Once, there was a little girl called Alice, and what a little girl she was. She was of five years of age, and quite lonely. She was the second child of a rather wealthy family which doted upon her elder brother. She spent her time outside, in the back garden, on the swing, daydreaming. At her side she kept a precious doll; a special gift given to her by her grandmother: A beautifully made white rabbit with a green jacket and a heart stitched on the left hand side pocket. Oh, how Alice loved that doll. Being as young as she was, she used to come up with adventures they would go on together. She would enter an imaginary world with talking trees and a moon and sun with faces.
Her pale eyes began to shut and the final thought that came into her head was: I wonder what we shall do in Wonderland this time?
The rabbit was put inside the toy box, along with all Alice's old toys and games that she used to play with, or tried to play with, with her brother. The heavy padlock was locked with a rusty key, which was then tossed out of the window. The maid and the butler lifted the toy box up into the attic and pushed it deep into the bowels of the loft, never to be seen again. It was not possible for a doll to cry, but the rabbit did so anyway.
The white rabbit knew it had been inside the toy box for a very long time, and so had begun to become moldy. It would not be long before it would rot away completely and the measly soul Alice had given it would have nowhere to go, and also disappear. It did not want to disappear. It did not want to disappear like Alice had. It wanted to stay, but it did not know how to keep existing. It needed someone to acknowledge its existence; to remember it was there. But that was impossible while it was trapped inside the toy box.
It was getting to the point where its limbs had begun to drop off. One of his eyes was festering with maggots. The dolls around him had already turned to dust, and mold was crawling out of its chest. He did not know that the padlock had gotten so rusty that it was almost ready to drop off until it did so with a heavy clanging noise. The moment he heard it, he forced the chest lid open with his leg and hopped out of the chest with the energy of a five year old child, even though he was nearly fifty years old. He needed to find a human fast before his soul vanished. He knew that the feeling he was suffering from was fear. He had one arm and one leg left. His right eye was rotten and his left ear was half chewed by mice and rats. He did not know how he was going to get out; he only knew he needed to. He hopped down the attic stairs and scurried down the corridor. He would prefer the person to find him to be a child. He would never trust human adults.
* * *
Alice's family had moved in four years ago; that was when she was twelve, and even now she still detested the place with all her heart. Alice was known for her foul mouth and short temper in the small village of Beulah. She was also known for her bright red hair and love of hockey. So, in general, she was known for being a brute. But she did not mind, in fact she preferred they thought of her as a mean tomboy than what she really was; a cry-baby, girly girl. She scowled at the thought of those children who had bullied her in her old school; that was one reason why they had left. That, and the fact that her mother and her father had decided divorced, though they never told her why.
The white rabbit saw her as a perfect candidate for the time being. If she decided to take him in, she would be far too stubborn to give him to her little brother, who ripped up all his toys in fits of sadistic childishness, and most likely ignore her mother who was at work a lot. At least, that is what he, the white rabbit, had found out through listening to conversations. The only problem for him was: Would she take him in? In the state he was in, no. He had to fix up his appearance. So he crawled up the stairs and into Alice's mother’s room. On the dressing table there was a sewing box and next to it, a recently knitted blanket. Alice's mother was having another child soon. He climbed up the chair and grabbed the sewing box, three times larger than he, dropping it on the ground. No-one came up the stairs.
Once his limbs were repaired and the mold and maggots were cleaned out, he started to search for a button for his eye, but was interrupted. The door to the room opened. Instinctively, he dropped everything and sat on the seat, looking like a typical stuffed toy. Standing at the door was Alice, her arms crossed and a scowl on her face. Her eyebrow was raised slightly. The rabbit began to feel nervous. Alice walked up to him and lifted him up by the scruff of his neck. He did not feel pain, but he still felt fear as Alice scanned him.
"I did not know mother made dolls," she grumbled, holding the rabbit with both hands at eye level. The rabbit noted her eyes were almost red, too.
"I think I will 'borrow' this one," She said holding the doll in her arm dragging it across the floor. Secretly, the rabbit smiled. It worked.
* * *
SIGNING OFF!
RinreiBut Alice was not a very well child. She got colds often, and sometimes fainted if she got too excited. Her parents did not suspect she would live very long with her illness, which was slowly getting worse. It got to the point where she would have to lie in bed almost throughout the day. Her skin got paler and paler, and the colour faded from her cheeks. She was dying, and everyone knew it. Even the rabbit that she kept at her side throughout her illness knew it.
* * *
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