"My sister was waiting for me when I woke up," I mumble, my head slightly lowered. The Cheshire hit a sensitive tumor in my soul. I am not only mad. I am lonely. I get it.
"You're lonely too!" I take a step forward. It actually unsettles him. He didn't expect that. "You've always been lonely, Cheshire. Humans killed your parents. You swore revenge on the world. Such a lonely lunatic who has no one to love him." The mortician woman's face knots. I press harder: "Even in Wonderland, no one cared for you. You and your silly grin, neglected in the Duchess' kitchen, then hiding on trees in the forest, appearing and disappearing, and commenting on the world only to take away attention from your miserable existence."
"Interesting." He steps forward, squinting at my face. "Tell me more. Is that really you, Alice?"
I shrug then lift my head up. "Why is it so important if I am the Real Alice?"
"Oh, it's important. You have no idea." He still glares, taking another careful step forward. "What puzzles me is that you don't remember any of it. I wonder why. What is it that the Pillar knows about you that I don't? Who are you, Alice?"
The Cheshire steps forward, the collective sum of the hate in the world glimmering in her eyes.
"I don't care about either of you." I take another step forward, not knowing how this will end. Will I fist-fight a cat eventually?
"What do you care about, then?" His tone is investigative.
"To stop you from killing children and stuffing their heads in watermelons all over Britain."
He laughs. "Neatly executed crime; very artistic, you must admit."
I feel disgusted. I don't know how I look when disgusted but my face is in pain.
"Do you know how hard it is to stuff a head in a watermelon?" He is creepily sincere. Human lives don't mean anything to him. "No one appreciates art anymore." He rolls his eyes. "Is it because I am a cat?" The mortician's fingers turn into hairy claws, like Wolverine. "Do I have to change my name to Da Vinci or Picasso for you to appreciate my work?"
"You don't want anyone to appreciate you. The more you're hated, the more you love it," I say. "But since you asked, how about you just die? The world loves dead artists."
"Then I shall never be loved." The mortician slightly raises her meaty arm and waves her hands sideways. "Because I can't die." He smiles thinly at my attempt to humiliate him. "And the killing of fat kids won't stop. The
"Why kill kids who are overweight?"
"Are you afraid to say 'fat' kids?" She smirks. "Is that politically incorrect? Is the blunt truth always politically incorrect?"
"Wow. You do have a grudge against 'fat' kids." I don't like the sound of it on my tongue, but I need to speak his insane language so I can read between the lines.
"You will understand what I mean if you figure it out, Nancy Drew." She breathes into her paws. "You and your hookah-smoking Inspector Gadget." This seems to amuse him to death.
"If this is an old grudge between you and the Pillar—"
"It's not that," she cuts in.
"If it's about the grudge you hold against humanity, please remember that this happened so long ago." I don't even know what I am doing, conversing with the enemy.
"Nothing is long ago." She still scans my face, as if she wants to spot evidence of me being the Real Alice. I catch her/him staring at my neck as well. "Don't you watch the news? Humans are walky-talky apes, still stained with barbaric behaviors after so many centuries of evolution. They might dress better, talk mellower, and invent cool gadgets. They will say that they prefer love over war, but it's all nonsense. Humans are still monsters. Always will be." He stops and takes a breath, not finding what he was looking for in me. "But then, all my grudges aren't what the Wonderland War is about."
"What is it about, then?" If the Pillar refuses to tell, do I expect the Cheshire to?
"If you were
"By killing children?" I can't digest his logic.
"Whatever it takes," he says. "Besides, you can still minimize the killings by solving the riddles." He cocks his head with another grin. "Think of it as a Catch-22. Either you don't solve the riddles and I keep allowing the murders, or you solve the riddle, I know you're the Alice, and we start the Wonderland Wars." He rubs his claws together.
"What kind of sick lunatic are you?"
"The
"I am." I'd say yes to anything until I get close to that mallet. I need to have some weapon prepared.
The Cheshire snaps his fingers, and a few corpses on his left and right come to life. They abruptly sit straight up and grin at me. Four on his left. Four on his right.
I freeze in place.
I barely learned how to deal with lunatics—other than myself, some might argue. But I am not prepared to deal with the living dead. This is beyond absurd. Why are there eight corpses coming to life?
"You didn't know I can possess nine lives at the same time?" She laughs, picking up two fork-like instruments from the table. What is she going to do, cut them open? "I can even possess them when they are dead. How
The two instruments in the Cheshire's hands are used in the most unusual way. I never expected it.
He waves them at the corpses, like a conductor guiding his musicians in an orchestra. On cue, the eight living-dead corpses on the table prepare to chant a melody of sorts.
I grimace, confused, perplexed, and overwhelmed as I watch the first headless corpse pick up its head. It adjusts it slightly off above the neck, and begins singing:
"Do you know the Muffin Man?"
It says it as if it's an obedient girl in school—she is actually one of the five kids. Then she tilts her loose head toward her friend on the table next to her. The other corpse fiddles with his chopped-off head, unable to place it correctly. So he decides to hold it out in both hands, and let it do the singing:
In unison they sing it all once more:
And then they repeat it. Louder.
I hold my head with both hands and consider screaming. Rarely does screaming solve any problems, I know.
If there is a clue, again, I don't get it. If the Cheshire's intention is to drive me insane, he has done an exceptional job. If none of this is really happening and I am just imagining it, I'd prefer shock therapy in the Mush Room over singing corpses in a morgue. I feel like Alice in the book, falling down an endless rabbit hole where the falling will never stop.
As they keep singing, the desire to hit the Cheshire grows inside me. I step forward and pick up the mallet, my hands trembling. I want to hit the Cheshire so the madness stops. It's not like me, but I've lost it. The pressure is too much. And their voices too noisy. It's all become too much.
I raise the mallet in the air and plod closer to him. He doesn't move. His grin widens.
"Are you going to hit a fat, poor mortician woman, Alice?" he asks calmly, backed up with the maddening rhyme. "You don't know if she has children, takes care of a mother or a husband, Alice. You can't do that to her."
"I can!" I flip the mallet back to gain momentum. "The madness has to stop!"
I wave hard and then...
And then...
I stop, midair.
How am I supposed to hurt an innocent woman working in a morgue? She is annoying, smokes too much, and doesn't take care of her health, I know. But I can't kill her. She hasn't done anything bad to anyone. And I am no killer.
"That's why you aren't
"The Pillar will tell you it doesn't matter who you are," he elaborates. "That it doesn't matter if you're mad or not. I'd say it matters a lot. How can you take sides when you don't know who you are? You know what the world's most common sin is, Alice?" He reaches for the mallet to snatch it from me. "It's indifference. Indecisiveness. Hesitation when it's time for swift justice."
He is about to pull the mallet away from my trembling hands when something inside me surfaces. Something I haven't met or thought of before. A strong urge to correct things, to stand for something, and to help as many people as I can. A strong urge to see behind the Cheshire's mask.
I can pretend it's not me as I bring down the mallet on the mortician's woman's legs, enough to hurt her but not kill her. I can pretend I am not that kind of girl.
But it's me. Truly me. Maybe not the Alice the Cheshire is looking for. But the Alice I want to be from now on.
A tear trickles down my cheek as the mortician woman falls to her knees. I do the unimaginable and catch my tear in the palm of my hand before it hits the ground again. If I want to win this, I can't cry. If I could squeeze that tear back in, I would. This tear is me balancing the insanity I am thrown into.
I help the woman in her fall so she doesn't hit her head against something. She stares at me with a horrified expression, unaware of what happened to her. The absence of a grin on her face tells me the Cheshire left her body.
Why not? He wants me to suffer the guilt of hitting an innocent woman.
The mortician keeps sobbing uncontrollably, more in need of an explanation than to mend her wounds.
The corpses have stopped singing and zipped themselves back into their death bags. I can't see the Cheshire anywhere.
"Who are you?" The woman starts to shake me hysterically. Her leg is swollen and bleeding.
"Please calm down," I tell her. "I need you to trust me. There is an evil presence in here."
The woman's eyes are wide open. She scans me from head to toe and then stops at the string wrapped around my toe. Slowly, she raises a reluctant finger, pointing at the empty death bag. "You're dead..." she stutters.
Before I can explain further, she faints.
I help her to the floor and pat her. I can't complain. She did me a huge favor and saved me a lot of time.
Turning around with the mallet in my hands, I look for the Cheshire. I don't know how his soul-possessing works, but he must be in the room because the door is still shut.
What kind of game is he playing with me now?
I walk slowly toward the door, the corpses supposedly resting in peace at my sides. Holding the mallet as if it's a sword does give me confidence somehow. It's amazing what fear does to you when you decide to finally face it. My bare feet, and my body, are still exposed to the chilling cold of the morgue.
Closer to the door, I hear my footsteps echoing. It's unexplainable, but I keep walking.
If the Cheshire has the ability to be invisible, then I really don't have a way to fight back.
Why am I hearing echoes of my footsteps?
I keep limping to the door with a mallet in my hand. Horror movies aren't even close to the condition I am in.
Closer to the door, I realize that what I am hearing aren't the echoes of my footsteps. They are someone else's. And they are approaching from the other side of the door.