HatterXReader(SyFy Alice):Part 4

You found yourself walking through a bricked in dark corridor. This one thankfully was well kept and didn’t have any flooded water on the floors or overgrown greenery sprouting from the walls. A throng of raised voices echoed down the passageway and the sounds of other human life was like music to your ears. You had heard enough silence in the past twenty four hours to fill a lifetime. Though it had looked like it on the outside you were happy to find that this wasn’t a ghost town after all. You followed the sound of shouting voices until you came to an open room full of crowds of business attired people all in various states of positions.

People moved about freely in the spacious industrial room before you. The inside of this warehouse was a little shabby around the edges, but it was nothing like the broken down abandoned ruins of the ones you had been in before. This particular building had fully functioning white cylinder lights that hung from the ceiling and cast a dim glow down on the restless guests below. The walls -while sparse and a little worn- were at least free of any kind of wild vegetation, gaping holes, or dangerously hovering electrical wires. The floor of the room was actually covered in grass. The grass was slightly dull in color and looked like it hadn’t been watered in a week and it crunched beneath your feet. The dingy grass gave way to concrete only at the very edges of the room where rows of circular bright white tables with illuminated surfaces stood surrounded by unstained pure white modern art single-person chairs. Most of those tables were occupied by well dressed men and women chatting fervently back and forth to one another. There had to be at least eighty people in the room and all of them were dressed in muted business appropriate wear. Their conversations blended to make one large hum of noise that blasted your ears making it impossible to discern what any of them were talking about. It was like being in the center of a beehive with all the people darting back and forth from here to there and giving off sounds that came to your ears like one vibrating buzz. As you stepped forward into the controlled chaos your attention was fixed on the very front of the room where a nice black podium stood with a clear hard plastic top. A small man in a frumpy suit seemed to be hunched over it sleeping. How anybody could sleep in this cacophony of sound was beyond you. Adhered to the wall behind the short dozing man were two wall marquees with red and gold flashing words and numbers streaming across. None of it made sense to you as you read, “Ecstasy -2.7%...195 interest”. You looked over to your right where a group of people were standing in front of a black chalkboard that had squares sectioned off with various emotions like peace, compassion, anxiety, and exhilaration. A man in an ill-fitting suit was currently standing on a small steel footstool and was erasing the numbers under surprise and adding new ones. Was this some kind of upscale drug den?  

People all over the room were making wild hand gestures in the air and bellowing over each other for their voices to be heard. The scene reminded you of the stock market with all the business people vigilantly watching the lighted marquees and squawking unintelligibly when a number they didn’t like showed up. You passed through the commotion of the crowd unnoticed while you silently searched for the strange homeless man who led you here. As your eyes observed your new surroundings they happened to land on one of the far walls where a lighted rack of shelves held clear bottles only about a forth of the way filled with varying colored liquids. Each bottle was had a different colored fluid and each large printed label was different from the last. You gazed at the assorted bottles reading them one by one. The bottle labeled “LUST” was held a small amount of a deep crimson liquid, while the next bottle called “EXCITEMENT” was a bold green, beside it was “PASSION” and it was a fine baby pink.  

You whipped your head around the room and noticed that at the table closest to you sat two men with bottles exactly like the ones on the walls. You drew nearer and saw that one man in a gray tweed suit had a bottle that said “DESIRE” -that looked oddly like red fruit punch- placed a few inches in front of his chest while the other man across from him in a tan loose fitting trench coat and matching hat had a bottle with clear liquid directly in front of him on the table. The man in tan said to the man in gray, “Okay, Okay, Okay, I’ll give you a half measure of hope for it.” The man in gray gave his companion a disinterested look and replied, “Hope was yesterday’s wonder.” The man in tan didn’t give up and instead responded in a cajoling tone, “Come on, I’ve got a little bit of serenity…” The man in tweed looked intrigued now, but kept his reply bland, “How much is a little?” The man in tan laughed insincerely while he reached into the pocket of his trench coat and pulled out another of the clear bottles. This one was a fourth of the way filled with a bright gold liquid. The label read, “SERENITY” just like the man had claimed. The man in gray’s eyes fixated on the bottle that was suspended in front of his face. He immediately said “Okay,” and reached for it, but the man in tan pulled it away from his grasp saying cautiously, “Switch.” The man in gray nodded and carefully the man in tan held out the bottle of “serenity” while grabbing hold of the other man’s bottle of “desire”. As soon as each man safely had their newly traded bottles of fluid in their hands they both began to unscrew the black plastic tops.  

You were watching them intently when suddenly a large slamming noise that made you jump rang out across the room. The swirling mill of voices came to a slow expectant silence and you directed your attention like everyone else to the front of the room where the noise had come from. The frumpy dour man at the podium was holding a wooden gavel and looked to be nodding off again. He slammed his gavel down on the podium again, you suspected more to wake himself up then to quiet the crowd. He had an unflattering mustache that did nothing for his round feminine looking face. His hair was a dark lank brown and it trailed lifelessly to his chin. Despite the length of the sides of his hair, it didn’t hide that the top of his head was slightly balding and was poorly covered up by a terrible comb over. The black faux fur-lined coat that he wore over his un-tailored three piece suit only enhanced the lack of hair on top of his head instead of masking it.  

“I have an important announcement,” the squat man called out to throng of now silent and still people. Unfortunately for the man, his voice was high-pitched like a girl’s. He was lucky he had that gavel otherwise there was no way he would have been able to settle down this crowd. “A new tea has just come on the market,” his soft features drew into a look of ominous understanding as he lightly shook his head, “You ever get that guilty feeling? Huh? Maybe you abandoned the wife and kids and left em without a crumb to split between them?” his voice was soothing and didn’t hold a trace of condemnation, “Or maybe you killed someone; a relative or a neighbor? And it’s left that niggling feeling in the pit of your stomach that’s growing little by little into a dull, throbbing pain; gnawing away at you. Undermining your confidence and making you feel sick,” here he pointed with one hand and paused for dramatic affect. A quick glance around the room showed that all of the crowd’s faces were somber and attentive. The man in front leaned on his podium and continued his horrible spiel, “and worthless…and fearful.” The little man slammed a hand down on the podium as his bleak tone changed into one of excitement as he cried, “Well fear no more!” he bent down and pulled out another one of those plastic bottles, this with a minimal amount of clear liquid, “Because CLEAR CONSCIOUS has finally arrived! Ha Ha, the latest wonder from that remarkable wonder of all wonders The Heart’s Casino!” the short man gave one last half-hearted laugh and smile before he instantly began to doze off again. The bottle of clear conscious still firmly gripped in his small grubby hand.  

You looked around aghast to see that the crowd had burst into excited shouts, as people jumped up and down in place with their hands raised like people bidding in an auction house. When you first came in you were relieved to see so many people, now upon seeing them clamor for a mysterious substance that was advertised to rid someone of well deserved guilt, you found yourself actually wishing this really was a ghost town after all. You looked around in disbelief at the crowd around you when suddenly the smell of moldy cardboard and old wet dirt wafted into your nose seconds before the odd homeless man sidled up to your shoulder and whispered into your ear, “This way.” Despite his stench you were glad to see him. You were more sickened by the people around you then by the smell coming off of him. His dirty boney fingers grabbed your forearm and dragged you through the crowd into a side doorway that you hadn’t noticed before. He led you down a bare empty hallway and down a very short flight of steel industrial stairs. The stairs led you down into another white factorial looking room where instead of grass there was loose dirt for flooring sprinkled with patches of sprouting weeds and orange and yellow wildflowers.  

About twenty feet into the room the dirt floor gave way onto a healthy green carpet of lush grass. Set up on the grass was a makeshift office of sorts all in furnishing of pure white. There were two small expensive looking couches; one lined in squared and bubbled looking pleather and the other covered with stringy faux fur. In the center of the grass carpet was a long table with mismatched white chairs.  A silver arched floor lamp was turned on and added an intimate lighting to the room. The far wall ahead was made up of light teal tinted windows that ran down to the half way point of the wall. The homeless man gingerly led you into the room and stopped directly in front of where the dirt would meet the grass. As you looked closer you faintly make out the beginnings of a hat peeking over the back of one of the larger and comfier looking white chairs.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” A relaxed male British voice sang out from behind that wide brimmed comfy chair with a large round set of silver and black headphones draped over the left side. Your homeless companion turned to you with an enthusiastic smile, urging you to answer. “No thank you,” you replied to the back of that chair. You didn’t like not being able to see the person you were speaking to so you added, “Who are you?” The white andromeda styled chair swiveled around smoothly revealing a rakishly handsome man wearing a light tightly-woven small top hat over his artfully spiked up tufts of dark hair. His face was handsome in a playful naughty kind of way. His jaw line -which came to a nice rounded point- was covered in a day’s growth of black stubble that went all the way up to a shadow of a mustache. Most men would have looked sloppy or ridiculous with that kind of facial hair, but this man pulled it off and made it look attractively roguish. His dark eyebrows rose as he answered, “A friend…I hope,” in a provocative lilt.    

To be continued…

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Author’s Notes: GAH!! Describing the world of Alice is so freaking hard!!! So if it was confusing I apologize. I did the best I could. We finally met Hatter even if it was for just a brief moment there. Still I wanted to leave ya’ll wanting more so where better than to leave off than there?  I’m sorry I haven’t updated in a while, but all my free time has been occupied by a boy lately. Darn those boys they are so distracting! Don’t worry it’s nothing serious so it wont be messing up my future updating schedule too bad. I know ya’ll are itching to interact with Hatter some more so I’m going to continue writing on today. I just wanted to get this up there for you guys now so you didn’t have to wait anymore without an update. I’ve also started on the Hatter Playlist which I will be posting up soon. I just wanted to get in a few more chapters so you guys would have a few more songs to listen to. Be sure to check back soon for the next chapter for more Wonderland goodness. Again a special thanks to LikeSoTotally for giving me the heads up that the show is now on Netflix Instant View so if you have Netflix and want to brush up on your Alice knowledge or if you haven’t seen it at all then you can find it there. If you don’t have Netflix but are still interested you can find the full DVD on Barnes & Noble’s website
Until next time guys,
          Fox