by Cameron Jace
“You will, My Queen,” the voice said. “Long live Wonderland. Death to the real world.”
“Ah, one more thing,” the Queen said. “Next time, I’d prefer you tell me your plans in detail. When Margaret first told me about the rabbit loose in the streets, you hadn’t told me this was your plan. I stood oblivious of what was going on.”
“Apologies, My Queen,” the voice said. “The idea came out of the blue after I learned of a psychological term called the Rabbit Hole.”
“Really? Is that a real scientific term?”
“Just like the Alice Syndrome,” the voice said. “It seems those real-world doctors stole their ideas from Lewis Carroll’s genius interpretations. The Rabbit Hole means putting a patient under severe stress, metaphorically sending them into a rabbit hole, and pushing until they remember their past.”
“Well done, then,” she said. “So, I should be counting on her remembering?”
“Like I said, it’s only half an hour, and she will remember,” the voice said. “However, it will be most heart-wrenching. I am making sure she doesn’t die or something from the shock.”
“We can’t afford this girl to die, you know that.”
“Don’t worry,” the voice said. “I have it under control.”
“And her sisters?”
“They know nothing,” the voice said. “They are just pawns in the game. Doing what I have planned for them to do.”
68
ALICE WONDER’S HOUSE, 7 FOLLY BRIDGE, OXFORD
TIME REMAINING: 1 HOUR, 01 MINUTE
“How did I give you the idea?” I ask as flashes of my horrible childhood are nothing but playing cards flying in front of my eyes. I can’t seem to catch any of the cards to take a better look, but I see fragments, flashes, flipping before my eyes.
Flashes of who I really am.
“This brings us to the shocking truth.” Lorina waves her fan again. The memory of her waving it and snickering as Edith punches with her gloves while I am inside the cage hits me like a plague. Now I know what the gloves and fan meant. But what is the dress for?
“Are you telling me there is a more shocking truth than what you have just told me?” My breathing grows heavier. First, I witness the atrocities against Wonderlanders in the circus, then my own horrible childhood in the basement of my family’s house, then I am supposed to learn something much darker?
“Remember when we said you went missing as a seven-year-old girl?” Lorina says. “Remember when we told you that you told us about having gone to Wonderland and coming back with that glinting knife in your hand?”
I nod but don’t say a word.
“That actually never happened that way,” Edith says. “The truth is...” She hesitates. “That you were never lost.”
“What happened then?” I ask.
“Alice.” Lorina stares right into my eyes. “You knocked on our door one day. When we opened it, you were a lost seven-year-old standing with a knife in her hand, blood spattered all over.”
“I—I am not following.”
“I wanted to kick you out, but Mother took sympathy on you,” Edith says. “I mean, I never understood why she wanted to save you.”
“She is my mother,” I retort. “Of course she’d want to save me.”
“She doesn’t get it yet,” Lorina tells Edith. “You think we shouldn’t tell her?”
I scream at them, “Tell me what?” Deep inside, I have already remembered the truth. “Tell me what, Edith?” I shake her with all my might.
Edith doesn’t reply. I think she enjoys the madness lingering in my eyes.
I find myself turning around, looking for something to threaten them with. Funny—or terrifying—how my eyes spot a glinting knife on the floor right away. I kneel down, grab it, stand up, and press them both against the wall. “Tell me what?”
“That’s the same look you had in your eyes when you were seven years old,” Lorina says.
“Tell me what, goddammit?”
“That you knocked on our door, told us you were running from the Wonderland Monsters, that they wanted to kill you, that something horrible had happened in Wonderland.”
“You were laughable,” Edith continues. “A lost, mad child whom my mother pitied and took in and made one of us.”
“You mean...?”
“You were never our sister, Alice,” Lorina says as if she is delivering the happiest news of her life. “You were never one of us, and you have always been mad.”
69
BUCKINGHAM PALACE, LONDON
Tom Truckle saw the Queen of England take the podium, that sinister grin glinting like a knife on her face.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said. “Pardon me, I mean mad ladies and gentlemen.” She snickered, and the crowd laughed. “I am about to offer you something that hasn’t been done in the history of mankind before. Something that will make us, Wonderlanders and fellow madmen and women, avenge what happened to us in the circus two centuries ago.”
Tom noticed the glaring silence of the crowd. Everyone seemed to be counting on the Queen now.
“What we’re going to do is going to shake this human world upside down,” she said. “It will make Wonderland look like such a sane place to what we’re going to do to the real world around us.”
Tom himself was as anxious as ever. Although an imposter, he felt like he’d like to be part of the Queen’s lunatic plan. Who worked in an asylum and didn’t feel like the sane world outside wasn’t the enemy? To Tom, it was the taxes he paid, the expenses of his divorce, and his medications. How much did he have to pay for those pills, just to stay sane in this mad world?
“But first, I want to show you a glimpse of the kind of madness you love to watch.” She pointed at the screen behind her. It showed people in England hunting all kinds of rabbits, opening them up to look for a bomb. Some people killed the rabbits, some ran when they saw one, even if it was on TV. The streets were a mess of accidents and panic. And oh, how insane the world looked right now. “This is just the beginning. In a few minutes, you will be watching something much more insane, so keep watching.”
70
ALICE WONDER’S HOUSE, 7 FOLLY BRIDGE, OXFORD
TIME REMAINING: 53 MINUTES
“That’s why you hate me so much.” I nod at Lorina and Edith. “I never was one of you.”
In truth, I can’t remember the part of me knocking on their door with a knife in my hand. But I do remember the basement. The horrible circus inside the basement.
“We don’t just hate you, Alice. We loathe you,” Lorina says. “You’re like that itch in the top of my mouth that hurts more if I try to lick it away.”
“Even after being put in the asylum, you still keep escaping to make our lives miserable,” Edith says, totally neglecting that I may have been just a troubled seven-year-old, but that the incidents in the basement—which were their fault—may have turned me into a loon.
“So how did you come up with the circus idea in the basement?”
“Because you told us about the circus in Wonderland,” Lorina says. “Or rather the silly idea that Wonderlanders had crossed over to the real world in the 19th century, and that humans thought of them as mad people and freaks, and sent them to the circus for entertainment.”
“Of course.” I sigh. “That was how I gave you the idea. So you decided to take it up a notch and make a circus out of me in the basement.”
“And it was fun, Alice,” Edith says. “I mean, if you bully someone in the real world, you may get in trouble. But bully a mad girl, wow, that was a million-dollar idea we got away with.”
“Because whatever you were going to say about it, no one was going to believe a lost mad girl who thinks she came from Wonderland.” Edith and Lorina high-five.
The Pillar comes to mind instantly. All his madness, theories, and the harsh ways he treats the people in this world seem just now. How I would like to choke both of them with a hookah’s hose right now. Maybe I was hard on the Pillar
. Maybe the twelve people he killed were the likes of Lorina and Edith. Bullies who needed to be put to rest.
At the same time, I stand, contemplating my past and what to do with Edith and Lorina, I realize I am too late again. Why do I always waste time lamenting my true past?
Edith tugs on her gloves and picks up a baseball bat from the floor, while Lorina shoots me an even more sinister look now.
“How about we play that circus game one more time?” she says.
“What?” I grimace, unable to comprehend their thirst for evil.
“Come on, Mary Ann.” Edith plops the bat against her fatty palm.
“What did you just call me?” I take a calculated step back. I was going to lash my None Fu at them when Edith caught me off guard with what she just said.
“Mary Ann.” Lorina sticks out her tongue and shakes her head like a bully teasing a kid on school grounds. “Mary Ann.”
“Why are you calling me Mary Ann?” I am fully aware that this is one of my names in the Alice in Wonderland book, that the rabbit mistakes me for a Mary Ann in the first chapter. But why do they call me by that name now?
What does it mean?
“Oh.” Edith nudges my shoulder with the bat. Lorina fans away. “We didn’t tell you?”
Both of my evil stepsisters wink at each other.
“You also held a pot next to the glinting knife the day you showed up at our door,” Lorina says, still forcing me to step back, closer to the cage’s opening behind me. “A pot with a tiger lily in it.”
“Remember that pot, loony tunes?” Edith swooshes the bat a breath away from my nose. “Inside the pot, there was a necklace, which was probably yours.”
“It belonged to someone called Mary Ann,” Lorina says. “My mother called you Mary Ann then, and you never minded. It was only later when she realized your obsession with Alice in Wonderland that she called you Alice. She thought it sounded better for your adoption papers.”
“And she gave you our last name, Wonder,” Edith says. “Odd how it all fell into place, isn’t it? Our last name being ‘Wonder’ while you think you came from Wonderland.” This part seems to amuse her the most.
“So, I was really Mary Ann in Wonderland?” I mumble.
“Here she goes again,” Lorina tells her sister. “Did you see how bonkers she went, talking to herself about Wonderland again?”
“That’s why we need to see her in the cage one more time.” Edith pushes me harder, the cage against my back now. “Come on, Mary Ann. Entertain us one last time.”
Edith’s push does something to me. Something I was looking for all along: I remember them torturing me in the basement now. Vividly.
It’s an even worse memory than remembering the Mush Room torture. The humiliation. Their friends they invited over to laugh at me. The worst memory a person can relive.
But one thing strikes me the most. In that memory, I’m gripping something behind my back. Something I don’t want them to see. I can feel it in my hand. It’s cold. And small.
“Get in the cage!” Edith roars now.
I close my eyes and don’t respond to her. My closed eyes are the draped curtain of my theatre of life, but they also open up another place in my memory, when I was seven years old.
What was I holding in my hand back then that was important to me?
I can remember I didn’t care about the pain. I only cared about that thing I was gripping.
What was it?
Then I remember seeing buckets in the corner of the room. A lot of cleaning tools next to them. What did I do with those buckets?
Risking the loss of my precious memory, I open my eyes, seeing if the buckets are still in the corner of the room right now.
They are!
Something inside me tells me I hid that precious thing in the back of my head in one of the buckets. Something tells me that this is what all this is about.
I am supposed to find what’s in the bucket.
Edith and Lorina freak out when I aggressively beeline through them toward the buckets. I pull them out of the corner and rummage through them, having no idea what I am looking for, but knowing I will recognize it when I see it.
“What?” Lorina says behind me. “You missed your buckets, Mary Ann?”
“My buckets?” I turn back. “They are mine? Did they mean something to me?”
“The whole world.” Edith rolls her eyes.
“What do you mean?” I insist. “Why did I have them?” I can’t tell them about what I think I hid inside, because I’m somehow sure they shouldn’t know about it.
If only I could remember it clearer now. If only!
“Here.” Lorina holds a broom with the tips of her hand. “Yuck. Hold this.” She gives it to me.
The broom is old. I don’t know why it should mean anything to me. “What is this?” I shout, then take a step forward and almost choke Lorina with one hand. “Tell me what’s going on. What do these buckets mean to me?”
“They were—” Lorina is choking under my grip, so I turn to Edith.
“They were tools,” Edith says.
“Tools for what?”
“Cleaning tools, duh!” Edith says. “Let my sister go.”
I do. I loosen my grip, and Lorina slumps to the floor.
But I don’t even bother. Cleaning tools?
“Yes, Alice.” Edith glares at me. “You were homeless. You were mad. You thought you came from Wonderland. You told us about that stupid circus. And we made fun of you as a kid. And guess what, you were also the maid!”
Both of them laugh at me again.
“That’s why you loved your buckets, soaps, and brooms.” Lorina’s voice is sour but challenging. “Along with your crazy Alice books. You came to us in that dress you wore. Mum wanted to make you one of our sisters, but we insisted you stay the maid you probably were from wherever you came from. Mary Ann, the maid.”
Tears stream down my cheeks, but I try to forget about them. Because my childhood couldn’t have been such a wreck. My existence, mad or not, must have a reason. A noble cause.
I kneel down and look for that damn thing in the buckets. What is it? Please make it something that brings back some of my dignity, my sanity.
And there it is, right in front of me.
I knew it.
I knew that my existence in this world must have a reason.
71
ALICE WONDER’S HOUSE, 7 FOLLY BRIDGE, OXFORD
TIME REMAINING: 39 MINUTES
I am staring at a golden key that looks exactly like the one Lewis Carroll gave me in the Tom Tower dream.
One of the six keys to Wonderland. The Six Impossible Keys.
Why I hid it here, I can’t remember. All I know is that it’s one of the six keys and that as a child, I hid this one here, for one reason or another. It meant the world to me and was worth the humiliation I went through.
“What did you find?” Lorina demands.
I push her hand away.
Edith swings and misses my head as I duck an inch or less. Time for some None Fu again.
I pull Edith’s arms and swing her whole body, as if she were my own baseball bat, against the wall. She sticks like a fat piece of fresh meat for a moment, her eyes rolling back, then slides down into my buckets.
Lorina surprises me with a kick in the back.
“Take this, $%$#@!” she shouts.
I find my body plastered against the wall. She kicks me once again in my lower back, and I drop to my knees, drooling.
How come this Barbie doll is that strong?
When I turn to face her, I see she has unfolded her fan again. For the first time, I notice how sharp its edges are. It could cut like a knife.
She throws it at me; it swirls and slices through the air before it reaches me, neck level.
I find myself catching it with a firm grip, right at a spot without blades.
“Learned a lot in your None Fu training, huh,” Lorina says.
I say nothing to her
but threaten to throw the fan back at her while running in her direction. Lorina thinks I am going to try to cut her with the fan’s blades, but I am not a killer. I won’t stain my hands with the blood of scumbag bullies.
I keep treading with fiery eyes, happy to see the horror in hers. I keep pushing her until she falls backward into the cage through the opening, where they wanted to trap me a while ago.
I watch her trip backward and lock her inside.
“How does it feel standing inside the circus now?” I say. “How does it feel to be the clown?”
Lorina starts pleading and playing good sister with me, like last time. Thankfully, I have learned my lesson. I won’t be fooled.
I stare at the key in my palm and smile. Now I have two keys. I think this is my real journey. To collect the Six Impossible Keys to Wonderland—for what reasons, or cause, I have no idea.
But just when I think I have it all under control, I sense someone standing behind me. I turn to face them, thinking it will be Edith.
But it’s not.
It’s a man with a long hat and teacups dangling from his black tuxedo.
72
ALICE WONDER’S HOUSE, 7 FOLLY BRIDGE, OXFORD
TIME REMAINING: 22 MINUTES
“I’ve been waiting for this moment,” the Hatter says, although I can’t see his face—he wears a funny mask. Not so funny, really, since it’s a clown’s mask.
“Why show yourself now?” I grip my key harder, feeling his presence has something to do with it.
