Usually when people run into a brooding forest of semi-poisonous mushrooms--actually, nobody does that. Nobody in their right mind that is. I guess you can say I'm a little crazy, but I prefer to be known as the 'outside-the-box' kind of person. Too bad nobody noticed me enough to care.

I really shouldn't have looked back. That just irritated me. What I should have done was kept running, running until I couldn't get a breath in my lungs and my legs refused to carry my weight. Hopefully black out. Nothing more satisfying than waking up disoriented in a field of unknown edible plants and realizing you were lost and completely locked out of humanity. I was working for that insensibility.

Whenever things were looking down at home, when my mom was out partying, when all my 'friends' left me cryptic messages in the girl's bathroom, I would look for insensibility. For me, there was no greater joy than cutting myself out of this world and somehow, miraculously, changing it to arrive somewhere else. And that is my Travling.

Before, just losing myself in anything was good enough. But I soon realized there was a type of trance to my mental wanderings. A vivid gap between sanity and madness, a frightening space fringed with unreality. I wanted to go there. To see what was beyond my comprehension, and that led me to Sunagakure.

A rather low-hanging shroom with wrinkled brown arms wagged in my face and I sputtered, forgetting where I was for a second. I sniffed the air. What was that? It was like something had died under this mushroom and devastated its massive gills with its rotting body. That got me thinking about spores and mold and what was I doing in a field of poisonous mushrooms anyways and I turned around to find another way through this field when I stopped dead in my tracks.

The path was completely gone. I thought back to Hansel and Gretel and figured I should've left a trail of bread crumbs. Or maybe blood because I didn't notice my leg was bleeding till I just looked down now. 

Wow that was a lot of blood. I stumbled over an enormous mound of what I assumed was dead plant matter, into the area with the floating spores. Some guys might be thinking 'Why the hell is she so nervous about blood? I mean, doesn't she have a period?' And I would like to say to those idiots: Yes. Yes I do have a period. It is bloody amazing if you need my opinion. My insides pouring themselves out every month and my uterine lining falling out in chunks. Yep that's me, attacked by the frickin' Red Ninja on an irregular business. 

But no, call me immature or underdeveloped, but I had never gotten my period. Most (normal) girls my age had, but I never started and doctors have said I never might. I don't really care either way. Look, I'm dying right now and my intestines are coming out. Really, similar events if you think about it.

And what would be the point of it? Not like I'm aiming to reproduce or anything. Might as well just let it be so I don't have to bring any unfortunate souls into this cruel world. 

It's already terrible enough without me contributing to it.

So yes. My blood scares me. The sight of its crimson liquid and the copper smell wafting up my nose made my eyes swirl. I just couldn't stand it. I looked up into the gills of the mushroom and tried to focus on its ridged lining. 

I practiced breathing. In, out, in, out...

The thought crossed my mind that I should probably do something to stop the flow of blood but I didn't know the first thing about first aid. Forget my anatomy classes, I was practically kicked out of Girl Scouts for being too house-broken and sheltered. 

Uhm, pressure? Maybe I could put some pressure on it. Still looking up I placed my hands on my leg and pushed down. Warm liquid gushed over my hands and I stopped moving. I swallowed back a gag, terrified to look.

Taking a deep breath I chanced a glance and almost passed out. My leg was cut in three succinct places. One running along the inside of my calf, the other just above my knee and the last digging into the fleshy part of my upper thigh. They already looked infected.

How could I have not seen this happen, much less feel it? The deepest gouge must've been three inches deep! The rich loamy earth was soaking up my blood greedily, storing it in its blackness and reeking of detritus. 

My fingers were trembling and I probed the open wounds looking for a way, any way, to stop its vicious flow. 

Snickering caught my ear. "You aren't a medic, can't save a tree, as for your life you should forget it."

"What?" I mumbled, looking up from my blood soaked leg to the Cheshire Cat. He's an obnoxious thing. His coloring is absolutely horrendous and his translucent, carefree smile chilled my spine. I bet he knows where I am now, lying on the ground with my hands trying to hold my insides in, laughing. We had a mutual dislike for each other. I'm more of a dog person, and he's more of a cadaver person. Maybe he'll be kind enough to not use my soon-to-be-corpse as a litterbox.

Then again he is an .

He stretched out on the umbra of one of the smaller mushrooms, back smoothing out on its pomegranate surface. "You angered her, no forgiveness, better to die now than live a cur."

I knew who he was talking about. That power-hungry queen was not satisfied with my performance in her court. She wanted me dead, or worse: sent home. Well, Alice faired fine so I was hoping I could pull off a similar feat. Just my luck though. Alice can get away with insulting a queen, but I can't?

That's just not fair.

"Well you can tell your Queen that I am still looking for a good place to set up my adult shop," I said mildly, trying to vainly cover up my leg. "Tell her to reconsider my offer. It's the best one she's gonna get."

"Oho no can do," he purred, breaking his idiotic rhyme scheme. I swear, he must be tired trying to make every single one of his responses fit that awkward pairing. One paw dangled over the edge of the shroom and his tail made tiny waves in the air. "The Queen is angry at your insolence, but even she answers to a higher power. And She warrants your death."

He was absolutely humming with delight. I was speechless. How could anybody want me dead? I didn't make too much trouble in this world and I knew that it resets itself every 63 days. Wonderland is a boring and repetitive place. Shouldn't they be thanking me for liberating them from its continuity?

And a power above the queen? How could that be possible? Unless...unless it was a goddess of this World. So Merh, the jerk from before, was a liar. He couldn't be the god of this World if it was a she.

", I don't know what you're talking about," I said, trying to brush it off as I had more pressing, and sticky, problems to attend to. "But I haven't done anything wrong."

His purring stopped and he arched an eyebrow at me. His mischievious yellow eyes looked at me once over, drawing over my injury, my clothing, and my face with one cursory glance. "Done nothing?" he mused. "It's true you haven't really done anything. How could you, when you're here for several hours, and disappear without a trace, hmmm?"

Of all the people and all the creatures in all the worlds, the Cheshire Cat knows I don't belong. He knows where I come from, how I got here and probably how I was raised. I couldn't deny his statement so he continued.

"You come into our home and expect us to be willing to allow you your frivulous games and impudent wanderings. But Wonderland has changed. We can no longer allow your presence to go unnoticed in our lands. It is a ruling from above and I think it will yield great results. Our Leader has told us so and She reasons most honorably," he said reverently. 

By now I wasn't really paying attention. I was more concerned with the blood leaking out of my leg and the eyes that were popping up all over the place. They had begun erupting over the Cheshire Cat's head and slowly spread out to adorn all the mushrooms and the vacant air around me. 

For the first time in a long while I was scared.

And the Cheshire Cat didn't seem to notice. His purring had resumed and he looked at me lazily. "Oh you're dying."

No Sherlock thanks for the update. I didn't know how much blood the human body could lose but I was sure I was reaching the max point before no return.

"Try using some of that leafy green stuff on the side," he mumbled rolling onto his back. "Then again, that might be poison oak and you might die a more horrible death."

I was desparate. I know in most situations I wouldn't have trusted the Cheshire Cat and I would have just let my consciousness drift into oblivion, returning to my real self sooner rather than later. But his words worried me. If this Leader knows about me and my presence, what has She done to ensure I don't return? If I die here, will I really die out there?

And this didn't feel like when I normally died in a different World. It would hurt but after enough time had passed a tingling sensation would prick my wrist and I would be gently lifted back to bleary reality. This had been more than enough time.

In my contemplations, I reasoned that death wouldn't be so bad. But faced with its imminency, I was afraid. I grabbed a fistful of the leaves and smothered them into my wound.

That stupid Cat watched with an amused expression on his face. "I can't tell if you're gullible or stupid. Most likely the latter."

I blinked at him. His body disappeared and only his face remained, suspended in a taunting smile upside down. "Watch out for the pits and the blue mushrooms I think was your last advice. And since you couldn't follow even that, try not to die. That is not what She wants," he said before being cleaved in half by the stump of an orange mushroom. From the mound that I had tripped on earlier sprouted several more brightly colored mushrooms, streaked with my blood, each one helping a succeeding one up from the ground. 

Did my blood summon these monster shrooms? Great.

It felt like my legs were being held down by vines and someone had detatched my head from my shoulders so it lolled around. The shrooms stopped moving for a second and slowly turned towards me. There were abnormal growths sprouting in what I assumed were their eye sockets. And those had turned towards me. 

They towered over me and I had trouble keeping them in focus, my vision blanking in and out. 

A long tendril like protrusion extended and reached under my chin. The growths moved inches from my face and I swear I saw a gleaming eyeball in its depths. No color, no retina, the pure white ball stuffed into the crater.

The soft extension in my neck pushed in deeper and drew blood.

Before I understood what was happening, I out.