Late For Tea (Part Three Of The Wonderland Series) Read online

shifted quickly, and only briefly showed places that sometimes looked like bathrooms, sometimes bedrooms, and sometimes the rearview of an automobile backseat. The unaccustomed would have not been able to discern where to tune the device, but Lupita knew exactly how many turns to make with the amber crystal and precisely where to stop as surely as if she was cyphering through the combination codes for a locked safe.

  She stopped at just the right moment and looked over at the mirror platform, seeing down upon it what looked like the interior of a bathroom. Quickly, she started for the mirrored platform. She reached the very edge of it, and then leaned over looking into image of the bathroom.

  She whispered. “Johann, are you there?” But there was silence, and the bathroom appeared empty. “Johann?”

  Still there was no response.

  Lupita frowned, and an exasperated sigh escaped her lips. It had only been ten minutes or so since she had just spoken with him. Where could Johann have gone off to in such a short time?

  But then she remembered that the time change from where she was and where Johann was in Germany was a bit off, and although it was a little after ten in the morning for her, it was eight in the morning for Johann, and he had probably already gone off to his job at the bank.

  Lupita backed away from the platform, and started walking back around to the stone podium. Then she stopped, hesitating, not sure what to do. She turned back to look at the mirror platform, looking back at the empty bathroom projected upon its surface.

  She wished she could talk to Johann, to tell him what was happening. But now it was too late. He had gone off to work, and now she would lose the chance. She would end up leaving Antarctica, leaving everything behind here, as God-awful cold as it was, and go back to Corpus, back to her life … with Raul.

  Lupita turned away from the platform and came around behind the stone podium. Upon the desk she found a pen beside one of the laptops, and she snatched a report of some kind that had been left there beside it as well. She turned over the report and began writing on the clean backside of the paper.

  Dear Bernie,

  Thank you for being my friend. I’m sorry. Don’t be angry, but I’m going to be late for tea.

  Alice.

  She dropped the pen on the table and strode back over to the mirror platform, stopping at the edge as she once more looked down into the image of Johann’s bathroom, that place thousands of miles away from where she was now. She did not have much time left before the connection would terminate, and she would have to reinitiate.

  Lupita raised her booted foot to step upon the platform, but just as she did so, the door to the Quonset hut opened, and someone stepped inside. She looked up at the sound and the movement just as her boot touched the surface of the mirror platform.

  “Lupita!” Bernie yelled.

  But it was too late. The instant her foot met the mirror surface, she felt herself tugged downward as if some junkyard dog had clamped onto her leg. And then her body slipped straight down, piercing the surface of the mirror platform.

  For a brief instant she felt a cold sensation cover her exposed face and head, just as she had once felt before a month previous when she had first fallen through her own bathroom mirror and had ended up in Antarctica. Then that distinct stomach-flipping feeling she once felt on a roller coaster ride years ago washed over her as she found herself falling through a dark abyss.

  An instant later she felt another cold, syrupy film wash over the surface of her face, and when she opened her eyes, she found herself tumbling onto her knees upon a tiled floor.

  Lupita yelled from the pain of her knees smacking the tiles, and then reached out instinctively to stop herself just as her nose was about to hit the edge of Johann’s toilet bowl.

  She sucked in a deep breath, as she knelt there, her nose an inch from the porcelain edge of the toilet, feeling the throbbing ache of both of her kneecaps from the impact of her landing.

  And then she heard in the distance behind her. “Lupita, wait! Come back!”

  She turned her head back toward the full-length mirror she had just fallen through, and at first all she could see was the ceiling of the Quonset hut. But the image being projected was shrinking in size and was starting to become distorted. The connection was breaking down between where she was now and where she had been.

  “Lupita!” Bernie called out, and she could see his face leaning over the surface of the mirror platform, but it sounded like he was thousands of miles away, trapped in a cavernous hole.

  And then the connection broke.

  For a couple of moments Lupita stared at the mirror as she continued kneeling upon her throbbing knees. She could hardly grasp what she had just done, and she wondered if she would ever see Bernie Skarpinski again. But then she shook her head and realized that if she did not get up, she most certainly would see him. Even if there had been directions coming from “high up” not to make further contact with the Mirror Anomaly, she knew Bernie well enough that it would be a few more seconds and he would re-establish the connection, and Lupita just couldn’t do it. She knew if she saw him again in the mirror that she would not be able to do what she was going to do, and that she would end up going back. And going back wasn’t the answer because going back to Bernie was temporary, leading to going back to Corpus, permanently.

  Get up, Lupita, she said to herself. Get up!

  She stood, using her hands to push off from the edge of Johann’s toilet, and although she wondered if she had broken her kneecaps from the excruciating pain she felt, Lupita steadied herself upon her feet. Staggering over to the closed bathroom door, she then opened it and stepped into what appeared to be a bedroom.

  For an instant she hoped she would see Johann standing there, perhaps still at home, getting dressed for work. She had hoped that despite the shock and surprise she would have certainly given him by stumbling out of his bathroom and into his very life that he would be standing there putting a knot in his tie. Instead, all she found was a room empty of people, but full of things not exclusively owned by a handsome, professional German bachelor.

  Off to one side of where Lupita stood was a large bed clearly made for two with a bedspread designed with flowers and bordered with lace. At the head of the large bed was a pile of fluffy pillows situated like a great Alpine mountain range, and sitting up against the pile of pillows was an adorable stuffed-animal bear. In Lupita’s peripheral vision, as she continued to stare at the bed, she caught the makings of a vanity desk with various cosmetics – lipstick, compacts, eyeliner. Upon the back of the vanity’s chair hung limply, like a dead squirrel, a beige bra.

  Lupita stepped backwards, reaching behind her for the door knob. She took another step back, and moved slightly to turn to re-enter the bathroom.

  Then she stopped, closed her eyes for a moment, and sucked in a great breath as she shook her head to the side just once – just once -- before exhaling, opening her eyes, and then stepping forward back into the bedroom as she pulled the door shut behind her.

  Lupita Espinoza walked straight through the middle of that bedroom, exiting it, and then found her way down an unfamiliar hallway that led out into a quaint and elegantly decorated living area. She noticed the faint, lingering aroma of sausage from a recently completed breakfast as she strode toward the front door of the home. And then she unlatched the locked door, opened it, and stepped out upon a well-maintained cobbled walkway, shutting the front door behind her just as a tear rose up above her lower left eyelid.

  She walked away from the whitewashed front façade of Johann’s home, never looking back as she raised her hand to wipe that one tear that had trickled down her wind-burned cheek. The tear wasn’t meant for Johann. He didn’t deserve it. Right then, Lupita realized what a fool she had been when it came to him.

  No, the tear was for another left behind at the bottom of the world.

  THE END

  If you missed them, check out the previous parts to T
he Wonderland Series:

  Now available for pre-ordering, ONE SECOND BEFORE AWAKENING, a full length novel by Robert Hill. Release date is July 2, 2014!

  ONE SECOND BEFORE AWAKENING is a fantasy/adventure novel which takes place within a compilation of the various surreal subjects and scenes depicted by the great 20th century master, Salvador Dali. It is a world populated by space elephants, drawer people, amorphous cannibals, and the mysterious flower-headed Fates – the very witnesses of past, present, and future. When Drew Anthony finds himself stepping into the midst of a painting come to life, a painting rendered by Salvador Dali, the first thing he wants to do is to find his way out, not end up journeying across a spectacular world peopled by the magical and the terrifying. His odyssey ends up changing the destiny of a beautiful woman, altering the philosophy of the people within this bizarre, painted dimension, and transforming himself from just an average man from an ordinary world into a transformational messiah trapped in a surreal place.

  You may also find these stories by the author

  AUTHOR’S BIOGRAPHY

  Robert lives with his bride, Linda, deep in the heart of Texas where he owns a small legal services company and writes in his spare time. He is a former military paramedic, former criminal investigator, current private detective, and chief bottle washer. He has had various poems and short stories previously published in small press literary magazines, but most notably in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, and most recently with Anotherealm.com. He is also self-published on Amazon.com and Smashwords.com, in both fiction and non-fiction categories.

  Website: https://www.roberthillauthor.com

  Twitter: robhillauthor

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  Blog: https://thevirtualunknown.blogspot.com