This chapter is dedicated to MaggieRays for the undying support and the severe help with editing this hot-mess of a first chapter ❤️

♦ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ᴏɴᴇ ♦
ᴅᴏᴡɴ ᴛʜᴇ ʀᴀʙʙɪᴛ ʜᴏʟᴇ

| ᴀʟɪɴᴀ |

ᴀs ᴛʜᴇ ʙɪᴛᴛᴇʀ sᴜʀɢᴇ ᴏғ ᴛʜᴇ ʜᴀʀʙᴏᴜʀ washed against my flesh, I cursed the fact that, of course, I'd be the one to die on a Monday.

Bindings dug into my wrists, polluted waters stung my eyes, and tied to my ankle was an Armani briefcase stuffed with a pair of outdated phone books.

I couldn't tell whether it was a laugh or a cry that escaped my lips, as my fingers clawed at the ropes. The ocean's touch burning me like ice, licking at my cheeks and nipping at my nose; a frigid and toxic pup that filled my lungs with salted water.

As the tide tore at my dress and billowed into my frozen scream, I let my emotions sink, and I focused on him instead.

The man with the white suit and the crooked smile.

He watched as I choked on my own fleeting breath. With sparkling white teeth, bronzed skin, and obsidian hair. He watched me. Even as he became nothing more than a blur, a mirage, a speck of white and gold as my vision filled with blue and purple.

I stopped fighting, stopped struggling; instead I held his gaze as I became engulfed by onyx waves.

Letting the icy waters hold me in their arms, corrupting me. I let out my breath slowly, as the bubbles trailed up from the corners of my blue lips. My white dress lashed out against the hum of the sea, as the makeshift anchor collided with the bottom.

Of course, I'd be the one to die on a Monday.

♦

| 48 ʜᴏᴜʀs ᴇᴀʀʟɪᴇʀ |

"ᴅᴏɴ'ᴛ ғᴏʀɢᴇᴛ ᴛᴏ ғᴇᴇᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘɪʀᴀɴʜᴀs."

The words smiled back at me as the edges of my notepad bled with dark splotches. Soggy pages stuck together with espresso and whiskey as I slapped a sticky note to my fish bowl and cursed loud enough to wake a dormouse.

My life was ruined, and the goldfish were all to blame.

I should back up for a moment, so I can explain why.

Why our story starts in the printing offices of the Dinah-Rose Daily Print on the Saturday morning I missed my train. Why I became a dead girl because I spent 1.18$—before tax—on a pair of goldfish so I could break a twenty dollar bill. And why I needed to tell this story.

So, here is my why.

In the event that you, or anyone you know, ever receives a letter like I did, this will be a story of caution. I've made it my unfortunate responsibility to tell you how things changed that January, because if I don't, no one else will. It is my job, and mine alone, to document each part of my fall; my trip and stumble down the rabbit hole. Because as much as I love my family, they tell their stories through puffs of smoke and sticky poker chips. With mismatched facts to make their tales more exciting than they actually are.

I won't let our story be told that way. This time, we'll get the facts right.

So, I'll tell it my way, and I hope you believe me.

Because it starts with Danny Ehrlich staring at my ass.

"You know, Boss, you look a lot better from this angle."

"You know, Danny," I sang as I caught his wandering gaze. "It just wouldn't be a Friday without me wanting to stick your pecker in the printing press."

"It's a Saturday, Miss," he hummed, circling me like a bloodhound, with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders back. Grinning wildly, he ran a finger on my desk and took a sniff. "And isn't it a little too early to be celebrating the Irish?"

For the past five years, it had been just Danny and I. Through thick and thin, and more often than not, for worse rather than for better. Tied together through fate, a failing newspaper company and the death of my mother.

It's not as sad as you might think, the newspaper was on the verge of a revival and the ghosts my mother left behind had stopped following me years before. Or at least until the messenger had arrived that weekend.

"First," I warned, "I'm supposed to be on a train right now, and I wouldn't have to cover this room in sticky notes if I thought for even a second that you were semi-capable of not murdering my fish and—I don't understand how this is so sticky, I barely put sugar in it."

"Honestly, if anyone can ruin liquor and coffee at five in the morning, it's you, Boss," Danny said as he shooed me away and gave a tap of his watch, urging me to shut up and go.

I let him take over the cleaning and started scrambling for my things. I stuffed notes, photographs, and whatever printed truths I could get my hands on into an overnight bag. When chasing down a risky story I took my usual precautions, shoving my biggest clues into the soles of my shoes, stuffing a couple extra bucks into a hole in the pocket of my jacket, and rubbing a smudge of ink on the flesh of my inner wrist for good luck.

With a ticket in my hand and a death note in my other, an unease washed over me. I looked down at the bag slung across my frame, and through the thick stench of fresh ink and printing paper, I knew Danny could feel it too. He could sense the shiver in my spine and the sweat in my palms as I eyed the best story I'd ever written, condensed into a black duffel.

It would be my insurance.

In case things went the way we feared they would.

"Come back to us in one piece, LaVella." Danny said, breaking the silence as through a sheet of thinning brown hair, he smiled at me. "Your ma' would be proud of you, Miss, and that's a rare truth coming from one scumbag journalist to the next."

He ruffled my mousy hair as my head bobbed in a knowing nod, and I extended my hand for one last goodbye. Danny pulled me into a familiar hug instead.

"Don't burn this place to the ground, Ehrlich. It's the only good thing left in this shit town. I'll be back by Monday, so you better not kill my fish."

"No promises." He smirked as he walked me to the door, holding it open as I ducked under his arm into the purplish-gold of early morning. "Oh, and just remember, if you ever need an extra set of eyes in the big city-"

"I'll make sure to call someone else."

I slipped into the darkness and into the cab idling just outside, engulfed in the red glow of the neon sign, the words "Dinah-Rose Daily Print" reflecting off the tinted windows. From the rear-view mirror, Danny tipped an invisible hat as his sad smile blew away in the breeze.

♦

ɪᴛ ʜᴀᴅ ʙᴇᴇɴ ᴀʟᴍᴏsᴛ ғɪғᴛᴇᴇɴ ʏᴇᴀʀs, and the Copper Hills Ferry hadn't changed. It still held the same stubble of rust, clatter of loose bolts, and creak of the archaic cabin doors.

Fifteen years, and I still felt the fog of the harbour stealing my breath, unwilling to let me go.

I was alone, looking over the railing at the waves, as the ship parted the mist. The silence washed over me as I closed my eyes and took a breath. It was something you didn't get in the country, the smell of saltwater and smoke mixing together in a dance I loved to hate. Pure undisturbed peace, until the smell of wild roses overwhelmed my senses.

Imagine a mix of spices and wild flowers; as if someone had been drenched in a vat of liquid lilacs. It was intoxicating at first, but quickly I could feel a tickle in my nose and a wash of nausea as the man appeared from the fog.

"Beautiful, isn't it?"

"I think I like the word haunted better." I smiled politely, choking back the putrid taste in my mouth.

"Haunted?" He tried, testing out the word as if it were foreign to him. "A city would need ghosts to be haunted, would it not?"

"Believe me," I said, "this city has its fair share of ghosts. My mom always told me there were bodies in the water, and if you looked close enough, you could see their faces."

I didn't need to look at him to know that both our eyes drifted towards the depths. It was a primal instinct to fear the murky waters we skimmed across so easily. The ghost story was just another reminder that, in a city like Wonderland, drowning wasn't the only way people got lost in the waves.

For a man so clad in colours the ghost story didn't seem to bother him. Even as the wind billowed through his curly hair and sent a shiver up my spine, he only smiled, leaning against the railing and standing out like a butterfly in a snowstorm.

"But maybe you're right." I attempted to break the silence. "There's nothing more beautiful than garbage and graffiti."

He nodded, his eyelashes fluttering in a mesmerising way. "I think there's something pure about the filth. Something ... cleansing about it. There are worse ways to do it. Purification, that is.

"In some countries, people scrub their tongues, in others they drink red wine to clean out toxins, and then there's fasting ... but that just sounds dreadful. A quick swim, I can imagine that's all it takes. Even in these ghost-infested waters, it would be such a deep cleanse on one's sinful aura. Might even be better than a facelift."

He was strange in a way I'd forgotten people could be, and I felt nervous around him. Exposed and raw. As if, even with his eyes shut, his constant smile could still see me.

"I mean," I said, smiling awkwardly, "there's no sign that says you can't jump in. I just wouldn't count on anyone jumping in after you."

The butterfly man's smile grew impossibly wider as he inched closer, another whiff of his aroma sending my head in a spin. "And here I was thinking I'd made a new friend."

"A new friend?" I asked. "Well, you chose one that can't swim."

The silent deck filled with a soft mumbling of voices as a dozen or so average-looking people came out from their cabins below; tired and complaining about the uneven boat ride. If the man next to me noticed them he didn't show it, instead he breathed in the fog with eyes shut as I people-watched. A man in a tweed-suit, a woman and her baby, plain and boring for the most part with only a few unique faces, like a tattooed old man with a shaved head and a young couple trapped in an irritating embrace.

"So, what brings you to Wonderland?"

"A funeral," I said. "Sort of."

He gave a nod of condolence and yet his amused smile persisted. "I'm sorry for your loss."

With a shrug, I turned back to the coast, my hair standing on end, as if the ghosts in the river were reaching out to me. As though on cue, the ferry let out a low whistle. "It's okay, I never knew her."

The lot of us made our way to the outstretched bridge. One by one, the Copper Hills Ferry counted a dozen more brave survivors. Some dragged suitcases that echoed across the empty shore, others clutched bags and watched with shifty eyes. And some, like the butterfly, had nothing but a smile.

Slowly, we all followed in line, all except one.

The butterfly man rushed by, his shoulder colliding into mine. Our bodies crashed, and for a split second, I felt myself falling. Just in time the old man caught my arm before I could lose my balance. I nodded my thanks, and yet I watched the butterfly's head turn back. Our eyes met and that permanent smile on his lips grew as he disappeared into the crowd.

♦

| ʙᴀᴄᴋ ᴛᴏ ᴍʏ ᴀᴛᴛᴇᴍᴘᴛᴇᴅ ᴍᴜʀᴅᴇʀ |

ɪ ᴡɪsʜ ɪ ᴄᴏᴜʟᴅ ᴛᴇʟʟ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀʟʟ ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ my first day back in the big city.

I'd gotten coffee, had a scone, did some quick sight-seeing. But ending up in the trunk of an obsessively well-kept Alfa Romeo made all those little memories a tad coffee-stained.

Ironically, the trunk was cleaner than every place I'd slept in the past forty-eight hours, but that didn't stop me from kicking the shit out of it with my leather boots. The strap of my bag choking me as I searched for a way out of the moving coffin.

The voices of the men muddled in my ears as they slammed on the brakes, my head smashing against the tire iron next to me.

Gravel. Waves. Plastic buoys bouncing off the dock.

My senses flew into overdrive as the air grew hotter and denser around me.

They exchanged fast phrases as they dragged me out by my hair, tying my wrists and ankles while I fought. One of them ripping the bag away from me and tossing it into the backseat of the car.

I was going to die. Soon, I would be just another ghost at the bottom of the bay.

At the time, I didn't know who they were, why it was all happening. All I knew was that he was to blame.

The White Rabbit. Whoever he was.

He might not have been the one who took me, the one who tied me up, but he was the one that kicked the briefcase off the dock—that pulled me into the black waters.

Through the crashing waves I could still hear the car sputtering to life. Careening away from the harbour, kicking up gravel and glass as I sunk.

My eyes grew wide in panic as I told myself to stay calm, but how the hell could I be calm? I couldn't tell where my tears ended, and the water began, as I let out one last voiceless scream.

I left a part of myself down in the dark waters that day. A dying girl who asked too many questions.

I lost the part of myself that knew the difference between good and evil, right and wrong. You only hold onto so much as you sink, so I let my sanity drown.

And let the madness carry me instead.

♦

Welcome back to you, yes you, my lovely little rabbit, to- *drum roll please*

The return of White Rabbit!! Wooo, *the five-person-crowd goes wild*.

Yes, after nearly a year of this book sitting untouched it has returned and with some delicious edits. New scenes, new crazy conversations and maybe some new characters...

Thank you for reading the first official chapter of my dark Alice in Wonderland Retelling and I hope you enjoyed. Still think you're in control of your sanity?

Well, don't worry just yet, we've still got plenty of time...

If you enjoyed Alina first steps into the glorious chaos of Wonderland, give her a vote, hit that sexy little star, comment your heart away and add this book to your reading list to be the first to know about new updates!

Thanks again for reading!

Comment trunk of an Alfa Romeo if you've made it this far, let's see how many people we can squeeze in there along side our main gal.

- Lots of love from beneath the waters wake, Allie <3