Mad Hatters and March Hares

by Ellen Datlow

  She pushed the door fully open and saw that the laundry was neat. There was a faint smell coming from the washing machine, usually a sign that a load was left in there, wet and beginning to rot. She looked in the cupboards and found plenty of cleaning supplies. Using these could provide a continuity of smell, a sameness, which she thought was a comfort to any loved one who came through the house once it was clean. Not for this man, though. He’d had nobody.

  It also saved her from using her own products.

  She tended not to take anything from the house except for food and cleaning products, to keep her record clean. She’d hate to lose this job because of theft or the perception of it; there wasn’t another like it. She only had it because her favourite uncle owned the company. She loved the job, taking great glee when she told strangers what she did. I clean up after dead people, and they’d either recoil or be fascinated. Either way, if often meant she was the most interesting person in the room.

  “Why do you do it?” she was often asked. She’d say, for the money, because the money was very good. But it was far more than that. It was the fascination of walking into a person’s house who would never return to it.

  The hallway was dim. She sensed movement to her right and turned, hands out, ready to fend off an animal or calm a person. Nothing; it was a full-length, ornate mirror at the end of the hallway. She saw herself and shadows, too, reflected in the glass. She squeezed her eyes to clear them, her vision blurred by the dust, because she thought she saw her uncle in the mirror, almost filling it with his bulk. He heaved a great sigh.

  Of course he wasn’t there.

  Alice didn’t have a mirror at home. While she loved the way she looked (especially on a good hair day), there were times, like now, when she imagined a whole different world in there. Not a place she’d like to be, but somewhere so dark and nasty she wouldn’t want anyone to have to live there.

  Her uncle always said she had a powerful imagination, and that imagination was the only weapon in the war against reality. He’d put his fingers up to show he was quoting someone, but he never said who.

  She tapped the mirror with the toe of her left shoe, proving the surface was solid and that even if she wanted to, she couldn’t step through.

  Alice did a quick walk through the house, assessing what she’d need to do. One bathroom. Two small bedrooms, one of them used as a study and barely at that, with the desk neat and no papers left out to tidy. The lounge room. The kitchen.

  Working methodically she cleaned, swept, vacuumed, and wiped. He really had been a tidy old man. While the towels in the bathroom were damp with mould, the rest of the room was almost spotless. She’d seen far worse. She’d flushed toilets filled with shit, she’d emptied bathtubs filled with dirty clothes, she’d thrown away baskets of used toilet tissue.

  In the lounge room, the carpet was pale mauve, immaculate. Dark wooden armchairs with embroidered upholstery filled the corners, while an antique bookcase, neatly layered with leather-bound volumes, covered one wall. The TV hid behind a wooden screen as if the owner liked to pretend he didn’t watch. Under the TV were rows of movies, numbered but not named.

  She heard more quiet, desperate sobbing as she dusted the shelves. She didn’t believe in ghosts, but given the emptiness of the house she wondered. This was too real, though. There was a buzzing noise also, usually a sign of something off and flies flocking around it.

  She followed the sound into the kitchen, where she saw a small fish tank tucked into an alcove above a small fridge. Pressed up against the glass was a turtle, about the size of her two palms, waiting like a loyal dog for its owner to return, its face wet with tears.

  It saw her and stopped crying with a deep, bone-shuddering sigh.

  Her first reaction was irritation. Alice despised glumness. Morose faces made her want to shout, “Snap out of it.” Sighing annoyed her because it was usually done with the intention of eliciting a particular response. A solicitation, an offer of help, or some sympathy. Certainly some attention.

  The turtle somehow managed to sigh and cry at the same time, quite a feat.

  There was a hand-lettered sign over its tank. “Mock Turtle. Genus: saddus. Feel Free to Mock the Turtle.”

  The turtle was looking at her mournfully, she thought. She wondered if that’s why it was labelled saddus. The body-lifters should have taken it away when they took the dead man; it must have been overlooked. It wasn’t the first time she’d found family pets. Dogs would die by their owner’s side, or be so depressed they had to be put down. Cats would escape the moment a door was open; she’d seen one dash onto the road and be run over, a mercy, really, given the state it was in.

  She’d never found a turtle before, though.

  There was a thick sludge at the bottom of the tank. Flies buzzing around it, sinking into it. The dead man had been so tidy; why didn’t he keep the tank clean?

  “That’s a lot of shit for a little turtle,” she said.

  “Go on, then, laugh,” she heard. “I’m sitting here like a pig in shit, except I’m not a pig and therefore not very happy. You can laugh if you like. Millions would.”

  She turned around, looking for the prankster, the ventriloquist.

  “It’s me,” the turtle said.

  Her jaw dropped open, an unattractive trait her uncle told her he hoped she’d grow out of.

  The turtle snapped his jaws at her. “Close your mouth, dear. Something’ll fly in there, and I’ve seen the bugs in this place. Nasty nasty.”

  I’m dreaming, Alice thought. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d dreamed of talking animals. “Very nasty, I imagine,” is all she said.

  “I know I am. Nasty as a nail gun and ugly as sin. No wonder the teachers always hated me. It’s all right for you, Miss Blonde Hair Pink Cheeks. Your teachers must have loved you.”

  They didn’t, at all. “Too much daydreaming,” her teachers said. “Living in a fantasy world.” That was true. What they didn’t understand was that her fantasy world, her Wonderland life, was as real as their world. And it was safer. In Wonderland she was smart and fit and bright. There was no such thing as school in Wonderland.

  “Why are you called Mock Turtle? You look like a real turtle to me.”

  “Because everyone makes fun of me. Even my dear, dead wifey did it.”

  “That’s not nice,” Alice said. “Nobody should mock another person!”

  The mock turtle rose onto his back legs, reaching for her. “Go on, take me out of this glass box. I promise I won’t run away!” He made a clicking noise Alice assumed was laughter. She lifted him out and placed him on the kitchen bench, which was covered with crumbs. There were half-empty jars of jam, honey, Vegemite, and peanut butter, with a knife resting across the Vegemite. She took a photo of this, the prep site of the owner’s last meal. If there were relatives, they sometimes like to see this record of last movements.

  She was glad there were none here. Relatives were an annoyance. They never wanted the food, at least, but they wanted to talk about that last meal, traces of which were often found in the kitchen and on the dining table, or on the arm of a sofa, or on a coffee table. Or they’d bore her with stories of favourite foods (“Tinned oysters!” as if that was the most astonishing thing) or they’d tells lies about the health of their loved one, say, “She always ate well,” but Alice would find the cupboard full of cheap snacks, chocolate, fatty salty crappy food. She didn’t mind any of that, though. It was the interfering relatives who insisted on helping her, who threw all the food out no matter how many times she asked them to let her do her job. Didn’t they understand how much food was wasted?

  She hated those ones.

  “Let us see if there’s any lettuce,” she said to the mock turtle. The half pun might have amused the dead man, she thought.

  She had to get to work, anyway. She set up her bags. One to take home and one for the rubbish. Not much went into that bag.

  On the fridge, a sign said, “Give us this day our daily
bread and butter and a slice of ham please.”

  The fridge held a plate of leftover roast lamb, some cooked green beans, a carton of milk that gave off a slightly sour stench, some supermarket cheese, three covered bowls of food she’d identify later, and a crisper full of limp vegetables.

  There was half a lettuce there, soft but edible, and she tore two leaves off and placed them on the bench next to the mock turtle.

  “M.T. is empty,” she said, as if the ghost of the dead man whispered in her ear.

  The mock turtle nibbled noisily, pausing only for breath.

  While he ate she started on the cupboards. She found an old currant bun and would have added it to the bag to make crumb cake but realised the currants were actually small cockroaches. They’d formed the words “take me” and she was happy to find the message. She often found justification for what she did, even though she didn’t need it. She knew she was doing the right thing. There was so much food wastage, why shouldn’t she help lessen that?

  She took a deep sniff at the roast lamb. It was dried up but not rotten. She didn’t want to poison anyone. She wanted them to eat so much they could hardly move. She’d use some of that for shepherd’s pie and some for soup. If she found jam tarts she wouldn’t take them home, she’d eat the lot herself.

  The mock turtle stopped eating the lettuce.

  “All full?” Alice asked.

  The turtle raised and dropped his shoulders. “What I really love are worms, but no one’s ever fed me those. There’s a whole world of them Outside.” He lifted his head and jerked it towards the backyard. “There’s everything back there. Before the old man turned nasty and left me in my tank he’d take us Outside to watch while he gardened. Such glory days!” the mock turtle said. “It was like a magic place where dreams come true.”

  “I call the magic place Wonderland,” Alice said. She hadn’t told anybody else the name.

  “Oh, that’s the perfect name for it! We just called it Outside.”

  “We?” said Alice, as she scavenged through the cupboard for more bags to carry food in.

  “I had a friend once. My wife. You didn’t think all that shit was mine, did you? Ended up as soup. I watched her being et, right before my eyes. She was a real turtle, not like me. I’m just a pretend one, really.”

  “What are you really?”

  “I really am a mock turtle. Anyway. You’ve never felt pain until you’ve had a fish hook through your lip.” He curled his lip down so she could see a small scar. She didn’t want to get too close. She didn’t trust those snapping jaws. “The old man threw me back in the tank, didn’t he? Not wanted. He took my dearest friend, my lovely wife, reeled her up and over the edge, her dear little talons scratching the glass, and next I knew I could hear her screaming. Screaming as he plunged her into the pot. Oh, the cruelty. The terrible, terrible cruelty of it.”

  “That doesn’t quite make sense. Why would your owner treat you so well only to eat you up? And why would he need to use a fishing line to take her out? I lifted you out easy as anything.”

  “You tell me, Alice. You tell me.”

  He began to weep.

  “I’ve lost everyone I’ve ever loved,” he told her.

  Alice said, “I’ve never loved anyone, not so it hurt. My doctor says something happened to me as a little girl so I have barriers.”

  “Like what?” He sat back, nose twitching. Alice cleared her throat, clicked her jaw, sorry she’d spoken.

  “What’s that?” he said. “My hearing, you know. Louder, dear! Tell me your woes!”

  He’s one of those, Alice thought. The ones who loved the saddest stories. Who liked other people’s suffering almost as much as they liked their own.

  “Like nothing,” she said. She felt nausea starting in the pit of her stomach and quickly ate a dry biscuit. Stale but bland; that’s what she needed.

  “I’ve been to Wonderland,” she said. “Many times. I think I even met you there once,” but that didn’t make sense, because the mock turtle was real and her dreams of Wonderland were not.

  “Did you now? Dreamt me up, do you think?”

  “I thought I did, but here you are, in all your glory.”

  “No glory for me. Oh, the terrible things I’ve seen and heard and what’s been done to me.”

  “Like what?” Alice said. Terrible things didn’t happen to people like her, unless you counted having a family that didn’t understand you. Her dad never forgave her for not finishing high school; he’d had high hopes for his moral little girl, his smart as a whip little girl.

  “You’ll remember.”

  But she couldn’t, she wouldn’t, not when there was Wonderland to visit, where the world was in her power.

  “We’ll find a box for you and take you to the animal protection people. Someone will want you.”

  “Nobody will want me,” he sighed. “No one ever wants me. I’m abandoned again. Unloved. You can’t imagine the sorrow I’ve seen.” Alice kept sorting, piling tins onto the bench to check their contents.

  She filled the next take-home bag and set up another. She filled that with tins, biscuits, and bags of coffee. There was frozen cake, too.

  She patted her stomach, an instinctive action whenever she thought about her weight.

  “You’re a big girl, aren’t you?” the mock turtle said.

  “That depends on your perspective. To some people I look tiny. Sometimes I think I shrink or grow, depending on who’s looking at me.”

  She gathered a pile of ingredients on the bench and pulled out a big pot. She liked to cook the soup while she was in the home; there was something about the taste of it that way. Finding a large pot sometimes proved difficult, but there was one in the pan cupboard, with a lid and all. She piled in ingredients as she found them in the fridge, the freezer and the cupboards; the lamb, the vegetables (those beyond use would go into the worm farm), the green beans, packets of lentils. She filled the pot to the brim. No one would mind if she took the pot away. She was doing them a favour.

  The soup she cooked, turning waste to food, would last her a week.

  “Is this what they cooked your wife in?” Alice asked, curious, knowing she was being rude.

  “Who’s that, then? I can’t think straight, I haven’t been fed in days. Weeks! I’m wasting away. Shrinking inside my shell.” He’d had the lettuce but it seemed that wasn’t satisfying.

  She offered him cheese. Some soft apple.

  “Never mind,” she said when he refused. “I’ll make a nice crumble with these apples. Cook them long enough and they turn to mash anyway. What is it you’d like to eat? The soup will be done soon. More lettuce?”

  She knocked over the pepper as she reached for it to add to the soup. She sneezed, and thought, as she did every time, that a sneeze was like an orgasm.

  “Oh, don’t you just hate pepper?” the mock turtle said. “Sneezy breezy. Brings up all sorts of nasties for me. Oh, the nasty stories I could tell you about pepper.”

  Alice laughed. “You silly sad thing! Who has a bad memory about pepper?”

  “You be quiet or I’ll eat you up,” he said, shaking the pepper pot at her using his two flippers.

  “Silly sad thing,” she said again, quiet now, because it wasn’t the first time she’d heard those words, but the other time was best forgotten.

  Alice closed her eyes and pictured the rabbit hole that led to Wonderland. She could feel the grass around her ankles, the breeze on her cheeks as she walked towards it, then the dark coolness as she stepped inside.

  She imagined jam tarts, bread and butter. Unlimited food. She imagined not being hungry. Not having to beg for a meal. Not having to …

  “You remember,” the mock turtle said. “You remember the time your uncle cut off your arms and legs and you had to wait for them to grow back again?”

  Alice laughed. “You’re thinking of another girl’s uncle. Mine is the kindest man ever. My dad says he spoils me but he says I deserve it.”

&nb
sp; “Oooh, that must be nice. That must help.”

  “You’re like a hypochondriac but for emotions,” Alice said. “Any emotion you can think of you feel and then you think everyone else feels it, too.”

  There was a whole cupboard full of different mustards.

  “He called it the mustard mine. Wasn’t he a funny old man?” The mock turtle looked like he was about to cry again.

  Alice emptied all the mustard pots into the soup, and some frozen vegetables she chipped out of the freezer.

  As the soup cooked she finished cleaning the rest of the house, with the mock turtle for company. She carried him from room to room, setting him down where he could watch and tell her stories and keep her amused.

  She liked the atmosphere of this house. It was quiet. The dead man lived alone so there was a sense of peaceful solitude, from the single toothbrush in an ornate mug to the single bed beautifully made. The idea of living here was seductive. Alice wondered how long she could stay, away from home. Overnight? She flicked a switch; the power was still connected. She could stay a night at least, keep the thick, heavy curtains drawn. There was plenty of food. She could bake some bread to go with the soup or make croutons from the loaf she found in the freezer.

  The mock turtle felt dry and soft in her hands, like old leather. He was heavier than she expected, his shell weighing more than the rest of him.

  “Aren’t you good?” he said. “Trained by the whip, weren’t you? Like a good whipped dog serving her master.”

  She turned him upside down and carried his shell like a soup bowl, as if she was Oliver Twist begging for more, until his complaints got too much to bear and she flipped him over again.

  She turned all the lights on so she wouldn’t get caught out by the mirror again, but “Who’s that, then? Who’s a pretty little pink girl?” the mock turtle said, his voice so familiar she had to dash into the bathroom and splash her face with water, swallow a cupful, to stop herself from being sick.

  “Tell me about your Wonderland, if you had one,” she said, and he told her of tall majestic towers and deep green pools.

  Back in the kitchen she found a roast chicken in the back of the fridge, eaten down to the bones. These she put into a pot of water to boil off the remnants of meat.