by Cameron Jace
There was one thing slightly wrong with Professor Pillar's cell. The professor wasn't there.
"This is a joke, right?" Dr. Truckle growled at the wardens and nurses, who were rarely allowed to leave the underground ward—today was an exception, due to the Pillar's disappearance.
The staff lowered their heads, afraid to meet Dr. Truckle's intimidating eyes. Truckle had fired employees for much lesser issues than an escaping patient in the past. The asylum's reputation meant everything to him.
"I think—" a recently hired nurse began.
"You think?" Truckle grimaced. "You don't get to think in my asylum. I'll tell you what I think: you're fired."
Immediately, Ogier took her by the arm and showed her out.
"I don't even know how he does it, Dr. Truckle," Waltraud Wagner said slowly. She'd always been among Dr. Truckle's favorites. "The cell is still locked from the outside. There is no sign of breaking out. And he is the one and only patient in the ward."
"Professor Carter Pillar is one of the world's most dangerous psychopaths." Dr. Truckle faced his staff. "He used to teach philosophy at Oxford University until something happened to him and compromised his sanity." Truckle's eyes widened under his glasses when he pronounced the word "sanity." His thinning blonde hair almost prickled, sending goosebumps to his staff's arms. "Pillar the Killer killed twelve innocent people afterward. The fact that he tricked the court by pleading insanity does not deter from the other fact: that he is a cold-blooded serial killer disguising as an insane man." Truckle enjoyed the fear he saw in his staff's eyes. He'd always liked being feared. Otherwise, he felt he'd fail in controlling the asylum. "The Pillar might fool you with his charms, hypnotizing eyes, and nonsensical sarcasm. But if you think his stay here is for treatment, then you're on the verge of insanity yourself. The asylum is more of a prison for him. He's doing time here because neither Interpol nor the FBI could convict him. We're supposed to keep him locked in here, to protect the world outside from him." He knuckled his fingers as if preparing to punch somebody. "So can anyone explain to me how he managed to escape for the third time this month?" he screamed at the top of his lungs, his veins protruding from his neck like hot hookah hoses. Most of the staff swallowed hard. There was a saying in the asylum: that the only one madder than a hatter was the Truckle.
"With all due respect, Dr. Truckle," Waltraud said, "I think we should finally inform the authorities."
"You know I can't do that, nurse Waltraud." Truckle gritted his teeth. "We're all going to lose our jobs instantly if we tell them that the man they asked us to simply lock away is gone. Besides, everyone is head over heels looking for this Cheshire Cat killer right now. Knowing the Pillar escaped will worsen things for everyone."
"What really puzzles me, Dr. Truckle is why Professor Carter Pillar always returns from his escape," Waltraud said. "I mean, we never report his escape, and yet he still returns to his cell, as if it's a walk in the park."
Truckle's face reddened as he stared back at the empty cell. "He's mocking us, Waltraud." He tucked his hands in his pockets and was about to pull out one of the pills his psychiatrist prescribed him. He didn't want to expose himself in front of his staff. If they knew their boss needed help just like any other madman in the asylum, it'd be the end of his career. "He is bloody mocking us, and I am dying to know what he has on his mind," he said, crushing the pill into powder with his fingers. He didn't mind leaving it in the bottom of his pockets. He had a lot of pills, as he took four to six a day to calm down.
"Maybe he really is mad," Ogier moved from behind. No one even paid attention to him. "Or why would he always come back?"
"I think it's that Alice in Under Ground book he always keeps with him," Waltraud suggested, pointing at the book that lay on the couch. "I heard he started killing after reading it."
Silence invaded the room, as everyone wondered where Professor Carter Pillar was at the moment.
5
ENTRANCE, THE RADCLIFFE LUNATIC ASYLUM
A black limousine halted abruptly before the Radcliffe Asylum's entrance. The recklessness of its driver alerted security at the main gate. They held their guns and squinted against the framed windows of the unusually long limo. A series of uninterrupted laughter crackled from the inside, while the Beatles were playing somewhere in the back. The passengers sang "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," except that in their version, it was "Alice."
A chauffeur got out and hurried to open the door for his partying passengers in the back. He was so devoted to his job that he hadn't even noticed the security guards with their guns aimed at the limousine. The chauffeur was short. He wore a tuxedo that was too long as if he'd borrowed it. His face was funny in the strangest ways. It was full of freckles scattered around a small and pointy nose. A chortle almost escaped one of the security guards upon noticing the chauffeur's thin mustache. It looked more like a rat's whiskers.
The chauffeur cleared his throat, adjusted his necktie, and bent over as he opened the passenger door. Many girls were laughing from inside.
A huge amount of smoke blew into the faces of the guards upon opening the door. It was as if someone had trapped a cloud inside the limo, and now it was floating out onto them, like a blob from one of the old scary movies. It was gray, thick, and smelled funny. The guards got a little dizzy.
"Suspicious activity at the main gate," one of the guards radioed. "Probably tear gas by an intruder. Need backup."
The rest of the guards stood paralyzed inside the big circle of gasses and waited until it began clearing away. The girls never stopped laughing and cheering for a moment. A few of the guards began coughing, though. The first thing the guards saw when the gasses subsided was a girl's leg stepping out of the limousine. It was a slender leg with a tattoo of a caterpillar on it. For guards who'd been handling insane people all their lives, drooling was the least they could do.
Girl after girl got out of the limousine. They wore the tightest outfits, the longest boots, and the shortest skirts. They were either coughing or giggling. Some of them did both. Most of them were so happy that the guards in the back couldn't help but giggle back. Some of the girls smoked rolled cigars, smiling with kaleidoscope eyes.
It was like a prelude to madness, where the highly respected gangster was about to show up last.
Finally, a short leg showed from the car, followed by the egg-shaped head of a man with a pipe tucked between his full lips. The man's fedora slipped over his eyes as he got out with a hookah in his hand. When he coughed, he vanished like a magician behind spirals of thick smoke. When the smoke cleared, the guards saw he wore a tuxedo with light cream horizontal stripes. His hands were covered in white gloves. His fedora had two spikes that were shaped like mushrooms. Although a bit funny looking from afar, the man had an eerie presence that filled the heart with worry and anxiety. The guards straightened up and aimed at him. They knew the man. It was Pillar the Killer.
Nudging his hat up, the Pillar looked at them with beady eyes. He looked easily content with himself, tremendously annoyed by the presence of others.
"T-turn around. Hands on y-y-your h-head!" one of the guards demanded, his anxiety showing in his scattered syllables.
The Pillar, with a hookah in one hand and a pipe in his mouth, looked puzzled. It seemed as if he didn't know what to do with them while surrendering to the asylum's guards. It looked as if someone had awakened him from a drowsy tangerine dream.
"I said, turn around. Hands on your head, Professor Pillar," the guard repeated. "You're a fugitive of the Radcliffe Asylum. If you don't comply, I will shoot." It didn't look like the guard was going to shoot. He was bluffing and scared of the Pillar.
"I was out shopping," the Pillar said. "Needed a purge valve for my hooka-a-a-ah." Smoke spiraled from his mouth, hitting the guard in the face. The guard sank to his knees from the power of the smoke, and Pillar lowered his head, squinting behind the smoke. "May I ask: whoo are yooh?"
6
DIRECTOR'S OFFICE, T
HE RADCLIFFE LUNATIC ASYLUM, OXFORD
To meet with the Pillar, Dr. Truckle prepared himself by swallowing two pills at once. His meeting with Professor Carter Pillar wasn't going to be easy. There was a reason behind the Pillar's repeated escapes. It killed him, not knowing it. Pillar the Killer was definitely going to bargain for something. Dr. Truckle had to find a way to compromise with him.
Under no circumstances could the doctor lose his job. It was all he had. After a money-draining divorce, ten years of serving at the asylum, and all the secrets the government had buried with him here, he could just not afford it. His kids had just been admitted to Oxford University, and his responsibilities had doubled. He also had his eyes on the young nurse in the secret ward that hosted prestigious people from Parliament. Insanity was a disease that spread to all classes and factions.
If Interpol and the FBI had just succeeded in convicting this lunatic Professor Pillar, Dr. Truckle wouldn't have been stuck in this position now. But like always, the small fish had to clean up the big fish's poop.
Giving time for the pills to take effect, he changed the channel on his big-screen TV. The news had nothing to talk about but the Cheshire Cat killer. The madman who left his victims dead and grinning.
"Boy," Dr. Truckle told himself, "that little Alice in Wonderland book drove the world insane. It's just a children's book, people."
The news showed recent footage of the Cheshire Cat sending a message to the world. It was a headshot, and he wore the orange mask of a grinning cat. It very much reminded Dr. Truckle of his childhood puppy named Garfield—which he loved to snuggle with and nibble at like a mouse. The Cheshire Cat's voice in the footage was distorted, but the words were clear:
"This is a message from the Cheshire to the world. Stay away from me and the people I am involved with. This is beyond the FBI, Interpol, and any other authority in the world. The girls I kill have nothing to do with you. It's a Wonderland War. Stay away. You've been warned."
Dr. Truckle wasn't sure if it were the pills or the Cheshire's monotonous voice that sent a shiver through his spine. The madness he'd just heard on national TV was beyond his years of expertise. It reminded him that the world was mad, in and outside of the asylum. He stood up and adjusted his necktie to meet with the Pillar. But before he did, a third pill wasn't a bad idea.
7
VIP WARD, THE RADCLIFFE LUNATIC ASYLUM, OXFORD
When Dr. Truckle entered the VIP Ward, Carter Pillar was sitting on the big couch in the middle of his cell. He was still wearing his fedora and white gloves and smoking his blue hookah from a pink hose. Dr. Truckle approached the bars while the Pillar leaned over his hookah. The Pillar wasn't an ordinary smoker. He demanded certain sizes, certain manufacturing, and no ordinary ingredients from exotic regions. The professor thought of his smoking as an art. Dr. Truckle was planning to intimidate him with his yelling, but the Pillar spoke first.
"Have you ever wondered if Wonderland is real, Tommy?" The Pillar liked to call him by his first name to provoke him. He didn't even look at him, talking in his distinguished lecturing voice. Dr. Truckle grimaced, suppressing his surfacing anger, unable to respond to this nonsense. "I mean, this lovely, stammering writer, mathematician, and photographer named Lewis Carroll couldn't possibly have just imagined Wonderland," the Pillar puffed, readjusting the charcoals with the other hand. "Just think of how his book has inspired, affected, and shaped the minds of children for almost one hundred and fifty years. It's safe to say that Carroll's words weren't a stroke of luck, but of genius. Something in that book makes people relate. Wonderland must be real."
"So, instead of talking about your escape, you expect me to talk about Wonderland?" Dr. Truckle inquired, dying to know what was on the Pillar's mind.
"The only philosophical problem with accepting the existence of Wonderland is that it means that our reality could actually be a figment of our imagination." The Pillar puffed out bubbles of smoke, which Dr. Truckle had never seen before. "An assumption that spikes an even crazier question: who are you?"
"Listen to me, you piece of…" Dr. Truckle couldn't play along anymore. He fisted one hand but then remembered to breathe like his psychiatrist advised him. "I don't have the slightest idea how you escape the asylum, but I get your point. You don't really want to escape. In fact, you like it here for some reason. You know I love my job and could lose it if you escape. So I'm all ears. What do you want in return for your stay so that I won't lose my job?"
"Alice Wonder," the Professor said without hesitation, puffing and adjusting coals. He never seemed to be satisfied with the placement of the coals, as if it were rocket science.
"Alice Wonder?"
"Alice Pleasance Wonder, patient number 1832, the one you lock up in a solitary, chessboard-like cell in the underground ward." The Pillar lost his whimsical lecturing voice to a flat and dull seriousness. But unlike Truckle, there wasn't the slightest hint of anger. "The girl you electrocuted over and over again and succeeded in making her forget all about Wonderland."
"That Alice." Truckle rubbed his chin, pretending he'd just remembered her. It was a relief knowing the Pillar's need.
"I want you to ask her a question. If I like her answer, then I'd like to meet her in person. Don't send a nurse. Do it yourself, and ask politely."
"You're out of your mind," Truckle spat out.
"'Out of my mind.' Ah, the irony." The Pillar laughed. "My victims used to say that to me." Just like that, any sign of humanity left his eyes. The change in his looks was so sudden that Dr. Truckle felt his throat become freezing cold. "I made sure they never said it again," the Pillar added.
The silence in the room suffocated Dr. Truckle. He wanted to disagree, but the Pillar's intimidation was beyond anything he'd done to his own staff. He understood now why the court accepted the Pillar pleading out due to insanity. He was insanity itself. Keeping him away from the world at any price was a victory.
"What do you want me to ask her?" Dr. Truckle said.
"It's a simple mathematical question, yet the answer isn't as easy as it seems." The Pillar leaned back on his couch, crossed his legs, and stretched one arm sideways. In Dr. Truckle's eyes, he looked like a loony version of Sigmund Freud. "Ask her what four times seven is." The Pillar plastered a fake smile on his face.
"This is nonsense." Dr. Truckle felt humiliated.
"Oh. You haven't seen nonsense yet," the Pillar said. "By the way, I choked one of your guards with my hookah hose and hung him like slaughterhouse meat at the end of the hall. I'd like you to clean that right away before it begins to smell."
8
THE MUSH ROOM, THE RADCLIFFE LUNATIC ASYLUM, OXFORD
Shock therapy feels like getting high. Each time Warden Ogier pushes the button, my body shivers so hard that my mind goes numb. It's not such a bad feeling if I think of it positively. I get to shut my mind off to the world for that brief buzz in my body. The world itself seems too noisy to me sometimes.
To top it off, I am soaked in some kind of liquid, so electricity has a more profound effect. Each time he presses the button, Ogier snickers, and grins. The shocks are short and to the point. If they send these bolts through my body for a little longer, I might make a good fried dinner for cannibals.
"How does it feel, Mushroomer?" Waltraud puffs spiral smoke in the air. She likes to call us mad people Mushroomers. This place I am being tortured in is called The Mush Room. It's all the nurses' and wardens' slang. Other than the analogy to most mushrooms being poisonous, they believe shock therapy mushes the patients' brains, and they find it amusing.
I'm sure Waltraud and Ogier don't want me to die. What would be the fun in that? Watching me suffer is pure entertainment for them. Life underground is pretty boring to nurses and wardens. I can see it in Waltraud's eyes. That's the problem with sane people. They almost always have a license to kill those they think are insane.
"Jeez." I rise against the pain and snicker back at Ogier. "I'm just a mad girl. Nothing personal." I
guess I got what I deserved for trying to escape.
Two hours later, I am back in my cell. The pain and dizziness are the least of my concerns. I feel lonely here without my Tiger Lily. Warden Ogier says she's been saved in a newer pot and sent to Dr. Tom Truckle's room, for his own amusement. Poor Tiger Lily, now in the hands of that vicious man.
A few minutes later, Waltraud tells me I have visitors.
9
VISITING HALL, THE RADCLIFFE LUNATIC ASYLUM, OXFORD
In the visiting hall, I sit opposite my mother and two sisters. There is no barrier between us. It's just tables. The visit is half an hour, max. Radcliffe Asylum's patients always behave. One threatening look from Warden Ogier or Nurse Waltraud will suffice.
"How are you, Alice?" My mother reaches out to touch my hand. I let her, although I am not really sure she is my mother. She has faint, uncombed brown hair. Her eyes are moistening. I think she loves me.
"Mad." I let out a weak smile.
Lorina and Edith, my sisters, snicker with their hands covering their mouths. Their eyes are twinkling. They feel more like stepsisters to me. I don't think they love me at all.
"Don't say that, darling." My mother's sincerity should affect me. It doesn't. Maybe because I am mad. I don't even remember her name, so I don't ask. I wonder why I remember the names of my sisters. Maybe because they are mean to me. I met all of them a week ago, for all I care. Before that, I was probably someone else entirely. At least, the tattoo on my arm suggests it. "You're just having a rough time." My mother's still caring enough to make believe she is my mother.