CHELSEA'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND

CHAPTER 3

My prince charming chance encounter in the bookstore came to a screeching end when we arrived at the emergency room entrance to the local hospital.  When I tried to follow him in, he turned around and glared at me sort of the way I would expect a demon to glare at me, so I beat a hasty retreat down the street and back toward the safety of my little store.  I began walking back following the sun's travels across the bright blue sky.  I was looking up, in other words, and just when the sun had entered the continental divide of noon, my life changed.

I stepped in a pothole and fell about ten feet, maybe more, actually, but that sort of thing is hard to judge as you are spiraling toward the ground rapidly with your skinny ankles about to take the pressure from the fall.  I closed my eyes and held my breath, my hair standing straight up.  Terrified would be such an understated adjective as I tumbled downward, that I will not even entertain such a ridiculous word!

Then I stopped.  Just...stopped.  There was no crashing and rolling and screaming, I just was falling one second and was sitting on what I guessed was the floor the next, and the first thing I saw were dolphins leaping out of the green grass of a field that stretched as far as my eyes could see, and on the other side, donkeys swimming in the ocean.  

I closed my eyes and shook my head and opened one eye at a time, slowly, hoping maybe the dolphins and donkeys were back where they were supposed to be, but nope, they were still backwards.  

Standing up slowly, I crept along the edge of the green field wondering if maybe I should try to walk where the water was, and eventually I just balanced precariously between the two places.  In front of me dolphins, behind me donkeys, clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am...that song was playing in my head as I stared straight in front of me, really a little disturbed, definitely afraid to glance left or right out of fear that I might question my sanity even further, if you can imagine that was a possibility at this point.  

Finally, though, I heard what sounded like a choir off to my left, and almost involuntarily, I turned toward it, and there, was a field of flowers that looked like cotton candy on stems, all pink and blue, the aroma filling my senses and conjuring up memories of being a kid at the fair.  Dogs dressed in shorts and tank tops and t-shirts, all sizes, shapes, breeds, were dancing merrily, howling, laughing, and making merry.  There were puppies, too, chasing one another around, playing tag, and to my right?  Well, to my right was the strangest scene of all:  Thousands of the most beautiful, colorful, exotic birds I had ever seen, all perched daintily in Christmas trees all decorated for the season, thousands of birds, thousands of trees, millions of colors.  

I sat down.  I sat down right where I was and started to think.  I felt my head.  There were no bumps and no blood.  I rubbed my eyes, closed them, rubbed them, closed them, and assured that my vision was still intact, I let out a long, "Hmmmmm."  Curiouser and curiouser.  

My curiosity was getting the best of me, so I began to walk, trusting that everything was solid, and soon I encountered a boy.  He was probably five years old and was wearing jeans, a white t-shirt, sneakers and looked as happy as I had ever seen anyone look.  I asked him, "What's going on here?  Where am I?"  

He blinked took my hand and said, "Hey, don't you know?  You're in Chelsea's dream, in her wonderland, and they sent me to bring you back to rule the pothole!  Come on!"  

"Whoa, whoa," I stuttered, digging in my heels and refusing to go anywhere with this kid, no matter how cute he was or how much I had always wanted to rule anything...just about anything but a pothole.  All my control issues aside, if I had to be given a queendom to rule, why could it not have been a vat of chocolate or something?  Pothole just sounded so, well, ugly.  

As the light set, and I call it the light because it was not exactly the sun but just a soft castoff glow from the sun somewhere in the normal world, I began to think about my safety and decided where there was one kid, there had to be some adults, and it was way past time to find someone who could tell me just what I had literally fallen into.