lobsterquadrille | "The time has come," the Walrus said...

Sometimes kids make things up to explain what they cannot otherwise comprehend. Sometimes the nicest people turn out to be cruel, and sometimes rulers turn out to be tyrants, and sometimes girls are born boys even though it never feels right.

Alec Liddell grew up very poor, lived with an abusive mother, and was frequently tormented by the world around him. He did not like his family and he did not like school and he did not much like himself, either. He went on adventures as another person, Alice, because Alice could be anything she wanted to be. Alice didn't have to be scared, even when the world seemed entirely too strange and impossible and upside-down. Alice peered into the looking-glass and saw another world, instead of hollow eyes and a face that wasn't hers.

But then the Red Queen was beheaded. He was taken away from his Wonderland and into protective custody, and told that he couldn't be Alice anymore. He had to Grow Up and stop Pretending. They taught him words like "dimorphism" and "disassociation" and "don't say things like that because no one will ever take you seriously." They gave him pills that made his head feel too big and took away all the nonsense, made everything sharp and present and wrong.

Alec knows it's not real. He's very aware, and smarter than he looks. He unconsciously spins complex fantasies to cover up things that frighten him, he lives in his head so that he doesn't have to face what's in his heart. He puts dreams between himself and everyone else so that no one can get too close and start asking questions like, "where do you see yourself in five years" and "do you believe in a higher power" and "did you watch the news this morning".

Alec knows all of this, but he maybe doesn't believe it. And maybe the not-believing in reality is what got him to the not-reality of Wonderland to begin with.

Alec is twenty-something and works in a quiet flower shop. He reads books about history and clinical psychology. He hates his hair. He is very fond of cats. The few people who know him say that he is spacey and easily spooked and that he has an "interesting imagination". He is unusually (or completely understandably) good at talking to children.