Alice was not expecting any adventures. She was just going to Slumberland. She was after a new mattress because she wanted to get a good night’s rest. The old mattress had lumps in it and the springs and coils within its interior had given her more than a few sleepless nights.

Getting to Slumberland was fairly straight forward even though it entailed a fair amount of walking from the bus stop. It was one of those places that was just outside of town in a big retail park. She stopped to check the street atlas every so often to make sure she was not taking a wrong turn. On one of these occasions, just as she was folding away the map her attention was distracted by the sudden appearance of a white rabbit wearing a waistcoat. It was a lovely rabbit and it reminded her of her childhood. Spotting a white rabbit in your path was supposed to bring you good luck and urge you on toward new beginnings. The rabbit spent some time looking at her with its whiskers twitching. She assumed it must be somebody’s pet that had escaped from the confines of its hutch. She looked around but there was no one else there. The rabbit turned on its heels and bounded off but then it came back to her feet again. What was it trying to tell her? The next time it bounded off she decided to follow it. As it happened, the rabbit did her a favour because it led her down a ginnel which brought her out right opposite the entrance to the retail park. In other words, it had shown her a shortcut to Slumberland.

‘Thank you, rabbit’ she said and then hoped that nobody had heard her, except the rabbit of course. An adult caught talking to a rabbit would look a bit odd, she thought, but the rabbit seemed pleased to have been of help to her and bounded back the way it had come.

For some reason she had difficulty getting through the revolving door at the entrance to the store. It was not that she was large, it was more to do with the doors being small. After a great effort, she managed to hold herself in and walk through the door.

Once she was in the store, she was greeted with a plethora of beds. There were bunk beds, ottoman beds, divan beds, guest beds, sofa beds, day beds, beds of all sizes that were just waiting for her to try them all out. The same could be said of the vast range of mattresses: hybrid, spring, foam and queen mattresses all seemed to vie for her attention. There was not a salesperson in sight. In fact, she seemed to be the only person in the store. After walking round the beds for a while and sitting on them to test them for their comfort, she settled for one of the queen beds, 60 x 84 inches which, according to the label, was for two people. It was certainly nice and roomy.

It was not long before she fell into a deep sleep. You might by now be thinking that she was as mad as a hatter. Who would walk into a store, sprawl across a bed fully clothed and fall asleep?

A lot of people seemed to come into the room which by now had turned into a milliner’s shop. Couples seemed to be mingling together in high spirits. She couldn’t see their faces but she could see their hats. Every one of them, despite being indoors, was wearing a hat. There was a man with a baseball cap with a rounded crown and a stiff, frontward-projecting bill who was handing a cup of tea to a woman in a bell-shaped hat from the Roaring Twenties. Someone who was wearing a fascinator made with feathers and flowers was pouring tea into a cup and passing it to a man in an Australian brand of bush hat. Two teenagers, one in a sun hat and another in a rain hat were conversing with one another in the corner. She couldn’t make out what they were saying but she wondered why one of them thought it was raining while the other one was enjoying being in the sunshine. The whole group erupted when a harlequin appeared in a brightly-coloured, conical party hat emblazoned with patterns and messages. He seemed to be inciting them to throw custard pies at each other. To Alice’s amazement, everyone ransacked the tables and started hurling cake crumbs, cherries and whipped cream at each other’s faces. It was absolute bedlam but nobody seemed to mind at all. It was a complete free for all. Even the gentleman in the bowler hat from Lock’s of St. James’s was joining in and seemed to take great delight when he succeeded in knocking his acquaintance’s top hat straight off his head. A woman in a pill box started to bombard her friend with fruit which finally dislodged her peach basket dashing it to the ground. A boy in a beanie was shivering in the corner, trying to stave off the cold. A long-legged girl in a flat-topped straw hat was strolling through the proceedings as if she were at a regatta. It was all most extraordinary.

Dreams are, of course, quite illogical.

*

In the next room, Alice found herself in maternity. The midwife was urging the Duchess to push.

‘Push hard,’ she said, ‘you can do it.’

The Duchess was not so sure. She thought that she was too posh to push.

‘Keep pushing,’ the midwife exhorted, ‘you’re almost there now.’

All this, despite the unbearable pain.

Eventually the pig appeared with all its trotters intact. It squealed and squealed and squealed.

‘Oh what a lovely piggy you are,’ cooed the Duchess, as the midwife handed her the pig.

‘There, that wasn’t so difficult was it?’ said the midwife.

Alice was shocked but everyone else seemed to think that this was perfectly normal.

*

Out on the croquet lawn, everything seemed to be fine.

‘At least it’s a mallet and not a flamingo,’ she said.

‘Not a what?’ said her friend.

Alice looked embarrassed. Where did the flamingo come from? She clearly wasn’t thinking straight. A mallet was nothing like a flamingo. You could strike a croquet ball hard with a mallet. A flamingo would just get in the way strutting round the hoops with its long pink legs. How absurd would that be?

‘A mallet is a mallet is a mallet’ she said, much to the growing consternation of her friend.

‘You’re talking gobbledygook,’ she said, ‘or was that jabberwocky?’

Either way, they both knew it was not plain English.

There was something wrong with the object she was trying to hit. Yes, it was round like a ball, but it appeared to be curled in on itself and its surface, far from being smooth, was quite spiky. She didn’t want to pick it up because its spines were sharp and looked as if they would draw blood.

‘That’s not a ball, that’s a hedgehog’ she said.

‘What on earth are you talking about?’ said her friend.

‘How did that get here?’ asked Alice.

She looked in horror as her friend whacked the hedgehog with her mallet. It was a gentle whack, of course, more like a tap really, because this was croquet, not golf. Alice felt for the hedgehog.

‘Hitting hedgehogs is wrong,’ she said, as if pronouncing some sort of official announcement. ‘There must be a rule about this. Anyone found hitting a hedgehog…’

‘What are you talking about?’ said her friend, ‘that isn’t a hedgehog, it’s a croquet ball.’

Alice peered closer. Her friend was right. It was indeed a croquet ball.

The white rabbit, who had been watching the proceedings from the long grass, chuckled to himself. It was all so highly amusing.

*

When Alice woke up she was surprised to see that she was still in Slumberland. Several customers were looking at her and talking among themselves. Flustered, she got up, smoothed down her skirt and walked over to the payment desk.

‘I’ll have the queen mattress,’ she said.

‘Very well, madam,’ said the floor assistant. ‘There’s no charge for delivery. Will you be paying by card?’

‘Yes,’ she said, and pulled out the Joker.

‘I’m afraid we can’t accept that,’ he said, ‘but we’ll take the Queen of Hearts.’

Just as she was leaving, she noticed the name badge on his lapel. It said LEWIS CARROLL.

Neil Leadbeater was born and brought up in Wolverhampton, England. He was educated at Repton and is an English graduate from the University of London. He now resides in Edinburgh, Scotland. His short stories, articles and poems have been published widely in anthologies and journals both at home and abroad. His publications include Librettos for the Black Madonna (White Adder Press, 2011); The Loveliest Vein of Our Lives (Poetry Space, 2014), Finding the River Horse (Littoral Press, 2017), Punching Cork Stoppers (Original Plus, 2018) River Hoard (Cyberwit.net, Allahabad, India, 2019), Reading Between the Lines (Littoral Press, 2020) and Journeys in Europe (co-authored with Monica Manolachi) (Editura Bifrost , Bucharest, Romania, 2022). His work has been translated into several languages. He is a member of the Federation of Writers Scotland and he is a regular reviewer for several journals including Quill & Parchment (USA), The Halo-Halo Review (USA), Write Out Loud (UK) and The Poet (UK). His many and varied interests embrace most aspects of the arts and, on winter evenings, he enjoys the challenge of getting to grips with ancient, medieval and modern languages.

You can find more of Neil’s work here on Ink Pantry.

That summer, breaking into the Lido under cover of darkness was the one thing that preyed upon Jacko’s mind more than any other. In fact, it would not be unreasonable to say that it had quickly become an obsession. This whole idea of entering forbidden territory propelled him on to the point where it had begun to take possession of him. Jeanie and Rebecca, the other two students who made up what they called ‘the gang of three’ were not so sure.

‘What if we get caught?’ piped Jeanie. She was always the more cautious one of the three. ‘Suppose there are CCTV cameras all over the place, what do we do then?’

Jacko gave her a look of disdain. Jacko was thorough. He’d already cased the joint during the daytime and there didn’t appear to be any evidence of CCTV surveillance there at all.

‘Suppose the fence is alarmed?’ shouted Rebecca, as they ran across London Fields in pursuit of Jacko who was now well into the lead.

‘Look, do you want to come with me or not?’ he said, rounding on them suddenly as they neared the approach to the Lido. ‘It’s just a laugh.’ he said. ‘Yes or no?’

The girls looked at each other. Their hearts were beating like crazy and there was no time to lose.

There was a full moon that night and it shone directly on their faces as they stood there in the park captured by its glow. The thought of breaking into a 50 metre Olympic-sized, heated outdoor swimming pool when no-one else was around had its attractions.

Jacko had spent weeks walking round the perimeter, sizing up the fencing, studying it in detail without trying to raise any undue suspicion. He’d even made rough notes, gone home and prepared a full-scale drawing so that he could pinpoint with accuracy the one place where he had found a bit of leverage, a weak point, where it might be possible to gain entrance. His pockets were bulging with cutting equipment. Once they had broken through there was nothing to stop them returning night after night. The girls had towels concealed in their bags and were wearing string bikinis underneath their outer clothing. Jacko, who was not so modest, intended to dive in naked as the day he was born.

Even though it was one hour to midnight they were surprised at how busy the park was with night time cyclists, dog walkers and people going home from the pubs. They would have preferred it to have been much quieter so that they would be less likely to be seen but the place where Jacko had detected a weakness in the fencing was pretty well concealed by trees and bushes and away from the main thoroughfares of the park.

It took him a good half hour to cut away at the wire mesh before he managed to make a hole big enough for them to crawl through. The girls were edgy, constantly on the lookout for any movement.

By the time they got in, it was completely dark. They took a moment or two to acclimatise themselves to their surroundings.

‘Hey, let’s wait a while. This could be dangerous. We don’t want to fall in the pool,’ said Rebecca.

‘I’ve heard it takes a good half hour for the eye to adjust for darkness,’ said Jeanie, ‘Eyes adapt to bright light a lot faster than they do to darkness.’

Reckless as ever, Jacko just wanted to find his own way in the dark. He walked gingerly to the edge of the pool, tore off his clothes and dived in. The splash alarmed the girls who thought they might be found out but no one appeared on the scene.

Jacko swam back to the edge and tried to persuade them to come in and join him. The girls stood shivering in their costumes as they were still uncertain about whether or not to chance it in the pool.

As their eyes gradually got used to the dark, Jeanie suddenly spotted two deckchairs in a pool of moonlight out in the bathing area. She thought it was odd that they were out when all the other deckchairs had been stacked away. The nearer she approached the back of the chairs the more nervous she became. She was sure that they were occupied. There was something about their shape and their bulk, as if they each held a human body. She went and grabbed hold of Rebecca, pointing all the time at the chairs. When they got closer they stopped to listen for any sounds of movement or conversation but there was none. It was curious though that, despite the slight breeze, the canvas did not move. After contemplating the scene for a moment or two, they both lost their nerve and walked quietly back to where they had come from. Maybe they were not alone after all.

‘I don’t think there’s anyone there,’ said Rebecca. ‘How could there be?’

‘Why would anyone be there?’ said Jeanie. If anyone was there, she reasoned, they would have turned round as soon as they heard Jacko diving into the pool. At that time of night, the splash had seemed loud enough to wake up the whole Hackney.

Jacko emerged from the pool, dripping water all over the ground. They motioned to him to keep quiet but felt that they were safer down at this end of the pool.

‘For goodness sake, Jacko, cover yourself up,’ said Rebecca. ‘Somebody might see you’.

‘I think someone’s around,’ said Jeannie. ‘I don’t feel safe like this.’

‘Me, neither,’ said Rebecca. ‘Let’s get dressed and go.’

The next time they looked towards the two deckchairs, the breeze rippled through the canvas and the chairs keeled over on to the floor. Whoever had been there had left or was lurking about somewhere else nearby.

The girls got the jitters. Even Jacko began to feel uncomfortable. It was not long before they left by the way they had come and made their way back through the fields.

What had started out as a student prank had left a nasty taste. Suppose someone had seen them? What if they were being followed home? The girls, arm in arm, frequently looked behind them, being suspicious of anyone who might be on their tracks. Even when they got home, they worried about whether or not this mysterious someone, singular or plural, had made a mental note of their address.

*

Jeanie, who had always secretly had a bit of a crush on Rebecca, asked her if she could come into her room and sleep in her bed that night as she was still feeling nervous after what had happened at the lido. It was not an unusual request. They were very close and shared everything together, even their clothes.

‘I’ll be round in ten,’ said Jeanie.

‘Just come when you’re ready,’ said Rebecca. ‘I’ll leave the door off the latch.’

When Jeanie came in, Rebecca’s room was in darkness. She could see her friend clearly enough though because she was standing close to the window, feet slightly apart, in a strip of bright moonlight. She had her back to Jeanie and had taken off her clothes. All she was wearing was a gold-coloured, spandex G-string. Jeanie held her breath as she secretly watched Rebecca untie her hair and shake out her glossy black curls which cascaded halfway down her bare back. Jeanie, who had a page-boy cut, had always been envious of her friend’s long hair.

When Rebecca turned round, her face was flushed. Jeanie felt breathless. She was aching to touch her.

‘You’ve let your hair down. You look gorgeous, Reeby,’ she whispered.

Jeanie was in a state of confusion but Rebecca made it easy for her. She came up close, slowly opened her girlfriend’s blouse and whispered something in her ear which made her blush. In that moment, Jeanie lost all her inhibitions. She went limp like a ragdoll in her lover’s warm embrace. The two began to kiss until such time as they were no longer bathed in moonlight.

*

None of them slept very well that night which meant that they were bleary-eyed when they went into their lectures the next day. They all hoped that they could quickly put the night’s escapade at the lido behind them but it kept on nagging them in all sorts of stupid ways. In the refectory, for example, Jeanie picked up a magazine that was lying open on one of the tables she chose to sit at to have her lunch. You might think this was innocuous enough but her eyes were drawn to an article on the subject of moon bathing. Curious, she read on. The article stated that moon bathing was just like sun bathing. It urged readers to go outside when the moon was in full view and absorb its light. It recommended that you should find a restful space and do this in private with or without your clothes in order to experience the calming properties of moonlight.

When she met up with Rebecca she told her all about what she had found out.

‘You can do it with your clothes off,’ she said. ‘Just think of all that moonshine on your bare skin. If it’s a full moon you can align your energy with the lunar cycle. Because moonlight is actually reflected sunlight, it too can boost your vitamin D levels, as well as give you nitric oxide which helps to regulate blood flow.’

There was a long pause while Rebecca took in the significance of what her friend was saying.

‘What is it, Rebecca?’

‘Those two deckchairs we saw last night…’

‘What about them?’

‘You know when we thought that there were people sitting in them?’

‘Oh, you don’t think there really were people in them do you? You mean that they might have been moon bathers?’

‘It’s possible.’

‘They must have seen us when they got up to go.’

‘But how come we never saw them?’

‘I don’t know.’

Later that day, a couple of other students had spotted the same article. They caught up with the two girls and casually dropped the subject into the conversation.

‘Have you heard about this moon bathing thing?’

The girls looked startled.

‘It’s all the craze round here, apparently.’

The girls felt uncomfortable.

‘Fancy trying it with us….fancy taking your clothes off?’

Jeanie tried to make out that they did not know what they talking about.

One of the students looked at her and gave her a smile.

‘I think you do,’ he said.

‘How do you mean?’ she said. She was as nervous as a kitten jumping at shadows.

‘Because I saw you.’

‘Saw me doing what?’

‘You were reading the same article when you were in the refectory earlier’

‘Oh,’ she said, immediately relieved. ‘Yes, I did just glance at it.’

Perhaps he didn’t mean anything by the remark after all.

Several days later there was a piece in the local paper about the broken fencing at the lido which was put down to vandalism. Eventually the fence was repaired. The police were too busy to do any investigations. Jacko said there was nothing to worry about but the girls thought otherwise for the one thing that had been taken away from them that night had been their innocence. What had they been thinking of? It was moon madness. They had crossed a line into forbidden territory and now there was no going back.

Neil Leadbeater was born and brought up in Wolverhampton, England. He was educated at Repton and is an English graduate from the University of London. He now resides in Edinburgh, Scotland. His short stories, articles and poems have been published widely in anthologies and journals both at home and abroad. His publications include Librettos for the Black Madonna (White Adder Press, 2011); The Loveliest Vein of Our Lives (Poetry Space, 2014), Finding the River Horse (Littoral Press, 2017), Punching Cork Stoppers (Original Plus, 2018) River Hoard (Cyberwit.net, Allahabad, India, 2019), Reading Between the Lines (Littoral Press, 2020) and Journeys in Europe (co-authored with Monica Manolachi) (Editura Bifrost , Bucharest, Romania, 2022). His work has been translated into several languages. He is a member of the Federation of Writers Scotland and he is a regular reviewer for several journals including Quill & Parchment (USA), The Halo-Halo Review (USA), Write Out Loud (UK) and The Poet (UK). His many and varied interests embrace most aspects of the arts and, on winter evenings, he enjoys the challenge of getting to grips with ancient, medieval and modern languages.

You can find more of Neil’s work here on Ink Pantry.