Alice in Zombieland by Lewis & Cook Carroll Read Free Book Online

know.’
          ‘I don’t know,’ said the Wurm.
          Alice said nothing: she had never been so much contradicted in her life before, and she felt that she was losing her temper.
          ‘Are you content now?’ said the Wurm. It began to clean its mandibles by rubbing them against its legs and then to its bulbous and shiny gray stomach.
          ‘Well, I should like to be a little larger, sir, if you wouldn’t mind,’ said Alice: ‘three inches is such a wretched height to be.’
          ‘It is a very good height indeed!’ said the Wurm angrily, rearing itself upright as it spoke (it was exactly three inches high). Its many legs waved in silent fury as it stared down on her with its dead eyes.
          For a moment she feared it meant to consume her next, and she backed away in fright. ‘But I’m not used to it!’ pleaded poor Alice in a piteous tone. And she thought of herself, ‘I wish the creatures wouldn’t be so easily offended!’
          ‘You’ll get used to it in time,’ said the Wurm; and it continued to clean its mandibles. ‘Have you met the Red Queen yet?’
          ‘No, but I’ve heard such dreadful things about her that I’m sure I’d rather not meet her,’ said Alice, crossing her arms across her chest to show she meant business.
          The Wurm squirmed a little closer and looked down at her, still working diligently at cleaning its gory mandibles. ‘You certainly don’t want her to see you in that state.’
          ‘What state?’ asked Alice.
          ‘The state which you are in,’ it replied.
          ‘I rather thought I was in a land, not a state,’ she said, quite pleased with her quick and logical wit.
          ‘She’s sure to show you, young lady,’ said the Wurm, not at all impressed with her play on words.
          This time Alice waited patiently until it chose to speak again. In a minute or two the Wurm stopped cleaning itself and yawned once or twice, and shook itself. Then it got down off the mushroom, and crawled away in the dead leaves and broken, rotting twigs, merely remarking as it went, ‘One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter.’
          ‘One side of what ? The other side of what ?’ thought Alice to herself.
          ‘Of the mushroom,’ said the Wurm, just as if she had asked it aloud; and in another moment its squirming gray body was out of sight.
          Alice remained looking thoughtfully at the mushroom for a minute, trying to make out which were the two sides of it; and as it was perfectly round, she found this a very difficult question. However, at last she stretched her arms round it as far as they would go, and broke off a bit of the edge with each hand.
          ‘And now which is which?’ she said to herself, and nibbled a little of the right-hand bit to try the effect: the next moment she felt a violent blow underneath her chin: it had struck her foot!
          She was a good deal frightened by this very sudden change, but she felt that there was no time to be lost, as she was shrinking rapidly; so she set to work at once to eat some of the other bit. Her chin was pressed so closely against her foot, that there was hardly room to open her mouth; but she did it at last, and managed to swallow a morsel of the left hand bit.
          ‘Come, my head’s free at last!’ said Alice in a tone of delight, which changed into alarm in another moment, when she found that her shoulders were nowhere to be found: all she could see, when she looked down, was an immense length of pale blue neck, which seemed to rise like a stalk out of a tangle of spiny sharp dead branches and autumnal orange and brown leaves that lay far below her.
          ‘What can all that brown and orange stuff be?’ said Alice. ‘And where have my shoulders got to? And oh, my poor hands, how is it I can’t see you?’ She was moving them about