Lewis Carroll - Alice in Zombieland

‘Why did you call him Tortoise, if he wasn’t one?’ Alice asked. She was exasperated; he seemed more intent on talking about his childhood and not his death.

‘We called him Tortoise because he taught us,’ said the Corpse Turtle angrily: ‘really you are very dull!’

‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself for asking such a simple question,’ added the Gryphon; and then they both sat silent and looked at poor Alice, who felt ready to sink into the earth. At last the Gryphon said to the Corpse Turtle, ‘Drive on, old fellow! Don’t be all day about it!’ and he went on in these words: ‘Yes, we went to school in the sea, though you mayn’t believe it—’

‘I never said I didn’t!’ interrupted Alice.

‘You did,’ said the Corpse Turtle.

‘Hold your tongue!’ added the Gryphon, before Alice could speak again. The Corpse Turtle went on. ‘We had the best of educations—in fact, we went to school every day—’

‘ I’ve been to a day-school, too,’ said Alice; ‘you needn’t be so proud as all that.’

‘With extras?’ asked the Corpse Turtle a little anxiously.

‘Yes,’ said Alice, ‘we learned French and music.’

‘And washing?’ said the Corpse Turtle.

‘Certainly not!’ said Alice indignantly.

‘Ah! then yours wasn’t a really good school,’ said the Corpse Turtle in a tone of great relief. ‘Now at ours they had at the end of the bill, “French, music, and washing —extra.”’

‘You couldn’t have wanted it much,’ said Alice; ‘living at the bottom of the sea.’

‘I couldn’t afford to learn it.’ said the Corpse Turtle with a sigh. ‘I only took the regular course.’

‘What was that?’ inquired Alice.

‘Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,’ the Corpse Turtle replied; ‘and then the different branches of Arithmetic—Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.’

‘I never heard of “Uglification,”’ Alice ventured to say. ‘What is it?’

The Gryphon lifted up both its paws in surprise. ‘What! Never heard of uglifying!’ it exclaimed. ‘You know what to beautify is, I suppose?’

‘Yes,’ said Alice doubtfully: ‘it means—to—make—anything—prettier.’

‘Well, then,’ the Gryphon went on, ‘if you don’t know what to uglify is, you are a simpleton.’

Alice did not feel encouraged to ask any more questions about it, so she turned to the Corpse Turtle, and said ‘What else had you to learn?’

‘Well, there was Mystery,’ the Corpse Turtle replied, counting off the subjects on his flappers, ‘—Mystery, ancient and modern, with Seaography: then Drawling—the Drawling-master was an old conger-eel, that used to come once a week: HE taught us Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils.’

‘What was that like?’ said Alice.

‘Well, I can’t show it you myself,’ the Corpse Turtle said: ‘I’m too stiff. And the Gryphon never learnt it.’

‘Hadn’t time,’ said the Gryphon: ‘I went to the Classics master, though. He was an old crab, he was.’

‘I never went to him,’ the Corpse Turtle said with a sigh: ‘he taught Laughing and Grief, they used to say.’

‘So he did, so he did,’ said the Gryphon, sighing in his turn; and both creatures hid their faces in their paws.

‘And how many hours a day did you do lessons?’ said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject.

‘Ten hours the first day,’ said the Corpse Turtle: ‘nine the next, and so on.’

‘What a curious plan!’ exclaimed Alice.

‘That’s the reason they’re called lessons,’ the Gryphon remarked: ‘because they lessen from day to day.’

This was quite a new idea to Alice, and she thought it over a little before she made her next remark. ‘Then the eleventh day must have been a holiday?’

‘Of course it was,’ said the Corpse Turtle.

‘And how did you manage on the twelfth?’ Alice went on eagerly.

‘That’s enough about lessons,’ the Gryphon interrupted in a very decided tone: ‘tell her something about the games now.’

‘But wait,’ Alice snapped, angry that he refused to get round to the point of the story. ‘How did you become a Corpse Turtle, if you please?’

The Corpse Turtle groaned again and tried to scuttle its dead body off the rock. It was the Gryphon that answered: ‘It was the Red Queen, of course. She killed him, used his flippers for soup.’

Alice shivered, feeling sickened by the old woman’s cruelty. Why had she not used his whole body for the soup instead of leaving him stuck on a rock with no way to get back to his sea home?

The Corpse Turtle finally gave up, and turned back to Alice and the Gryphon. ‘No use trying to avoid it. The games it is.’

The Corpse Turtle sighed deeply, and tried to draw back one ragged stump of a flapper across his dead white eyes. He looked at Alice, and tried to speak, but for a minute or two sobs choked his voice. ‘Same as if he had a bone in his throat,’ said the Gryphon: and it set to work shaking him and punching him in the back. At last the Corpse Turtle recovered his voice, and he went on again: ‘You may not have lived much under the sea—’ (‘I haven’t,’ said Alice)— ‘and perhaps you were never even introduced to a lobster—’ (Alice began to say ‘I once tasted—’ but checked herself hastily, and said ‘No, never’) ‘—so you can have no idea what a delightful thing a Zombie Lobster Quadrille is!’

‘No, indeed,’ said Alice. ‘What sort of a dance is it? How can dead things dance?’

‘Why,’ said the Gryphon, ‘it’s quite simple, really. You first must dig up all your dead (if they haven’t already seen fit to raise themselves) and then form into a line along the sea-shore—’

‘Two lines!’ cried the Corpse Turtle. ‘Seals, turtles, salmon, and so on; then, when you’ve cleared all the jelly-fish out of the way—’

‘ That generally takes some time,’ interrupted the Gryphon.

‘—you advance twice—’

‘Each with a zombie lobster as a partner!’ cried the Gryphon.

‘Of course,’ the Corpse Turtle said: ‘advance twice, set to partners—’

‘—change lobsters, and retire in same order,’ continued the Gryphon.

‘Then, you know,’ the Corpse Turtle went on, ‘you throw the—’

‘The lobsters!’ shouted the Gryphon, with a bound into the air.

‘—as far out to sea as you can—’

‘Swim after them!’ screamed the Gryphon.

‘Turn a somersault in the sea!’ cried the Corpse Turtle, capering wildly about.

‘Change lobster’s again!’ yelled the Gryphon at the top of its voice.

‘Back to land again, and that’s all the first figure,’ said the Corpse Turtle, suddenly dropping his voice; and the two creatures, who had been jumping about like mad things all this time, sat down again very sadly and quietly, and looked at Alice.

‘It must be a very pretty dance,’ said Alice timidly.

‘Would you like to see a little of it?’ said the Corpse Turtle.

‘Very much indeed,’ said Alice.

‘Come, let’s try the first figure!’ said the Corpse Turtle to the Gryphon. ‘We can do without lobsters, you know. Which shall sing?’

‘Oh, you sing,’ said the Gryphon. ‘I’ve forgotten the words.’

So they began solemnly dancing round and round Alice, every now and then treading on her toes when they passed too close, small bits of the Corpse Turtle and ratty feathers from the Gryphon falling to the cold sea sand with every new pass, and waving their forepaws to mark the time, while the Corpse Turtle sang this, very slowly and sadly: