Alice's Alternate Adventure

 Instructors Note:

This is an exercise in adaptation of a sort, an experiment to see if it is true, as I believe,  that all good stories are infinitely malleable, that their beginnings can lead us down different rabbit holes because we as writers have the creative capacity to extend their trajectories. So ... take either the beginning of ALICE, or the opening paragraph of any story or novel that you like and follow it up with a completely original second paragraph of your own.

She hurried across the field after it, and was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge. In a moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.

 Moments later she was falling down a tunnel with no bottom in sight. Roots and rocks littered the perimeter of the tunnel protruding from where the dirt had been hurriedly excavated. Alice occasionally bumped against the sides of the rabbit hole covering her dress in the dark brown earth that became dislodged, resulting in her falling head over heels as she tumbled down into the endless abyss. Time stood still while she plummeted headlong downwards. She noticed that the walls had become a smooth metallic finish not quite man-made but certainly not the work of burrowing rabbits, no matter how industrious they might be. Suddenly Alice was enveloped in a mattress of sorts, absorbing the impact of her fall. Alice looked up to see a pin hole of light seemingly miles above the floor of the cave, which was her initial entry point.

Across the floor of the lobby a creature was stepping out of a rabbit costume. A curious looking being, covered in fur with huge eyes and unusually long digits with what appeared to be suction cups on the end of each tip. “I’m late again, this will not go well, how am I ever to become considered a valuable member of the pod?” said the being. A series of hooks each holding a rabbit suit hung from the metallic steel wall. On one of the remaining empty hooks the alien hung his suit, the inanimate red eyes and long ears of the costume slumping towards the floor. Alice rolled off the side of the cushion, hiding herself from the harried self-absorbed creature. A wide fluorescent tube circled the ceiling of the room which bathed the room in a luminous pink light. The creature ran to a panel covered in alien symbols, and after a penetrating laser retinal scan he disappeared into thin air. "Curiouser and Curiouser Indeed!” exclaimed Alice. “This is certainly not what I expected from that silly rabbit!”

Jim

Feb. 2021