by Cameron Jace
The Cheshire Cat.
With no distinguishable face or identity, he frightens the very essence of me. I fear him so much that I need to pinch myself to make sure I am not possessed by him every once in a while. Had I not been scared of mirrors, I would have used them each morning to confirm the absence of his evil grin on my lips.
"You're insane, Alice," my Tiger Lily whispers behind me. She, who is supposed to be my one and only friend, has been mean to me lately. I wonder if they had done something to her when she was in Dr. Truckle's custody.
"Eye. En. Es. Aay. En. Eee." She snickers like an old toothless lady behind my back. "The Cheshire isn't real." Her tone gives me goosebumps. "You made him up, Alice. He is just an excuse for you to avoid facing the world outside. That's why you see the Cheshire's face in almost everyone you meet. You're simply afraid of people, Alice. Any psychologist knows that."
I don't turn around to face her. Usually, when she talks to me, it means I am in my highest moments of insanity. I bend my knees against my chest, and I bury my head between them, hugging myself with my own arms. I close my eyes and decide to clap my hands over my ears until she stops talking.
"Nothing is real." Tiger Lily refuses to shut up. "Even Jack isn't real."
My hands stop halfway, and my eyes spring open. A single sticky tear rolls down my cheek. I tremble as it glides down slowly. Then I catch it before it hits the ground. I stare at it wobbling in the palm of my hand. My tears are terrified of the unknown the same way I am.
"I mean Adam," Lily teases. "If you killed Adam, then who is Jack but a figment of your imagination?"
Provoked, I turn back, only to find a harmless orange flower in a pot near the crack in the wall. I am not even sure she was talking to me. Mentioning Jack triggered a bittersweet knot of pain inside of me. If there is anything I am certain of, it's that Jack Diamonds—real or imagination—is the only thing I wish is real.
Now that I had been shown he was my boyfriend, I understand my previously unexplained strong feelings toward him. I don't want to resist my feelings because, in a world as mad as mine, they shine on me with rays of sanity. I don't even have these kinds of strong feelings toward my helpless mother or my two mocking sisters. Jack seems to be my only chance for a family.
Lily is right, though. If Jack is Adam, the boyfriend I killed, he must be dead too.
A sudden pounding on my cell's door relieves me from the burden of thinking about Jack.
2
It's Waltraud Wagner at my door, the head of wardens in the Radcliffe Lunatic Asylum. Torturing me in the Mush Room pleasures her above all else. "Did you change your mind yet?" she blurts in her horrible German accent, reeking of cigarette smoke and junk food.
"What do you mean?" I tighten my fist around my single tear, squeezing it away.
"You've been unusually obedient for the past six days, confessing your insanity and such." She slaps her prod against her fleshy palm. "It's not like you," she remarks.
"I'm insane, Waltraud. I'm fully aware of it."
"I hardly believe you. How would an insane person know they're insane?" She is testing me. Admitting my insanity doesn't appeal to her. It rids her of reasons to fry me in the Mush Room. "People are kept in asylums because they aren't aware of their insanity. Their ignorance of their insanity endangers society. That's why we lock them away."
"Are you saying insane people who are aware of their insanity don't deserve to be locked away in asylums?" It's a nonsensical argument already.
"Insane people who know they are insane are smart enough to fool society into thinking they aren't," Waltraud replies. I blink twice to the confusing sentence she just said. "Think of Hitler, for an example." She laughs like a heavyweight ogre. Sometimes I think she is a Nazi. I was told she killed her patients in the asylum she worked for in Austria. But when she makes fun of Hitler, I am not sure anymore. "Or, in your case, you're admitting insanity to avoid shock therapy."
A twisty smile curves on my lips. Waltraud isn't that dumb after all. "That's a serious accusation, Waltraud," I say.
"It is an accusation," she retorts. "But it's hard to prove. Who'd believe me when I tell them you're an insane girl believing you're not insane, but pretending you are?"
"Such a mind bend." I almost chuckle. Waltraud's misery is always my pleasure. "Have you ever read Catch-22 by Joseph Heller?" It's a book that tackles this kind of logic. I wonder if Heller was a Lewis Carroll fan.
"I don't have time to read books," Waltraud puffs. "Does it have pictures in it?"
"No, it doesn't," I say. Waltraud probably read Alice in Wonderland and is trying to provoke me. Anything to get me to do something foolish and deserve punishment in the Mush Room.
"What use is a book without pictures?" She snickers behind the door.
"It's a book that describes how something can't be proven until a previous thing is certainly proven. However, the previous thing can't easily be proven either, to put it mildly." I neglect her comment about a book without pictures.
"I don't understand a word you say." She truly doesn't.
"Think of a chicken and an egg. We have no way to know which came first."
"I don't understand that either," she puffs. "I hate chickens." I hear her scratch her head. "But I love eggs."
I wish I could drive her mad myself. Wouldn't it be fun to have her in my cell instead of me?
A scream interrupts our ridiculous conversation all of a sudden. I have been hearing this for a few days now. It's a patient girl pleading to be spared from the Mush Room. It's probably Ogier torturing her. The Mushroomers in the other cells pound on their bars, demanding the pain to end. The screams have tripled since I've stopped being sent to the Mush Room. Waltraud and Ogier have been compensating for my absence with too many other patients.
"Why all the torturing?" I ask Waltraud. I'd like to scream in her face and punch her with oversized gloves filled with needles and pins. But the inner—relatively reasonable—voice stops me. If I want to forget about my madness, and if I want to keep avoiding the pain of shock therapy, I'd better keep to myself. When I walk next to a wall, I want people only to notice the wall.
I am not here to save lives. It's not true. Why should I care?
"It's not torture. It's interrogation," Waltraud explains. "A patient escaped the asylum recently while you were locked in here. We are authorized to use shock therapy to get confessions from the patients neighboring his cell."
I jump to my feet and pace to the door, sliding open the small square window to look at her. "Are you saying someone actually escaped the asylum?" I can't hide the excitement.
"You look so happy about it, Alice," Waltraud sneers. "Come on. Show me you're mad. Give me a reason to send you to the Mush Room. You want to exchange places with the poor girl inside?"
My face tightens instantly. I spend my days and nights in my creepy cell, safe from Waltraud's harm—and safer from my own terrible mind. I need to learn to control my urges.
Be reasonable, Alice. Last week was all in your head. You've never been to the Vatican, the Grote Markt in Belgium, or to Westminster Palace in London. If you want proof, it's easy. Think of why the Pillar never sent for you again. Why Fabiola never entered your cell again. Why your sisters and mother never visited again. It's better not to care about the escapee as well. Even if you escaped, there is no one out there waiting for you outside.
"Play the 'sanity' game all you want," Waltraud says. "Sooner or later, your brain will be mine to fry." She laughs. An exaggerated laugh, the way they portray an evil person's in Disney cartoons. I am really starting to wonder why she isn't locked in a cell, unless she is like Hitler, knowing he's mad and persuading the world otherwise. "Now get ready," she demands.
"For what?" I grimace.
"It's time for your break," she tells me. "You're rewarded for your good behavior: a ten-minute walk in the sun."
3
WALLED GARDEN, RADCLIFFE LUNATIC ASYLUM, OXFORD
The garden
where I am taking my break is guarded with barbed wire and concrete walls, high on all sides. Very reminiscent of maximum-security prisons where they want you electrocuted if you try to escape. The walls are ten feet high; they almost block the skewed sun rays trying to shine through. I need to move to a certain spot and tiptoe to allow the sun on my skin. When I do, my pale skin feels nourished, loved, and spoiled. No wonder my Lily lives next to a crack in a wall. Now she silently dances to the beautiful daylight, as though she worships the sun.
Don't ask me why I bring her along, even when she is sometimes mean to me. I can't explain why I am so attached to her. Like Jack, I consider her family for some reason.
I close my eyes, spread my arms sideways, and inhale all the air I can. The more oxygen into my lungs, the saner I feel.
The earth underneath me is sand, gravel, and boulders. I kick my shoes away and walk barefoot. I wonder if I keep my eyes closed long enough, would my life change for the better when I flick them open again? Will the madness subside? I wish it were that easy.
Maybe that's why people only dream with eyes closed. To open one's eyes is such a dream killer.
I walk barefoot, and in the darkness of my shut eyelids, a vision shapes before me. A colorful vision that looks as if a rainbow has crashed onto it and spilled its paint everywhere, turning the place into a palette of different hues and shades. I see huge mushrooms, funny-looking trees, giant fruits, as well as oversized rabbits and cats. A dormouse. Flying pigeons. A hookah's spiraling smoke. Nonsensical music is playing somewhere nearby. The vision is so beautiful I don't want to open my eyes again.
My feet keep walking. It feels like I have stepped into the transparent bubble of my own vision, leaving the real world behind.
A thin orange hue occasionally seeps through my vision. I am thinking it's the sun over the barbed-wired walls, seeping through my eyelids and into my daydreaming vision.
My feet still keep walking. I can't stop them. Nothing can stop me from walking farther into my vision. I breathe in again. Air is such a precious thing. So underestimated. I feel the oxygen fill my brain. It's relaxing. It's soothing. This vision I am staring at with closed eyes must be real. The air is real, and the trees are real. There is no way I am hallucinating now.
Finally, I realize what I am staring at. It's the place I have been looking for. The place, maybe, everyone is looking for. I am staring with closed eyes at a memory of Wonderland.
My heartbeat shoots to the roof. I start to hurry barefoot in this amazing place, not even caring how I look like in the real world of the walled garden of the Radcliffe Asylum. Maybe I am standing there. Maybe I'm also running. Who cares?
My eyes inhale everything I see. Wonderland is huge. I mean huge. It baffles me that most of its vastness is blocked by the enormous fruits and trees. I run farther. I have no idea of my destination.
Could this be? Is Wonderland real? I can even smell it!
The farther I run, the more my vision dims. I don't know why, but I keep running. It looks like it's raining in the distance. It looks like the sun is fading in the distance. But the distance is where my footsteps take me. An inner feeling draws me toward it, away from Wonderland.
Why would my vision take me beyond Wonderland? I don't want to leave, but something urges me to go.
The last things I see in Wonderland are huge clocks hung from thin threads in the sky as if they were laundry. The watches are as flexible as cloth. They haven't dried yet. Someone has just washed them, so no time can be told from looking at them. Someone has washed time away.
But then Wonderland disappears behind me.
Now, I am entering a normal life again, bound by time, chained by reason, and surmounted by human stupidity. It's not the present time, though. A newspaper swirls in the air and sticks to my face. I pull it off. Through the noise of the crowd around me and the heavy rain, it's hard to unfold the yellowish paper. But I manage.
It's a periodical newspaper. It's called Mischmasch, owned and edited by Lewis Carroll. This is the fourteenth edition.
With a beating heart, I raise my head and discover that I am standing in the Tom Quadrangle in Oxford University, a century or two ago. Somehow I arrived here through Wonderland. I lower my head and check the date on the Mischmasch. The date is January the 14th, 1862.
4
TOM QUADRANGLE IN CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD UNIVERSITY, JANUARY 14TH, 1862
It's still raining heavily. A darker shade hovers over the Victorian atmosphere. The clouds are gray and cruel in the absence of the sun, blocked by the dirty smog and smoke all over this world. A world that reeks of pollution and stink. Poverty and homelessness overrule this not-so-picturesque vision of English Victorian times before me.
I snake through the crowd, all the way outside the university. I am outside at St. Aldates. Deeper into Oxford, I see hordes of homeless people shading themselves with newspapers from the heavy rain. Coughs and vomits are heard and seen everywhere as if there's been a disease. Young children with tattered clothes and bandaged hands, smitten with dirt, walk all around me. All they ask for is money. A penny. A shilling. Even a bronze half-shilling with the drawing of Queen Victoria upon it.
If they're not asking for money, they are begging for food, a loaf of bread, a single egg, or a potato, with open mouths. Some even beg for a whiff of salt or a sip of clean water.
An old man with a stick shoos a few kids away. "Go back to London, you filthy rotten beggars!" he grunts before he trips to the floor himself. He is as weak as everyone else, upset that they're begging for his share of meals.
People don't seem to notice me.
Most people are conspicuously shorter than usual. Maybe they're not really shorter—their backs are bent over from poverty, a lack of nutrition and shelter.
I keep stepping on the muddy earth, realizing that what was Wonderland a few breaths ago has turned into a nightmare of older times.
Victorian times.
It looks like I am in a factually real point in history. Did I travel back in time?
I realize I can just open my eyes and escape this vision. But I don't. I want to understand why I am having it.
Is this why January the 14th is so important? My hands crawl to the key at the end of the necklace Lewis gave me last time. One of the six keys to open Wonderland doors, he said.
I stop in my place and gaze ahead, only to see Lewis Carroll walking in a haze. He is wearing a priest's outfit, and a pile of papers is tucked under his armpit. A tattered umbrella is held loosely in his other hand before some kids steal it and run away, hitting the old man with it.
Lewis doesn't care. He tucks his hands into his pockets and pulls out a fistful of breadcrumbs. He offers them to the homeless children. The children circle him like ants around a huge insect they'd just trapped. The kids snatch the bread and then knock Lewis to the floor, the papers of his manuscript scattering in the air. They begin hitting him, asking him for money, but he is not fighting back, astonished by their aggressive acts. They steal his watch and his wallet and rid him of his hat.
I run toward him. They have left him half-naked. He seems to be the only one who sees me.
"Lewis," I yelp. "What's going on?"
"I couldn't save them, Alice," he cries in the rain. "I was too late. Couldn't save them."
"Save who? I don't understand," I say as a few kids suddenly are aware of my existence.
"I—I tried," he hiccups. "Th-those p-poor children," Lewis stutters.
I also realize my time in this vision is short. I'm exposed entirely to the children, and they are approaching. They'll rip me of my asylum's nightgown for sure and see if I have any bread or money.
"Run, Alice," Lewis demands but holds to my hand for one last time. "Never tell anyone that I couldn't save them!"
I don't understand, but I have slid my hand away and am already running from the sinister Victorian kids.
Suddenly, my head hits something, and my lips swell as if I have been punched in the face by a
train.
My eyes flip open as my vision phases out, back into the uninteresting real world. As I regain my balance and momentum, I realize I've hit the garden's wall.
"This can't be," I whisper to myself. "I had to run from the kids, but I had to save Lewis. What was that about? Who are they, the people he could not help?"
I close my eyes deliberately again, wishing to re-enter the vision. It's not there anymore. I don't know how this works.
I stand, helpless and imprisoned in the choking arms of these walls of the asylum. Either I am mad beyond all madness, or I can travel through time. Either I was right about forgetting about what happened to me last week, or it's a terrible mistake.
What did Lewis mean? I couldn't save them, Alice.
5
DIRECTOR'S OFFICE, RADCLIFFE LUNATIC ASYLUM, OXFORD
Instead of spending his money on his failing marriage, Dr. Tom Truckle, director of the Radcliffe Lunatic Asylum, spent it on surveillance cameras.
He even helped install them himself in the VIP Ward when the Pillar was away. Although Dr. Truckle's life was sliding down on an oily spiral of circumstances, his obsession with the Pillar pushed him to do maddening things. He needed more cameras—from every angle possible—to learn about the Pillar's secret.
How does Pillar the Killer escape his cell and return as if he's the world's best magician?
Two days ago, Professor Carter Pillar escaped his cell again, leaving a trail of swirling hookah smoke behind. It hung in the air, shaping the word Frabjous.
Dr. Truckle had previously doubled the security guards on the VIP Ward. He also sent for England's finest magicians to ask them how such an escape was possible. They had no clue. Architects, too, had been consulted. Radcliffe Asylum was a two-centuries-old building, first built in Victorian times. Maybe the asylum hid secret tunnels underneath it. Secret tunnels only someone as devious and intellectually crazy as Professor Pillar knew about.
