The Middlesex House, as it was commonly known, was founded as the Middlesex Institution for the Insane and Feeble-Minded, before more sensible heads prevailed and realized that, all things being equally, the mentally unbalanced had enough to deal with without the stigma of such ugly labels on top of everything else. Within its respectable and dedicated halls was a large central room, commonly used as a meeting area for the professional staff. One evening a week, these men and women would sit down for dinner, discussing the state of their facility and the progress of various patients within. This particular week, one patient was monopolizing the discussion. Unusually, she also happened to be present.

“I must say, Alice,” the senior physician, Doctor Lewis, began, enjoying a slice of roast beef. “Your progress over these last few months has been most commendable. After so long spent with us, it’s so lovely to see you finally letting go of those confused fantasies that had so long plagued you.”

The young woman he was addressing nodded politely. “Thank you, sir,” she said softly. “I’m glad you think so. And I hope you enjoy the meal.”

Nurse Carroll, head of the daytime shift, nodded approvingly. “Just a couple days with kitchen privileges, and you’re able to do all this! If I’d known cooking was such a passion of yours, we’d have set you up with Cookie a long time ago.”

Alice smiled slightly, nodding again. “I apologize for never mentioning it, before. It seemed…unimportant, compared to…well…”

Lewis smiled, understanding her hesitation. “You may speak freely, Alice. There’s no need to feel ashamed. You were ill, through no fault of your own. And now you’re getting better. Talking about your illness is one way of working through it.”

The woman hesitated another moment, before continuing. “Well, I’d enjoyed cooking as a girl, but it seemed unsuitable for a Queen, after all. Even the Queen of a make-believe Wonderland.” She chuckled slightly, which led to a small round of appreciative laughter at the table. Lewis joined in, genuinely pleased to see how at ease the girl was.

He studied her a moment as he took another bite of roast beef. She was tall, with a ponytail of thick blond hair that matched her blue eyes well. An otherwise-average girl in her mid-twenties, the only mark against her beauty was her incredibly pale skin. Spending almost a decade within the walls of the Middlesex House hadn’t given her any opportunity to improve her complexion, particularly with a case as extreme as hers had been. She’d been kept locked within a padded room for days at a time, a danger to herself and others; it was little wonder her skin was almost as white as her nondescript scrubs.

“I think,” Lewis went on. “That in a few years time, you may even want to consider documenting your experiences here, and your progress over time. Yours is truly an inspirational story, Miss Alice.”

“Oh, it is,” Alice agreed, with an odd gleam in her eye. “Truly inspirational. A triumph over adversity, and the whole lot.”

Nurse Carroll took a drink of wine. “This beef is simply marvelous, girl,” she noted. “And it’s got such a lovely bit of extra flavor. What seasonings did you use? Almond shavings?”

Alice’s smiled broadened. “Just a little hometown secret,” she noted, pulling a small blue vial from the pocket of her scrubs. Lewis paused, suddenly concerned. Written on the side of the vial were two small, almost insignificant words.

DRINK ME.

Lewis practically threw his fork down. “Alice, my girl,” he said, forcing his voice to stay calm. “What, exactly, was the flavoring you added?”

“You can’t tell by the taste, Doctor Lewis?” Alice asked, feigning surprise. “What do you know that has an almond aftertaste?”

Chilled silence fell over the table, as a half-dozen pairs of eyes turned wide with terror. It was Nurse Carroll who finally broke the silence. “Arsenic?” she practically shrieked. “You put arsenic in our food?!”

Alice laughed gaily. “Oh, Mrs. Carroll! Of course not! Why would I do such a naughty, evil thing?”

Lewis was frowning, now. “Alice, if this is a joke, it’s not very funny…”

“This isn’t a joke, Doctor Lewis,” the girl replied firmly. “This is the proof you asked for. Do you remember, all those years ago? ‘If Wonderland exists, Ms. Alice, can you prove it?’ Well, I finally figured out a way to do so. And any moment now…”

The effects began to take hold, even as Lewis and the others began to spring to their feet. Alice’s eyes lit with delight. “There we go!”

Doctor Lewis, despite being an older gentleman, still cut an imposing figure, being over six feet in height. Normally, he was almost a full head taller than the blond woman giggling before him. With this in mind, it’s understandable why he would cry out in shock when he found himself looking directly into her eyes. Seconds later, he was looking up at those mirthful eyes, as he seemed to compress and fold into himself, shrinking smaller and yet smaller at the feet of the cunning cook before him.

“What is happening?” he called in a humorously weak voice as he continued to dwindle. A panicked glance around the room told him that his situation was hardly unique: the entire senior staff was shrinking as well; he was the only one unfortunate enough not to be in his chair as he continued his march to physical insignificance.

“You know what’s happening,” Alice sighed, as if she was explaining something for the hundredth time. And in a way, she was. “You took all those notes, yet you don’t remember the river of tears? The vial on the table? Here’s your proof, Doctor: tokens brought to me from Wonderland itself. Do you believe me now?”

Lewis tried to stay calm, even as his form settled into what had to be two inches, maybe less, in height. “…I concede that you may be right,” he allowed. “You’ve made your point, Ms. Alice. Certainly, something fantastical did happen to you all those years ago, and I was wrong not to believe you.”

Alice laughed, turning to where Nurse Carroll stood in the vast expanse of her own chair, shivering in terror. “That wasn’t so hard after all, was it? Mrs. Carroll?”

“You…you proved your point, Ms. Alice,” the nurse managed. “Now, return us to normal, and we can talk more about Wonderland.”

“Well, you and I can, in any event,” Alice replied. “You’ve always been my favorite. But Doctor Lewis?”

With movement so fast the nurse almost didn’t register the action, Alice lifted her socked foot and slammed it down on the miniscule form of the head physician. The man was wiped from existence before he’d even had a chance to realize what had happened.

As the other miniscule prisoners began a confused chorus of screams, prayers, and curses, Nurse Carroll couldn’t take her eyes off the deceptively-innocent face of the relative giantess before her. As her mind began to move to speed once again, one single confused word made its way from her lips.

“…why?”

“Why?” Alice’s eyes flashed with unbridled venom for just a moment. “Because I’m the bloody Red Queen, you fools! I slayed the Red Queen before me! I took her throne! And my armies took the rest of Wonderland for my own! You would deny me my title, and my achievements, and all of it, telling me it was nothing more than a fantasy! A child’s fairy tale! A sick fever dream!”

“Alice,” the Nurse began slowly, as if speaking to an angry child. “After your parents’ death, you went missing for weeks. You were found, sickly and starving, in the middle of the forest. We had no reason to think-“

“Yes, I’ve heard it all before,” Alice sighed. “I listened to your stories. But did you ever listen to mine? Perhaps I should tell you again. But this time, do promise you’ll pay attention.”

The patient gave a grin reminiscent of the mystical cat she’d so often spoken of. “Like when I spoke of the Jabberwok.”

With a casual motion, she bent over and snatched up another of the senior staff, a middle-aged woman whose name Alice couldn’t be bothered to remember. “’Beware the Jabberwok, my son,’” she recited in a sing-song tone. “’The jaws that bite-‘”

Ignoring the terrified protests of both her captive and Nurse Carroll, Alice carelessly tossed the woman into her mouth, chewing thoughtfully. Not even pausing in her display, she reached for the deceased morsel’s seated neighbor. The junior attending physician stood no chance of escaping.

“’The claws that catch!’” Alice sang, giggling as she applied enough pressure to compress the man into a bloody smear between her thumb and forefinger.

The two doctors seated opposite the doomed pair had, to their credit, managed to climb down from their seats and were in the process of racing across the tile floor. Alice merely giggled again at their attempted escape.

“’Beware the Jubjub bird, and SHUN the frumious Bandersnatch!’” She knelt as she sang, and on ‘shun’, she slammed her open palm on the closest of the fugitives. The man was a bloody smear on the Red Queen’s palm as her free hand reached for the remaining victim.

“Running from your Queen?” Alice muttered. “Well, I suppose it falls to me to carry out sentence. Off. With. Your. Head.”

Judicious application of her thumbnail to the back of the prisoner’s neck completed the execution, as Alice casually returned to her feet. She strolled about the room, forgetting about her favorite nurse as she moved to rest her sore feet. Nurse Carroll had nowhere to run as the girl’s prodigious backside plummeted towards her, a thin layer of cotton fabric being all that separated her from the warm, pale flesh of Alice’s buttocks. The pressure and darkness increased tremendously, until darkness was all Nurse Carroll would know.

Propping her feet up on the table, Alice smiled with satisfaction. That had been enjoyable. But it was only the first stage of her conquest. Reaching into her other pocket, she pulled a strange mushroom from it.

“Last time, I only took a single bite,” she reflected to herself. “And I was not a mile high…”

Eyes ablaze with insane excitement, she pushed the entire mushroom into her eager mouth, and began to chew. The effect was instantaneous, and Alice could feel her size increase slowly. The chairs legs began to creak from the growing girl's weight, and didn't last long before exploding from beneath her ample posterior.

The growth was just beginning though, and Alice stood to her feet, eager to burst out of this building that had so long been her prison. Her fingertips reached the ceiling in a matter of seconds, and she pressed her palms flat against it. Pressing upward with all her strength, she felt the flimsy roof buckle before collapsing into a shower of broken wood around her body.

It wasn't long before the only part of Alice that remained in the building were her steadily growing socked feet. She'd already forgotten that she planned to spare Nurse Carroll, who was likely trapped somewhere in that room with her feet.

Stepping out of the rapidly shrinking remains of the Middlesex House, Alice relished the feeling of the tiny world beneath her socked feet. It was a feeling she hadn't experienced in so long, though she was much, much, bigger this time.

Little people ran around her toes, looking for a way to escape the giantess, and Alice simply dropped to her knees, shaking the ground beneath her. There was no chance for anyone to escape her wrath, and she had to know if a full sized person would taste any different than a shrunken one.

Plucking a shrieking woman off the streets, Alice held the girl up to her wide eyes, looking her over. The woman was beautiful, and a tinge of anger ran through Alice's body. She'd been locked up in that accursed asylum for years, never allowed to go out and experience the world. The woman was dressed in fine clothing, and what did she have? Pasty white scrubs. The woman's skin was fair, and smooth, while Alice's was almost a sickly pale.

Shoving the screaming woman into her mouth, Alice could no longer bare to look at her. She tried to savor the woman's flavor on her tongue, but growled when she couldn't taste anything. Moving the woman to the back of her mouth, Alice smashed her teeth down, crushing her and her pretty clothing out of existence.

Swallowing loudly, Alice licked her lips. The other woman may have been a real beauty, but what did that earn her? A one way trip to her stomach, and Alice certainly wasn't going to let her be the final victim.

Falling onto said stomach, she felt a great number of bodies pop under her chest, and hoped they would provide the splashes of color her scrubs needed to look nicer. Reaching her still-growing arms out, she corralled dozens of tiny people closer to her, and licked her lips in anticipation. The one woman hadn't tasted too different from the shrunken one, but flavor no longer mattered to her. Eating the beautiful young woman had made her feel better for the torturous time in that building, and she had many long years to make up for.

Slipping her huge, wet tongue out from between her lips, she licked through the tiny, terrified crowd before her. A couple caught on the taste buds of her tongue, and she drew them back into her mouth. Not even looking at them, Alice filled in the blanks with her imagination. The one that seemed to be wrestling with her tongue was Dr. Lewis, attempting to assert his authority over her even now. The two trying to escape her closed lips? The nurses who made her bed in the morning. Even now, they were trying to right a situation that didn't need to be fixed.

Every person was assigned to someone Alice had remembered, and that only made it all the sweeter as she tilted her head back, allowing them access to her open throat. Their bodies tumbled down, and Alice resisted coughing, trying to listen to their pleas for help.

Unfortunately, try as she might, she couldn't hear a thing. So she simply dipped her head back to her captive audience, repeating her earlier actions. After only three mouthfuls, the group of people had dwindled in both size and numbers to the point where eating them was starting to be less pleasurable.

Placing two huge hands onto the cobblestone streets, Alice lifted herself to her feet, taking a moment to look down. Stretching her scrubs out, she smiled as they were dotted in small red dots. Perfect for the Red Queen.

Stepping forward, Alice's much-enlarged foot slammed onto the street, crushing countless people beneath the soft, white socks. Though the sight of the red splotches on white socks pleased Alice, she was disappointed that their ends were muted compared to the first groups.

Bending down, the beautiful British behemoth slipped both feet out of her ankle socks. The cool wind felt great on the now-bare feet, and she briefly considered stuffing her socks full of her new, rebellious subjects.

Instead, Alice took in her new surroundings, ecstatic at the sight of everything so small to her. She hadn't the foggiest idea how tall she was now, but her toes were significantly bigger than the individual people around them. She wasn't sure if she was still growing anymore, but she was glad to have finally reached a suitable height to reign over her subjects.

“It is better to be feared than loved.” she thought to herself. Those were the words of the former Red Queen, before Alice had slaughtered her. It had been quite an experience, and the first time she'd used the power of size on someone.

Now she had brought that power into not-Wonderland, and she slid her foot forward. Flimsy buildings and fragile people that weren't bulldozed by her toes wound up between them. The walls of hot flesh towered high over those people, and they gazed up at their new queen in awe. They were so stricken with her beauty, her power, that they had to fall to their knees and worship her. They didn't care if she killed them or spared them, as long as it was what the Queen wanted.

Or, that's what Alice told herself they were doing. In actuality, they were too small for movements to be discernible, and she clenched her huge toes together. She couldn't see them well, and couldn't be sure that they were all paying the proper respect, so it would be better to kill them all on a hunch, instead of allowing disrespect to spread.

Besides, the moist, wet crunchiness of their forms was quite pleasing, and she was sure they would've wanted this anyway. She was, after all, their ruler, and a subject should be willing to die for their ruler at a moment's notice.

Separating her toes, Alice smiled at the carnage in between them. Red splotches lined the inside of her toes, and she twisted her foot in place in an attempt to clean it. This didn't do any good, and really only compounded the problem. Alice was truly beyond caring at this point.

Looking away from her foot, she spread her arms wide, enjoying the sun’s delightful rays on her tremendous form. She had missed the sun so much, and was happy to see that it had been waiting for her all these years, just as she'd left it.

When she broke into a casual stroll, devastation erupted at her feet. The Queen was making her way through this positively minuscule town, and it should know better than to stay in her way. Rather, that's how Alice justified her actions to herself. Really, though, how could they not view her as their queen? To think otherwise was positively silly!

“Your Queen needs a throne!” Alice stated suddenly, her voice rumbling through the entire city. The people below her continued to flee, while Alice flexed her toes impatiently. Their attempts at building her a seat were going far too slow, and as she looked over the tiny skyline, she spotted a particularly dense cluster of buildings.

“Oh my, you're too kind.” Alice said happily, pleased with this, her makeshift throne. It'd have to do until the real one could be completed. She slowly, carefully, lowered her prodigious posterior to the ankle high buildings. They didn't put up the slightest resistance, crumbling beneath Alice's superior behind, before it drove the tall structures underground with her mind-boggling weight.

“This cushion will do!” Alice said happily, leaning back onto the city, enjoying the sensation of hundreds of people pulping beneath her back. She cared little for her subjects, and why should she? She was their supreme ruler now, and could just move to another city if this one grew too sparsely populated.

Sighing pleasurably, Alice adjusted her position on the tiny world beneath her. She still had plenty to do if she wanted to make up for this city's horrible treatment of her for years, but the rest of her punishment could be doled out later. For now she was content to enjoy the sun’s rays, for the first time since she was a little girl on that fateful day.

Sleep came quickly, and the murderous titaness drifted into a land of dreams, where she imagined herself being praised by all her new subjects.

Moments later, Alice was nudged gently back into consciousness. Nurse Carroll stood over her, smiling warmly.

“Alice sweetie, are you awake? I brought you some tea and biscuits!” The nurse said, gently moving the cup to the lying girl's lips. Alice accepted the tea gracefully, as a ruler should, though she was beginning to wonder why Nurse Carroll was suddenly her size, and why she was back in her room at the asylum.

“It's time to wake up Alice. It's your first day of cooking duty, and you wouldn't want to disappoint Doctor Lewis, now would you?” The nurse asked. She smiled at the patient, before standing and leaving the room.

Alice sat up slowly, fuming. Time had been turned back somehow, and she had a feeling that the sinister Doctor Lewis was behind this. She'd been defeated by him again, and she was tired of his constant interference with her actions.

Fishing around the inside of her scrubs, she extracted a small glass vial labeled, “DRINK ME”, from one pocket. A small mushroom came from the other. Pinching herself on the cheek, she made sure she wasn't in another of the Mad Doctor's dreams, and was happy to see that she definitely was not.

This time, she'd have her revenge. On all of them.