Alix in Wonderland

Alix stumbled out of a bar, already three whiskeys deep into his night. The streetlights danced in his eyes, and he saw the whole world as if through a few inches of water. He felt around his pockets to make sure he hadn't left his belongings in the bar.

Finding everything in place, he turned to the right to begin the short trek to his apartment down the way. He felt confident nothing could come out of place in this sleepy Chicago neighborhood. Three minutes north on the main road, then two down the side street to his duplex. A path he'd been down a dozen times or more. Steps confident but uneven, he proceeded on the right side of the road toward home.

He stopped at an intersection, an orange hand blocking his path. He swayed from side to side, doing his best to stay upright. At that moment, he felt something against his right leg. He looked down, and found a pair of bright green eyes peering up at him. A small black cat looked up at his face, blinking slowly.

"Aww, kitty!" Alix reached a hand down to pet the cat, and she pushed her head into his hand. He stroked along her spine, feeling the bones through her sleek pelt. She looked up at his face again, and seemed to gesture with her head down the street to the right. She pulled away and began walking down the sidewalk to the right.

The crosswalk light turned to the little blue-white gentleman. But Alix turned to his right to follow the affectionate kitty. Every now and then, she turned back to peek back at him, as if checking that he was still following. The bright lights of the main street dimmed as he went along, giving way to the dense neighborhood homes and the intermittent streetlights that lit their roads.

"Kitty, kitty! Come back, little kitty! Pspspsp!" Alix called after the sweet feline. She took another right at an intersection, and Alix jogged a little so as not to lose her. Once he rounded the corner, he saw no cat. Instead, roughly at the distance he had been following the cat, he saw a woman. She stood, facing him, under a streetlight, and was dressed in a fluffy black coat. She raised her hand and made a come-hither gesture, then turned to her left and went down a flight of stairs into one of the homes.

Alix scurried to catch up to her. Just as the door she had gone through was about to close, and likely latch shut, he caught it. "Kitty?" Alix called questioningly.

Directly in front of him, with no other option of where to go, was a staircase descending into the earth. There was no sign of the cat, or the woman. "Hello?" he said again. He began descending the steps in front of him. He passed a camera mounted on the wall.

The steps did not continue straightforward down, but turned to the left every half dozen steps or so. At each turn was a dim light bulb. He lost track of how many flights he had descended, but had a faint impression he was somewhere near the center of the world when at long last, the walkway opened onto a thin hallway. Alix took a few steps, smelling cigarette smoke as he entered a fairly dark room. The woman he had followed was nowhere to be seen. A large man stepped in front of him. "Can I see some ID?"

Alix blinked. He didn't precisely know where he was, but this didn't seem like the time to ask. Had he somehow wandered into some kind of underground club? In any case, Alix pulled his driver's license from his wallet, and presented it to the bouncer. He, in turn, looked at the card, then at Alix. "Ten dollars entry fee, cash only."

A wave of tiredness washed over Alix, and he wasn't sure he needed to be here. Yet, the people in the smoky room behind the bouncer were eccentrically dressed, and intriguing enough that he could part with a little cash. Not to mention, the woman - or, cat? - he had encountered earlier was bound to be somewhere down here. He handed the bouncer a twenty, and he handed Alix a ten in exchange. 

At the far end of the room was a bar, which stretched along the entire back wall. Glimmering bottles of assorted colors and shapes lined the shelves behind the bar. Two young women, seemingly twins, stood behind the bar, polishing glasses back to back. Patrons sat on bar stools along the bar, some talking to one another, and others nursing their drinks alone. Alix took an empty seat, and waved at the twin bartenders. They approached him.

"What'll you be having to drink?" said the bartender on the left.

"Double Jack, on the rocks."

"Will do," said the one on the right, reaching for a bottle of Jack Daniels. The first bartender, meanwhile, pulled a glass and filled it with ice. She handed it to the second, who proceeded to pour a hearty quantity of brown liquor into the glass.

"What brings you to Wonderland?" asked the woman as she handed the drink to Alix. He handed her a credit card in exchange.

"Curiosity, I suppose. I followed a cat here."

The bartender who handed him the drink looks at her counterpart. "Oh, he's curious." The pair tutted and shook their heads. "The oysters were curious too, weren't they?"

"Oysters? What oysters?"

"Oh, you wouldn't be interested, I think. It's a long story, after all."

"No, I'm in no hurry."

The pair exchanged a knowing look. "We'll make it swift. In short, a man and his walrus friend came upon a family of oysters. A mum and her dozen children. The walrus managed to sweet talk the babies into leaving their mother and going for a walk with him. And then the man built a whole restaurant for the pair, thinking they might have the oysters for lunch, as it were. Well, the walrus sent the man to slice up some bread for the table, but while he was gone, the walrus ate the whole half shell on his own. The man came back, but his peeve wasn't that the babies were eaten, it was that he hadn't gotten a taste himself! Isn't that sad?"

Alix blinked. "Yeah, real sad." He took a sip of his whiskey.

"And a great moral, too," said the other bartender.

"Sure, if you're an oyster," muttered Alix. He rose from the barstool, and went to take another look at the room. Out the corner of his eye, he noticed the woman he had followed inside before, or thought he did, before a shifting crowd of people hid her from view again. He chased the afterimage, and, once he reached the far corner of the room, found a woman smoking a vape, sitting on a couch. She was dressed in a shabby blue coat, made of some type of shedding polyester.

"Hello? Have you seen a black cat? Or a woman who looks like one?"

"That depends," said the blue-clad woman, looking up from her phone and taking another hit of her vape. "Who R U?"

Something about the texture of the way she spoke felt off putting to Alix, as if she were so terminally online that she spoke in textual contractions.

"I don't entirely know anymore. I thought I did when I came in here. But this place is so odd I don't entirely know where I stand. You see what I mean?"

"I do not C. Explain yourself. Who R?? U????" She blew a puff of vapor in Alix's face. 

He coughed. "Shouldn't you tell me who are first?"

"Y?" she retorted.

"Oh, to hell with it." Alix turned and moved to leave her corner.

"Hey! You there! Boy! Wait!" Alix turned back toward her. She shouted again, through the people in their midst. "I have something important to say!"

He returned to her. She stood and took off her coat, revealing a shimmering blue dress that she had been wearing underneath the entire time.

"One side will get you higher. And the other will bring you low."

"One side of what?"

In answer, the woman produced a cookie, wrapped in plastic, and tossed it on the low table in front of her. The cookie itself was some sort of sugar cookie, with white frosting on one side and black frosting on the other. A smile was drawn onto the white side, and a frown on the black.

"Take it. U will need it in time. I need to go B a social butterfly." The young woman left her coat where it was on the table, and moved off into the crowd.

Alix took the cookie, and slid it into a pocket. He sat at the same couch where the blue girl had just been sitting, and put his face in his hands. He wondered to himself why he was here, and whether it wouldn't be better just to go home. He sipped his whiskey.

"Excuse me, might we sit here?"

A large pack of brightly dressed women approached Alix. He was startled, but gestured invitingly toward the open spots on the cluster of couches, where he occupied only one space. 

"Nice to meet you! Oh how lovely it is to meet someone new to talk to."

"Or about," whispered another of the women, a bit too loud to be unheard.

"Do you all come here regularly?' asked Alix.

"Of course! Wonderland is our favorite key club in the city!" exclaimed one of the other women, taking a seat. "The clientele is so eccentric! And they do such a good job keeping an eye out for the law."

"The law? Why would that be necessary?" Alix asked. This was the twenty-first century, after all. Prohibition was long behind them.

"Well, seeing as this is technically a private residence operating without a liquor license, rather than a legally sanctioned bar, the King doesn't look kindly on our shenanigans. We get raided every now and then. The music is quiet, and the doorman keeps the children out. But we're so targeted nonetheless. Such is the life!" said one of the brightly dressed women.

"Oh, I didn't realize it was like that. I just caught the door as it was about to close when someone else was coming in."

The women around him grew quiet.

"You mean you're not a key club member?" asked a woman to Alix's left.

"I don't really know what that means. So I suppose not."

The women began tittering. "Ho ho! What a silly mistake we've made! Maybe you should go and be with your own type, then!" said the woman to his right, dressed in a yellow sundress. "I think the bartenders wanted to speak with you. Best be going!"

The women continued laughing, and Alix flushed red. "I was sitting here first, wasn't I?"

A glass of water was splashed onto Alix by someone he wasn't paying attention to. "Hey!" he shouted. He reached for his phone, trying to assess whether it was dry. "Fine! I'll go."

As Alix reentered the milling crowd in the center of the room, most of the dancing to a soft beat that he only just took note of, he felt so out of place. If this was the sort of people who came here, he felt far from welcome. He looked from side to side for the door, but the smoke in the air and the alcohol in his veins made it difficult for him. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't find the exit.

Eventually he found his way back to the bar. He grabbed a seat without looking at who was sitting next to him. He looked up and saw a woman with a fluffy black coat, looking at an iPad, with a glass of water in front of her.

"Oh! It's you!" She said, looking up from the screen. She smiled, cat-like, at Alix.

"Yeah," he said, demoralized. "It's me."

"Aw, why so glum?"

"This place is insane. And I can't even find the exit. I would've gone home by now if I could."

"Hm," the woman said, glancing between her crush and the screen in front of her. She glanced back up at him, then did a double take at her screen. Her eyes went wide.

"Excuse me, I have to take care of something." She rose from her seat at the bar, and addressed the crowd in the room. "HIS IMPERIAL HIGHNESS, HIS GRACE, HIS EXCELLENCY, HIS ROYAL MAJESTY, OFFICER KING OF CLUBS!"

The energy of the room became panicked. All of a sudden, Alix was able to see the way out across the room from where he sat. And from this entryway, he saw a pair of police officers enter the barroom. They shone flashlights into the room, which refracted from the smoke in the room.

They spoke in loud voices, addressing everyone there. "Chicago Police Department! We're checking IDs and frisking for contraband! Stay where you are, all exits are blocked!"

Alix held his drink, relaxed. Until the woman next to him, stowing her iPad, whispered, "Didn't you take a cookie earlier? Eat it now, if you don't want to get caught with it."

He felt in his pockets, and felt the cookie, crinkling in its packaging, on the left side. Facing away from the police, he quickly scruffed it down, both white side and black, before tossing the plastic on the opposite side of the bar.

"Got it? Great. Now go run interference, the flowers need to hide their coke." The woman next to Alix pushed him toward the police, who had moved into the center of the room, passing people toward the exit as they checked IDs.

Alix accidentally bumped into the lead officer. "Sorry! Sorry," he said.

"Freeze! Get back!" the officer said, drawing a baton and holding it at the ready.

"Whoa! Ok, ok, no problem."

"And who is this?" muttered the lead officer.

"We haven't seen him here before," said the secondary officer, standing behind him, her baton still at her hip. "I think he might be a visitor."

"Ah!" the primary officer exclaimed. He holstered the baton. "Some advice for you kid. Look up. Speak nice. Keep your hands where I can see them. And always say 'Yes, Officer King.'"

Alix bristled at being told what to do. Nonetheless, he replied, "Yes, Officer King."

"Now, where do you come from, and why are you here?"

"I'm a local, just a few blocks up. And I met a girl who came here."

"A girl? Best just let it be, son. All the women here are freaks and nasties. Show me your ID, and you can get along home, son."

Alix turned to look at the woman in the black coat, but she was nowhere to be seen. Instead, he turned to the officer. "Yes, Officer King." Alix pulled out his ID.

After a quick inspection, the officer waved him along. The second officer motioned for Alix to move to the exit, and presumably leave. However, just at that moment, the edible Alix had taken earlier kicked in. Or, half of it, at least. He felt as if he were untouchable, a mile high, and as if nothing could be done to him whatsoever.

"You know," he began, turning back to the officers. "I don't take kindly to you being so belligerent to my friends, Officer King." In the corner, the brightly dressed women were looking up admiringly at Alix. "Why you're hardly an officer at all! You're just a fat, pompous, bad-tempered old tyrant!"

Both officers now drew their batons. Alix was fully prepared to engage in fisticuffs with the law, allowing the remainder of the patrons at this bar to hide their contraband in the meanwhile. However, just at that moment, the second half of Alix's edible kicked in. And in this case, it caused him to collapse to the floor in a catatonic heap. All he could see was the officers crowding around him as he passed out.

The following morning, Alix awoke on the couch of his apartment. His roommate, Vanessa, was brewing a particularly fragrant cup of earl grey in the kitchen. "Wake up, Alix! Time for tea!" she roused him gently.