Honey, I shrunk the Winchesters
PART TWO
Being able to see over the top of crowds; being able to lean right over a pool table to take an awkward shot; being able to take things down from high shelves. Sam hadn’t realized just how much he took being tall for granted until now. He and Dean had spent the last fifteen minutes pushing a chair from the table in the library to the door so that they could reach the door handle, and the effort had left them both sweating. Dean had stubbed his toe twice and Sam was grateful that he’d been shrunk with his boots on.
Once the chair was in position Dean clambered up onto the padded leather seat. Sam gritted his teeth, bent at the knees and hoisted the thick brass key up off the floor in a smooth clean-and-jerk motion, his biceps bulging and his shirt riding up as he staggered in position with the key held over his head.
“Hey Sammy?”
Sam glanced up at Dean. He didn’t like the smirk on his brother’s face, not one bit.
“If there’s a key,” Dean declaimed, throwing his arms out dramatically, “then there has to be a lock!”
“Shut up. At least I didn’t look constipated when I was trying to say my lines!” Sam shoved the key at Dean who wrestled it from his hands with a grunted curse.
“Heavy sonovabitch, ain’t it?”
Sam climbed up beside Dean, who was now leaning nonchalantly against the thigh-high key. They stared up at the door knob for a while and then Dean cleared his throat.
“So, uh, I figure you can give me a boost up and then I’ll, you know, shove the key in the lock.”
“Dude, it’s heavy.”
Dean smirked. “Hey, you aren’t the only one here with muscles. I eat my Wheaties too you know.”
Sam couldn’t help it, he laughed. “No you don’t. You hate Wheaties.”
Dean flashed a genuine grin, his eyes sparkling with warmth. “Yeah, well, you might be the granola-munching hippie with the RoboSam workout routine, but there’s nothin’ wrong with my upper body strength. Hell, I’ve pinned you to the ground enough times for you to know it.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “Okay, so you’re better at hand-to-hand combat. We both know I’m stronger.”
“Right,” Dean nodded. “I can’t lift both you and the key, so,” Dean lifted the key and held it out in front of him. “Boost me up, Sammy!”
Dean dropped the key eight times and fell off of Sam’s linked hands twice. By the time he finally got the key inserted the boys were both bruised and irritable, their muscles straining and their underarms soaked with sweat.
Dean turned the door knob and then pushed slowly. The door swung open and revealed…
“A freakin’ garden? I thought this was s’posed to be Wonderland! This is…” Dean waved his arms around effusively, “this is…”
“Alice’s garden,” said Sam. “It’s where the rabbit hole is.”
--
To say that Dean was less than thrilled at having to hike across Alice’s garden was an understatement of epic proportions. The grass was littered with brittle fallen leaves that prickled his feet, and walking past marching columns of ants the size of rats was creepy as hell. The giant-ass length of rope that he and Sam were dragging behind them was awkward and heavy and Dean was just about done with everything being so much harder than it should’ve been. Being the size of a Ken doll sucked balls.
“Dude,” he snarked at Sam, “do you even know where this freakin’ rabbit hole is?”
Sam nodded. “Alice was sitting under a tree by the river bank, reading with her sister, so,” he pointed a long arm toward an oak tree by the brook, “most likely she was sitting there. And then she ran across the field toward the hedge,” Sam pointed out the route Alice would’ve run. “So the rabbit hole should be somewhere under that part of the hedge.”
It took them ten minutes to reach the hedge. Half way there a huge white butterfly had tried to land on Sam’s head and Sam had screamed like a girl and batted at it with his hands while Dean had laughed and wished like hell he had his cell phone with him so he could take pictures. Even without pictures, he would still be able to tease Sam about this forever. The hedge itself was creepy. It was home to way too many spider webs, all with ugly fat arachnids the size of cats perched in the center of them, peering out at potential prey with way too many eyes. Dean shuddered. And then cocked his head when he heard a stuttering kind of meow.
“Dude-”
“Shhh!” Sam raised his arm and pointed. “We’re being stalked.”
There, on the other side of the hedge, visible through the tangled branches and leaves, crouched a charcoal-grey cat with vivid green eyes.
Dean dropped the rope and very slowly withdrew the kitchen knife from his waistband.
“Dude!” Sam hissed. “You can’t shank the cat! It’s probably some little kid’s pet. They’d be heartbroken! Besides, look at it! It’s adorable.”
Dean snorted. “We’ll see how adorable you think it is when it’s treating you like a chew toy. It’s a predator Sammy, a ruthless, cold-blooded…why is it shaking its ass like that?”
Sam tilted his head to one side and then his eyes widened. “I think it’s about to-”
The cat sprang and Sam and Dean threw themselves sideways, Sam one way, Dean the other. Dean rolled and rolled and rolled again, before coming up on his knees with his knife at the ready. He was pleased to see Sam mirroring his position on the other side of the cat. The cat, for its part, wasn’t sure which of them to go after and didn’t seem to appreciate the way they weren’t acting like prey. It flattened its ears, lowered its body and hissed-its suddenly very fluffy tail whipping behind it like an angry feather duster.
“Go find the rabbit hole,” Dean told his brother, “I’ll hold off Fluffy here.”
The cat fixed its eyes on Dean and Sam nodded, backing away slowly, picking up the rope and dragging it with him.
Dean met the cat’s eyes and held them; channeling every bit of bad-ass alpha male attitude he’d ever learned in an attempt to scare the cat away. The cat’s eyes were as black as a demon’s and if the way its fur had puffed up all over was any indication, Dean had actually managed to make it angrier. The cat started to yowl, loud and high-pitched and Dean winced and manfully resisted the temptation to cover his ears. Instead, he lunged toward the cat with a William Wallace battle cry, waving the knife in front of him.
The cat didn’t run away like he’d hoped-it leapt at him and, damn, Dean really didn’t want to stab a cat; that was just wrong on so many levels. Instead, he tucked the knife back into his waistband and threw himself at the cat’s feet, causing it to stumble, and then he rolled out from under, yanking its tail as he scrambled to his feet and ran for the hedge.
The cat whirled around, growling menacingly, and gave chase.
“Dean!” Sam was waving at him frantically. “I’ve found the rabbit hole!”
Dean ran at him, the cat in hot pursuit.
“You got the rope fixed?”
“Yeah,” and now that he was closer, Dean could see that the rope was tied to the lower branches of the hedge and dangling down into the hole, “but that’s for coming back up. Don’t worry about it now, just jump!”
“You sure that’s safe?” Dean could smell the fishy breath of the cat coming up behind him.
“Pretty sure,” Sam nodded vigorously.
“Oh that’s comforting,” Dean leapt into the rabbit hole, “Geronimo!”
He felt a rush of air as Sam jumped down behind him and then they were falling.
Really, really slowly.
“The cat’s staking out the rabbit-hole,” Sam said from above him. “It looks pissed.”
“Awesome.”
Dean tried looking straight down, but it was too dark to see anything, so he turned his attention to the sides and was surprised to see maps and pictures and shelves and cupboards. He reached an arm out and plucked a tin can off one of the shelves as he fell past. “Treacle? What the hell is treacle?”
“I think it’s an English thing, a bit like molasses,” Sam said.
Dean’s eyebrows shot up. “Dude! Were we in England just now? Was that garden in England? That’s freakin’ amazing!”
Sam huffed. “Really, Dean? You’re eight inches tall and slow-falling down a rabbit-hole to Wonderland and the most amazing thing about all that is passing through England on the way?”
Dean put the treacle onto another shelf as he fell past. “Shut up, Sammy.”
“Awesome comeback,” Sam mocked. “No, really.”
Dean decided to ignore him and busied himself pulling random items off shelves and examining them. He saw a jar marked ‘orange marmalade’ and snatched it off the shelf. That was another English thing, some kind of jelly he thought, only when he opened the jar it was empty. He sniffed at the empty jar-very citrusy-before putting it onto another shelf.
“Hey Dean?”
Dean glanced up at Sam; or at Sam’s feet anyway. “What?”
“You remember that summer we spent at Bobby’s? You would’ve been ten, I think? And we found that old copy of Alice in Wonderland and you read it to me, a little bit every night? And sometimes Bobby would read it to both of us?”
“Vaguely,” Dean said. What he mostly remembered about that visit was that his Dad and Bobby had argued because Dad didn’t think that Bobby had made him train hard enough.
“He told me years later,” Sam said, his tone subdued, “that Alice in Wonderland was Karen’s favorite book,” he cleared his throat. “Imagine how stoked he’d be if he knew we were on our way to Wonderland?”
“Yeah,” said Dean, and then he thumped down onto a heap of dry leaves.
“Ouch!” Sam crashed down on top of him. “Sonovabitch! Get off me, dude!”
The boys scrambled to their feet and looked around. There was only one way to go; forward down the dark tunnel in front of them. They walked until they came to a sharp corner and when they turned it they found themselves in a long, low hall. Rows of lanterns hung from the ceiling, casting a soft orange light, just bright enough for the boys to make out the shadowy images of closed doors all around the hall.
“The Hall of Locked Doors,” Sam said. “The glass table should be in here somewhere.”
Dean nodded. “And the cake should be underneath it, right?”
By unspoken agreement they headed in opposite directions around the hall.
“Found the table!” Dean called. “But there’s nothing underneath it!”
“Is there anything on top of it?” Sam called from across the hall.
Dean stood underneath the table and peered up. “Looks like there’s a key up there. You think we have to take the key off the table to make the potion appear and then take the potion off to make the cake appear?”
“Maybe?” Sam materialized by his side. “You think you could climb up there and get it if I gave you a boost?”
Before Dean could answer a loud throat-clearing had them both spinning around, their jaws dropping as they took in the sight before them.
“Dude,” said Dean, “that rabbit isn’t wearing any pants.”
Sam gaped at him. “The weird part, is that it’s wearing a waistcoat and a hunting jacket and carrying a fob watch and a walking cane.”
“Right,” Dean nodded, his eyes wide. “Obviously,” he cleared his throat and ran a hand over his jaw. “But why no pants?”
“Hello?” said the rabbit, “I’m standing right here, you know?”
“Yes,” Dean agreed solemnly, “you are.” He inclined his head toward his brother and spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “It’s talking, Sammy.”
“Hi,” Sam stepped forward and offered the rabbit his hand. “I’m Sam. And this is my brother Dean.”
The rabbit stared at him until he dropped his hand. “Are you mice? You’re odd looking for mice.”
“Um, no. We’re -”
“What are you doing in my burrow?” the rabbit demanded.
“We came for cake,” Dean said.
The rabbit turned his red-eyed gaze on Dean. “I don’t recall inviting any mice to tea. Or are you just passing through on your way to the Mad Hatter’s? He does throw the best Tea Parties, after all.”
“We are not mice!” Sam said quickly, before Dean could inadvertently accept an invitation to the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, which sounded like the sort of thing that could go really, really badly. “We’re people. Who got shrunk. And we came here to see if we could get some of that Eat Me cake that makes you grow big. Alice wrote-”
The rabbit’s expression brightened. “You know Alice?”
“Not personally. Did you know her?”
The rabbit shook his head. “But my great, great, great grandfather knew her quite well. So you’re from Alice’s world?”
Sam said that they were and the rabbit asked him if they knew a Haggerty.
“Haggerty? Yeah. He was a Man of Letters, same as us. You know him?”
“My great grandfather did. He visited. Quite obsessed with what he called ‘Other Worlds’, was Haggerty.”
Dean cleared his throat and rubbed his hands together. “So. Can you help us out with some Eat Me cake?”
“Follow me,” said the rabbit, turning away with a swish of his hunting jacket and padding toward a nearby green door.
Dean grinned. “We’re following the white rabbit, Sammy. I think we’re about to find out just how deep this rabbit-hole really goes!”
--
The rabbit led them into a very large walk-in pantry, the walls of which were lined, floor-to-ceiling, with shelves. There was a really tall ladder attached to the shelves and the rabbit pulled it across to a section marked ‘magical foodstuffs’ and then climbed, until he was almost out of sight. A bowl of bright rainbow-colored candy caught Dean’s attention and he stepped toward it, only to be yanked back by his brother.
“Don’t touch anything,” Sam hissed.
“I wasn’t gonna-”
Sam raised one eyebrow and Dean sighed. “Fine,” he stuck his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. “Happy?”
Sam bit at his bottom lip. “It’s just, we’re in Wonderland. And things have a habit of going sideways in Wonderland. I don’t want you to eat a piece of candy and, I dunno, blow up into a giant blueberry or something.”
Dean didn’t bother to point out that they weren’t in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory; he just nodded and fixed his eyes on the ladder.
When the rabbit came back down he had two currant cakes and two small bottles of potion tucked under his arm. He handed them each a cake first and then a bottle. “Just in case you grow too big,” he said. “Alice overdid the cake and grew to 9ft; had to fan herself back down to size.”
“Thanks,” Dean began to unwrap the cake.
“No!” the rabbit shouted, “not here! You’ll never get back out the rabbit hole if you’re the size of a regular man. Alice may have been able to fall down it, but she was a slip of a gal. Go back up top first, and then eat the cake.”
Sam raised a hand. “One small problem with that…we’ve got a cat sitting up there staking out the rabbit hole.”
The rabbit chuckled. “Ah yes, Dinah’s great, great, great granddaughter. She does rather fancy herself as a hunter. Come with me.”
They followed the rabbit out of the pantry, through the hall and back down the tunnel to the bottom of the hole. The rabbit reached out and pushed a button set into the tunnel wall and the whole area lit up.
The rabbit frowned and flicked at the dangling rope. “Yours, I take it?”
Sam agreed that it was.
The rabbit grinned (which was rather scary) and pulled a lever. There was a hydraulic whir and then a section of the tunnel wall opened up and a wooden platform slid out and positioned itself before them.
“It’s an elevator,” the rabbit said helpfully. “Step on board. It’ll shoot you up to the top in no time and when you break the surface it’ll spray water all around and give an air horn blast, scare away that blasted cat. Just remember that you’ll have to jump off quickly.”
“Nice!” Dean approved. “You’re the man!”
“Rabbit.”
“Right.”
The rabbit hustled them on board the platform. “Hang onto your hats,” he said gleefully. He pulled the lever again and the platform took off, speeding up past the shelves before shooting out into the fresh air of the garden with an almighty shriek. They leapt from the board and Dean watched with satisfaction as the cat fled across the garden.
“Some hunter you are,” he shouted after it. Beside him, Sam was unwrapping his cake and Dean quickly followed suit. They ate small amounts slowly, as a precaution against growing bigger than a house, and kept their eyes peeled for any wandering English folk; but no-one was watching them except the cat. Dean briefly considered eating a little more cake than he should’ve, just enough to see him grow to 6ft6” because he kind of missed the days when he towered over little Sammy. But in the end it felt a little like cheating and besides, Dean figured that he was awesome just how he was. The cat, he noticed, had frozen low to the ground, its eyes huge, like liquid black orbs. Dean, now back to his proper height, couldn’t quite resist the temptation to run at it.
“How do you like them apples?” he yelled. “Not quite so much fun when you’re the tiny one, is it?”
Sam rolled his eyes. “Quit that,” he said, “before someone calls the ASPCA. Or whatever they call it here.”
“Yeah,” Dean jogged back to his brother’s side. “We should probably get back to the bunker. I’d hate to have to explain how we got here to the British cops.”
Before they’d left the bunker, they’d pushed one leg of the chair into the doorway to prop the door open. Sam had then plucked out one of his longer hairs and, with some sticky tack they’d found in the bottom kitchen drawer, he’d tacked it across the narrow gap in the door, low down. The boys had then crawled through the gap and out into the garden, reasoning that if anything taller and wider than five inches found its way into the bunker, they probably wanted to know about it. Fortunately, when Sam bent down to examine it, the hair was still intact.
“Ah,” said Dean as they shut the door behind them and removed the key. “Home sweet home.”
“Yeah,” said Sam. He re-opened the door, just to make sure that Wonderland had really gone. “I’m gonna go and put the key back. And put the rest of the cake and the bottles of potion into the Wonderland storage box.”
“Okay,” Dean called after his retreating back. “I’m gonna make us burgers.”
He got a backwards wave in response.
Later, once Dean had grilled up two of the best ever bacon cheeseburgers, hand cut some fries and even made a salad (he still couldn’t get over just how many different types of tomato there were), he piled everything onto a tray and went in search of his brother.
Sam was curled up on a purple leather and mahogany arm chair in the corner of the library reading a slim, brown leather book.
“Dude,” Dean lifted the tray. “Food. Be easier to eat at the table.”
Sam grinned, his eyes soft. “Like I said, 1950s housewife.”
“And like I said, Bitch, I have a wooden spoon and I ain’t afraid to use it. Now let’s eat.”
Sam joined him at the map table, the book still in his hand.
“What are you reading?” Dean asked.
Sam cleared his throat. “It’s uh, Alice’s journal actually. The real Alice. Turns out she was a Hunter. And this story? Definitely not for children. There’s a lot of drug use,” Sam rolled his eyes, “and you really don’t wanna know what she got up to with that caterpillar, man. Anyway, Alice was actually hunting for some kind of dimension hopping monster who was kidnapping and abusing prostitutes. She tracked him to Wonderland but couldn’t manage to, uh, bring him to justice because he was from a powerful family. Twenty or so years later he was back in London and active again, and this time he was killing. Alice tracked him back to Wonderland again and confronted his family with the evidence of his crimes and this time, his family had him executed. You know, off with his head.”
“Wow,” Dean spoke around a mouthful of burger, lettuce spilling from his mouth. “Definitely not a Disney movie. So we’re talkin’ about the Jack of Hearts, right? He stole some tarts?”
Sam nodded. “Also known as Jack the Ripper.”
“Holy shit!” Dean gaped. “So how did Lewis Carroll end up with the Alice in Wonderland story?”
Sam was chewing on his burger with a blissful look on his face. “Oh man, this is really good, Dean.”
Dean’s face brightened. “I know, right?”
Sam swallowed. “Charles Dodgson, which is Lewis Carroll’s real name, he met Alice at a party and after a few too many tokes on the opium pipe, she told him about her experiences in Wonderland. He told a G-rated version of the story to the children of some friends of his a couple of weeks later, one of whom was also called Alice, and she asked him to write it down. The rest, as they say, is history.”
They finished their burgers in silence, Sam holding Alice’s journal in one hand and sniggering occasionally. The burgers were followed by Mississippi Mud pie and Sam rolled his eyes at the porn noises Dean made while he ate his portion. Finally, Sam pushed back from his plate and yawned, rubbing a hand across his suddenly drooping eyelids.
“You feelin’ okay, Sammy?”
“Just a little tired; no more than usual.”
“Okay,” Dean got to his feet. “I’m gonna go and check on Kevin, make sure the slippery nipple shots at the Dolly Parton Dixie Stampede didn’t kill the guy. You should take it easy. It ain’t been long since the trials, and there’s no telling what all that shrinking and growing’s done to you.”
Sam agreed that he’d take it easy and once Dean had left, he wandered across to the book shelves and searched for something to lose himself in for the rest of the evening. Right on the very top shelf he spotted The Earthsea Trilogy. He reached for it with a smile and promised himself that never again would he take being tall for granted.
The End
<
Back to Masterpost
Being able to see over the top of crowds; being able to lean right over a pool table to take an awkward shot; being able to take things down from high shelves. Sam hadn’t realized just how much he took being tall for granted until now. He and Dean had spent the last fifteen minutes pushing a chair from the table in the library to the door so that they could reach the door handle, and the effort had left them both sweating. Dean had stubbed his toe twice and Sam was grateful that he’d been shrunk with his boots on.
Once the chair was in position Dean clambered up onto the padded leather seat. Sam gritted his teeth, bent at the knees and hoisted the thick brass key up off the floor in a smooth clean-and-jerk motion, his biceps bulging and his shirt riding up as he staggered in position with the key held over his head.
“Hey Sammy?”
Sam glanced up at Dean. He didn’t like the smirk on his brother’s face, not one bit.
“If there’s a key,” Dean declaimed, throwing his arms out dramatically, “then there has to be a lock!”
“Shut up. At least I didn’t look constipated when I was trying to say my lines!” Sam shoved the key at Dean who wrestled it from his hands with a grunted curse.
“Heavy sonovabitch, ain’t it?”
Sam climbed up beside Dean, who was now leaning nonchalantly against the thigh-high key. They stared up at the door knob for a while and then Dean cleared his throat.
“So, uh, I figure you can give me a boost up and then I’ll, you know, shove the key in the lock.”
“Dude, it’s heavy.”
Dean smirked. “Hey, you aren’t the only one here with muscles. I eat my Wheaties too you know.”
Sam couldn’t help it, he laughed. “No you don’t. You hate Wheaties.”
Dean flashed a genuine grin, his eyes sparkling with warmth. “Yeah, well, you might be the granola-munching hippie with the RoboSam workout routine, but there’s nothin’ wrong with my upper body strength. Hell, I’ve pinned you to the ground enough times for you to know it.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “Okay, so you’re better at hand-to-hand combat. We both know I’m stronger.”
“Right,” Dean nodded. “I can’t lift both you and the key, so,” Dean lifted the key and held it out in front of him. “Boost me up, Sammy!”
Dean dropped the key eight times and fell off of Sam’s linked hands twice. By the time he finally got the key inserted the boys were both bruised and irritable, their muscles straining and their underarms soaked with sweat.
Dean turned the door knob and then pushed slowly. The door swung open and revealed…
“A freakin’ garden? I thought this was s’posed to be Wonderland! This is…” Dean waved his arms around effusively, “this is…”
“Alice’s garden,” said Sam. “It’s where the rabbit hole is.”
--
To say that Dean was less than thrilled at having to hike across Alice’s garden was an understatement of epic proportions. The grass was littered with brittle fallen leaves that prickled his feet, and walking past marching columns of ants the size of rats was creepy as hell. The giant-ass length of rope that he and Sam were dragging behind them was awkward and heavy and Dean was just about done with everything being so much harder than it should’ve been. Being the size of a Ken doll sucked balls.
“Dude,” he snarked at Sam, “do you even know where this freakin’ rabbit hole is?”
Sam nodded. “Alice was sitting under a tree by the river bank, reading with her sister, so,” he pointed a long arm toward an oak tree by the brook, “most likely she was sitting there. And then she ran across the field toward the hedge,” Sam pointed out the route Alice would’ve run. “So the rabbit hole should be somewhere under that part of the hedge.”
It took them ten minutes to reach the hedge. Half way there a huge white butterfly had tried to land on Sam’s head and Sam had screamed like a girl and batted at it with his hands while Dean had laughed and wished like hell he had his cell phone with him so he could take pictures. Even without pictures, he would still be able to tease Sam about this forever. The hedge itself was creepy. It was home to way too many spider webs, all with ugly fat arachnids the size of cats perched in the center of them, peering out at potential prey with way too many eyes. Dean shuddered. And then cocked his head when he heard a stuttering kind of meow.
“Dude-”
“Shhh!” Sam raised his arm and pointed. “We’re being stalked.”
There, on the other side of the hedge, visible through the tangled branches and leaves, crouched a charcoal-grey cat with vivid green eyes.
Dean dropped the rope and very slowly withdrew the kitchen knife from his waistband.
“Dude!” Sam hissed. “You can’t shank the cat! It’s probably some little kid’s pet. They’d be heartbroken! Besides, look at it! It’s adorable.”
Dean snorted. “We’ll see how adorable you think it is when it’s treating you like a chew toy. It’s a predator Sammy, a ruthless, cold-blooded…why is it shaking its ass like that?”
Sam tilted his head to one side and then his eyes widened. “I think it’s about to-”
The cat sprang and Sam and Dean threw themselves sideways, Sam one way, Dean the other. Dean rolled and rolled and rolled again, before coming up on his knees with his knife at the ready. He was pleased to see Sam mirroring his position on the other side of the cat. The cat, for its part, wasn’t sure which of them to go after and didn’t seem to appreciate the way they weren’t acting like prey. It flattened its ears, lowered its body and hissed-its suddenly very fluffy tail whipping behind it like an angry feather duster.
“Go find the rabbit hole,” Dean told his brother, “I’ll hold off Fluffy here.”
The cat fixed its eyes on Dean and Sam nodded, backing away slowly, picking up the rope and dragging it with him.
Dean met the cat’s eyes and held them; channeling every bit of bad-ass alpha male attitude he’d ever learned in an attempt to scare the cat away. The cat’s eyes were as black as a demon’s and if the way its fur had puffed up all over was any indication, Dean had actually managed to make it angrier. The cat started to yowl, loud and high-pitched and Dean winced and manfully resisted the temptation to cover his ears. Instead, he lunged toward the cat with a William Wallace battle cry, waving the knife in front of him.
The cat didn’t run away like he’d hoped-it leapt at him and, damn, Dean really didn’t want to stab a cat; that was just wrong on so many levels. Instead, he tucked the knife back into his waistband and threw himself at the cat’s feet, causing it to stumble, and then he rolled out from under, yanking its tail as he scrambled to his feet and ran for the hedge.
The cat whirled around, growling menacingly, and gave chase.
“Dean!” Sam was waving at him frantically. “I’ve found the rabbit hole!”
Dean ran at him, the cat in hot pursuit.
“You got the rope fixed?”
“Yeah,” and now that he was closer, Dean could see that the rope was tied to the lower branches of the hedge and dangling down into the hole, “but that’s for coming back up. Don’t worry about it now, just jump!”
“You sure that’s safe?” Dean could smell the fishy breath of the cat coming up behind him.
“Pretty sure,” Sam nodded vigorously.
“Oh that’s comforting,” Dean leapt into the rabbit hole, “Geronimo!”
He felt a rush of air as Sam jumped down behind him and then they were falling.
Really, really slowly.
“The cat’s staking out the rabbit-hole,” Sam said from above him. “It looks pissed.”
“Awesome.”
Dean tried looking straight down, but it was too dark to see anything, so he turned his attention to the sides and was surprised to see maps and pictures and shelves and cupboards. He reached an arm out and plucked a tin can off one of the shelves as he fell past. “Treacle? What the hell is treacle?”
“I think it’s an English thing, a bit like molasses,” Sam said.
Dean’s eyebrows shot up. “Dude! Were we in England just now? Was that garden in England? That’s freakin’ amazing!”
Sam huffed. “Really, Dean? You’re eight inches tall and slow-falling down a rabbit-hole to Wonderland and the most amazing thing about all that is passing through England on the way?”
Dean put the treacle onto another shelf as he fell past. “Shut up, Sammy.”
“Awesome comeback,” Sam mocked. “No, really.”
Dean decided to ignore him and busied himself pulling random items off shelves and examining them. He saw a jar marked ‘orange marmalade’ and snatched it off the shelf. That was another English thing, some kind of jelly he thought, only when he opened the jar it was empty. He sniffed at the empty jar-very citrusy-before putting it onto another shelf.
“Hey Dean?”
Dean glanced up at Sam; or at Sam’s feet anyway. “What?”
“You remember that summer we spent at Bobby’s? You would’ve been ten, I think? And we found that old copy of Alice in Wonderland and you read it to me, a little bit every night? And sometimes Bobby would read it to both of us?”
“Vaguely,” Dean said. What he mostly remembered about that visit was that his Dad and Bobby had argued because Dad didn’t think that Bobby had made him train hard enough.
“He told me years later,” Sam said, his tone subdued, “that Alice in Wonderland was Karen’s favorite book,” he cleared his throat. “Imagine how stoked he’d be if he knew we were on our way to Wonderland?”
“Yeah,” said Dean, and then he thumped down onto a heap of dry leaves.
“Ouch!” Sam crashed down on top of him. “Sonovabitch! Get off me, dude!”
The boys scrambled to their feet and looked around. There was only one way to go; forward down the dark tunnel in front of them. They walked until they came to a sharp corner and when they turned it they found themselves in a long, low hall. Rows of lanterns hung from the ceiling, casting a soft orange light, just bright enough for the boys to make out the shadowy images of closed doors all around the hall.
“The Hall of Locked Doors,” Sam said. “The glass table should be in here somewhere.”
Dean nodded. “And the cake should be underneath it, right?”
By unspoken agreement they headed in opposite directions around the hall.
“Found the table!” Dean called. “But there’s nothing underneath it!”
“Is there anything on top of it?” Sam called from across the hall.
Dean stood underneath the table and peered up. “Looks like there’s a key up there. You think we have to take the key off the table to make the potion appear and then take the potion off to make the cake appear?”
“Maybe?” Sam materialized by his side. “You think you could climb up there and get it if I gave you a boost?”
Before Dean could answer a loud throat-clearing had them both spinning around, their jaws dropping as they took in the sight before them.
“Dude,” said Dean, “that rabbit isn’t wearing any pants.”
Sam gaped at him. “The weird part, is that it’s wearing a waistcoat and a hunting jacket and carrying a fob watch and a walking cane.”
“Right,” Dean nodded, his eyes wide. “Obviously,” he cleared his throat and ran a hand over his jaw. “But why no pants?”
“Hello?” said the rabbit, “I’m standing right here, you know?”
“Yes,” Dean agreed solemnly, “you are.” He inclined his head toward his brother and spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “It’s talking, Sammy.”
“Hi,” Sam stepped forward and offered the rabbit his hand. “I’m Sam. And this is my brother Dean.”
The rabbit stared at him until he dropped his hand. “Are you mice? You’re odd looking for mice.”
“Um, no. We’re -”
“What are you doing in my burrow?” the rabbit demanded.
“We came for cake,” Dean said.
The rabbit turned his red-eyed gaze on Dean. “I don’t recall inviting any mice to tea. Or are you just passing through on your way to the Mad Hatter’s? He does throw the best Tea Parties, after all.”
“We are not mice!” Sam said quickly, before Dean could inadvertently accept an invitation to the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, which sounded like the sort of thing that could go really, really badly. “We’re people. Who got shrunk. And we came here to see if we could get some of that Eat Me cake that makes you grow big. Alice wrote-”
The rabbit’s expression brightened. “You know Alice?”
“Not personally. Did you know her?”
The rabbit shook his head. “But my great, great, great grandfather knew her quite well. So you’re from Alice’s world?”
Sam said that they were and the rabbit asked him if they knew a Haggerty.
“Haggerty? Yeah. He was a Man of Letters, same as us. You know him?”
“My great grandfather did. He visited. Quite obsessed with what he called ‘Other Worlds’, was Haggerty.”
Dean cleared his throat and rubbed his hands together. “So. Can you help us out with some Eat Me cake?”
“Follow me,” said the rabbit, turning away with a swish of his hunting jacket and padding toward a nearby green door.
Dean grinned. “We’re following the white rabbit, Sammy. I think we’re about to find out just how deep this rabbit-hole really goes!”
--
The rabbit led them into a very large walk-in pantry, the walls of which were lined, floor-to-ceiling, with shelves. There was a really tall ladder attached to the shelves and the rabbit pulled it across to a section marked ‘magical foodstuffs’ and then climbed, until he was almost out of sight. A bowl of bright rainbow-colored candy caught Dean’s attention and he stepped toward it, only to be yanked back by his brother.
“Don’t touch anything,” Sam hissed.
“I wasn’t gonna-”
Sam raised one eyebrow and Dean sighed. “Fine,” he stuck his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. “Happy?”
Sam bit at his bottom lip. “It’s just, we’re in Wonderland. And things have a habit of going sideways in Wonderland. I don’t want you to eat a piece of candy and, I dunno, blow up into a giant blueberry or something.”
Dean didn’t bother to point out that they weren’t in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory; he just nodded and fixed his eyes on the ladder.
When the rabbit came back down he had two currant cakes and two small bottles of potion tucked under his arm. He handed them each a cake first and then a bottle. “Just in case you grow too big,” he said. “Alice overdid the cake and grew to 9ft; had to fan herself back down to size.”
“Thanks,” Dean began to unwrap the cake.
“No!” the rabbit shouted, “not here! You’ll never get back out the rabbit hole if you’re the size of a regular man. Alice may have been able to fall down it, but she was a slip of a gal. Go back up top first, and then eat the cake.”
Sam raised a hand. “One small problem with that…we’ve got a cat sitting up there staking out the rabbit hole.”
The rabbit chuckled. “Ah yes, Dinah’s great, great, great granddaughter. She does rather fancy herself as a hunter. Come with me.”
They followed the rabbit out of the pantry, through the hall and back down the tunnel to the bottom of the hole. The rabbit reached out and pushed a button set into the tunnel wall and the whole area lit up.
The rabbit frowned and flicked at the dangling rope. “Yours, I take it?”
Sam agreed that it was.
The rabbit grinned (which was rather scary) and pulled a lever. There was a hydraulic whir and then a section of the tunnel wall opened up and a wooden platform slid out and positioned itself before them.
“It’s an elevator,” the rabbit said helpfully. “Step on board. It’ll shoot you up to the top in no time and when you break the surface it’ll spray water all around and give an air horn blast, scare away that blasted cat. Just remember that you’ll have to jump off quickly.”
“Nice!” Dean approved. “You’re the man!”
“Rabbit.”
“Right.”
The rabbit hustled them on board the platform. “Hang onto your hats,” he said gleefully. He pulled the lever again and the platform took off, speeding up past the shelves before shooting out into the fresh air of the garden with an almighty shriek. They leapt from the board and Dean watched with satisfaction as the cat fled across the garden.
“Some hunter you are,” he shouted after it. Beside him, Sam was unwrapping his cake and Dean quickly followed suit. They ate small amounts slowly, as a precaution against growing bigger than a house, and kept their eyes peeled for any wandering English folk; but no-one was watching them except the cat. Dean briefly considered eating a little more cake than he should’ve, just enough to see him grow to 6ft6” because he kind of missed the days when he towered over little Sammy. But in the end it felt a little like cheating and besides, Dean figured that he was awesome just how he was. The cat, he noticed, had frozen low to the ground, its eyes huge, like liquid black orbs. Dean, now back to his proper height, couldn’t quite resist the temptation to run at it.
“How do you like them apples?” he yelled. “Not quite so much fun when you’re the tiny one, is it?”
Sam rolled his eyes. “Quit that,” he said, “before someone calls the ASPCA. Or whatever they call it here.”
“Yeah,” Dean jogged back to his brother’s side. “We should probably get back to the bunker. I’d hate to have to explain how we got here to the British cops.”
Before they’d left the bunker, they’d pushed one leg of the chair into the doorway to prop the door open. Sam had then plucked out one of his longer hairs and, with some sticky tack they’d found in the bottom kitchen drawer, he’d tacked it across the narrow gap in the door, low down. The boys had then crawled through the gap and out into the garden, reasoning that if anything taller and wider than five inches found its way into the bunker, they probably wanted to know about it. Fortunately, when Sam bent down to examine it, the hair was still intact.
“Ah,” said Dean as they shut the door behind them and removed the key. “Home sweet home.”
“Yeah,” said Sam. He re-opened the door, just to make sure that Wonderland had really gone. “I’m gonna go and put the key back. And put the rest of the cake and the bottles of potion into the Wonderland storage box.”
“Okay,” Dean called after his retreating back. “I’m gonna make us burgers.”
He got a backwards wave in response.
Later, once Dean had grilled up two of the best ever bacon cheeseburgers, hand cut some fries and even made a salad (he still couldn’t get over just how many different types of tomato there were), he piled everything onto a tray and went in search of his brother.
Sam was curled up on a purple leather and mahogany arm chair in the corner of the library reading a slim, brown leather book.
“Dude,” Dean lifted the tray. “Food. Be easier to eat at the table.”
Sam grinned, his eyes soft. “Like I said, 1950s housewife.”
“And like I said, Bitch, I have a wooden spoon and I ain’t afraid to use it. Now let’s eat.”
Sam joined him at the map table, the book still in his hand.
“What are you reading?” Dean asked.
Sam cleared his throat. “It’s uh, Alice’s journal actually. The real Alice. Turns out she was a Hunter. And this story? Definitely not for children. There’s a lot of drug use,” Sam rolled his eyes, “and you really don’t wanna know what she got up to with that caterpillar, man. Anyway, Alice was actually hunting for some kind of dimension hopping monster who was kidnapping and abusing prostitutes. She tracked him to Wonderland but couldn’t manage to, uh, bring him to justice because he was from a powerful family. Twenty or so years later he was back in London and active again, and this time he was killing. Alice tracked him back to Wonderland again and confronted his family with the evidence of his crimes and this time, his family had him executed. You know, off with his head.”
“Wow,” Dean spoke around a mouthful of burger, lettuce spilling from his mouth. “Definitely not a Disney movie. So we’re talkin’ about the Jack of Hearts, right? He stole some tarts?”
Sam nodded. “Also known as Jack the Ripper.”
“Holy shit!” Dean gaped. “So how did Lewis Carroll end up with the Alice in Wonderland story?”
Sam was chewing on his burger with a blissful look on his face. “Oh man, this is really good, Dean.”
Dean’s face brightened. “I know, right?”
Sam swallowed. “Charles Dodgson, which is Lewis Carroll’s real name, he met Alice at a party and after a few too many tokes on the opium pipe, she told him about her experiences in Wonderland. He told a G-rated version of the story to the children of some friends of his a couple of weeks later, one of whom was also called Alice, and she asked him to write it down. The rest, as they say, is history.”
They finished their burgers in silence, Sam holding Alice’s journal in one hand and sniggering occasionally. The burgers were followed by Mississippi Mud pie and Sam rolled his eyes at the porn noises Dean made while he ate his portion. Finally, Sam pushed back from his plate and yawned, rubbing a hand across his suddenly drooping eyelids.
“You feelin’ okay, Sammy?”
“Just a little tired; no more than usual.”
“Okay,” Dean got to his feet. “I’m gonna go and check on Kevin, make sure the slippery nipple shots at the Dolly Parton Dixie Stampede didn’t kill the guy. You should take it easy. It ain’t been long since the trials, and there’s no telling what all that shrinking and growing’s done to you.”
Sam agreed that he’d take it easy and once Dean had left, he wandered across to the book shelves and searched for something to lose himself in for the rest of the evening. Right on the very top shelf he spotted The Earthsea Trilogy. He reached for it with a smile and promised himself that never again would he take being tall for granted.
The End
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