The world felt silent and Alise felt restless. She pondered the last time she felt like this but it only brought her memory back to tiaras, barbie shoes and small muddy hands. Such a stillness should be in debt with peace, except it now means no quick hits of dopamine, no distractions from reality, and no screen to hide behind. The feeling of desperation surged over her. She once again tried switching on her phone but was met with another failed attempt. She was itching.
For a feeling but for numbness.
For clatter but for clarity.
For a hole to go down.
At the back of her mind, there appeared a White Rabbit. With glossed over violet-red eyes and a long slender body that seemed to stretch so freely. Alise grew conscious of her stiff body and haughty limbs, swiftly straightening herself.
When was the last time she even encountered a living creature? She slowly traced her eyebrow, as if she was stroking the fine, coarse hairs of a rabbit. Her fingertips soon left her face and touched the spine of a book, neglected and covered with a pitiful amount of grey dusting. She flipped it open, and only reached as far as the second page.
Has words on a page always felt this uninteresting? This underwhelming? Her mind craved for immediacy but begged for intimacy. It was unable to pay attention, unable to slow down. Was it always this hard to just be? Perhaps her lingering thoughts weren’t something worthy to just swipe away or scroll past. It unsettled her, the way she used to devalue the essence of them.
She had built her whole life avoiding this stillness, unnoticing of the White Rabbit, who now seemed to wear a waist coat and stowed a pocket watch around the crook of his neck. Alise helplessly listened to its non-stop ticking. The noise of her earphones always used to drown out the dreaded sound of time moving, and she happily remembered letting it wash over her again and again. She happily scrolled through lives that weren’t hers, happily chased online trends to feel complete and ‘caught up with the world.’ Without that constant pull, the things she once loved felt foreign and clumsy. Alise hesitated before glancing guiltily over to her past paintings and projects she had made years ago, and then to her unchanged carpet with patches of old paint stains. She felt insolent standing on what used to be holy ground for her.
The white rabbit seemed to sense it and soon led Alise away. Outside, the streets quivered with perfect tranquility. Her neighbour swept the sidewalk in front of their building, and Alise found herself watching, noticing the movement of the broom against the concrete, the way the dust swirled briefly in the sunlight. A lady carried a bag of groceries, stopping halfway to adjust her grip, then resumed, her pace unhurried. A child raced past with a soccer ball, his group of friends following behind. People went about their daily errands, passionately immersed in it. She wasn’t used to noticing these things. Normally, they blurred past as white background noise. Now they drew her attention.
It didn’t give Alise the anticipated thrill of spiralling down her usual hole. It was just there. The sunlight bounced off car windows, the wind littered bits of paper along the curb, and somewhere in the distance, she could hear screams of laughter- the sound of childhood innocence despaired her. She dragged herself back inside, ready to try her phone again, but abruptly stopped outside her bedroom door.
The rabbit seemed to be pointing her down a different hole now. One that didn’t seem so dark and sinister. And so, Alise bent to pick up the book she had thrown face down on the ground moments earlier and flipped to the third page.