SKITTLES

ALICE: I do feel weird but I always feel weird. Rather sleepy. Could do with a bloody coffee. And it’s too hot. Bollocks to this heatwave.

RABBIT: Hotter than a gorilla’s armpit and what time is it? It’s twilight’s last dreaming, it’s chocolate o’clock, it’s the hour of the hungover werewolf — [Cracks up] Once somebody told me, "Sundown takes the whole day," I was like, "Whoa…" You want a Guinness, my dude? Have a Guinness with me!

ALICE: I trust we have weed for this deep and meaningful chit chat?

RABBIT: Would I let you down? Went to see the twins, Tweedleduh and Tweedledumb —

ALICE: [Gasps] Oh my god, the Brothers Dim.

RABBIT: Like, I might be a stoner but those boys are dense as fucking swamp mud, they’re literally an anti-drug advert. Cool your paws with me on this lil’ grass mattress! Like a bedtime story.

ALICE: OK — Miaow, this weed is actually good.

RABBIT: Obvs. Oooh, so I’ve got a hot question, mate. How do you like Wonderland now you’ve been here a little while? All through your difficult teens and stuff?

ALICE: I mean, I love it now but in the beginning it was a lot. The green lightning, the MDMA blizzards. If you want to call somebody, you sing into the grass. And the rancid garbage everywhere, which stinks apocalyptically.

RABBIT: I am outraged that you hate it! I love the sparkle-slime. I chillax in sparkle-slime. Wonderland is very polluted but it’s cute…

ALICE: And there are lots of weirdoes, the Hatter (R.I.P.) —

RABBIT: That was sad. OD’d under the bridge like a troll.

ALICE: I mean, he had serious mental health problems, it was not a surprise. But now I’ve got my bloody treehouse, I’ve escaped. All the fruits are hallucinogens here, you can get L-O-S-T, just be a lushed-up puppy tripping out in the fields.

RABBIT: Drugs for breakfast, drugs for lunch!

ALICE: Sometimes it’s scary and it doesn’t ever stay still but that’s OK because that matches how I feel inside. And the light is dreamy…

RABBIT: Ooh, can I tell the story about how we met?!

ALICE: I was weeping like a gargoyle.

RABBIT: You were crying under that tree, big snot candle hanging out your nose —

ALICE: — I was homesick and bloody sobbing and I’d never been homesick before.

RABBIT: And you were using that big old Amazon box as a sleep coffin!

ALICE: I had gone somewhat feral.

RABBIT: I was like, "This cannot be, I need to look after this weird lonely girl."

ALICE: You came bounding up, "What’s wrong?"

RABBIT: Aw! I’m so nice! Probably wanted to eat you.

ALICE: You said, "Let’s set something on fire, it’ll cheer you up."

RABBIT: And it did cuz we set that car on fire and the flames were like big tigers, like, roar! Fire’s the best medicine, mate, you get a big rush of endorphins.

ALICE: Sweet little bonfire. And then you explained everything to me, "Sometimes the floor will be velvet or cake or ice cream." I did a lot of throwing up. I threw up blood, which is actually quite relaxing.

RABBIT: Fuck maps cuz everything goes wandering. Wander-land. [Chuckles] Whoa… Deep.

ALICE: "Here’s the Purple Drank River, here’s the Woods of Death where it’s night time all the time." And then you took me out to the beach with the stained glass waves and we did mushrooms.

RABBIT: Shrooms dunked in chocolate. A big bag. A grown-up no-fucking-around trash ˜trash bag bag of shrooms. You were getting royal treatment.

ALICE: Which I deserve! That trip was magic, though.

RABBIT: "Ahh, the beach is breathing!"

[Laughter]

ALICE: So that’s how we became friends.

RABBIT: My brain was frying cuz I’d never seen a real girl up close. Is she gonna bite me, can I take her home, what am I gonna feed her?

ALICE: Sad ghost. It’s funny, though because pretty soon after I got here, I felt kind of normal which was the weirdest thing. That did not happen at home.

RABBIT: I’m getting goosebumps! Ah, lil’ intermission — Alice, look at this smoke ring, my dude.

ALICE: OK.

[RABBIT exhales a perfect spiral.]

ALICE: Wow, that was a pretty one.

RABBIT: Thanks. The Caterpillar taught me when I was little… OK, so, this is us delving, slycologically, into your past, mate — [Sings] Flashback time!

ALICE: So it was very much the classic story: my perfect radiant brain box sister, Queen of the Fluffy Pink Bedroom, nuzzling her horses, and then me, the confused little wayward runt. And I felt like me being alive was a complete fucking mistake. Should I change my name to Alas?

RABBIT: Aw, honey. I’m gonna stroke you now, you’ve earned a lil’ stroke.

ALICE: "Am I in the wrong house?" I was a freak. I mean, I’d be skipping merrily to school, like, naming all the roadkill on the way.

RABBIT: Badass.

ALICE: I was at war with all my teachers.

RABBIT: School is evil. Fuck school.

ALICE: And then, later on, I was depressed but nobody tells you depression isn’t blue, sad Snoopy, ooh-I-don’t-really-feel-like-playing-my-guitar-today gloom. It wasn’t cute. It wasn’t melancholy. It was this thing eating me alive. "What’s your big ambition?" "I don’t know, death?" And then trying to deal the weird haunted attic of your family’s past.

RABBIT: All the stuff you’re not allowed to say.

ALICE: And why is my brain full of evil noises all the time, and why is my body all wonky? Can I please be someone else, please? There was all this awful black nightmare inside me that I didn’t want to show anyone, ever.

RABBIT: Everybody’s got the nightmare inside them, though.

ALICE: Really? But I was like, "Will she relate?" Because I always think you’re The Carefree Bunny wandering around with your nice pipe and…

RABBIT: Yup, but I still feel the darkness! Sometimes all I wanna do is burn the whole world down.

ALICE: Yes. Completely. Did you have the big sadness growing up? Did you have a lot of friends?

RABBIT: Eh, not so much "friends," accomplices. I was just like a bag of chaos.

ALICE: You still are!

RABBIT: I just hate being bored! I’ll literally eat my face not to be bored. Everybody’s always asking questions all the time. What are you? Who are you? Why?

ALICE: Yes…

RABBIT: Bitch, I don’t know why the fuck I’m doing anything. I lost my virginity to some rando lanky boy who looked like Dracula. Or maybe he was a Dracula? I’ve crashed cars, I’ve had fights with badgers.

ALICE: Was he good, the Dracula boy?

RABBIT: Oh, it was vibey. It wasn’t like classic panicky Chihuahua virgin sex. He was squeezing my Floppingtons.

ALICE: Floppingtons means "ears" for anybody who doesn’t speak Rabbit.

RABBIT: Yuh-huh. We got all bruised and bloody and stuff. I just wanna have fun.

ALICE: Yeah, you get excited.

RABBIT: Sooo excited. My thing is, everybody’s a little weirdo. Everybody’s thought about having sex with a relative in the woods, or what would it be like to eat shit, or what would it be like to be a bat sucking on somebody’s tits or whatever. Who gives a fuck? And we’ve all got nasty little goblins living in our heads that our Mummies and Daddies gave us. And we’re supposed to say, [adopting aristocratic voice] "I never feel like that or get those weirdo thoughts."

And it’s just something our brains made up to keep us gloomy or some shit. Nobody understands themselves at all. It sucks. But I think deep down everybody’s felt it. We’re all fucked up and if you say you’re not, you’re the most fucked up. The worst. And sometimes you’re born in the wrong place and you have to escape and you did, you came here, and it’s really, really magic that you did.

ALICE: Oh, my god, I think my heart just exploded.

RABBIT: You wanna set off some fireworks? You wanna get double high?

ALICE: Let’s just be quiet for a little bit, just — shush — Look at the clouds.

RABBIT: Wow… they look like somebody spilled a milkshake.

ALICE: Yeah. [Yawns] And the stars.

RABBIT: Who’s your favorite star guy? The sad owl or the two snogging unicorns?

ALICE: I do like the owl. I’d never seen stars like that until I got here.

RABBIT: Wow.

ALICE: Until I left home…

RABBIT: I wonder how they got there, mate? Like, did somebody cut this big wolf’s belly open and all this treasure spilled out and just got stuck there? Like Skittles on a huge shaggy black rug. [Cracks up] I kind of feel like I’m in a hot tub — Mate? Oh, I think she fell asleep. Sleep is so weird. You see all this freaky stuff and you wake up and you’re the same. Or maybe you’re not the same at all, really… Think. Thunk. You could wake up as a totally different animal. It’s so weird, some little shadow dog comes and blows you away like candles on birthday cake cuz you’re tired? Buh-bye. And, boom, that’s it, black out. Where did you go?