Alice’s Cousin (Flash Fiction)

This came from an Instagram prompt, which gave me all the Alice in Wonderland vibes! What do you think Alice did to make her cousin chase after her? To read more stories that are also from the same prompt, head to Instagram and follow the #writerstowriterschallenge hashtag.

You’d think that by now I’d be used to 3am wake-ups from a spiteful octopus. That’s what I get for taking in the bloody thing to begin with. 

“Simeon, get off of me!” I pushed the tentacles away from my face. 

In reply, Simeon flopped to the floor and scuttled across to the door. From there, he watched me with beady eyes.

“You can not possibly want a snack again!” I moaned. “You’re going to get fat if you keep waking up to eat cookies.”

Simeon made a gesture that if I understood OSL (octopus sign language), I probably would have been highly offended. He was one of the few mute creatures I’d met since coming to Wonderland. If only I hadn’t gone chasing my bloody cousin. Alice had started this whole mess. Unfortunately, I was never one to leave messes uncleaned.

So, here I was. Trapped in a world of abnormalities. In fact, I’d been here so long that I’d started up a psychiatric rehab center for the poor creatures that had been leftover from the Red Queen’s war. Most of them needed a lot of therapy.

Not Simeon. He’d shown up one day, and all I knew about him so far was that he had a terribly annoying habit of wanting ginger snap cookies at 3am.

“If I ever find Alice, I’m leaving you with her.” I grumped my way into my lopsided kitchen. 

I nearly tripped over the pots and pans on the floor to make it to the fridge, which was anchored to the ceiling. 

Opening the fridge, I pulled out the pack of cold ginger snaps. Simeon waited on the kitchen table, his suckers keeping him from falling to the floor as the table too was secured to the ceiling.

Handing him a cookie, I watched him snuffle it down. He was sort of cute when he wasn’t waking me up in the middle of the night.

It had been eight years since I fell down the rabbit hole. You’d have thought I’d have found Alice by now, but it seemed I was two steps behind her at all times. Not that I was actively hunting her right now. I’d opened the sanctuary two years ago and had been comfortable in treating my patients. 

Mostly comfortable. I still had the itch to find Alice. I mean, she had to pay for what she had done, didn’t she?

I reached into the packet again, but this time I pulled out a slightly different cookie. Printed on the front where the words, Eat Me.

I froze.

“Simeon. She’s here. Alice is here.”