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.