Thoroughly English Alice

by Rod Drake

The Red Queen screamed for Alice’s head, and the vast army of knave, knight and soldier playing cards raised their weapons and charged with warrior gleam in their two-dimensional eyes. Alice was no shrinking violet and was prepared for this situation; she reached into the pocket of her apron, pulled out the DRINK ME bottle and took a big swig from it. In a wink she grew to a towering thirty feet, a blonde colossus, using her size to kick the now tiny cards into a nearby stream, which warped their paper bodies, their red and black colors fading, mixing in the blue water; bending down she flicked the irate Red Queen high over the horizon, her screams gradually fading away. More and more soldier cards emptied from the queen’s castle, throwing spears and lances at her shins and knees, so Alice, in pain and anger, knocked the castle over, kicking its parapets and towers across the countryside, then stomped what remained into the soft green earth. Seizing the shattered kegs of the queen’s royal liquor, Alice rinsed her mouth with the foul-tasting stuff, then lighting her alcoholic breath with a match she had swiped from the Caterpillar’s hookah, she breathed a massive blast of fire like a dragon on the surviving army of cards, incinerating them like the paper they were. Finally peace and quiet reigned; Alice shrank down to her normal size and wondered why these strange foreigners couldn’t act like the civilized and mannered English, which she was.

6S

Rod Drake, author of UZS, likes odd little historical anniversaries, so he wrote this story to run on Guy Fawkes Day, which occurred on November 5, 1605 (known in England as the Gunpowder Plot). Check out his longer stories in Flashes of Speculation, Fictional Musings, Flash Flooding, Flash Forward and MicroHorror.