Alice In Chains Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Also by Adriana Arden

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Copyright

  About the Book

  ‘Look, this girling has feathers where she should have hair.’

  ‘Bet they’re not real,’ replied Dum.

  Dee reached down, took hold of one of the larger feathers in the middle of her delta and plucked it out of her. Alice gave a shriek of pain.

  ‘They are real,’ Dee agreed. ‘And pretty.’

  Young Alice Brown has an unusual problem. Only another trip to Underland can solve it, and her bedroom mirror is the only means of return. Used once more as a pawn by the Red Queen, this time literally, and enslaved by the greedy Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Alice must use her willingness to submit to the bizarre demands made of her if she is to succeed in returning to normal. A delightfully perverse retelling of a classic tale, by the author of The Obedient Alice.

  Also by Adriana Arden

  THE OBEDIENT ALICE

  ALICE IN CHAINS

  ‘So, you’re both masochists, or submissives, or what?’ Juliet asked, sounding slightly embarrassed.

  ‘Probably a bit of both,’ Alice said. ‘Those are Overworld terms. In Underland being a girling includes all of that and also being a slave, a pleasure toy, a working animal …’

  ‘Ughh! How can you do that? It means you don’t have any choice, any freedom.’

  ‘I’m free if I’m honestly being who I am,’ Alice replied.

  ‘You really like pain?’

  ‘As part of being dominated or foreplay, it can be fantastically exciting. Sex is much more intense here.’

  ‘I saw you come a few times in the garden when Ruddle was stimulating fruiting,’ Suzanne said to Juliet. ‘And what about when the insects took your nectar? Don’t pretend that didn’t feel good.’

  ‘But I couldn’t help myself!’ Juliet exclaimed defensively.

  ‘Exactly. You were just following your instincts. Well it’s the same for us, for all the girlings down here as far as I know. I just want to be with my master and please him. If it doesn’t hurt anybody else, who are you to judge?’

  One

  ALICE BROWN SAT naked and miserable on the side of her bed.

  What could she do? Who could she ask for help?

  She stood up and, for what seemed the tenth time that morning, examined herself critically in the full-length mirror on the back of her wardrobe door. Most eighteen-year-old girls would have been pleased with what was reflected in the glass. So was Alice up to a point.

  Her face, when not creased with worry as now, was pretty and nicely proportioned; capped by a golden bob of collar-length hair, its fringe brushing her brow. Her eyes, when not red-rimmed from crying, were normally clear and bright. Her body, so recently matured into young-womanhood, combined pleasing curves with suppleness. Full breasts stood out from her slender chest, their pneumatic resilience imparting a slight convexity to the creamy flesh of their upper slopes. Though sadly crinkled and cold now, they were normally crowned by a pair of perky pink nipples. Alice’s waist was slim, her stomach flat, her hips a little on the narrow side, which however only served to accentuate the rotundity of her buttocks, the curve of her strong thighs and firm calves.

  In all it was a body of which to be proud, except for one bizarre feature.

  Once more Alice’s hand crept reluctantly down to the delta of her pubes. Where there should have been a triangle of fluffy honey-blonde hair, there was instead a growth of fine golden feathers.

  They were downy soft, tiny at the top but growing slightly larger with each layer, pointing downwards and closely following the pouting curve of her pubic mound and dividing neatly about her cleft. At least she could pee without wetting them. The feathers tapered off between her legs just short of her anus.

  As Alice turned slightly to look in the mirror sideways the sunlight caught the feathers, making them sparkle with warm golden highlights that played over her inner thighs. On a bird such growth would have looked remarkable, even beautiful. On her it was a nightmare.

  She had tried pulling them out with tweezers, but the pain had been horrible. Feathers, as she had discovered to her cost, had much thicker roots than hair. In any case she could not go through life literally plucking herself! She ran her fingers through the hair on her head. Underneath there were more tiny feathers sprouting from her scalp. At the moment they were concealed, but what if they kept on growing until they spread all over her?

  With a groan Alice sank back onto her bed and buried her face in her hands. What a mess! Even the timing was terrible. She was sitting her A levels in ten days. Right now she should be revising, not driving herself insane about growing pubic feathers! And she would not be able to conceal the fact much longer. Her parents were already worried about her behaviour. They had even asked her the big question: was she pregnant? If only it was that simple!

  Alice knew they loved her and only wanted what was best for her, but how could she explain this? If she secretly went to a doctor what could he do for her? Send her to a vet? In any case, he would want to know how had it happened, and that was something so impossibly crazy that he would never believe it. Her parents were not the most imaginative people and to accept what had happened to her they would need a whole lot of imagination. They would either think she was mad, or if she convinced them it was true, they would completely freak out. But then who would believe her story? Alice had endlessly rehearsed the words, even though she knew she could never speak them aloud …

  ‘Dad, Mum, it’s like this …

  ‘A few weeks ago when I was coming back from school through Shifley Woods, I met a White Rabbit just like the one from Alice in Wonderland, except that he said the place was called Underland now and it wasn’t for children. He had a watch that opened what he called a “transdimensional portal” in a rabbit hole, and I followed him through.

  ‘Well, he wasn’t kidding about it being adults only, because they call girls from our world “girlings” and use them as sex slaves. And they made me one, which wasn’t so bad, actually. You see I found out I’m a bit, well, turned on by bondage and also quite masochistic and bisexual and OK about doing it with animals, at least the talking ones they have down there, who are really just like people … only not.

  ‘Anyway, a lot of very weird things happened and I ended up getting the Queen of Hearts – who’s even crazier than in the book – thinking I was part of a revolution to overthrow her. She ordered my head cut off, but I managed to get away by taking a potion that turned me into a bird. That was actually pretty wonderful, the flying bit anyway, but the problem was I didn’t take all the antidote. So when I got back here I found I’ve got these feathers growing on me and I’m very frightened and please help me …’

  Of course, long before that her father would have that baffled disapproving expression on his face and her mother would be looking sad and despairing, because they would think she was telling some kind of freaky story just to shock them and show up the generation gap. And if she ever did convince them it was all true (how could she ever flash her pubes at her father?) there would be shouting and tears and the whole package that went with them.

  Eventually she knew they would support her, because they did love her and she loved them, but then what? They would try medical specialists and kee
p going up the ladder. And what if the government found out and she ended up in some secret laboratory being interrogated about whether Underland posed a threat to national security?

  The only person she could think of who might accept her story and not totally gross out was Simon Gately, her sort of half-boyfriend who was a bit nerdish and deeply into science fiction and fantasy stuff. But even if she convinced him her story was true and he’d said, ‘That’s just amazing!’ seventeen times, what could he do? He wasn’t going to be able to mix up an antidote in the school chemistry lab, or make a duplicate of the White Rabbit’s dimension-twisting watch like some teen genius in a comic book.

  The ultimate bottom line remained where it always had been. She was on her own.

  Alice shivered, wiped her eyes and blew her nose, pulled on her clothes so that the sight of her feathered pubes would not depress her further, and tried to think rationally.

  There was only one place she had any chance of getting a cure and that was back in Underland. Any Underlander who knew the right mix of local ingredients could probably put her right in five minutes. There was something about the laws of nature there that meant you could do wild things to bodies with the help of a few special herbs and mushrooms. But she had lost the White Rabbit’s watch, which had reopened the portal returning her through time and space to a point only seconds after she had left, back in Underland. Unless the Rabbit had found it and came calling locally again she couldn’t travel that way. Alice had taken several walks through Shifley Woods in the last few days just in case, but there was no sign of him.

  There remained just one other slim chance.

  She had met several girling slaves in her travels through Underland. Most had been transported there by the Rabbit or some other procurer, presumably using similar means. But two of them, Keli and Barbara, had made the trip accidentally. What had they said to her? Keli had been hiding from a man she thought was going to rape her and had fallen asleep desperately wishing she was somewhere else. Barbara had been half stoned when she read the Alice story and also wanted to get away from a dead-end existence.

  But simply going to sleep wishing you were somewhere else could not be all there was to it, or else Underland would be full of Overworlders.

  Was there a pattern she could make sense of? Well, they were both young women in a similar state of mind experiencing heightened emotions. Perhaps being alone or somehow isolated from others at the time was also significant. But dare she experiment with drugs, assuming she could get any, while in her condition? And though she was feeling pretty miserable, she was not in fear of her life. No, there had to be a better way.

  Once again she took the book off her shelf that had been the cause of both the most amazing adventure she had ever had and her current dilemma. Idly she flipped through the pages, looking at the incredible world brought to life by those meticulous and often eerily grotesque line drawings. Before her eyes passed the likenesses of people and creatures whose near doubles she had met in the most intimate, degrading or wonderful circumstances (occasionally all three). And there was her namesake gingerly stepping through the looking glass. If only it was as simple as that …

  The breath caught in Alice’s throat.

  Slowly she turned to look at her wardrobe mirror and then back at the illustration, feeling a tiny flicker of hope. Why not? Why couldn’t she just step through the mirror?

  Of course she knew, or at least, in view of her recent experience, she was fairly certain, that the real Alice the story was based upon had never actually entered Wonderland by such means. But nevertheless the image of her doing so had captured the imaginations of millions of people for over a century. In their dreams perhaps they even believed it could be done. Indeed it was the power of that belief that may have created Underland in the beginning and was even modifying it to this day. And Alice had the advantage of knowing that Wonderland, or at least its contemporary and rather perverted equivalent Underland, really existed. It was there, somewhere in another world hiding just around some multidimensional corner. She also knew it was possible to reach it without any special mechanical aids if only the circumstances were right. Did the answer lie in the plane of a mirror where it seemed two worlds touched? She sprang to her feet and ran over to her mirror reaching out in desperate need, only to snatch her hand back at the last moment.

  No, she must do this properly. Nothing must distract her from believing, when the moment came, that there was something more there than a silvered pane of glass. She peered at it closely, noting the dust and careless fingermarks on the mirror. That wouldn’t do.

  She ran downstairs, thankful that her parents were out, found a cloth and spray can of glass polish, rushed back up to her room and gave her mirror the most intense clean and shine it had ever had. By the time she had finished she was breathing heavily and the mirror looked perfect.

  What else did you need when setting out on a journey? A destination! As she was going to be her own pilot and means of transport, so to speak, she had to know exactly where she wanted to end up. It might be just one step away, but it had to be the right step.

  She grabbed the book and sprawled face down across her bed with it wedged between her elbows, covering her ears so that no external sounds intruded. Then she read the story line by line more intensely than she had ever done before, fixing it in her mind. As she did so she tried to recall the unique quality of Underland. The freshness of the air and the improbable greens of the woods, the pearly bright but sunless sky and the dim twilight that was the closest it ever came to night; immersing herself in the smell and touch of Underland, letting it fill every corner of her mind.

  She reached the last page as though in a dream.

  Calmly she got up from her bed and walked towards the wardrobe mirror. All she had to do was reach out and let her fingers slip through into Underland.

  From downstairs came the sound of a key turning in the latch, then her mother’s voice calling out, ‘Hello, Alice, it’s only me.’

  No, not now! Alice wailed in silent rage, and in her frustration she beat her clenched fists against the mirror.

  And met no resistance.

  Her arms sunk into the mirror as though it was no more substantial than a soap bubble.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Alice stepped through the looking glass.

  Alice stood in a perfectly reversed simulacrum of her own bedroom hardly daring to breathe. She was filled with a dizzy sense both of elation and disorientation. Everything was exactly reproduced down to the smallest detail.

  No, not quite. The image in the wardrobe mirror she had just stepped through was now misty and somehow distant, and she could see no sign of her own reflection. Also the daylight coming through this bedroom window was muted and green-tinted. Where the roofs of houses across the road should have been visible there was only an indistinct blur. She was reaching out to pull the net curtains aside when she realised there was no time to indulge her curiosity. What if her mother came in looking for her and saw Alice walking about on the other side of the mirror? She ran to the door, wondering if her whole house was duplicated in reverse as well, and pulled it cautiously open. But there was no landing outside.

  Alice stepped onto lush green grass and shut the door behind her.

  The mirror copy of her bedroom door was embedded in the side of a towering oak, giving the disconcerting impression that it had been there for a few hundred years while the tree had grown round it. The oak was one of a few dozen ringing an open glade, illuminated by a pearly bright but sunless sky. Though she had never seen this exact spot before she had no doubt she was in Underland. Nowhere else could you find nature so unspoiled, with sweet air, multicoloured flowers carelessly dappling the ground, flitting butterflies and, yes, little clumps of improbably perfect red-and-white spotted toadstools nesting between the tree roots. It was too good to be true, yet at the same time somehow more intense and alive than the world she had just left.

  Alice looked back at her do
or thoughtfully. The Underland end of the portal through which she had chased the White Rabbit had terminated in a hollow under a similarly massive oak tree. Was that significant, somehow? She dismissed the detail from her mind. What mattered was that she had made it! Now she had a chance to …

  Suddenly a shiver ran like an electric current through her. Somebody has walked over my grave, Alice thought in alarm, suddenly appreciating the old saying more keenly than ever before. She glanced quickly about her, overwhelmed by the uncomfortable sensation that she was not alone. But she saw only the perfect woodland and the feeling gradually faded. A delayed reaction to her interdimensional hop? she wondered. Well, she couldn’t stand here all day. She had a cure to find.

  A track had been worn in the grass close to her tree, as though by regular use. It was as good a way to go as any other so she set off along it.

  But she had hardly gone twenty paces when the background buzz of insects suddenly grew louder. An angrier buzzing came to her ears, like the whir of miniature outboard motors, and a pair of huge dragonflies shot past her.

  As she turned to watch the bizarre creatures go with a smile, she heard a woman’s voice cry out: ‘I see you, spies!’

  With a crack of displaced air, a spear of red light lashed out through the trees and one of the dragonflies exploded into a shower of smoking fragments. By reflex Alice threw herself off the path into a carpet of tangled ivy as another form raced along the path. But this was no insect.

  It was a very tall woman in a red dress and billowing cloak. She sped past Alice, sparing her the briefest of glances as she did so, running at tremendous speed. Running? No, she was flying!

  She was bent sharply forward with arms spread wide, her legs making long lazy gliding strides, her red slippers delicately pointing as she skimmed over the ground without quite touching it, as though the air itself gave her support and traction. In her right hand she held a rod-like device which she pointed ahead of her. Another bolt of fire flashed from the rod. ‘You can’t escape me!’ the woman cried, and was gone.