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Wonderland
{Andrea}

An aging fluorescent bulb buzzed, and an incessant plip-plop noise stirred Andrea awake. She kept her eyes shut as she stirred and yawned. The musty scent of mildew made her lungs sting. When she attempted to stretch, white-hot pain shot through her shoulder joints. Her eyes grew wide, and she cried out, “Oww!”

She twisted and shifted to alleviate the pressure. Hardened mascara flaked off and crumbled into her eyes as her false lashes peeled away from each other. Blinking several times, she looked around. “Where the fuck am I?”

A ghoulish chartreuse-tinted light glinted off mint-green tile walls. “Jesus, did I time-travel back to the 1970s? If I didn’t feel like puking before, I do now.”

Andrea often woke in a stupor with little to no memory of how she got there. Her favorite form of self-care was oblivion through debauchery. “Argh,” she groaned. “I’m getting too old for this shit.”

Her head hammered as if a metronome had taken up residence inside it, and when she swallowed, her throat burned like a metal playground slide in the noonday sun. Her mouth was so dry, her tongue felt chapped, and her entire body ached. Shrugging internally, she accepted her fate and moved to rub the sleep from her eyes.

“What the hell?” she croaked. She couldn’t move her arms! Her wrists were bound behind her back. Startled, she checked her feet. Her ankles were stuck together with . . . “Duct tape?” she whispered.

Squirming to free herself from her bonds, her skin touched cool, hard steel. She shuddered. Andrea lay on a table similar to the kind found in a morgue.

Panicked, she bent her knees and kicked out, trying to right herself and figure out where the hell she was. Instead, she lost her balance, free-falling before hitting the concrete floor with a hard thud.

“Oomph,” the air whooshed from her on impact. The room spun as she landed on her back. She shut her eyes and sipped quick gulps of air through her gritted teeth until the pain subsided.

Rolling to her left side, she reopened her eyes. “Shit! Fuck!” She was face to face with a body, pale and lifeless and missing an eyeball.

As she scrambled to escape, she bumped against another body. She had fallen into the center of at least a dozen corpses thrown in haphazard piles. Sucking her lips into her mouth, she stifled a scream and scanned the room. She’d woken in some rank places over the years after a particularly fun bender. However, this place won all the terrible first-place prizes.

She was in a windowless storage closet, no larger than a bedroom. Two mobile metal carts containing various medical supplies lined one wall, while the opposite had a door with a narrow, frosted window above its handle. It promised a way out. To her left sat a stainless-steel utility sink she recognized from her forensic sketch artist days and the source of the plip-pop noise. A rusted rack occupied the remaining wall space. Its wire shelves were stacked with unmarked boxes, linens, and jars containing cloudy liquid. Her mind wanted to conjure all the disturbing things they held. She wouldn’t allow it, and she shook her head, turning her focus on the door instead.

Dragging herself over the bodies, she wormed her way forward. Her stomach churned, and acid crawled up her throat as she considered they were once human beings. Then, her arm brushed against one. Its texture was rubbery, and its face held a queer, nonhuman expression. She examined another nearby. They were not corpses, but macabre, life-like dummies. Some were nude, while others wore hospital gowns. Glancing at her own body, Andrea gulped, and a cool sweat broke out on her forehead. She was dressed in the same threadbare smock. She’d bet her freedom this was no hospital, and if anyone had peeked into the room while she was unconscious, they would’ve spotted no difference between her and the other bodies.

Her teeth chattered, and her limbs quivered as she imagined what would happen next. Determined to fight the fear building inside her, she concentrated on baby steps, even though she wanted to curl into a ball and sob. “Free yourself first, then escape.” Surveying the room, goals in mind, she flipped on her back to maneuver her body better.

“OUCH!” she shouted and sat upright at once to soothe a sharp, burning pain in her left big toe. She’d sliced it open on the wheel edge of one of the rolling carts. In her quick motion, she banged her head on its leg, and the full weight of the heavy cart crashed on her, dumping its contents onto the floor.

“Jesus. Could you be more clumsy and noisy?” She snapped at herself. With her arms behind her, hands at the small of her back, and the cart’s extra weight, Andrea’s shoulders shook from the strain. Struggling for relief, she writhed until she found a new position. There, she glimpsed a scalpel an arm’s reach away. Wrestling for mobility, her long brown hair tangled in a dark, oozing liquid leaking from a small plastic bottle. The more she moved, the more ensnared her locks became. Yet she was determined to get her hands on the scalpel. Pulling her legs up as close to her chest as she could, she kicked out, raising the cart enough for her to roll out from under it. Shimmying once more across the floor, she made headway towards her goal.

“Son of a bitch!” The scalpel was a fake, made from the same material as the dummies.

Casting it aside, she focused on the door. Grunting and groaning, she struggled forward, moving her body like a human-sized earthworm. After a few attempts, she managed to pull herself to a standing position, the door supporting her back. Aligning her hands with the knob, they slipped off each time she attempted to grasp it. Whatever ooze her hair absorbed before was dripping down her arms, coating her hands. Even if they were dry, the bindings on her wrists were so taut she couldn’t make the turning motion to move the handle.

“Free yourself, then escape,” she chanted, closing her eyes to refocus on finding a solution.

If the same materials were used on her wrists as her ankles, pressure might stretch the tape enough for her to slide her hands out. Squatting, she used her body weight as leverage and tried slipping the door handle between her skin and the bindings. With help from the slippery goo, she eventually succeeded in liberating one hand, then the other.

Freed from their unnatural position, her arms trembled while her hands tingled from the surge of blood returning to them. Sliding to the floor, she hung her head and took a moment to rest before picking away at the tape around her ankles. “Fucking fingernails! Why haven’t I stopped biting them,” she cursed. Between her short nails and quivering arms, she couldn’t make headway on her remaining bonds. As blood dripped from her cut toe, it occurred to her that if the wheel edge was sharp enough to slice skin, it should slice the tape too!

With her bindings gone, she turned toward the sink in the corner, tempted to wash the goop from her body. Her twin sister, Allyson, would be using it as a bathtub if she were in this situation. She liked things clean and structured. Everything had its place. Andrea preferred messy and unorganized.

Squaring her shoulders, she plastered a coy smile on her face. “Why change now?” Then she yanked open the door and staggered into the adjoining space. Her legs wobbled as she inspected the area. If she could find a phone or computer, she could get in touch with the outside world and call for help.

From the storage closet, she entered an operating room with a table, more instruments, and bloody gauze. Yet to her right was a spacious interior made to resemble a bus or airport terminal. Straight ahead was a short hallway with exposed wood framing supporting a semi-finished office. False windowpanes covered a painted sprawling city scene that reminded her of Atlanta, where she’d lived briefly after college. Spotting a laptop on the desk, she stumbled forward.

She stabbed at the power button, but it didn’t budge. The buttons were fake. Every item she touched on the desk was a replica of the real thing! The phone, books, stapler, even the paper clips! Picking up the laptop prop, she threw it across the room, screaming in frustration. Terror seized her as it skittered across the floor. Whoever bound her and left her in that room might be watching and waiting. She must be smarter. Quieter.

Taking a deep breath to settle her nerves and racing heart, she tiptoed towards the next area. Soft music played overhead as she entered a mock hotel room. A table for two, dressed for dinner, sat against a floral-papered wall. Another false window showcased the same city skyline from a different perspective. “Definitely Atlanta,” Andrea murmured. A bouquet of ruby-red roses rested in the table’s middle as the proud centerpiece and a silver floor-length ice bucket stood beside it, holding a bottle of champagne. Four covered dishes rested on a room service cart, the aroma of real food filling her nostrils. Her stomach growled.

Intuition told her to exercise caution, yet her watering mouth and gurgling stomach argued it was worth the disappointment if the dishes were empty. Yet there was another reason for her hesitation. The whole scene tugged at a lost memory. It was familiar in the way a forgotten fashion trend returns and reminds you how much you hated that period in your life.

“Fuck it,” she spat, stepping forward and lifting one of the lids. A loud bell broke the silence like a sensor alarm on a hot ticket item at the clothing store. She jumped, dropping it. The clang of metal crashing into metal reverberated. The echo hit her in the chest as she swung around to face the way she’d entered. A crawling sensation trickled up her spine. Was someone behind her watching? She half expected a cameraperson and a cinematographer to be standing there when she turned.

“Hello?”

When she spoke, the ringing stopped, only to be replaced by the sound of creaking floorboards. “What the?” she bit back as she looked at the floor and her bare feet, her toes automatically curling into the soft shag carpet.

She whipped her head back up to locate the source of the noise. As she did, a sharp pain above her right eye took her by surprise.

“Ugh! What is happening?” she whispered, gripping her forehead in her hands.

A buzzing sound began in her ears, low at first but increasing in intensity until it forced her to lay on the floor. Curled in the fetal position, her head still in her hands, a moan escaped her lips before she could gain any control over her roiling emotions.

Anger replaced pain, and fear replaced anger. Was someone playing a deadly game with her? As she drifted into unconsciousness, a hand smoothed the bangs from her forehead.

“Shhh. It’s okay, Dre. Relax.”

“Lyssy?” Andrea whispered, confused.

“I’ve got you. But it’s time.”

“Time? For what? I don’t understand.” Andrea slurred, which further baffled her. Why couldn’t she speak properly?

“It’s time to make things right.”