drRapture's Clinic
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Prompt 43 [part 2]
🕑 Added 2025-06-16 01:06:04 +0000 UTCAlice followed the skunky odor. She saw baggies of so many varying smallnesses. Teenie bags, itty bitty bags, zips, sandwich, double sandwich, triple deluxe club, BLT w/ crust on, 8 oz, 12 oz and 16 oz. Some had their corners twisted and ripped off. They all smelled like the pressure to have a good time. None had anything inside.
The caterpillar was massive. In fact, it wasn’t until Alice saw its long torso and head in the distance that she realized she was walking upon the giant bug. They were the entire landscape. Alice tried to think back to when she stopped walking on ground and started walking on Caterpillar but she was drawing a blank. And in that blank her mind’s eye wrote the words, “I can’t remember where the ground stopped and the caterpillar started, Alice”
There were other bugs around but no one was paying her much attention. Every now and then a massive pill bug would shout, “Holy fucking shit it’s a pre-teen human woman what the FUCK” or something to that effect but no one paid them much mind. The pill bugs were seeing a lot of things that weren’t there. That one particular pill bug who shouted profanity towards Alice had seen a bunch of whacky shit that day. Here is a list of what the pill bug saw that day:
- A dozen eggs singing 12 part harmony
- A limousine made of genoa salami
- A pelican turn into a flying penguin turn into a kite turn back into a 2 slightly smaller pelicans
- A small white horse soaring like a dragonfly
- A thousand fire ants crawling all over it’s body
- The face of God [and it was weeping]
- A rotting tangerine
It was tough for the pill bug to decide what was real and what was a hallucination. Alice didn’t know all the things the pill bug had seen that day, but she could feel its kinetic energy in a way that both scared and excited her. She got so distracted she almost tripped on a rotting tangerine in her path. Thank goodness she was warned by the head of the gargantuan caterpillar they were all existing on.
The Caterpillar could not talk, of course. And it wouldn’t have done much good if it could, as the sound of its iron lung in the distance seemed so much louder near its sickly face. No, the Caterpillar could only cough.
Who are you? The second cough [that was not a warning] seemed to say.
Alice was unsure if she should cough back or try using her words. She tried to cough. The Caterpillar cut her off with a cough of its own
My dear girl, please don’t embarrass yourself. There is no need to make any attempts to speak my native tongue. I know the common parlance, thank you. Now, if you would be so kind, who are you?
Alice breathed a sigh of relief [although it is quite rude to breathe deeply in front of a god-sized bug relying on an iron lung]. She told the Caterpillar her name was Alice and she was looking for a way out. She had already met a cream-colored squirrel who seemed to have been killed and a very sensitive dormouse who ran off crying.
That little shit-weasel can dish it out but he sure can’t take it the throaty cough of the Caterpillar responded to Alice. Alice was unsure how to respond to this. The caterpillar decided to move on with the conversation after allowing a short beat for Alice to reply [in which she did not, as aforementioned]
I suppose you’ll want to talk to the Queen. She’s the only one with any power. Her and her pets rule over this land. I assume she still lives in the castle where she controls the weather and decides our elections they hacked out with a very ugly, dying-like sound
“Do you have a Queen and elections too?” asked Alice genuinely
The cough came on violently and harsh, Oh, I don’t need this shit. So that’s why you’re here, huh? Forget this. I hope the queen turns you into a male praying mantis and makes you fall in love with one of her pets. This is an assault.
The Caterpillar began to turn around but seeing as Alice was standing in front of them - this did not work as the Caterpillar had intended. Houses were uprooted, buildings crumbled and whole communities were swallowed up but, alas, it made no difference. Alice was still eye-to-eye with the Caterpillar on life support. She tried to move out of their eyesight, but she tripped and fell. The Caterpillar's cough became more frantic. She could hear the factory that was being used as an iron-lung work even harder in the distance. She noticed the head of the Caterpillar gaining height - as if it was getting up to walk away. This caused the terrain to rake and she began falling down the hill of Caterpillar flesh. She was surprised at how rocky and earthy it felt below her. The sounds of screaming/laughing/singing pill bugs grew distant.
Alice kept rolling for what seemed like hours. There was grass below her again, and in the calm of being thrown down the hill she wondered what happened to the giant Caterpillar. Then her mind wandered to the shapely body of the Walrus… there was something about that Walrus that was very enticing and she couldn’t put her finger on it. As she rolled on, her mind wandered even further from her body and it wasn’t until she was trying to remember the exact shade of the squirrel’s fur that she noticed she had stopped. The ground was completely flat. She must have been walking for quite some time now. She drew another blank in her head and her mind’s eye filled in the blank with the words, “Wow, I wonder when we stopped rolling. This place sure is whacky”
Alice heard music coming from a dense wilderness. She also heard fighting from the opposite clearing. The clanging of swords and the firing of cannons. She could hear generals shouting orders to soldiers. She decided to follow the music and never thought about the fighting again. She hoped that was okay but before long she forgot about even making the choice. The dense wilderness was all she could see now, and it would require her to focus on what was in front of her. Her mind's eye forgot about the fighting too. She wondered if she had missed lunch, or if they even had lunchtime here. She hoped they did and that she did not miss it. Alice loved lunch.
Comments
The Lady Is A Tramp
This is so absolutely your voice. Even if you don't record it, I'm hearing you read it to me in my head and it's delightful.
Jennie Owen
Still think this would make a great audio.
