Deanna Knippling

The Clockwork Alice Deanna Knippling

Everyone fears death, the great unwinding...




Ticking clocks echo through an enormous English country house. A watercolor over the mantle ripples. A woman sleepwalks, pulled by moonlight and dreams, until she stands under the painting, the last gift she was given by author Lewis Carroll, on the eve of her wedding.




Her name is Alice. And on the other side of the painting, Wonderland is calling to her.




One last time.




Tick...tock...tick...




In Wonderland, one only works in one's sleep.




All proper Wonderlandians spend all night, every night, hard at work, winding the great clock of Wonderland - the Master Chronometer - of which all other Wonderlandians are but synchronized slave clocks.




At night, one understands that one is made of clockwork, although, of course, one pretends otherwise when one is awake. To do otherwise would make the current madness of the daylit Wonderlandians look like stark sanity.




Besides, it's only polite.