Marionette Wonderland

It is different for everyone.

For some, it is simple. Cold logic and hard facts come together as flat steel walls. Everything is ordered neatly and smoothly beneath their fingertips. It always makes sense, it always fits. There are no cracks, no gaps, only more smooth edges where the pattern can be continued as more logic and facts are added to the machine.

For others, their minds are like marionettes. Fragments suspended on strings and hanging in liquid darkness. Pulled this way and that. Half in control, half controlled by whims and follies and dreams. It may make sense when you follow a string to its end, but sometimes, it is better when it makes no sense at all. When you allow yourself to drown in your own mind.

And when you walk through Wonderland, you start to feel the strings. Attached to your arms, your legs, to every finger on your hands and wound around your neck. Who is in control here? Are you moving the strings, or are the strings moving you? You raise your arm, look at your hand. The strings hang slack, and you pull-

No, they told you to stop that. It isn’t Wonderland. It’s not real. There are no strings. There are no strings and no eyes and teeth that flash and grin in the dark. Return to the machine. Put the pieces of the puzzle back together. Remember, if they don't fit together, they won't stay. Put the red and black into their patterns, colour and shade on white backgrounds in perfectly ordered columns of numbers and ranks.

Relax. Focus, just like they told you. That isn’t a string around your neck, there is nothing tied to your hands at all. It isn’t dark here, you can see perfectly clearly. But then why can you still hear that voice at the back of your mind? That seductive purr and the ticking of clocks and suddenly you understand that gravity and sanity are linked so very intrinsically. 

After all, what difference is there between falling down the rabbit hole, and falling down a flight of stairs? All it takes... is one... little... step...