by Cameron Jace
"May I ask why you're dancing now?"
"It's not a dance. It's a Caucus Race. You run so fast, still in the same place," he says, so into it. "It reminds me that we can't escape our fates. But enough about me, Alice. How did it feel to save Constance today?"
"It felt…" I shrug. "It felt really good. Heart-wrenching, but good. I feel like if I end up living in the sane world, I need to save a soul every day to cling to my sanity."
The Pillar smiles broadly.
"What's that smile on your face?"
"You said it yourself," the Pillar says. "The only way to stay sane in the world outside is to save a soul every day. How about we do it again? And then maybe again?"
"I thought I was getting out to prove my sanity. Is that what I am here for? To save people from mad people and Wonderland Monsters?"
"Questions. Questions. Questions. Don't you ever learn that questions don't ever get answered unless I ask them?" he says. "Questions are the lazy man's way to try to learn when the only way to learn is not to ask."
"Then, what is the only way to learn?"
"To live, of course." He tilts his head. "Look at me. Not really a role model, but I am a fine example of living. You'd think I'm stoned and lightheaded, but you know that the stuff I've learned is endless. That's because I allowed myself to live every moment of it."
"Whatever." I stand up. "I said it as a metaphor. I don't really want to save someone every day. The outside world is too mad for me." I let out an uncontrolled laugh. "I think I better stay here. I believe you promised me I'd get my Tiger Lily back." I see it next to the couch. Someone has been taking care of her. She looks fine.
"As you wish, Alice." He pushes the pot my way. "As you wish."
I take the pot and feel its warmth in my heart. I paid a great price to get my friend back.
29
UNDERGROUND WARD, THE RADCLIFFE ASYLUM, OXFORD
Holding my precious pot, I walk among my fellow mad people back to my room. Waltraud taps her prod on her hand as she walks behind me. The patients on both sides stare at me, wondering where I have been all day. It's as if they secretly know I have been to the outside world and are wondering what it was like. I smile at them, and they tilt their heads, wondering why I am smiling today.
I know why. I am back home.
Waltraud informs me that it's too late for me to start shock therapy, but she promises me great pain soon. She and Ogier aren't finished with me yet after I tried escaping last time. I see a plaster on her nose from when I pushed her face into the bucket. Whatever pain they impose on me, it won't be as bad as knowing there are killers out there murdering young girls.
I enter my cell and place my flower next to the wall with the slight crack in it. Tomorrow she'll enjoy the sunshine for ten minutes again. Before I go to sleep, I run my fingers on the writing on the wall. It still says the fourteenth of January and has a key drawn underneath. I know for a fact that we're not in January. It's mid-December. Christmas is on the way. I have no idea what the date means. Why January the fourteenth?
As for the key, I have no clue what it means. Who wrote this on my wall?
Tired of questioning, I call it a day and lay me down to sleep.
Usually, my dreams in the asylum are short and make no sense. This time, I dream of standing at a bus stop. I look younger, probably seventeen. I'm holding someone's hand. I think it must be Adam J. Dixon's. He is wearing a hood, and I can't see his face. My first impression is that he is not Adam. He could be the Pillar playing games with me. Even worse, the Cheshire Cat. After all, I don't know what Adam and the Cheshire look like. How can I forget the face of someone I loved?
Whoever I am holding hands with squeezes in a gentle way. It's a warm squeeze, filled with love and care. I need it. I haven't felt this safe before. It's not the Cheshire or the Pillar. It has to be Adam.
Several other students come over and wait at the bus stop. They are all happy. They are laughing. They high-five Adam and talk to him. They call him Ay Jay. I am afraid they'll ignore me. None of their faces ring a bell, and they are supposed to be my classmates.
"Alice!" a girl says. And then another. They raise their hands to high-five me. Hesitantly, I clap back. They ask me how I have been. One girl whispers in my ear that she always had an eye for Adam, but now that we're together, she wishes me luck. She doesn't say it in a mean way. She is happy for me. She even points at my sisters, Lorina and Elsie, standing at the bus stop opposite to us. They don't say a word. Their eyes say it all. They don't like me.
Adam is taller than me. He bows his head with the hood still on and whispers in my ear, "I heard that." His voice is so musical that I want to play it over and over again. "They don't know that I am the lucky one." He squeezes my hand again.
The bus arrives before I get to talk back to him or see his face. He pulls me ahead, and we get on the yellow bus. The atmosphere is ethereal. Everything just fits. I think the sky is even pinkish in my dream. If this was my life before the asylum, then I'm better off dead now, without Adam and my friends.
Yes, I know I'm dreaming, and it seems I'm the only one who knows this is in the past. The others are just happy, cracking jokes. I am supposed to have spent a lot of time with them, but I don't remember one face. The bus takes off, and I'm starting to doubt we're heading to school, or we wouldn't be that happy.
Adam keeps talking to the others while I'm occupied with the bus. My sisters said I killed everyone on a bus. Could it be this one? I stand up and walk the aisle, looking for a stranger on the bus. My gut feeling tells me there is an intruder in here. I know I'm not crazy. I couldn't have killed all those happy people I seem to love. Why would I?
I eye each passenger but don't see someone I know or suspect. It even crosses my mind that I might find my envious sisters on the bus. Maybe they did it, but they aren't here.
I reach the beginning of the bus, near the driver's seat, and realize who the intruder is. The bus driver has rabbit ears.
I rub my eyes and stare back at everyone. They don't seem to see it. I take a step forward and notice the sign says the bus is driving to 83 St. Aldates Street in Oxford, the same street where I got off at the Tom Tower this morning.
"You're late, you're late, for a very important date," a voice mocks me. A voice I hate the most. It's the rabbit driver. He is the same rabbit I see in the mirror, with his white hair dangling down his face, except I can see his teeth now. They are pointed, like a scary clown. The rabbit has a pocket watch dangling from his hand.
"Leave me alone," I say. "I'm not mad."
"How is this for madness?" The rabbit pushes the gas pedal and speeds up, crossing over to the opposite side of the road. The bus is swooshing by the cars driving our direction. He wants to kill us all. I jump on him and grip the wheel, trying to stop the bus, but the rabbit is too strong. I can't steer.
My friends in the back scream, "Don't do it, Alice! Don't kill us!"
I have no idea why they think it's me. I turn back, and the rabbit is gone. The bus is on the loose. When I raise my head to look at the cars, glass splinters in my face. We've already crashed. It's time to wake up from the dream. How in the world did I survive this?
30
PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION BUS, OXFORD
I wake up shaking in my seat. Yes, I am in a seat, and on a bus. Not the one in my dream, but a real one, outside of the asylum.
"Bad dreams?" The Pillar rests both his hands on a cane next to me. We're sitting in the front seat of the bus. I crane my neck to see the driver. He isn't a rabbit. Instead, it's that mouse-looking dude who must be working for the Pillar. He is wearing an Irish hat this time.
The sun is shining feebly outside. I think it's the next day already.
"I dreamt of a school bus." I rub my eyes, checking out my modern Alice outfit. "Am I still dreaming?"
"Hit the brakes, please!" the Pillar shouts at the bus driver, who hits the brakes abruptly. Cars screech, and people honk their horns behind us as I almost ban
g my head on the pole.
"Does this feel like a dream to you?" the Pillar says and signals for the driver to proceed.
"You stole a public bus?" I furrow my brow.
"Rich people steal poor people's houses and lives. I can't borrow a public bus?" He shakes his shoulder, sincerely annoyed by my remark.
"How did I get here?" I touch my head. I am not hurt.
"I had to sedate you, and dress you up." The Pillar looks out of the window. "The Mushroomers helped me."
"Why would you do something like that?" I am dizzy and enraged by the Pillar dragging me out here. "I told you I am done with the world outside. I am not the Alice you think I am."
"There is something you have to see." The Pillar knocks his cane on the floor. "Stop here!" he says, raising his cane. I notice he never addresses the chauffeur by name. "Take this." He tucks a notebook in my lap. It looks like it belongs to a child, and has pink and yellow roses on the cover. It's a little smeared with ashes or something, though.
"What's this?" I open it up and flip through it. The notebook is girlish. Its pages are filled with drawings of a young girl in a blue-and-white dress. At one point, the girl is fighting a Cheshire Cat, then the Mad Hatter, and the Jabberwocky. It's basically a young girl's reimagining of a twisted Wonderland. The Alice in the drawing looks uncannily like me.
"It's Constance's notebook," the Pillar explains. "She drew all these three years ago when she was seven years old."
"So what? The girl looks a little like me. It doesn't mean I am the Alice she wants. I look pretty ordinary, like any other girl on the street."
"That's not the point. Constance had this book with her when the Cheshire kidnapped her. Her mother called and asked for it since it was left in the fireplace in Christ Church."
"Her mother called who?" I ask.
"Doesn't matter. She said Constance asked for you to deliver it. The girl wants to see you one last time. That's her house." He points to a two-story middle-class house. It's mostly gray but in a lovely way.
I stare at the house and then at the notebook. The truth is, I love Constance. I actually miss her, and it's only been a day when I only talked to her for ten minutes.
"All right," I sigh. "If that's all, I will deliver it."
31
CONSTANCE'S HOUSE
The doorbell to Constance's house is a cuckoo sound. I try not to laugh.
"Just a minute," a woman's voice calls from inside. A moment later, she opens the door.
"Hi." I bend my neck slightly. "My name is—"
"Alice," the woman says. She looks like Constance's grandmother, but she must be her mother. Her eyes are moistened. Was she crying? "I know." She pulls me closer and hugs me. Actually, she is squeezing me, and her armpits smell. I expect more hygiene from sane people, but I say nothing. "We were waiting for you."
"I brought you this." I show her the notebook.
Constance's mother stares at the notebook for a while, then breaks into tears. It's the kind of sniffling tears that make you think the person is sneezing in your face. I understand she is emotional, but I am bringing her the notebook. She should be happy.
"It's Constance’s." She holds it in her hands. Constance is the kind of word that is pretty good for spitting. She almost drenches me.
"I know." I smile. "Can I see her? I was told—"
The mother breaks into tears again. She needs a handkerchief, and I have none. Why does she keep crying? "Come in." She ushers me inside. Finally.
I walk into the modest house but don't get to look around, since the mother pulls me by the hand to Constance's room.
Constance's room is all about Alice in Wonderland. All kinds of wallpapers, toys… even the carpet has one big Humpty Dumpty on it. In between, there is always Alice, fighting dragons, wolves, and human-sized spiders. All the Alices are me. If I had doubts about the notebook, I can't escape a wall-size portrait of me.
This isn't happening. How could it be?
"She always talks about you," her mother explains. "I've always wondered why you never showed up. She said she keeps inviting you to dinner, but you're busy saving lives."
"I…" I am speechless, afraid that I'll burst into tears when Constance comes through the door. Did the Cheshire Cat plan this on purpose?
"Yesterday, she told me that even if the Cheshire kidnaps her again, you promised her you will always save her."
"Of course—"
"And now that it's happened, I believe you're here to—"
"What's happened?" I interrupt.
Suddenly, we both realize the horror. She doesn't know why I am here, and I don't know why I am here. The Pillar played me.
"You don't know?" Her mother looks puzzled. "Constance was kidnapped again yesterday by the Cheshire."
"What? How?" I slump to the bed, tears filling my eyes but refusing to burst out. "Didn't the police protect her? What is this, a jungle? The Cheshire kidnaps a girl twice? Why didn't you take care of her?"
"She wasn't taken here," her mother explains. "She went to the Alice Shop in Oxford. She was planning on buying you a present."
"The Alice Shop?"
"Yes. You must know it. It's on 83 St. Aldates."
32
ST. ALDATES STREET, THE ALICE SHOP, CHRIST CHURCH
It takes me some time to find the Pillar. He keeps playing that silly game with me on the phone, where he sends me messages and guides me through town to find him. Instead of firing back at him for playing me, he's disarming my anger by using the tactic of waiting. I have no choice but to play his game. At this moment, I have no one else but him to help me catch the Cheshire.
And I will catch him. I feel so close to Constance, and this is beginning to become personal between me and the Cheshire.
I end up in front of the Alice Shop at 83 St. Aldates Street. It's a gift shop, really nice. It screams Victorian style but has a red door with the number 83 on it. A young crowd visits and leaves with a Queen of Hearts playing card, a drinking bottle that says "drink me," a big fluffy rabbit in a tuxedo, and all kinds of souvenirs.
A breeze of cold air rushes behind me all of a sudden. When I turn around, I see it's a school bus speeding up. It's just a normal bus, and nothing bad is going to happen. It just reminds me of my dream, where the rabbit killed my friends. Why does everyone else think I killed them? I don't even know what's real and what isn't.
My phone rings.
"Historians will tell you that the Alice Shop is what inspired Lewis to write about the Old Sheep Shop in Alice's Adventures Through the Looking Glass," the Pillar says on the phone. "The truth is, this is the shop itself. Lovely, isn't it?"
"Can't quite say that, after you shattered my childhood memories." I purse my lips.
"You don't have 'childhood' memories. You have Wonderland memories. They will come back to you sooner or later. I don't promise you will like them, though."
"So why did I dream about the Alice Shop?"
"I can't think of something that could help in that shop. It's just the shop the Cheshire followed Constance to. That's it. Tourists come to visit it from all over the world. Constance just loved you so much, she wanted to buy you something special from it," the Pillar says, and I don't know his location. "The fact that you dreamt about it only backs up my theory that you're destined to save lives outside the asylum. You still want to stay lazy in your cell downstairs?"
"No." I'm confident about it. "If not to save lives, then to save Constance and catch the Cheshire this time."
"Can you write this down and sign it please, so I can use it in court when you change your mind again?" he says.
"Stop playing games. I learned my lesson. If Constance thinks I am her superhero, I will be. So don't waste time, and tell me something useful. Why did the Cheshire kidnap her again after I saved her?"
"Maybe you didn't really save her the first time. Maybe he let you save her."
"How so?"
"Maybe he just let you think you saved her," the Pilla
r says, "so he could know if you're the Real Alice because if so, you'll be a great threat to him."
"How can I be a threat to the Cheshire? And why don't you just tell me what happened in Wonderland in the past?"
"Other than the fact that I don't know everything, I have to protect certain assets of mine. Wonderland is like relationships: very complicated. Do I have to remind you that you and I weren't allies in Wonderland?" His voice is sharp as if he wants to carve the recognition into my skull.
"I didn't think I was friends with a serial killer."
The Pillar says nothing for some time. His silence is killing me. All kinds of crazy thoughts fill my head.
"I am really wondering what the Cheshire is after." Like always, he is a master of changing subjects. "Killing girls for fun isn't his thing. He is smart, sneaky, sly, and smooth, just like a normal cat. A killing spree isn't his thing."
"Then, where do I start looking for him? He must have a weak spot." I begin walking around the college. It feels good walking and breathing the air, like a normal person. I am starting to get used to it.
"In my caterpillar experience, a man's weakness always lies in their past, where all their dirty laundry is buried," he sighs cheerfully.
33
"How do we dig into his past?" I glance skyward, wondering if he's watching me from somewhere. I am not sure he is back in the asylum. He sounds as if he's around me. I don't know why.
"Why don't you think for yourself for a change?" the Pillar says.
I think it over for a moment. What do I know about the Cheshire? "The Cheshire likes games. His games are meticulously planned. He is fond of making them about grins and cats, his favorite subjects. He is also fond of hinting at his past—wait. Is that it? You said that Cheshire County and the cheese factory inspired Lewis to write about him."