Week 13 Story: Mark's (Almost) Adventures in Wonderland


Once there was a young boy, Mark who lived in a normal suburban neighborhood in Oklahoma. Mark didn’t have many friends, he was a bit too odd. That didn’t bother Mark at all, he filled his time with adventure books and exploring the nearby fields that surrounded his town.

One day, as Mark was exploring, he came across a manhole cover. Normally Mark wouldn’t have taken notice but there were a couple of things that drew in his attention. One, instead of having a rusted color (like most manholes Mark has seen) it was chrome! Two, when Mark drew closer to it, he could hear a pleasant humming noise coming from underneath it. So, naturally, Mark went to the manhole and tried to lift it. The cover flew off, it was as Mark had the strength of 10 men! He thought to himself, “Aren’t manhole covers supposed to be really heavy?” However, before he could give thought as to why this manhole cover was so odd, a huge gust of wind pushed him into the hole!

Mark felt the wind gushing past him as he kept falling. “Shouldn’t I have hit the ground by now?” But Mark didn’t hit the ground for a long time. He kept falling and falling and falling. Finally, when it seemed like he couldn’t fall any longer, a rainbow-colored slide sloped in and caught him.

As he was sliding, Mark noticed shapes start to appear in the darkness around him. “Was that a bat with a dogs head?” Who knows, he was sliding too fast.

When he came to the bottom of the slide, he flew into a huge pile of leaves. Looking up, he could see the tiny pinprick of light that was the surface. He was in trouble now.

“Where are YOU going?” A voice came out of the darkness. Mark twisted around trying to find the source, but couldn’t see one – the slide was gone as well! Just as Mark was about to give up searching, a ginormous head appeared – it was rainbow colored and looked like a caterpillar! “We haven’t had a normal person like you down here in ages.” The caterpillar drawled, “The last one that was down here was awfully rude and had no idea what was going on.”

“What IS going on?” Mark asked.

With that statement, the Caterpillar widened his eyes and screeched, “You’re just like HER, aren’t you? Well, we just can NOT have you down here.”

With that, the caterpillar morphed his body, so that instead of being a slide, he turned into a ladder. “Now get out of here before the Red Queen finds you.”

Mark didn’t know what to say – he didn’t like this place with creatures and darkness. He figured it’d be best to just go home and stick to his adventure books.



Image result for caterpillar from alice"
The Caterpillar
Illustration by John Tenniel

This story is based off of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland Series (1865). In this iteration, we just have an almost sort of adventure with one of the original characters involved. I figured in this "modern" version we could have the main character be relatively sensible and take the way out. I mean, who would want to be in some scary world after falling down a manhole?

Comments

  1. Megan PalmerNovember 17, 2019 at 7:43 PM

    Hey there! I absolutely loved this story. I thought that it was a great idea that you made the story something that was so relatable in the beginning. The way you described the caterpillars mood and feelings towards Alice and Mark were so perfectly spot-on, and definitely added such a great component to the story. I can agree with the character you created, who was scared, but also I feel that I would be at least a little bit curious of the new world if I had just discovered it!

    ReplyDelete
  2. zNovember 19, 2019 at 4:32 PM

    Hi Andrew,

    I love that your version of Wonderland has all of these different entrances, and that this one happens to be a chrome-plated manhole cover. Alice in Wonderland always kind of raises the question of whether anyone else has been to wonderland, either before or after, so this is a fun little vignette on that idea.

    I did notice one little typo: in the second paragraph, you say “it was as Mark had the strength,” and I think you’re missing an “if” between “as” and “Mark.”

    Best,
    A.M.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Introduction to Andrew

Image
Hi! My name is Andrew Barton and I am currently a senior here at OU. My major is pre-medicine/biochemistry, so obviously this class is a little out of range from what I normally am taking during the semester. Right now, being a senior, I am applying to medical school. This is definitely not an easy process, but I am almost done with the application aspects of it. If I had to choose as to what medical school I could attend, it would be OU, since this is my home and I would be absolutely privileged to serve the community, especially where help is needed most. This summer, I went on one vacation to Seacrest Beach in Florida. For the remainder of the summer, I took Quantitative Analysis here at OU. The class wasn’t too terrible – the only “bad” part of the class was that lab was four times a week from 10:30-1:20. Other than those two things, my summer was pretty relaxing. I’m involved in a few student-led organizations at OU, with the primary one being Soonerthon. I have served o
Read more

Week 3 Story: Justice

Image
Walking up to the gleaming Palace of Three, Armistice could feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. No one was allowed past the white gate – what his grandfather had told him of his parentage must have been true. Armistice had a normal childhood, at least by mid-world’s standards. Living within the country had taught him the true value of things: justice, vengeance, and power – in this order, specifically, he was told how to rise up in the world, to be a representative of the place where he came from. He didn’t want to disappoint his teachers. That’s why he walked past the gate, why he was told of his relation to one of the three. Armistice didn’t simply want power to control his own fate, he wanted to control the fates of everyone around him – no one could get in his way. He was in front of the large marble door now – he could see the engravings of past revolts, with Vengeance coming down upon the masses with her fiery whip. Next to these revolts was Power, the weak
Read more