Alice is a work of young adult fantasy-fiction possessing cross-generational appeal with a mash-up of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking-Glass and M. N. Shyamalan’s, The Sixth Sense (in essence that iconic line uttered in the film: “I see dead people”). The protagonist is a Croatian immigrant busting her butt working to dig out beneath debt incurred during the COVID-19 pandemic when food and beverage establishments were forced to close for many months. The impact on those willing to toil harder than most for minimum wage plus tips was devastating. With income cut off as if someone had flipped a switch, and if they were fortunate enough so their credit scores entitled them to own credit cards, most walked a tightrope from billing statements to billing statements. With little choice, many sunk into massive debt bundled with the burden of astronomical interest fees. My fictitious Alice has just turned twenty-six, discovered she’s pregnant, and is one of the multitudes who fell down that rabbit hole and was struggling to escape.

In summary, Alice is approximately 24,000 words of text. Adhering to a children’s storybook format it includes original illustrations throughout to capture the caricaturesque quality of the characters she encounters while working a final shift at The Madd Hatter Bar & Restaurant. These illustrations not only add content but context and texture. This work, while intended to stand on its own, has the potential to be expanded into a series based upon the protagonist and/or the other characters she interacts with throughout this tale. In fact, and in the right hands, it could even be developed as an epic film.

REQUESTED INFORMATION: "Alice"/Young adult fantasy-fiction/18 - 80 years old/23,737 words/Stevie B/Original and well written/Alice has cross-generational appeal with a mash-up of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking-Glass and M. N. Shyamalan’s, The Sixth Sense (in essence that iconic line uttered in the film: “I see dead people”)/Young adult fantasy-fiction/Bio: <!-- /Stevie B signed his first record deal with a major label at sixteen. Over the years he’s produced records and composed songs for Madonna and other international stars. Since 2006 many of his music and book reviews have appeared in assorted entertainment publications. In 2012, “Pajamas on a Sun Stained Beach,” his first published novel, hit the bookstore shelves, followed by “The Freaky Fungal Family Tree” in 2021, as well as the upcoming “You’re Crazy – I Love You!”, “Chris and her Daughters”, and “Beneath a Lazarus Moon.” For nearly 40 years he’s owned and managed Mia Mind Music, a successful entertainment promotion and marketing company that has accumulated multiple gold and platinum record awards in association with various record companies and artists. Born a be-freckled, bewildered, bemused, and bashful, blue-eyed boy from Baltimore, Maryland, he now resides contently alone in Hoboken, New Jersey. In between publications, he offers short stories, thoughts, ramblings, and rants on his blog (https://www.thestevieb.com). Additional information also appears on his Facebook author page (https://www.facebook.com/thesteviebe)/https://www.thestevieb.com/College degrees/Professionally engaged in the entertainment industry for many decades, producing records for Madonna and other notable artists/Normal/Fiction/People/Creating/Baltimore, Maryland/68

“To Seamus!” all the Irish diaspora who were drinking their heavy, dark Guinness stouts and green colored beers on Saint Patrick’s Day at The Blarney Stone Pub, located somewhere in the West 30s neighborhood within the canyons of New York City, loudly toasted. “To Seamus O’Malley and his sorry Saint Patrick's Day snake bitten arse!” another patron of the pub proclaimed and which elicited gales of laughter from the other Gaelic guzzlers packed wall-to-wall inside The Blarney Stone.

“To me sorry Saint Patrick's Day snake bitten arse!” O’Malley chimed in as he raised his pint of green lager toward the crowd.

“Seamus, tell us the tale again, lad. Tell us again how ye managed to get ye arse bit on Saint Patrick's Day in a manky Irish airport, nonetheless,” demanded the heavyset, handlebar mustachioed barkeep.

Drawing a long sip from a cool glass of beer held firmly in hand before recanting the now legendary saga that he’d retold time and time again on Saint Patrick's Day for the last dozen or so years since his arrival in America, O’Malley prepared himself for what had now become an annual ritual. America, which could hardly be called the New World any longer, was where he and his wife, Maggie, now called home. What began as a sip ended as a gulp as he drained the last of the bitter green draft from the vessel in which it had, mere moments before, been filled up to the brim. Clearing his throat and then pausing for several seconds in order to create a dramatic effect, Seamus O’Malley launched into the retelling.

“Well, lads and lasses, as ye all know, way back somewhere about the 4th or 5th-century, our country’s patron saint, Saint Patrick, came into, then passed out of this world. ’Tis believed he had been born in what was then known as Roman Britain and that while a teenager was kidnapped by Irish raiders as the moon looked down, high above in the sky like a watchful eye, and carried off as a slave to our beloved Emerald Isle. ‘Twas there he worked for six years or thereabout, as a shepherd, and ’twas during that time he found, or some say was found by, God. God told Patrick to run away to the coast, as a ship would be awaiting him and take the sheepish lad back home, and whereupon his return, in gratitude, he entered the priesthood.

“Now according to the Declaration, which others have said was written by none other than Saint Patrick himself, the young priest returned to Ireland so as to convert our pagan Paddy arses to Christianity. ’Twas there that he and his converted went head-to-head against the druids, driving them from power. Over the years the tale itself was converted into an Eire allegory of how he drove “the snakes” from our island, albeit the fact that a viper of any kind had never been known to actually inhabit that region of the world.”

“Get to the good part about how one bit your Hibernian arse, already!” some fellow drinker implored.

By this time the barkeep had set another pint of lager before O’Malley as he continued. “One of the first lines of employment I undertook, as I was wee a bit of a chancer in those days, and prior to arriving in this country, was working security at Dublin Airport in North County Dublin, near Swords which was slightly outside The Pale.” And in response to a mention of those locations murmurs of several ex-patriots could be heard roiling throughout the over-packed saloon in an affirmation of nostalgic recognition.

“Aye, I worked for a spell in one of the two terminals there. Anyway, what I’m about to tell ye all ended up being, as it were, me last day on that job, which coincidentally occurred on Saint Patrick's Day. I’d gotten a call through me walkie-talkie thingamabob to head down to the baggage sorting area office and investigate a mysterious situation. There, one of the baggage handlers, some Indonesian bloke, had already set a large canvas suitcase on a table, and the first thing I noticed is it appeared as if something was moving about and writhing within. So, I asked the handler what the bloody hell was that and was told that was what I was sent there to find out.

“Well, I don’t know what I expected, other than to do what I was told, so I put on me latex gloves then slowly unzipped it open. Now before I even had that suit bag all the way opens this large green snake’s head slithers out, takes an angry gander me way, and hisses at me like some noisy, broken radiator spitting out steam in the middle of winter. Now it was still early on in the day so I was as sober as a judge. But I imagined if I’d a’ had a few in me already and was fully fluthered I’d a’ stood me ground and stared him down. But that not being the case I turned about to get away as fast as I could from the viper. A’ fore I got more than a step away from it I felt a sharp pain in one of me buttocks at first, ‘twas the right one if yous need to know, and then something like some kinda heavy weight was thrashing about off me arse cheek. He’d a’ sunk his fangs into it, then was a’ holding on to it for dear life, and the bugger wasn’t about to let go.

“Me? I thought I was a’ dying so was a’ screaming at the top of me lungs for help when that baggage handler grabbed that cold-blooded creature by its head, squeezing the sides until it opened its jaws and let go of me rear. Still holding the beast’s head with one hand the handler grabbed its tail with his other, calmly walked it over to a recently emptied dumpster, and tossed the serpent into it, then said, ‘Don’t worry, mate, it’s just a lil ol’ green tree python. She not poisonous—they even make nice pets if you like that kind of company’. Crikey, little? —that constrictor was at least two meters long—it turns out the ‘he’ was a ‘she’ about to lay a clutch of her eggs and give birth to more little eejit monsters of her kind. What a holy show!

“So anyway, one of the DUB airport managers takes me in his car to the nearest hospital, telling me all along the drive to try not to get any of me blood on his upholstery, where they examine me gluteus maximus, clean the wound, bandage me up, and then give me some tetanus shots and a few aspirins for good measure. On the ride back to DUB the manager tells me as long as I sign some form absolving and indemnifying the airport and the entire city of Dublinfrom any responsibility, they’ll give me a very generous severance package and I needn’t return to work there ever again. Blimey, it ’twas over a year’s full pay and some other goodies, so how could I say no? The Devil be damned, I took that money to get Maggie and me over here to the USA.”

At that point, everyone in the pub raised their glasses as they chanted, “USA, USA, USA…”

Once things had quieted down again one of the barmaids working at The Blarney Stone, who he believed was named Siobhan, approached him to ask, “If ye don’t mind me asking, do ye know whatever happened to that poor mama snake?”

“Aye, lass, I do indeed. I heard that that baggage handler fished it from the dumpster at the end of his shift and took it home along with him.”

“Now why would he do that? Did he keep it as a pet, did he?”

“Pet? Well, no lass, I heard he cut off the head, cooked it up, and served it up along with some fava beans and a fine Chianti for a family dinner that night. Someone even told me once, though they may have been slagging me, that in some countries snake meat is a delicacy. But what do I know? I’m not some kinda fecking herpetologist, am I, darling?”

The barmaid stared back at him in wide-eyed horror as she backed slowly and silently away. O’Malley was pretty sure if she’d been a snake, like that green tree python, she’d a’ either sunk her fangs into his neck or constricted her body around his to squeeze the life out of him. But he really didn’t know for sure, now did he now? What Seamus did know was as sure as he’d be surely attending Sunday mass with his Maggie this weekend, is that for the remainder of that Saint Patrick's Day night, Siobhan the barmaid did not meet his gaze again and completely ignored Seamus O’Malley every time he tried in vain to catch her eye and order another round. So, boyo, what must a knackered, thirsty chap do in order to get ossified here in the New World on the tail end of the Feast of Saint Patrick, he wondered to himself?

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“Hey! How’s it going? My name is Tu’u ko Iho. I am one of an estimated nearly 1000 moai that were hand-carved from stone by the Rapa Nui people over 500 years ago. Our actual number, as concluded by a recent moai self-headcount, is closer to 887. My deep elliptical eye sockets, which were crafted by the native Rapa Nui, held eyes made of coral that they extracted from the southeastern Pacific Ocean, and possessed pupils formed from either red scoria or black obsidian volcanic rocks. They stare stoically over the island toward the coast, and throughout my many, many years have seen many, many changes. Much of what I have seen has filled my stone-cold heart with lamenting and sadness. Especially the potential and seldom discussed extinction of one kind of species: the human animal.

“My name, Tu’u ko Iho, was the name of the captain of the crew that chief Hotu Matu’a led when their two-canoe expedition from Marae Toe Hau arrived on my island. Personally, I never liked that name and would have preferred to have been named Bob or Sam or Tim, but few may name themselves, so most must bear the moniker others have dubbed them. Oh well, what’cha gonna do? At least they didn’t name me Seymour or Cornelius or Stewart or something even worse. My moai friends here just call me T. K.

“Somewhere around the year humans count as 1200 AD/CE, Hotu Matu’a was fleeing from a neighboring chief on Marae Toe Hau who had some big bug up his butt about one thing or another, and after having had his own butt kicked 7 ways from Sunday in battles by the other said chief. So, while Hotu Matu’a may not have been much of a warrior, I guess you would say he was at least a decent enough explorer of unknown worlds. Honestly, I never met the man, so what I’ve just shared with you comes from chit-chatting with my other moai stony brethren here (hey, it helps pass the time) on Easter Island. Anyway, it was after the Rapa Nui settlers got settled in, they whipped out their stone cutting tools, hammered and chipped away, and carved all of us.

“Today is Easter Sunday, and that’s a pretty big day here for us on Easter Island. On April 5th, which was an Easter Sunday in the year you folks call 1722 AD/CE, the first European arrived. He was a Dutch dude named Jacob Roggeveen. Roggeveen proceeded to wound and kill about a dozen humans like him who then currently inhabited the island. Many could say that Jacob was one of those guests-from-hell. Me? From what I’ve witnessed with my very own eyes over the years I’d say he was just another human being that was being a human being. Admittedly, he was also the one responsible for the then newly adopted name for our island, so go figure...

“Thereafter many came and went; the Captain Don Felipe Gonzalez de Ahedo from Spain in 1770, then 1774 marked the arrival of a British explorer known as James Cook (yeah right, as if that was really his real name!), French Admiral Jean François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse, came here around 1776, and a lot more followed after them. They were as impossible to get rid of as what the Māori natives called the kiore, also known as Polynesian rats. Once you got’em you got’em for good, or at least so it seems.

“During the 19th century, a bunch of Peruvians paid us a visit. Turns out they were slave raiders and abduction was their game. We moai were not too bothered by them, but oy vey! more than half of the island’s people population were not so lucky. Some, who were enslaved and later repatriated, when returned were smallpox carriers as it turns out. Later on, as if that wasn’t bad enough, visiting missionaries and some sailors from whaling ships introduced the islanders to tuberculosis, which killed around a quarter of the remaining inhabitants. Maybe those missionaries who were sharing more than just their religion with the natives were simply fulfilling their mission of introducing the locals to God, albeit quicker than one would want, but who am I to say? Oh yeah, I’m Tu’u ko Iho, remember?

“One may wonder what they’d do after they had such a negative impact on others. But another Frenchman, Jean-Baptiste Onésime Dutrou-Bornier, bought up most of the workable land on the island at bargain prices. After a bit more of this, that, and the other, only 111 living Rapa Nui remained on Easter Island. If you bother to do the math, it meant that over 97% of the natives had been decimated in less than a single decade. Chile, in 1888 annexed the country that once belonged to the Rapa Nui people with some treaty, and we all know how treaties usually work out for the natives, don’t we? Yeah, right.

“Do you like knock-knock jokes? Alright, knock-knock! Who’s there? It’s the 20th century. The 20th century who? The 20th century, who then icily introduced the surviving Rapa Nui islanders to the hard, cold concept of private property ownership. Now you may ask who then owned this private property, and you can bet dollars to doughnuts that it wasn’t the indigenous Rapa Nui. Oh no, it was now controlled by the Scottish-owned Williamson-Balfour Company, and managed by the Chilean Navy. After the Chileans annexed the island the Rapa Nui people were decreed Chilean citizens (wow—big whoop). By the beginning of the 21st century, illegal fishing by foreign entities had depleted the supply of fish that once fed the families of the indigenous Rapa Nui.

“I know this is a very sad story, and if my elliptically shaped eyes were not merely pieces of coral with puny pupils of black obsidian or red scoria, I would probably cry tears of sorrow. But being made of stone, I simply cannot. Yet still, deep within me, my stone-cold heart aches in woe. Have any of you ever heard tales of any boulders inflicting on any other boulders the inhuman pain and cruelty my unblinking eyes have had to watch all these centuries? My moai friends and family certainly have not. Did you just hear that loud cracking sound coming from all across Easter Island? It was just the sound of all our stone hearts breaking in unison for you.

“Anyhoo, today is another Easter Sunday on Easter Island. And this is Tu’u ko Iho, your brokenhearted moai pal and good buddy saying happy Easter to everyone. Maybe one day you may want to come by and pay us a visit here on Easter Island. Then on second thought, maybe that’s not such a hot idea.

“So, I’m off now to band practice with a few of my more musically talented moai friends. Bet you can’t guess what name we came up with for the group: T. K. and the Talking Heads, and we’re a hard rock band, of course. May I leave you with a few flyers for our next gig that you can share with some of your friends? Okay, later!!!!”

I was holding her hand when she passed. Since I’d never seen anyone die, I hadn’t been sure what to expect. Perhaps I thought her death would be preceded by a long sigh or some kind of final death rattle. Maybe I was supposed to see some aura or light emanating and escaping from the body I’d cherished all these years. She certainly wasn’t confused nor disoriented in her ending moments. The last words I heard her speak were lucid and clear, “Grow old along with me. The best is yet to be, my darling.” Next, she grew very still and quiet as her body slumped down a little deeper in the place we had laid together for many years. The love of my life now appeared more relaxed than I’d recalled seeing her for quite some time. Then she was gone.

Those last words were from some poem she’d heard and memorized when younger and years before we’d met. In fact, she had recited it when proposing we mate.

Grow old along with me!

The best is yet to be,

The last of life, for which the first was made:

Our times are in His hand

Who saith, “A whole I planned,

A youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!”*

How could I say no to that wonderful young female whose beautiful brown eyes misted with the dew of tears while sharing those words that were more than mere words? They were a solemn promise that she kept to me up to her last breath. Whenever I had grown upset or frustrated by the barriers and burdens, real or imagined, that fate had dealt us in our lives she’d draw me near to hold as she softly whispered in my ear, “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be...” And like an answered prayer I’d realize my problems were vastly outweighed by the miracle of being loved by her. Now she’s gone—and I’m all alone.

The hand which I had still held in mine had grown cold, and I released it so I could use my knuckles to help me stand upright by her lifeless corpse. The thought of the loneliness I’d now have to endure during what years still remained in my life, endure without her, made me want to pound and beat my chest in rage and anger. It made me want to howl at the full moon that now began to appear, alone in the sky above us as another day had surrendered its clear and vividly colored twilight to the darkened night the way life surrenders to death. Thoughts and feelings that made me want to hurt something, anything—even myself, to offset the pain that now trapped and enslaved my heart, my soul, my mind, my very being with the misery of bereavement.  

“Why would she do this? Do this to me? Leave me like this?” I savagely growled and demanded from the unhearing and uncaring cold universe I was now left to face on my own without her. “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be...”

“How can I still grow old along with you? You’re gone—you’ve left me and the best is now behind us and fading like a dulled memory! How do you trust a God that severs and cleaves the two to leave only one to remain without the other to soothe and assuage for what’s lost in the last of life? How could you have made me believe we were in His hands when He was not there when we most needed Him? Are you even listening to us, God?” I bellowed beneath the stars that appeared silently to provide consoling company for that melancholy moon in the heartless heavens above.

Sinking back down on my haunches next to my beloved’s inert remains laid on the hard floor of the cage we had shared in this zoo all these years together I began to sob. A Sub-Saharan African silverback is not supposed to cry out loud, but I didn’t care if the other animals or the zookeepers saw or heard me. A gentle wind blew through the trees making their leaves rustle ever so lightly. And for a moment I believed again I heard the lilting sound of my sweet companion’s voice comforting me, “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be...”  

Grow Old Along With Me Pt. II: Aftermaths and Embers

When the zookeepers had clocked into their jobs the next morning and found us we were snuggled together at the place we’d slept with each other for many years in this now half-empty cage. I was still holding her cold dead hand when one of them stopped by to feed us. I’d neither slept nor dreamt the entire night but was too emotionally drained to feel anything else but emptiness. The first to come upon us recoiled in shock when he discovered she was dead.

Me? By now I’d come to the realization they’d soon be removing her now stiffening body and that would be the last I’d ever see of the love of my life.

At first, I thought about fighting them. Though over the years the two of us had shared this cage we’d come to the conclusion that resistance was futile when it was against the hand that would not only feed you but could hurt you at their discretion. Well, between you, me, and the walls that surrounded, discretion was not their strong suit. And with that in mind, I conceded that when the first zookeeper returned with the inevitable cluster of other zookeepers my only choice was to retreat to the most distant corner of the cage while they inspected my beloved’s remains.

Return they did, and they did in mass. There were two from the medical team that usually took care of all who live in cages here and four I recognized as the ones we’d most usually see around us during the daylight hours, while there we several who I can’t clearly remember having seen before and who appeared to dominate a majority of the others by no other behavior than just being present. I was neither spoken to, nor regarded, or acknowledged. During the whole course of their unrequested and uncomfortable visit, they really paid me little to no mind. Looking back, it was as if I wasn’t even there.

I couldn’t watch when they examined my darling’s corpse so I simply turned away to look out between the bars that had separated my mate and me from the rest of the world all these years. It wasn’t their fault that she had died—but still—I had to battle the urge to hurt them, even though I admit they’d had no hand in ending my sweetheart’s life. In the end, they’re as impotent as we all are against death.

Now, here’s a funny thing. The majority of us encaged here in captivity behind bars can understand most of the words the zookeepers and those that come to watch us in our cages say to us. Ironically, none of us can recall an occasion when any of them showed the least bit of recognition in regard to what we said to them. They were clueless! We’d do our best to speak with them but they appeared to never understand a single word we said. Most of us had already given up on any hope of ever communicating with them and we try our best not to fault them for being slow. 

“Do you think he killed her?” one of the ones I recognized as someone I’d seen around us during the daylight hours asked one of the ones from the medical team.

“No, there’s not any evidence of physical trauma,” the one from the medical team replied.

“She was getting pretty old, you know.”

“Yeah,” the inquisitor continued, “but it seemed like she was healthy.”

“Well, he didn’t kill her, I’ll tell you that.”

“Ah, Okay. What are you gonna do with the body?”

“First, get it out of the cage. We’ll do an autopsy just to check if she died of anything that could be communicable to the other animals or us then we get rid of the carcass the way we usually do.”

“Well, guess I’ll start firing up the old incinerator then and get it ready for when you’re done.

“Yeah, why don’t you go do that and let us get on with our work?”

“Okey-doke.”

Throughout the years that this cage was ours’ to share we had mated many times. Nonetheless, we bore no offspring, and for the life of me, I don’t know why. While most bear young from their coupling, for those of us who do not it’s neither for lack of trying nor a lack of love for each other. I loved her more than I know ways to tell you. Still, when we lay together I could not have been happier. This she told me too was how she felt. So it seemed we were enough for each other when all’s said and done. Remembering that, made time pass somewhat less painful since the day she died.

And time did pass. The pain faded to numbness. I was glad they never brought another to my lonely cage to mate with me. She was irreplaceable and I had no desire to be with anyone else but her ever again. I was probably just too old anyway. Fate had cast me together with my one and only soul mate so I’m thankful for that good fortune. Still, I miss her every day.

I’ve no way of knowing for sure how many years a Sub-Saharan African silverback can stand before finally lying down, like my lover, for the last time. What I do know is during those times when the memory of her manifests as a dull ache in my heart and keeps me awake all night long, is if I listen carefully, I can still hear her voice. Especially when the leaves on the trees outside my cage are being rustled by a soft wind, “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be...” she reminds me. It’s then I truly comprehend the complete meaning of those words. Once this mortal coil no longer binds me to this life we’ll both be able to grow old together, united once again to watch the sunrise on all the best that is yet to come. Together anew, for eternity.  

*From a poem titled Rabbi ben Ezra by Robert Browning circa 1864