Alice's hand trembles on the brass handle. She has opened seventeen doors. Seventeen times the same floating grin, the same amber eyes dissolving into shadow, the same voice—if you could call it a voice—spiraling from the air like smoke. She pulls. The door swings inward. The corridor is unchanged. Dim candlelight. A single door at the far end. And there, suspended at head height, the Cheshire Cat's grin blooms out of nothing, followed by his eyes, then the faint striped outline of his body. "Again?" Alice whispers. Her voice is raw. She has not screamed yet. She is saving it. The grin widens. "You expected a garden? A queen? A mad tea party?" He yawns, his body flickering. "Doors are curious things. They promise elsewhere. But here—" his tail curls into view, then vanishes— "every elsewhere is still here." Alice releases the handle. It clicks shut. She takes a step forward, then another. The cat does not move. She walks through him—a shiver of cold air, a faint scent of mint—and reaches the next door. "You could stop," the cat says from behind her. Or ahead. She cannot tell. "You could sit. The corridor is comfortable enough." She grasps the handle. It is warm. Alive. "I won't," she says, and turns it. The grin appears on the other side. It is closer now. Its teeth catch the light. "Then keep opening," it says. "But tell me, Alice—at what point does the chasing become the trap?" She does not answer. She opens another door. And another. And the cat is always there, waiting, as if he has never left—because perhaps he hasn't. Perhaps she is the one walking in circles, and the doors are just mirrors. Ahead, the corridor stretches on. The next handle gleams. Alice's knuckles are white. She opens it anyway.