Wonderland Syndrome

Chapter Two - Advice From A CaterDylliar

There's a long moment where nothing happens, and Jay is left to chew the stale, blueberry-raspberry-strawberry-blackberry flavoured candy in the otherwise silence, his eyes scanning the long corridor for any change. No sooner than when he swallows the last of the hard candy he feels his body start to ache as he starts to grow.

The clothes grow with him, as they had done when he shrunk, and he wonders what they're made out of. Perhaps that was the reason for his outfit change. If this was a prank, surely the others would plan for all this growing and shrinking, and cast a spell on the clothes. But there's still the matter of how he got into the clothes, and why the others would play such an anticlimactic prank. Just what exactly would happen when he caught up to Fanta?

Jay is brought out of his thoughts when his head hits the roof, and there's a moment where he realizes he has far outgrown his normal height and he can barely even see the glass table from where he's hunched over, shoulder blades pressing into the ceiling as he finally stops growing.

There's a light weight around his neck, and Jay cranes his neck as best he can, using his hands to clasp whatever is hanging from his neck and bringing it to eye level. There, small in his now large palm is a key. The key is the right size for the door, and after staring at it for a long moment in disbelief, Jay realizes it to actually be the teaspoon he picked up earlier. He tries to straighten up, only to bang his head on the roof, a headache starting to pound back against the inside of his skull.

Carefully, with forced patience, he picks up the now tiny bottle between two fingers and carefully places the lip of the bottle between his teeth. He barely feels the liquid flow down his throat, and he spits the empty bottle out before he can shrink too far.

He stops at something closer to the size of the door, and the deep satisfaction he earns when the key fits into the keyhole perfectly almost makes the headache worth it.

He's just about to turn the key when the floorboards under him give out, swinging in like doors of their own, and all of a sudden he's no longer reaching for the brass doorknob, but nothing at all. So long as air doesn't count as anything, because if it does then he's reaching for air, not nothing at all at all.

A sky spans out around him forever, or for at least as far as he can see, and it takes the invasion of bitter, salty water into his mouth to realize that he's not falling through the sky, but sinking in water.

He kicks his feet rapidly, his new clothes threatening to drag him down. He fights off the heavy blazer, leaving it to sink to the seemingly endless depths, and when he's sure he's on the surface and no longer sinking, he takes a deep breath. He stares and stares, but can see no end to the sky reflected in the water, and instead turns around. Almost right next to him, is the edge of the pool, along with a uniform metal pool ladder. He swims over and takes the cold metal in his hands, pulling himself out of the water.

His arms and legs are heavy and the tiles are cold against his now-bare arms, but he drags his body up and when he stands on the glass tiles surrounding the pool, he realizes that his clothes are completely dry, despite how they weighed him down in the water moments ago.

The water in the pool is so clear that every detail of the clouds is copied with mirror accuracy, and Jay wonders if he was actually falling through water and sinking in the sky, which makes much less sense than what he thought before.

All around the cement, as far as he can see, lining the sky are tall white pillars, joined together in arching fashion, similar to the way a child counts from point to point on a number line. With a sigh, Jay looks left, then right, and debates which direction to go. There are no signs, no difference between the directions, so Jay is left to make the decision blind. He could go right, however, if he were to turn around, right would become left, and left right, so which right was right? They were two totally different rights, yet both were right, and both were left, so who was to judge which was which?