Page 2 of Alec in Wonderland (Rainbow Tales #1)

It was still light out when Alec scored a great parking space outside the dojo. He'd been practicing Judo since he was little, something his father insisted upon. Alec's dad had never been a violent man. To the contrary, he always said that you learned to fight so that you didn't have to. Plus, he believed that Judo had more to offer than defensive skills and increased strength. It also gave you confidence, made you more respectful of others, and enhanced your social skills. All Alec knew was that it made him feel safer to know that despite his smaller size, he could take down anyone who came at him.

In his layers once more, Alec hurried from his car to the dojo's door. As he opened it, he glanced to the side. Then froze. That blond was standing a few shops down. Staring at him.

“What the . . .” Alec let his words trail off as he watched the man bring out that watch again and tap it. “This is fucking bizarre. Yeah, okay, man. It's time for something. Got it.” Alec nodded at the guy and went inside.

Throughout his session, Alec kept thinking about the blond man. He couldn't figure out why the guy bothered him so much. It wasn't until he was leaving the dojo that he realized what it was. The guy had followed him. Either that or he already knew Alec's routine. And that was some crazy stalker shit.

As Alec drove home, he considered calling the police. But what would they say? He couldn't imagine them sending an officer out to watch him. The most they would do was note the complaint. Then, if the guy attacked him, Alec would have cause to defend himself as he saw fit.

He grimaced as he headed for his apartment. If not for the food truck, Alec would own a house, but he had sunk everything into his dream and he didn't regret it. He wasn't one for material things. Well, he could be, but for now, the truck's success was more important. So, Alec lived like a monk—sleeping on a futon and eating his meals at a fold-out table.

Halfway to his building, he saw the blond again. He was standing a block down on the sidewalk. And he fucking tapped his watch again.

“That's it!” Alec, who rarely got angry, stomped down the sidewalk after the man.

The man turned and walked away.

“Oh, hell no.” Alec put on speed.

Although the man didn't appear to speed up, he kept ahead of Alec. Frustrated, Alec started to run. Despite the continuance of his sedate walk, the blond remained out of reach. The oddness of this started to occur to Alec just as he reached the park. Marquam Nature Park—the very one Ishan had mentioned that morning.

Alec came to a stop at the park's entrance, bent over and huffing. He kept his head lifted, his stare locked on the blond. And the blond stopped as well. He turned, met Alec's stare, and did that annoying pocket watch tap again!

“Dude, what's your problem?” Alec called to him.

That's when the guy turned into a rabbit. A cute little fluffy white bunny.

“What the fuck?” Alec whispered as the white rabbit hopped into the park. “What the actual fuck?!”

Alec ran after the rabbit.

He knew it was insane, but nothing could have stopped him from chasing that rabbit. Not after Alec saw it transform like something out of a sci-fi movie. What he saw wasn't possible. He knew that. And yet, he had seen it. Alec wasn't a man to doubt his own eyes. He had seen something. He just wasn't sure what it was. There had to be a logical explanation, and Alec wasn't leaving the park until he found it. At the very least, that bunny was coming home with him.

The rabbit went off the trail.

Alec cursed as he blundered into a clump of wet ferns that came to waist-high on him.

The rabbit veered.

Alec's foot slipped and he smacked into the mossy trunk of a tree. Moss was everywhere—the ground, the trees, the rocks. It was damn dangerous. On top of the moss and the monstrous ferns, stuff dangled from the trees, hindering his sight. Through the overhang, he caught a flash of white. Alec twisted around and raced off in another direction.

Then he lost sight of the rabbit.

“Son of a bitch!” Alec turned around and realized that he was so far off the trail, he couldn't see the way back. “No. Fuck. I'm a damn idiot. And I'm lost. What is wrong with me?!”

A rustling came to his left and against all reason, Alec spun toward it. There it was—the bunny. It stared at him as if egging him on, then hopped away.

“Oh, it's gonna be rabbit stew for dinner!” Alec snarled and ran after the rabbit.

He made it two steps before the ground gave way beneath his feet. Shouting and clawing at the disintegrating earth, Alec fell backward into a chasm. Roots whipped him as debris came at him from both above and below. Alec prepared himself for a rough landing.

A minute later—which is quite a long time when you're falling into a ravine—Alec was still falling. He twisted about to look below. At first, there was only darkness, but then he saw a light. Fear lashed through him. His brain couldn't process what was happening. Above him, a tiny patch of gray light was getting smaller and smaller. He kept falling.

Around Alec, the walls of the chasm changed. They smoothed out, and then objects appeared among the rocks and packed soil. Little ones at first—a plate, a book, a teacup. And then the objects got larger, protruding from the wall. Alec passed a desk, a floor lamp, and a rocking horse. Then he knocked into a spindly wooden chair.

With a grunt, he spun. His feet ended up where his head had been. Panicked, Alec fought to right himself. Hitting the ground with his head, especially from that height, would mean instant death. But before he could turn the other way, his fall slowed.

Like a leaf, Alec glided downward. No. It wasn't downward anymore. His sense of gravity shifted, telling him that up was now down. When Alec came to a stop, he found himself hovering over a hole. Just as he started to fall back toward where he'd come from, he took a step forward—onto solid ground.

“Holy shit,” Alec whispered as he turned to peer down into the hole and saw a garage sale's worth of crap lining its walls. “What the hell just happened?”

He stood on a tiled floor of white and black squares, the surface glossy and perfect except where the hole was. There, things got jagged, revealing the dirt beneath the tiles. Alec walked away from the hole to inspect the room he'd arrived in. Not a cave as one might expect to find at the bottom of a forest chasm, but a decorated room. It had a round table in the center but no chairs. The wall—a single wall since it was a round room—boasted lengths of black velvet curtains and portraits in golden frames. Peeking out from behind the pulled-back curtains were several doors of differing sizes.

A portrait moved. Alec shrieked and jumped back. Then he realized they weren't portraits at all. They were mirrors. And he looked freaked out in every one of them. Panting, he turned in a circle.

The rabbit sat before a door that matched its height perfectly. The door was also open.

“Rabbit!” Alec pointed at the animal. “You and I need to talk.”

The bunny hopped through the door.

“Damn it!” Alec jumped for the rabbit and hit the floor right in front of the little door. “Rabbit!” He reached through the door, but the critter was gone. All he got was a handful of plants. “Fuck!” Alec sat up, brushed off his hands, and glared at the door. “This is insane.”

Rubbing his forehead, Alec sat on the floor cross-legged for several minutes. He was hoping he'd wake up, that it was all a dream. Or maybe something would happen to give him some direction. If you sit by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by. Yeah, that line is about revenge, but Alec often applied it to anything that required patience. Or when he didn't know what to do. Sometimes a good bout of quiet reflection is all that's needed.

But Sun Tzu had never fallen down a gravity-defying chasm and come out on the other side of the world. Into a room of doors. Patience did not help Alec. Nothing happened as he sat there in contemplation. Nothing beyond him coming to the obvious conclusion—open another door.

Alec tried the doors he could fit through. Locked—every last one. He yanked on their handles, pounded his fist on them, and even kicked them, but they didn't budge.

That's when he saw the bottle. Made of clear, blue glass and stoppered with cork instead of a cap, the bottle waited in the center of the table. A paper scrap hung from it, tied to it with string. Feeling as if he were walking through cotton candy—sort of dazed and fuzzy—Alec went to the table and picked up the bottle.

“Drink me,” he read the tag aloud. Then he snorted. “Right. Like I'm going to drink some random liquid that I found at the bottom—or maybe the top—of a hole.”

Then Alec looked at the hole. He realized he had two options. He could either drink the stuff and see what happened or he could jump back in the hole and hope it took him home.

Alec thought about home. He thought about Kevin and his other friends. He thought about his parents and their dog, Connor. He thought about judo and sushi. When was the last time he had sex? Or fun of any sort? When was the last time he drank something crazy without worrying about it? Running the food truck consumed him. It took up most of his time and a good portion of his thoughts too. Maybe a sip from a random hole-bottle was exactly what he needed.

“Fuck it,” Alec muttered and uncorked the bottle.

The scent of strawberries wafted up to him, making him smile. It wasn't a fake strawberry scent but one of freshly picked and sugared berries. He lifted the bottle to his nose and inhaled deeper.

“Oh, wow,” Alec whispered. “That smells incredible.”

He pressed the bottle to his lips and tasted the drink. The flavor of sweet strawberries burst across his tongue. It was heaven. Rapturous. But before he could take a larger sip, he started to tremble.

“Shit.” Alec hurried to cork the bottle before he spilled it everywhere. “What the hell?” He stared at his shaking hands. “Even if it was toxic, it shouldn't hit me this fast.”

Then Alec gaped at the floor. Because the floor was coming at him. He cried out as the world shifted around him, things growing in size rapidly. Just as he raised his arms to protect his face, everything stopped. Alec opened his eyes and found himself standing before an open door. It didn't register at first that it was the rabbit's door. Because it wasn't a rabbit door anymore. It was an Alec door.

Alec looked up and then jerked back. The table was enormous, soaring over him like a skyscraper. Stumbling, he fell into some curtains. With the bottle still firmly in hand, Alec flailed in the fabric, bounced off the wall, then fell onto his face. Groaning, he shoved himself up. As he got up, he saw the view through the Alec doorway.

“Fuck me,” Alec whispered as he pocketed the bottle. “Where am I?”

Alec crawled to the doorway and leaned out. Enormous plants loomed around the exit—ferns, broad-leafed grass, and flowers. He got to his feet and stepped through the arches passage. The ground was dirt, but even that was strange. It was like walking over pebbles. A look up gave him glimpses of a pale blue sky, sunlight streaming past the canopy of plants to warm him. He pulled off his knit cap and tucked it into his jacket.

Flower stalks the size of tree trunks bent under the weight of monstrous bloom, the vibrant petals exuding exotic fragrances. Even the smells were large, his nose overwhelmed by the layered perfume of nature. Alec walked in a daze, running his hand over blades of grass the size of palm trees and gaping at mushrooms bigger than his apartment.

Then he saw that fucking rabbit.

It was waiting for him in a clearing. The white rabbit stared at Alec and then, in the blink of an eye, it became the blond man. The man towered over Alec—a giant out of a children's story. He felt like Jack or one of the Lilliputians. But the blond found none of this strange. He drew out his pocket watch again and tapped it.

“Well?” the blond demanded, his voice booming in Alec's ears. “Hurry up, Alec! They're waiting for us!”

“What?” Alec gaped up at the giant. “Who's waiting for us?”

“Don't be impudent!” The blond crouched to better stare at him. “Now, where's the cake?”

“What cake?”

“The cake!” the blond huffed and waved back the way Alec had come. “Didn't you take the cake?”

“ This takes the cake,” Alec muttered.

“For goodness' sake!” The blond brushed back his wild bangs and shook his head. “Did I even bring any? Oh, I must have.” He patted his pockets, then, with a huff of relief, brought forth a tiny cake—one of those petite fours Alec's mother always bought at Christmas. “Here.” The rabbit-man set the cake on the ground before Alec.

For Alec, the cake was the size of a steamer trunk. He looked up at the blond and asked, “What do I do with this?”

“What do you think you do with it? It's cake.” He shook his head again. “I swear, it's like you don't remember a thing.”

“About you?” Alec asked. “I don't know you, man.”

“I knew it! I told them so! But would they listen? Oh, no. 'Fetch Alec,' they said. 'He's the only one who can help us,' they said. 'The Caterpillar,' they said. And when I told them it had been too long, that children forget things when they grow up in your world, they called me foolish. Foolish! And here you are.” He waved at Alec. “Forgetful Alec. Now, who's the fool?”

“Uh.” Alec scowled from the cake to the blond. “They are?”

“Precisely!” the blond said. “Now, eat your cake, Alec. There's a good boy. And just a tiny bite. We don't want you to grow too much.”

“A tiny bite will make me grow?”

“Stop playing around and eat the cake!”

“Yes, sir.”

“I am Valcazan of the House of Rabbits,” the blond said. “But you may call me Val.”

“Uh-huh.” Alec took a tiny bite of the enormous cake. It was vanilla, but a good vanilla.

And then the world did its crazy dance again.