by Cameron Jace
“I suppose you don’t know we don’t have signals for phones or WiFi in the asylum,” Tom says.
“Since when?” I am curious.
“Just learned about it thirty minutes ago,” Tom says. “It must be Interpol’s doing. It crossed their minds that we’d seek help from outside.”
“The real question is: why wasn’t Fabiola invited?” the suspicious Alice in me asks.
“Good point,” the Pillar says.
“Maybe because she is ill in the hospital and can’t move?” The March’s tone is a bit accusatory. None of us even cared to visit Fabiola.
“Could we spare the chitchat?” Tom pops down another pill.
“We could,” the Pillar says bitterly, still chewing like a goat, and pretending the wound doesn’t hurt. “How about you gimme one of those pills?”
“You want my pills?” Tom’s eyes widen.
“I know I’d end up dumb like you.” The Pillar is still chewing. “But the pain is unbearable.”
“Be my guest.” Tom hands one over.
“Is it bitter?” The Pillar stares at it with distaste.
“Not like the stuff you’re chewing on,” Tom says.
“Do you have honey maybe? Some cinnamon to sprinkle on it? I hate pills,” the Pillar muses.
“You’re not really interested in the pill,” Tom says. “You just want to talk. You think we’re going to die in here, right?”
“Caught me.” The Pillar smirks and stuffs the pill into Tom’s mouth. He turns and flashes that grin of his at me. “Alice, why don’t you just shoot me? I mean, really shoot me?”
“What?” I tense, feeling both offended and betrayed by his apathy. “Why ask now?”
“Because whoever invited us here, really thought it through. It’s unlikely any of us will make it out alive. The only choice we have is to push the button and trap ourselves inside forever. Imagine spending the rest of your life in a bunker with all these insane pill-popping individuals. I’d prefer being shot.”
40
The Queen’s Limousine
“LOL.” The Queen grinned, sipping her champagne.
“Please don’t say that,” Margaret said, incredibly annoyed by her company.
“LOL!” Jack followed, cheering with Lorina.
“You can’t say LOL, My Queen,” Margaret protested. “This is real life, not Facebook.”
“What do you want me to say? Laughing Out Loud?” the Queen said.
“Not even that. Just laugh,” Margaret said.
“But how would you know I’m laughing out loud? It’s hard to express how much I’m laughing without telling out loud that I’m laughing. Right, Jack?”
Jack, Lorina, and the Queen clinked glasses and cheered as if they were drunk students on prom night.
Margaret could not fathom what was really going on, but she had to ask. “Why do you feel you have to laugh out loud now? Is it because Alice is going to die now?”
“Nah,” the Queen said. “A minute ago I remembered that they may think they’ve found a way out of the asylum.”
“How so?”
“The Pillar used some spell which opened a hole that lead to the underground tunnels,” the Queen said. “This was how Pillar escaped the asylum repeatedly.”
“Really? How do you know that?”
“I’ll get to that in a minute. The brilliant part of the story is that I can imagine them thinking about using the hole for escape — that’s assuming the Pillar is inside as well.”
Since Interpol had announced the Pillar as the head of the terrorist organization, Margaret had already assumed he was inside. Her messenger must have planned that part as well. However, she was curious about the Queen’s story about that hole. “So we should tell your men about this hole, right?”
“Nah.” The Queen raised her glass. “They’ll discover it’s not working anymore. It’s either totally blocked or too small for anyone to pass through.”
“Really, how do you know all that?”
“I found out about the hole two weeks back and arranged for its size to be shrunk. Don’t worry. They can’t leave.”
“Please Queen, I’m curious.” Margaret leaned forward. “How could you have known? The Pillar is usually meticulous and careful enough you wouldn’t be able to fool him so easily.”
“Not when time travel is involved.” The Queen winked.
“Time travel?”
“Mr. Tick and Mrs. Tock had traveled back in time for a mission of their own and told me about the Pillar’s trick when they came back.”
“Unbelievable.”
“I promised them a few favors in exchange for a little tweak in the timeline.”
“You mean you sent them back again to change the tunnel?”
“Sometimes you’re smarter than I think you are, Duchess.” The Queen clinked glasses with Jack and Lorina again. “Last week I sent them to shrink the hole, and now the Inklings can’t leave.”
“But wait a minute. This means…” Margaret was furious. She’d suddenly discovered she’d been played and manipulated by the shortest and most obnoxious ogre in the world. The Queen of Hearts.
“Yes, dear Margaret.” The Queen nodded. “I knew about the invitation. I knew about the message you received.”
“And you acted as if you didn’t know about the message? Why?”
“You’ll understand soon enough.” The Queen stuck out her tongue like child.
“But you’re not the messenger,” Margaret contemplated.
“No, I’m not. I’m just a helping hand. Don’t worry, Duchess,” the Queen said. “Something horribly beautiful is going to happen today. Just remember, I’m smarter than you. In fact, I’m smarter than all of you! And by the way, I was just bluffing when I told the police we’re going to barge in. I just wanted Alice to come out and get shot!”
41
The Radcliffe Asylum
“I’m going to face them outside and tell them we’ve been framed!” I say, turning around, ready to face death itself.
“No one’s going to believe you, Alice,” the Pillar says behind me.
I dismiss his words and walk on through the corridor.
“He is right,” Tom says. “No one’s going to believe you.”
“We have to stand up and face them.” I stop and turn back. Tom, the Pillar, the March, and the Mushroomers are staring back at me. A variation of different stares. But one thing is similar. They look up to me as if I’m the leader who has to find a solution. “We can’t let Black Chess rule the world, posing as if they’re the world’s savior.”
“It’s too late for that,” the Pillar says. “This isn’t a yesterday’s plan. This has been going on for two hundred years. Black Chess is everywhere. In every industry. In every authority. The masses are brain washed. No argument can change that.”
“You’re the last one to tell me this,” I say. “You’ve convinced me we can do it. You made me believe I can save lives. So stop the hypocrisy.”
“I meant every word I said,” he says. “But just be real about it. The world has been suffering from so many terrorist attacks in the past few years. The public is hungry to find who is responsible. Hungry for justice. We’re the scapegoats now.”
“Then what should we do?” the March asks, worried like a four-year-old.
“Anything but go outside and talk to them,” the Pillar says, but then falls into a thinking silence for a moment.
I let the silence fill the room. Let it slow down the anger. When in anger everything is confusion. All actions executed in confusion end up being mistakes. The silence stops time. Time heals — partially. But it helps make us think. The Pillar is a master of such moments. I swear I will kill him eventually, but it’s a good idea to have his deception on my side for now.
“What are you thinking?” I ask him.
“It has just occurred to me that part of their plan is to lure us outside,” he explains. “The fake threat, claiming they’d barge in, was a game. They wante
d us to give in and go out.”
“Why?”
“It’s hard to tell. This whole situation is bonkers, but maybe they want to shoot us in public and pose as heroes in the public eye. Maybe something else.”
“Then my idea of confronting them wasn’t that bad.”
“You could be right, Alice. But…”
“What is it, Pillar? We only have five hours left.”
“I think I have a better idea.”
“You think?”
He rolls his eyes. “Okay. I have a better idea.”
“Speak up. And it better be good.”
“I know someone who can crawl into the small space of the hole.”
“That’s hard to believe. The hole is too small. Besides, what good will come out of it? We can’t fit anyways.”
“I’m sure the asylum is full of secret tunnels none of us, or anyone else, have discovered. Somewhere in these tunnels there must be a wall leading to a usable tunnel. All we have to do is bring the wall down.”
“Why are you so sure?”
“History. It’s a given fact that the Radcliffe Asylum was surrounded with tunnels in the time of war. Escape tunnels, now buried in the rubble of time and neglect.”
“We could punch through every wall, starting now,” a Mushroomer suggests.
“That would take forever,” Mr. Tom Pessimistic Truckle comments.
“If we get someone with a tiny figure to crawl through, they could find a way and guide us. We could use Tom’s walkie-talkies to communicate.”
“How do you know I have walkie-talkies?” Tom says.
“You’re an eighties guy. I searched your office, but that’s not the point,” the Pillar says.
“It’s not the point indeed.” I step forward. “The point is, who do you think can crawl in that small space?”
The Pillar shrugs. “Someone I should not introduce, but I have no choice.”
“Who?”
“A girl.”
“A girl?”
“A little girl who once was the sixth member of the Inklings.”
42
Outside the Asylum
The Queen’s gloating had been spoiled with a knock on her window. She rolled it down a fraction of an inch. An Interpol officer bobbed his head and informed her through the tiny opening that they needed her to kindly step outside. Rolling down the window further, the Queen spat on him and humiliated him for a while, but finally gave in, realizing that something unexpected had happened.
Something that seemed like a devious twist in a well-planned script.
“What?” She burped in the face of the officer standing in front of the asylum. “Who wants to talk to us?”
“Carter Pillar.”
“Why? He is a terrorist and will die in a few hours.”
“He is offering a solution out of this situation.”
“Solution?” she roared. “As if we’re not the ones with the upper hand now.”
The officer leaned closer, whispering. “In the public’s eye we can’t deny him that, or we’d be crucified.”
The Queen fidgeted in her place. “What does the Pillar want?”
“He sent us a Mushroomer asking for a phone with a signal and a camera. We sent him one. He is going to appear on national TV in a moment.”
The Queen sighed and crossed her arms, watching the Pillar show up on TV. He sat on Tom Truckle’s desk in the asylum with a paper in his hand. He looked tired, with a few blood stains on his blue suit.
“Do I look good?” the Pillar asked the camera man.
“Good.”
“Does my hat look good?”
“Good.”
“Do you look good, camera man?”
A few Mushroomers laughed. The Queen was getting impatient.
“People of Britain,” the Pillar began. “People of the world.”
“Who does he think he is?” the Queen mumbled. “A king or a queen?”
“My name is Carter Pillar,” he said, facing the camera. “I’m the leader of the most organized terrorist group in the world.”
The Queen grinned with satisfaction.
“I’ve done really bad things.”
Her grin widened.
“But you will not catch me. Not because I will escape justice, but because I’m mad. I flew over the cuckoo’s nest a long time ago and my mind never came back. According to the law, you can’t punish a mad person.”
The Queen scratched her temples, wondering what the Pillar was up to.
“However, this isn’t the purpose of my speech,” the Pillar said. “I’m offering to turn myself in. I mean, if the police shot me, it would be unfair, because I have answers to all of your questions. The reason for our atrocious and inhumane attacks in the past years that you, the public, will want to hear.”
“This doesn’t look good,” the Queen commented. “What are you up to, Pillar?”
“But I will only turn myself in in exchange for a little girl who is also a terrorist,” the Pillar said. “I will hand her information to your messengers. Hand her over and I will be yours. This is the Pillar, the most wanted saxophonist — I mean terrorist — in the world. Over and out, happy days, chocolate and madness to y’all.”
43
The Queen of Hearts was contemplating the Pillar’s offer when the call came in. Checking her personal phone, she saw it was Mr. Jay. She had to pretend it was her mum and that she needed privacy. No one even wondered how old the Queen of England’s mum would be, and if she could possibly be still alive.
“Hello?” the Queen said, alone in a side alley with a few of her guards on the corner of the street.
“Are you considering the Pillar’s offer?” Mr. Jay asked in his low and hollow voice.
“I need to think about it, though I wouldn’t want to hand the girl over.”
“The little girl is of no threat. She is an Inkling. Always was. I say she should die with the rest inside.”
“I wouldn’t trust the Pillar.”
“Neither would I, but what can he do? They are squeezed inside the asylum. None of his tricks will work.”
“If you say so,” the Queen said. “But I’d ask the exchange to be between Alice and the little girl.”
“Why?”
“I’ve tempted Jack to kill her if we could bring her outside.” She snickered with mirth.
Mr. Jay sounded as if pleased with the idea, though the sound he made to express that would scare an infant and suck it to its mother’s womb.
“What do you think, Mr. Jay? Let’s ask for Alice and watch the boy she loves kill her in plain sight.”
“What would be the reason for him killing her? The public doesn’t recognize Jack as an authority. Even if they think she is a terrorist, he doesn’t have the right to kill her.”
“I’ll make sure I’ll introduce Jack as one of my guards to the police. He will have a license to kill Alice then. And then I’ll make up another story of him being a traitor.”
“Ah, you’re disposing of Jack as well.”
“Two Inklings with one stone.”
“I thought you wanted to use Jack’s talent on our side?”
“That was before today’s situation. Let’s really get rid of every Inkling today. We owe it to ourselves. They’ve been dragging us back for too long.”
Mr. Jay remained silent for a while. He always did that when thinking things over. The Queen waited. In her mind, she contemplated asking him about the Six Keys. Why they had suddenly given up on the idea. But she assumed the Cheshire’s trip to the future had something to do with it. He’d once been in Jack’s mind, and Mr. Jay wouldn’t let her kill Jack if he still needed him for the location of the Keys. The Six Keys’ location were definitely in the Cheshire’s mind. Which reminded her: she’d not seen the Cheshire for some time. Where could that devious cat be now?
“I think we better get the Pillar out,” Mr. Jay interrupted his own silence.
“Why so?”
“First of all,
I want to see him die in public. I’d like to see him on his knees while the police bury him under their bullets.”
“And his fourteen lives?”
“Don’t worry. Interpol was provided with Bandersnatch bullets. I took care of it.”
“Brilliant, but why else would you prefer the Pillar coming out?”
“Because of Alice.”
“I’m not following.”
“Alice is always stronger with the Pillar by her side,” Mr. Jay said. “Killing the Pillar will weaken her, no matter how much she knows about him or how much she thinks she hates him.”
“He’s been a great asset to her, I admit.” The Queen thought it over. “As you wish, Mr. Jay. The Pillar it is.”
“One last thing,” Mr. Jay said. “Give him a chance to make a fool of himself when he gets out. Let him speak and babble. I’d like to have a good laugh before he dies. Then, once it’s enough, make something up and shoot him. Just scream and tell the police he has a gun or something. They will take care of it.” He let out a long sigh. “That will be some nasty show broadcasted worldwide. I love it.”
44
The Radcliffe Asylum
I watch the Pillar being pushed by the Mushroomers in his new wheelchair. He’d decided against limping his way out to the crowd. The loon still has his pride by his side. Ten Mushroomers volunteer to assist him, though they know they will get caught. I’m done arguing with them. They love him in ways I can’t understand.
“Maybe you’re not destined to kill me, Alice.” He smirks, passing me by.
“Don’t underestimate the Queen outside. They’ll probably shoot you in public to please the masses.”
“It still won’t be you.” He winks and begins rolling himself.
I stop the wheel chair with a grip of steel, bend over and glare at him. “If they don’t kill you, Pillar, don’t think I won’t.”
“That’s if you make it outside without me.”