you again, “If I’m the frying pan, then that out there,” he pointed vaguely in the direction behind him, “is the fire.” Once again he was standing straight in front of you close enough that if you reached out your hand you could touch his…not that you were thinking about doing that of course. His dark eyes caught yours and he looked so earnest as he said, “I’ll be square with you. I know people who like to help your kind. And if every once in awhile I scratch their back...” He stopped there and rose his eyebrows at you in a “you know what I mean” look. “They’ll scratch yours.” You supplied for him. “Precisely! Lot of scratching.” He responded back cheerfully.

He looked down at you expectantly and finally you were going to be the one to disregard him. You turned to your side without a word and strode away from him, giving him your back as you moved towards the white plush loveseat couch where the pretty plum colored coat was still unceremoniously draped over the back. You hastily threw on the coat and its dry warmth felt wonderful as it slid over your bare arms. It was a lot lighter feeling than the heavy velvet material had led you to believe. The end of the coat fell just a little above your knees and its well tailored silhouette made you feel positively chic. The suave man, or Hatter as he had called himself, took that as your answer and he walked towards the back of the room towards a white door that he began to open. “Do try to keep up.” He stopped and leaned against it, his weight keeping it wide open as he waited for you to finish buttoning the coat in front. Your eyes widened in alarm as you saw that just beyond the open door was the dilapidated stacked city that hung several hundred stories in the air. You rolled your eyes in exasperation as you took a deep breathe to steel your nerves before you went striding towards that open door.

To be continued…

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Author’s Notes: Just for a quick FYI you may have noticed that I changed a few parts around in the conversation with Hatter. Alice is not the reader therefore she plays a much different part in this story then she does in the original movie. So I had to change it because of future plot purposes that are going to differ greatly from the show. Ratty didn’t know that her friend was Alice at first of course, he was just eager to get a reward for bringing the reader to Hatter. And probably the hardest for me personally is the altering of the “pretty girl in a very wet dress line”. I decided to have the reader in jeans because there are a lot of girls who do not like to wear dresses and jeans seemed to be more appropriate for a reader insert. Even though it killed me not to type the original line because it is such a stand out quote. As I said in the description of the last chapter describing Hatter in words in so very hard. I did the best I could though so I hope you liked it. I never realized before I started writing this, but some of Hatter’s behavior and words are really alarming lol. No wonder Alice didn’t trust him in the beginning! He was rather slick in his conversations with her. On top of that he moves around A LOT! Anyways be sure to check back soon for the next chapter for more Wonderland goodness. Again a special thanks to LikeSoTotally for giving me the heads up that the show is now on Netflix Instant View so if you have Netflix and want to brush up on your Alice knowledge or if you haven’t seen it at all then you can find it there. If you don’t have Netflix but are still interested you can find the full DVD on Barnes & Noble’s website
Until next time guys,
Fox