Chatterbox: Inkwell

So for English at school, we have to write a fantasy story. Mine is a modern Alice in Wonderland sort of thing. Tell me what you think and please do not hesitate to critique it! here it is:

 Strange Places

My name is Alexandra Cecilia Witherspoon. Yesterday I was walking to school, lugging my 20-pound backpack with me. It was cloudy and muggy and foggy. I felt like I was breathing steam. It was the day of the huge math test that would count for 30% of my grade. I am terrible at math and I was not looking forward to that day at all. My math teacher, Mr. Salamone, at least was kind about it and always offering for help. I hoped I could do some extra credit to make up for my grade, which I knew would be at most average.
While I was trudging drowsily and crabbily down the street in the early morning, a huge hole on the side of the street caught my eye. It was in the front yard of the house that hasn’t been lived in since sometime in 1960 or so. There it stood, right in front of the old, creaky house. Anyone within 10 feet of it could faintly smell the mold growing in it and hear the rats scurrying around, looking for maybe a 50-year-old crumb or something. The nondescript paint was chipping off to reveal nasty, termite-devoured, weatherbeaten wood. The windows were opaque from half a century’s supply of flies and cobwebs. The hole seemed to be dug by a half blind person with a dull shovel. The dirt was jagged and misted upon, and with the effect from the old house and the visibly misty, muggy air, the hole was impossible to not be investigated by.
So I decided it would be all right to just look around a little. I walked over to the hole, and knelt down on the dewy grass. My backpack slid off my arms, and I peered inside. I expected to see maybe a bunny or something like that, but it seemed to be bottomless. Where I thought there would be a damp, dirt surface, there was endless black, endless darkness. Thinking that I was just too far away to see, I leaned forward, squinting. My hands clung to the grass that surrounded the hole, my feet dug into the ground and my knees were grinding against the ground. Before I could stop myself, I lost my grip and I was falling down into the huge abyss. I let out a scream of terror and shut my eyes and braced myself for the crash that was soon to come. But there was no crash.
I opened my eyes, perplexed. The darkness seemed to swallow me up. I was still falling at approximately 100 miles an hour, and my hair was flailing all around my head. I was expecting to land any second, but I kept falling and falling. When was this going to end? It was a couple of minutes before I realized I was passing, not circular walls of dirt, but shelves filled with miscellaneous trinkets and toys. There were jars of jam that would most likely poison the person who ate some of it; books with dusty, yellowed pages; and little china dolls with scraggly dresses and moth eaten hair. There were little tin soldiers and quill pens and ribbons and picture frames but with no pictures, and other things that seemed to not go with anything else on the shelves. I was amazed, and shocked, and scared.  I was just beginning to think I was in the middle of a dream when–
SPLASH. I landed in a tight, enclosed space filled with something that was dreadful-smelling and liquid. It stung my eyes and burned my nose. I was terrified. And for some reason, there were bumpy, oval objects floating around my body. I was running out of oxygen and I needed to get to the surface. I caught some blurry, indistinct words before someone tugged on the back of my shirt. Suddenly I was being hoisted up into the air. I gasped for breath and coughed and spluttered, spitting out the sour liquid. I was all sopping and wet, and dripping with pale green juice of some sort. The first thing that met my eyes was a crowd of people staring at me with wide eyes, as if I was an alien. Then I glanced to my left, and saw a barrel of pickles.    The person holding me up, glaring at me while still looking bewildered, was unmistakably Mr. Salamone. His thinning brown hair, streaked with silver, was combed down impeccably while his horn-rimmed glasses sat curtly on the bridge of his nose. His round face was looking at me incredulously, and his mouth was pursed into a thin crimson line. There were worry wrinkles on his forehead and he looked furious.
“Mr. Salamone! Where- what- I- you,” I stuttered helplessly.
“What? Who are you?,” he demanded gruffly with no concern whatsoever while still holding me up.
“Mr. Salamone–?” I asked, baffled. Why didn’t he recognize me?
“How do you know my name? Why were you in that barrel of pickles?” he requested with that same disagreeable, ill-tempered tone.
“But Mr. Salamone... I.... you...” I interrogated pathetically. What was wrong with him? And how did I get here? Was I still dreaming? Well, no, I don’t know if the last one was possible because the pickle juice was soaking through my jeans and making me shiver. Mr. Salamone dropped me onto the pavement and I landed what looked like a crumpled heap of wet, soaking, and dirty laundry. The crowd of people started to leave and mingle around amongst themselves. I realized I was in the middle of a square, where there were shops and stores. Mr. Salamone turned to me, with his hands on his hips and a frown on his face.
“Now, tell me the truth. Were you trying to hide from the police or something?” he demanded.
“No, I.... I didn’t do anything.” I squeaked in a feeble voice. He let out a booming laugh, with a look suggesting I was the most stupid person on the face of the earth.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Now where do you live?,” he asked, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes.
“I live on 238 3rd street.” I stated, trying to sound powerful and confident but ended up sounding weak and nervous.
“All right. Do you know how to get there from here?” He asked, the frown back on his face, where it should be.
“I- no, I don’t.” I looked around at where I was. It looked a little like the downtown near me house. The ice cream shop had a slightly different name, though. And in the window of one of the clothing stores, the mannequin is supposed to be wearing a green sweater, not red.
“Well, take a right on the corner from the end of this road, and turn left on Dreary Street. Then keep walking until you find 3rd street, and find number 238.” He said all this in a bored tone, as if it was completely ridiculous that I didn’t know how to get to my house.
“Okay,” I muttered, and I started walking. The pickle juice was starting to stink even worse, and my pants were stiff. My sneakers squished on the ground with every step, and made a wet footprint on the sidewalk. I followed the directions he gave me, and before long was on my street. Something was odd about everything. I didn’t know if I was dreaming or in a different world. I didn’t know if I was in the regular world or not. Everything was the same as in real life, but oddly different. Like my neighbor’s house. It is white with dark green shutters, and a bright yellow door. There are multicolored tulips lining the pathway up to the door, and there is a red car in the driveway. But when I looked at it, the white house was fading and changing to a sickly shade of cream, there were no tulips, and there was a melancholy little black car. The door and shutters were both black, and the yard, usually a bright kelly green, was tan and limp. That was the basic pattern on every house I saw. Everything looked as if they had been ‘un-cheer-ified’. That was true for my house too.
Normally a sunny yellow house with a red door and creamy white shutters, it was white, and the paint was coming off. It was 10 times bigger than my regular house. The door was deep, dark red, which nauseatingly reminded me of blood. The shutters were black and sad looking. The yard was, like my neighbor’s, all crackly and yellow. Where had my house gone? There was a big 238 painted on the mailbox, and I was sure I had turned on the right street.
I bit my lip, and braced myself. I took a deep breath and walked as steadily as I could up the path to my door, despite the sloshing sound my sopping sneakers made against the pavement. My right hand slowly raised and knocked three times on the cold, hard door. I heard the shuffling of feet, and the door swung open. A woman with a glare in her eyes stood there and faced me. She frowned at me and looked at me as if I was an old, shriveled up raisin left out in the sun way too long. Her jet black hair was yanked into a tight bun and her normally smiling lips and laughing eyes were gone.
“You’re late,” barked my mother.
“Sorry– I-“ I stuttered, not knowing exactly what to say. I wasn’t sure exactly what I should do. At this point I was sure I was trapped in some different world, but I didn’t know how to get out of it. I was terrified and extremely nervous, but I tried as hard as I could to stay calm, at least on the outside. I felt as if I was about to melt into a puddle of worry.    
“Just go walk the dog and maybe you’ll get dinner tonight,” she spat, the same glare still carved onto her face of stone.
“Uh– yes, ma’am.” I mumbled. I was so worried to see what became of my dog, Moby. He was a German shepherd, and was brown, and most loyal of the most loyal of dogs. Actually, he was for humans, too. I hoped nothing happened to him, like what happened to my mother and teacher and all the houses. I gulped and bit my tongue to keep from screaming.
“Moby? Where are you?” I asked in a weak voice. And moments later, a haughty looking dog sat at my feet and looked at me. If dogs could purse their lips, I’m sure he would have done that.
“Um... here’s your leash.” I was afraid to put his leash on him; I was expecting him to bite me. I leaned towards him as far as I could stay while being close enough to hook his leash onto his collar, which, usually bright red, now was black with silver spikes on it. He just sat there, squinting a little and scrutinizing my every move. It made me ridiculously uncomfortable.
‘Okay then. Let’s go,” I tried to sound optimistic but it didn’t work. As soon as I shut the door, he sniffed my ankle.
“Good heavens! What in the world is that horrid smell?!” whined a nasal voice which was not mine.
“What? Who’s there? Moby?” I panicked, thinking I was going crazy.
“Yes it’s Moby. I’m the only one here besides you, aren’t I? Sheesh. Humans apparently have hollow brains, if they have any at all.” complained my dog.
“How can you talk all of a sudden? And why am I here? And what happened to everyone? Where am I?” I blurted, almost screamed.
“Easy, easy. Even though a I am a dog of such intelligence, I can only answer one question at a time. Listen, and I’ll fill you in on the details.” he stated, cool as a cucumber. “Okay, so first things first. You fell into a hole so deep that it passed your world and entered another world, this one. Here, everything is the opposite of what the real world is. Everyone has an evil side, which are the people living here. They don’t work all the time, so they invented a new world to live in. Sometimes they grab their nice side when the nice ones are sleeping and dump them in here, so they can do some crime. Evil people have nice people that live here. It’s just the other way around. Now, since it is an opposite world, animals can talk.”
“But if it’s opposite, how can the humans talk?” I interrupted.
“Okay, one: save questions until after I’m done talking. I do not like to be interrupted. And two: the humans were mesmerized by our glorious ways and taught themselves. Now, you are here because, last night, your evil side dug that hole, knowing you would come across it and fall in. That’s how the evil people do some crime in the real world. Every time you leave the evil world, you get your memory of it taken away, and put onto a disc which is kept in the hall of memories. Then you go back to the real world and think you were asleep the whole time. That’s about it. Are there any questions?” he sounded like my science teacher.
“Yeah. Why are the memories put on discs and where is the hall of memories?” I questioned.
“The memories are put on discs because, well, where else would they go. You can’t get rid of matter, you know.” He said matter-of-factly.
“But memories aren’t matter.” I said.
“Yes they are. They are videos of what you see that get put into the memory storage section of your brain.”
“But how is there enough room for everything right inside your brain?”
“Because they are too small even for a microscope to see. Scientists are too stupid to invent a microscope that can see them. They are even too stupid to figure it out themselves. It’s quite obvious, isn’t it?”
“I guess so.” Actually, it does make a lot of sense now that I think about it.
“Oh yeah,” said Moby, as he was sniffing the sidewalk for something invisible and insmellable. Or at least to me. “The hall of memories is the biggest building in the square you were just in.”
“Oh.” I could think of nothing else to say. “Should we go home now?”
“Yes, I guess so.” he said blankly. We trotted back to my– or my evil side’s– house. I knocked on the door and this time, a man answered the door, whom I suspected was my evil father. He should have a slightly balding head, but this man head a head full of hair. He had the same face as my dad, though. A large nose which he rubbed when he was lying or feeling uncomfortable, freckles, wrinkles on his forehead, and a cleft on his chin.
“Get inside,” he ordered. I did, afraid not to do so. “Sit down and eat your dinner, and then go to bed. He stalked off in a different direction, and left. My mother wasn’t anywhere.
“Will you at least take the leash off me?” asked my dog. I could have sworn I heard him mutter ‘sheesh’ under his breath again, probably contemplating the thought that dogs were superior to humans and they should at least learn to live with humans’ stupid ways.
“All right, all right, I’m coming.” I took the leash off him and he climbed into a chair at the table. He laid his front paws on top of each other and sat on the chair as if he was a normal, civilized human being.
“What’s for dinner?” he asked. I sat down at the place my evil father had indicated, and saw a piece of bread with green mold growing on one corner of it, alongside a single, shriveled up carrot on a lonely little plate. I was in no mood to eat right now with so much new information on my mind.
“You can have it all; I’m not hungry.” I said, pointing to the plate. As if on cue, I walked outside and sat down on the dry, thirsty grass. I leaned forward and held my chin in my cupped hands with my elbows resting on my knees and sighed. All of a sudden, I was exhausted. I worked to keep my eyes open, but my eyelids just began to droop, and I let them close....
I woke up with a jolt. The mist was creeping into my shoes and slithering into my socks. I stood up and reached down to pick up my backpack. I slid it onto my arms and hurried off to school. The old house seemed to snicker at me while I ran. I think I dreamt some sort of strange dream, although I can’t remember what. Oh, well. I kept running. I was going to be late for school to take that math test.