By Jack Stratton

It was another day in a long chain of hot summer days spent inside helping her mother cook. Alice was a perfect daughter, or so she continually told herself. Although she didn't particularly help with the preparation of meals, per se, she did keep her mother company in the kitchen and offered helpful advice as much as possible. Being that Alice herself didn't do much cooking, the advice was mostly theoretical, but Alice thought it was helpful nonetheless.

Sitting at the large kitchen table with her head in her hands, Alice watched as her mother busied herself with various chopping and seasoning and folding and so on that people do when they cook. Alice wasn't sure what her mother was making, but it did smell very nice, and the kitchen was very warm, and the chair she was sitting on was so very comfortable. So comfortable, in fact, that Alice thought it would be a good idea to take a very short nap. A nap is a lovely thing to have just before dinner because you would be woken up right when it was time to eat!

Alice awoke with a sneeze and was startled by the cloud of white dust that she stirred up.

"Oh my!" she said, waving away the dust and sitting up.

She found that she was no longer sitting in a chair, but rather, she was lying on a large table. Alice was wearing her robin's egg blue dress with the white apron over it, which was silly because she hadn't worn that in years. She looked around and found that the dust was actually flour from a massive sack that she had disturbed when she sneezed.

As she rubbed her eyes, she noticed that her surroundings were nothing like her kitchen at all. This new kitchen was an extraordinary one indeed, though Alice was getting a bit used to unusual places. It seemed like the kitchen was one size, that is, it was sized for an average person with a plain white oven and a plain sink and even a plain icebox, but all the food in it was massively oversized.

In the corner next to the table she was sitting on was a burlap sack full of flour that was almost six feet high. She also saw a pile of blueberries in the other corner, each one roughly the size of her head! There were also a few sugar cubes that could have been used a stepping stools, and by the front door was one humongous brown egg, so large it almost blocked the door.

Alice eyed the egg with astonishment as it started to rock and move, and then suddenly, it rolled forward towards her, crushing a small bench in its way. At first, she thought it might be hatching into some monstrous chicken, but it turned out it was only upturned because someone had opened the door it was leaning on.

As the door opened, the room was suddenly filled with noise and commotion. Three people entered, a tall man with a huge white chef's hat, a younger man and girl both dressed all in white with long aprons.

"We must get to work immediately!" said the chef, who Alice now saw was pulling a red wagon with what looked like a massive mound of butter.

Alice gasped at the sight of them, and all three of them looked at her, sitting on their table, her hair speckled with flour.

"Excellent! The main ingredient is here!" the chef exclaimed and proceeded to park his butter and go to the sink to wash his hands.

"Why... I'm not the main ingredient! Am I? I don't even know how I got here!" Alice said in a worried voice.

The young man and girl walked over to her and smiled.

"Maybe it's a dream?" the boy said, and the girl nodded in agreement.

"I'm Millicent, and this is my brother Horatio. I'm afraid you are indeed the main ingredient." said the girl who was apparently named Millicent. Millicent then took a pair of costume bunny ears out of the pocket of her apron and placed them on Alice's head.

"We're making Hasenpfeffer and popovers!" said the chef with delight.

Horatio leaned over to Alice and whispered, "Hasenpfeffer is rabbit stew."

"But, but I'm not a rabbit!" she wailed, though politely as not to disturb her hosts too much.