Blue Skies, Prompt #13: When You Would Rather Wake (AiW)
Dreaming was second nature to Alice. Some of the best things in her life had begun with dreams after all.
This one always began in the same manner: a key in the palm of her hand. She lifted it higher to examine it more closely. It seemed commonplace enough, but as her fingers curled around it, she knew what it was for and she knew where she was.
And she was glad.
She spun to her left and hurried to the little door just waiting to be unlocked, and as she knelt down, her skirts pooling around her, she could hear voices beyond the door.
“Hello there!” she called, as she clutched the key in her lap, anticipation making her feel like a tightly wound pocket watch.
The voices were faint but clear enough to be understood, when they cried out in response, “Who’s there?”
“It’s me: Alice,” she explained brightly, as she raised the key to the lock.
“What’s an Alice?”
“I’m not a what, I’m a who,” she laughed. “My friends will know me.” Know her and be so very happy to see her.
Her confidence faltered, however, when the key would not turn. She frowned, and jiggled it, whispering to the lock in case it was a stubborn lock that needed a little petting. Neither the jiggling nor the whispering seemed to work. She pulled the little black key out to look at it once more and when she did, it seemed to melt away, so that her fingers grasped nothing but air.
“You’re a very slow Alice.”
“I’m coming. I’ve just dropped the key,” she called through the door, although she could recall no such thing.
She crawled back away from the door, searching the floor for the mislaid key. She moved to the table and peered atop it as well and under it for good measure. She lifted the legs in turn so as to be completely thorough in her search.
“Perhaps I never held the key at all.” She stood and shook out her skirts, scanning the stark room. “Perhaps I just haven’t found it yet.”
“The Alice isn’t real. It’s just a myth like zebras.”
She scowled at the door. “I resent that greatly: it’s very rude to accuse someone of being a myth, you know. I'm real and so are zebras. I’ve seen one at the London Zoo in Regent’s Park. It was black and white and really quite lovely.”
It seemed as if their answers were swallowed up in some void, as a strange silence hung heavy in the room. She brushed that off, reminding herself that she had experienced things much more curious than a bout of silence.
“Best be useful,” she muttered to herself as she pulled herself atop the table to get a better perspective. It did not wobble, which was a good thing. She didn’t want to take a spill. “No point in being sour,” she lectured herself. “Use your brain, Alice. That’s what it’s there for.” The key was just as likely to be hiding very high as very low, and since she had already scoured the floor, she might begin to scour above. Standing tall did not do her much good, but it occurred to her that the key might be tucked along the picture rail, which if she was only tall enough, she could check. So, she hopped down and dragged the table to the wall so as to climb atop it once more and begin to methodically run her fingers along the molding. All she found was a rather thick layer of dust.
She sneezed and waited for the proper response from the creatures outside. A ‘bless you’ would be nice, but she would happily accept a ‘gesundheit’ too.
Nothing.
More rudeness. She would need to speak to them about proper etiquette. They might run into someone with a penchant for taking heads, who would not be as forgiving as she was about these little lapses.
Alice climbed down from the table, her shoes failing to echo on the floor as they should in the expansive silence.
Suddenly she understood. No one gave polite answer to her sneeze, because there was no one to answer at all. There had never been any creatures outside the door. The halloos and impertinent assumptions had been entirely of her mind’s creation. There was no one to greet her, because she had been forgotten, just as she had once forgotten them.
She felt in the pocket of her apron, but she knew it to be folly: there had never been a key, so there was no key to be found. No, in fact, there was never even a door, she realized as her gaze skittered to where she thought the door had been only moments earlier. There was no way back. All doors were shut to her.
The floor itself began to move, slipping beneath her as if it was not solid but made up of fine grains of colored sand like she had once brought home from the seashore in a glass bottle. It moved and flowed under her feet and the room collapsed about her in a terrifying rush.
Her dream collapsed.
Yes, the best things in Alice’s life had begun in dreams, but those days were past. In her dotage this was a dream-a reminder of friends lost, loves regretted, and adventure never tasted-that Alice could have done without.