Prologue

She worked furiously, her tiny hand scribbling colorful lines across the sheet of paper to the point where her muscles began to ache. The 64 pack of crayons her grandma had bought her for her birthday lay scattered out of their organized place in the box. They surrounded her on all sides while she drew her pictures, so that they would be right at hand if she needed them.

For five year-old Alice Liddell, drawing pictures were the best way to cure her parents of anger whenever she did something wrong. But it wasn't like she was bad all of the time. She just had a hard time deciding between right and wrong, as all children did at her age. On this particular day, Alice was working to cheer her mother up after she had used her cat, Dinah, as a paper towel when her fingers had been covered in barbeque sauce. Her mother probably wouldn't have been so mad if the cat hadn't decided to jump into Grandma's lap afterwards.

After she finished the last picture, the small child sat upright and gathered up the gifts into her arms. Eight drawings in all. Surely her mother would forgive her with this many. Alice dusted off her overalls, making sure that no stray crayon shavings still clung to the denim. Stubby fingers combed through her long, blonde hair to free it from tangles. She cast a glance into the mirror near the door and deemed herself as presentable, then flung open her bedroom door and scurried into the kitchen.

Her mother and grandma sat at the counter, watching a talk show on the small flat-screen television. The faint smell of coffee and glazed donuts swirled through the air, creating a pleasant haze that Alice took in slowly as she peeked around the doorframe.

Grandma noticed her first. The old woman smiled wryly, swirling a spoon around in her coffee mug, her blue eyes twinkling.

"Did you come to apologize, Alice?" she asked, her words causing her mother to turn around, too.

Alice smiled bashfully and stepped through the threshold, holding her thin stack of papers out for the two older women to take. She avoided her mother's gaze, however, when she realized that her eyes were narrowed in a scolding manner. Instead, she chose to stare down at her feet. Her grandma reached out and took the pictures in her own hands, a wide smile spreading across her wrinkled face once she saw the brilliant colors.

"You're quite the artist, aren't you dear?" she asked, flipping from page to page, studying each detail with her wise, old eyes. "Is this one a picture of Dinah?"

Alice beamed. That was one thing that separated her parents from her grandmother. It seemed that her grandmother knew exactly the depths of her imagination. She always knew what the contents of her grand-daughter's projects held. When her parents could barely make out her sloppy handwriting on homemade birthday cards, her grandma could read the words as if they were printed straight from a computer after running through a spell-check. When she drew pictures and her parents asked what they contained, Grandma was always there to correct them.

"Can't you see?" she would say, depending on whatever it was she had drawn. "It's a castle made out of cotton candy!" or "It's a turtle riding a surfboard!"

Her mother's expression lightened, the corners of her mouth twitching into an unwilling smile as she leaned over to look at the drawing of Dinah. She let out a small laugh, then jabbed a polished fingernail at the page.

"What are these brown spots?" she inquired. "Dinah doesn't have spots."

Alice tried to hide a grin, but failed horribly, stuffing her hands into her back pockets.

"It's barbeque sauce, Mommy . . ." she said softly.

Grandma roared with laughter in response, placing the pages down on the table so she could scoop up the little girl into her lap. She stroked her hair tenderly and Alice eagerly snuggled into her hold.

"Are you still mad at me, Gramma?" the child asked innocently, raising her blue eyes to the woman's face above her.

"No, of course not," Grandma cooed, planting a kiss atop her grandchild's head. "I always liked the smell of barbeque."

Even her mother had to laugh at that comment. By this time, Alice was grinning from ear to ear, obviously pleased with how well she had done in making them forget. She glanced towards her mother to see she had picked up the other stack and was now going through them with a smile on her face. She clicked her tongue softly at the picture of the meadow of flowers, chuckling at the lion in the grass. It wasn't until she flipped to the very last picture, the eighth one, that her smile quickly vanished. Her mother frowned, holding the paper up closer to her face, her eyes studying it harder. Finally, she looked back up to her daughter and held the drawing up for her to see.

"What is this one, Alice?" she asked.

Alice blinked a few times, trying to remember what exactly it was she had drawn. Many of her ideas for pictures came from her dreams. Her father had once mentioned she was a 'lucid dreamer', whatever that meant. This particular drawing came from a very recent one that had been bothering her from quite some time. It was a boy with platinum blonde hair, sitting alone in a room of white with sad eyes.

"That's a boy, Mommy," Alice explained with a blink, as if the answer was simple. "His name is Peter. He's sad because he misses his mommy."

Her mother didn't speak. She stared at the paper with wide, yet narrowed eyes. She looked afraid, but she kept staring, as if the picture would turn into something less strange. But it stayed the same. Her grandmother seemed to go pale, her hands quivering so badly that she had to set down the coffee mug. The old woman tried her best to smile, despite her obvious distress, turning to look down at her grandchild.

"W-why does he miss his mommy, Alice?"

Frowning at their reactions, the little girl merely shrugged in response.

"I don't know, really," she said quietly. "He said that they got split up."

She reached up with her tiny hands, placing them on her mother's knee in an attempt to soothe her frightened look away. Her young, childlike face was formed into an expression of deep concern.

"Mommy . . . ? Don't you like my draw -"

The innocent gesture was smacked away. Her mother swatted her hands away, pushing the small child back a bit with wide, furious eyes. She threw the drawings, causing them to drift through the air, landing in scattered formation across the kitchen floor.

"Go to your room!"

Her voice was the angriest Alice had ever heard in her entire life. She jumped backwards, staring up in confusion and shock, mouth agape.

"But, Mommy -"

"NOW!"

Alice wasted no time leaving the room. Her legs almost buckled beneath her as she ran for her own bedroom, tears of fright stinging in her eyes. The last glimpse she caught in the kitchen was her mother. She was doubled over, as if in pain, sobbing while her grandmother moved to console her. Alice slammed the door before she saw anymore.

She spent the remainder of her day hiding out in her bedroom, too afraid of what her mother would do if she ventured outside again. Her father returned home at sundown, tired from a busy day at work. He attempted to coax his daughter from her room, but to no avail. She skipped dinner and her father tucked her in early.

That night, as she slept beneath the warm covers of her bed, Alice dreamt. She dreamt of their little house, splashed with the most vibrant shade of red. The rooms were empty. There was no rich smell of coffee, no comforting sense of love and tenderness. There was, however, the deep feeling of despair. A vile odor made the child gag as she moved from room to room. She called for her parents, but nobody responded. She was alone.

The next day, her parents were dead. They had been brutally murdered, their blood splashed all over the entire house.
Alice was the one who found them.

((So, I bet there might be one person out there who is all, "Hey, this sounds familiar." That's because it IS familiar. It is a story I wrote in the past. However, due to my long hiatus because of a broken computer, I have returned, more confident in my abilities to write.

I'm taking a course in creative writing this year and I thought that I would like to finish Project Looking Glass, anyways. So for the novel I am supposed to write throughout this school year, I decided to re-write it. I hope you enjoy. If you wish to look back and compare this story to the old one, feel free. It will be up until I can catch up to where I left off previously.))