“Carmen, are you okay?” her mother said golden hair flowing down her back with her apron and the card suits down the lining.
“Just a nightmare of the Queen of Hearts again,” Carmen says standing up from the bed.
“Are you sure?” her mother asks.
“Yes, Mom. I’m sure,” she says pulling a dress out of her wardrobe
Her mother leaves the room as Carmen pulls on a black dress with lace on the tips of the dress, she walks down the stairs to her stepfather reading the paper and her mother cooking pancakes. She sits beside her stepfather and stirs his coffee as the cream rises to the cup's top.
“Thank you, Carmen,” her stepfather said.
“I know you don’t like the cream in your mustache when it rises again,” Carmen says smiling.
Her mother walks over to the table with three plates of pancakes, sits in front of the two, and sits down with her plate.
“Carmen were you going to sell the story prints in town today?” her mother asks giving the other two plates of pancakes to her and her stepfather.
“Yes, I was,” she answers as she keeps eating.
“Paul, you have the prints on the cart right?” her mother asks her stepfather.
“Yes, Alice there on the cart, and Carmen can go after breakfast,” her stepfather says.
Carmen finishes her plate and washes it before kissing her mother and stepfather on the cheek before biking the cart into town, she sets up the cart in its usual place as people slowly start buying the prints.
“Carmen, I see your mother is still having her crazy stories,” Mrs Milkum says as she walks up to the cart with a quarter to pay for a print.
“Yet Mrs. Milkum you still buy them every time I’m here,” Carmen says, handing her one of the prints.
“Your mother's weird Wonderland stories are corrupting young minds with nonsense.” Mrs Milkum says.
“Whoever said it was nonsense.” a figure says leaning against the wall across the alleyway.
“If you’ve read this you’d know why.” Mrs. Milkum says, holding the print in her hand, slowly crushing it in her fist.
The figure pushes off the wall and walks over. He’s tall and in a black suit with a gold snake belt, a gold stud earring in his left ear, black hair, and green eyes. “I’ll take a copy,” he says handing Carmen a quarter. Carmen hands him a print and puts the quarter in her jar.
“You look like one of the crazy characters that Carmen's mother describes in her Wonderland crazy stories,” Mrs. Milkum scoffs.
“The story's very accurate to what Wonderland is like it reminds me of the story the Queen of Hearts told me about a girl that came from here to Wonderland,” the man says.
Carmen shudders at the name of the Queen of Hearts and her famous words “Off with her head crossed her mind. When Mrs. Milkum walks away. “Thank you, Mrs. Milkum,” she yells from the cart and starts closing as the prints are all gone. She finishes to see the man still standing there “Can I help you with anything else?” she asks.
“Do you believe in Wonderland?” he asks.
“Kind of some of it seems crazy but I wish it was real and it’s not just my mother's bedtime stories for me when I was young,” Carmen answers.
“What if I told you it was real and not just a story,” he asks.
“I would say we don’t know each other and that it's not real,” Carmen says sighing.
“James that's my name,” he says walking over to the wall and pushing in a brick that makes the wall slide into a tunnel.
“What is that?” Carmen asks.
“A rabbit hole,” James says before jumping into it.
A few memories flash across Carmen's brain like photos of things that she doesn’t remember at all. James’s face feels familiar the word rabbit hole to Wonderland seems normal and not like a faraway dream Carmen could never reach before.
Then she jumps.