A Writing Experiment - Answer #4

It was like "Alice in Wonderland" and "Wizard of Oz" rolled into one and as she looked around her she wondered if Alice or Dorothy seriously considered themselves insane.

Of course the truly insane were always the last to know, weren't they?

Since that line of thinking was hardly comfortable at the moment, and because Morgan O' Hallahan came from a long line of Irish women whose flights of fancy were confined to buying a colorful handbag for winter instead of a serviceable black, she shook away thoughts of insanity and focused on finding a rational explanation for her current predicament.

There was always a rational explanation. GPS systems could break. Road signs could be confusing. That neatly explained how she'd ended up in the tiny mountain town of Lorreilan, so many miles away from her intended destination that it boggled the mind.

Automobiles went wonky on their own, too. Even the newer models. That explained why her engine suddenly coughed and rattled away into silence the moment she passed the sign welcoming her to Lorreilan.

Lorreilan looked like a movie set from - and here Morgan made an unwelcome cirle in her thinking - Alice in Wonderland or the Wizard of Oz. Every building seemed dipped in technicolor, the streets were glittering metallic swirls that followed circuitous routes more fanciful than practical, and even the foliage seemed like a Crayola box had vomited its contents with no particular rhyme or reason on everything in sight.

All that could be explained as well, of course. A reclusive society of artists, perhaps. Maybe having an absurdly colorful town was their stake in Ireland's booming tourist industry. Or perhaps Lorreilan was currently being used as a set for a film.

There was a perfectly rational explanation for all of that. But try as she might, Morgan could not find a single reasonable, logical explanation for the three-headed horse heading her way - one head yanking strands of violently purple grass from the roadside, one head wreathed in a flowered bonnet with silver grapes bobbing in time to each step, and one sporting a very dignified bowler hat and contentedly puffing an extraordinarily handsome pipe.