by Cameron Jace
The stings turn into bolts of electric pain. Then when the wounds are many, the skin begins to heal. This makes it contract. The pain intensifies. The pain of the wound and the pain the healing. The intensity is so much that I can’t take it. The only way to counter it is to go mad.
“I can’t cut myself anymore,” I tell Fabiola as she shoots Reds.
“Toughen up,” she says over her shoulder. “It will heal once you cross over from pain to pure madness.”
“Madness?” Tom is about to pull out his hair. “Listen, I promise if you get me out of here alive, I will turn myself into an asylum, wear a straightjacket for the rest of my life. But please, save me!”
I keep cutting, “Am I not going to faint?” I ask Fabiola.
“Not if you’re the Real Alice,” she says, mocking me, encouraging me to become a beast, not a beauty.
“Why didn't you say so when I first met you? It would have solved everything,” I roll my eyes.
“How does the sword feel in your hand?”
“Heavy,” I reply. “It’s strange. As if it doesn’t want me to hold it. I can’t explain it.”
“It means you’re not ready. Once you cross over with the pain, it will work. You will be so strong. Trust me.”
I take a deeper breath, ashamed it’s taking me so long, and that I am not fighting with the rest.
“Look at all this blood on the floor,” I say. “Do I come from Wonderland or a Halloween movie set?”
The pain is too much. I am drowsy. I am going to fall dead, being stupid, and trusting the troubled Fabiola. I am waiting for the madness to arrive. Waiting for the sword to lighten up in my hand.
Instead, I am awakened from my drowsiness by a scream.
Who is it?
Constance?
Jack?
Lewis?
No, it’s Fabiola. She’s been shot. She turns and looks at me with frozen eyes as if she didn’t expect it. As if someone had told her she’d be invincible for life. She tries to touch me, but before she does, she falls on the floor.
Past: Wonderland
The Hatter didn’t come that day, nor did he ever.
The Queen had found the Hatter’s love letters in her sister’s bedroom. All stained with tea and full of nonsensical words that meant nothing to the Queen. Very typical of a nonsensical being like the Hatter. The Queen of Hearts had never understood why everyone loved him so much. Especially the March Hare, who was as mad and stupid and as naive as the Hatter.
The sister found the Queen’s guard surrounding her in the middle of the garden. Panicking, she asked about the Hatter, but she was too late. The Queen had let her Bandersnatch beast hunt him down outside.
Wriggling and crying and protesting didn’t help. The guards chained the sister and forced her to her knees. The Queen showed her that she had caught the Hatter and was about to torture him. That was when the first Mush Room instrument had been invented. The Queen had just discovered the fun side of electricity. She realized it had a greater purpose than bringing light out into the world. Electricity could, in fact, fry someone’s brains, which was better than chopping it off. Much, much fun.
The little sister couldn’t take it. She promised to do anything so the Queen of Hearts would let the Hatter go. The Queen smirked. Her plan had worked. Now her little sister would eat the mushroom willingly.
And she finally summoned to it and ate it.
A week later she got engaged to the Pillar… willingly… or mushroomy, or nonsensically. Whichever way you want to put it.
Present: Warehouse in the London
Fabiola isn’t waking up. It is as if her heart has stopped beating. Nothing.
Lewis loses his grip on the fight and gets wounded when he turns to check on Fabiola. Jack gets aggressive and runs into the Reds, killing a few like he had done so many times before. But then he realizes they’ve trapped him in the middle and are about to kill him. Constance is still fighting but is now giving me that blaming look. I should have saved everyone. Tom is hiding somewhere; we can’t find him. The Chauffeur disappeared some time ago.
As for me, I am drowsy from cutting myself. Soon, I’ll fall dead next to Fabiola.
In this rollercoaster of all the wrong emotions, something happens. It’s not like I am getting better as Fabiola said earlier, but the sword lightens in my hand. The Vorpal sword seems to send shivers down my spine. Good shivers.
A bolt of energy surges through my soul. With a pint of anger, I’m all good.
I raise my sword and run as fast as I can to save Jack. It’s not long before I find myself running on air, above the Reds’ heads. I don’t resist the transition. The power. Evil meets good meets efficiency. I slice the first head with the lightest and smoothest sword I’ve ever seen.
Jack’s eyes widen. He starts shooting as well, but can’t stop glancing at me now and then.
The elevation isn’t permanent. It’s like I need to feed it. If I stay up in the air too long, I tend to fall again. I realize it’s fed every time I kill a Red.
Chop. Chop. Chop.
Easy like a thin knife into butter.
“It’s about time!” Constance cheers.
I use the Reds’ shoulders as standing poles between my jumps, in case the elevation doesn’t last long. This damn power needs feeding, which means killing.
The Reds scatter all around me, trying to confuse me so they won’t be an easy target. They’ve forgotten about the others. They’re all on me now.
“Don’t kill her,” one of them shouts. “Mr. Jay wants her alive—”
His last words. I chop off his head.
From the corner of my eye, I see Constance use the Reds leftover cloaks to make a bed for Fabiola. Who knows where those Reds disappear to when you kill them?
Funny, I notice now my wounds are suddenly healing.
The Reds scattering maneuvers don’t help me, and they keep coming through the door. I need to find a way to gather them closer to each other.
“I can tease them, if you want,” Constance yells from afar, jokingly.
What did she just say? Distracted, I turn and look in her direction.
“Yes,” she nods while mending Fabiola. “I heard your thoughts.”
“How is that possible—” I start to ask.
Red slices a wound at my thigh.
The pain is so abrupt that I lose my grip on my sword. It skids before me on the floor as I tumble sideways.
“No!” I shout.
Jack gets to his feet and does the right thing. Instead of helping me up, he shoots the Reds trying to get their hands on the sword. Lewis returns and starts fighting the Reds who are trying to kill me while I am on the floor.
The pain is too much, but then I hear a voice in my head. “Reach out for the sword. It will come to you.”
I turn my head and gaze at Constance. “Reach out,” she says it out loud now. “I don’t know how I know, but I do.”
My hand stretches as much as I can. I glimpse Tom picking up a cellular from the floor. One of the Reds lost their phone? That’s absurd.
Suddenly, lightning surges through my body again, and my brain feels as if it’s frying. The Vorpal sword flips in the air, high, somersaulting back to me.
“Wow!” Constance exclaims.
One of the Reds near me has a more precise thought, “Shit,” he says as I grip the sword and I slice him open.
This time, I am much stronger. Lewis, Jack, and Constance appear much stronger now too.
“We can do it,” Constance says. “Fabiola is well, by the way. She only hit her head into something. No bullet.”
“Like the old days, all over again,” Lewis says to her.
Jack stands perplexed, not remembering anything about the past. Lewis’s rabbit peeks out of his pocket and tells him, “Just don’t say anything like ‘awesome’ or ‘fantabulous.’ Don’t spoil the moment, Jack.”
And then we bring hell on the Reds. The Inklings are back.
Past: Wonderlan
d, Wedding Day
The Pillar and the Queen’s sister kissed. She had to bow down a little to kiss him. She was wearing the fanciest wedding dress, made from the feathers of swans, and the Pillar was wearing a blue tuxedo, buttoned with pieces of gold. He was wearing a hat which he hadn’t done before. Actually, the hat belonged to the Hatter. The Queen had confiscated it the day she gave her sister the mushroom.
The Queen’s sister is so happy. The crowd is puzzled. The Hatter is older, shorter, uglier, and meaner. How come this beautiful girl loved him so much?
Her face was red from too much happiness. It’s like she had been in love with him for years. Rumors had it that she had been the one who proposed. Rumors also had it that she had been doing drugs, and he was her dealer.
None of that made sense, but none of the Wonderlanders spoke against it. None of them knew how to stop a girl so madly in love.
The Pillar had made sure everything went smoothly, so he’d brought his hookah along. A few puffs here and there and the crowd got dizzy, giggled, and were happier than the bride. The wedding wasn’t just the happiest day in the Pillar’s life, but it was also good business. He’d made a few high-class clients as well. He used to say the difference between ‘wed,’ and ‘weed’ was just the added letter E. Nothing much.
Flowers showered the bride and the groom, and the Queen’s guards played the music. Wonderland had been so colorful that day. A dark day full of rainbows.
The Pillar winked at the Queen while ushering his bride to his mushroom carriage. Instead of a pumpkin-shaped one, he had it mushroomed and smoked. It was long, like the limousine he would ride in the real world later. The Pillar liked long cars. Was he compensating for the shortness of other things on his behalf?
He rode in the carriage with his bride, and they drove away. The Queen’s sister couldn’t stop kissing him.
“I love you, so much, Pilly,” she said.
“Me too,” he arched an eyebrow in the backseat. “Just forget the Pilly thing. I like people calling me Pilla da Killa.”
She laughed, hand on her heart. “Why? Who are you planning to kill?”
He winked at her and leaned in to kiss her again.
“So, where are we spending the honeymoon?” she wondered.
“In my mushroom hut.”
“That’s it? I thought you’d take me to—”
“Trust me, the mushroom hut is the best,” he explained. “As longed as we smoke the hookah, in our minds we’ll be visiting anywhere in the world.”
She laughed again. Even his chauffeur was annoyed. How did the Pillar get the girl to love him so much?
She rested her head on his chest and patted him. “I love you so much, Pilla da Killa. I wonder if you love me as much.”
The Pillar grinned. “You have no idea how much you mean to me, White Queen. No idea.”
Present: Warehouse Location, London
Fabiola wakes up screaming as we’re fighting the Reds. I tell Constance to check on her. Since most of the Reds are escaping now, I have only a few to finish.
“She needs you, not me,” Constance says telepathically. “Go, we can finish the few Reds left.”
I dart back to Fabiola.
She is sweating like a pig. Her beautiful face seems like she’s aged years now.
“Are you okay?” I hug her. “What can I do for you?”
“Hug me closer,” she says surprisingly. “You have no idea what I have been through.”
“I know, the hospital and the wounds you got from Russia.”
“Not that,” she says in my ear. “You have no idea what happened to me in Wonderland, Alice.”
“I thought you were all badass in Wonderland?”
“That came later.”
I slide away to look in her eyes. “Later?”
“I’m like you. My life is a prolonged revenge story, trying to hurt those who had hurt me,” she admits.
“Then why did you go to the Vatican?”
“It was the only place I could cool down, slow down, and persuade myself that forgiveness was a virtue.”
“Is it?”
“It is, but it doesn’t take away the pain.”
“What are you talking about?” I am curious.
“All in time, Alice,” she says, standing up. “That’s if I live long enough to tell.”
“Are you sure you can walk—”
She smiles. Then winks. “Look at you.”
I realize the wound on my thigh has healed. I raise my head and ask, “So we’re invincible?”
“As long you keep on fighting after getting the wound, you should be okay,” she says. “That’s the power of the Vorpal sword.”
“Then why did you end up in the hospital after Russia?”
She leans closer and whispers in my ear, “Because I stopped believing.”
“So that’s the weakness,” I say.
“You have no idea how easy it is to stop believing, to take the easy way out, to sit and whine. We think it’s not going to happen, that we’re quote un-quote invincible. It’s not like that. Want to believe in something? Then do the hard work and keep believing day after day, even if it gets you nowhere.”
From the corner of my eye, I realize the Reds have escaped.
“I believe!” a voice shrieks.
Oh, it’s the March, waking up again.
In a second, we all gather around him. He is the most important of us all.
“Are you okay, March?” I ask him.
“Tell us where the Keys are,” Constance demands.
Hazy and disoriented, he looks like someone who's slept too much but doesn’t feel like he has slept at all. “I know where the Six Keys are. I know what they do.”
“Spit it out,” Constance says.
The March spits.
“Not like that,” I calm him, and Constance, down. “She means tell us.”
“I will remember when I see the mushrooms,” he says.
“But you said you know,” I tell him.
“I know that I know,” he explains. “And to know what I know that I know, I have to see the mushrooms.”
“You mean in London?” Lewis interferes.
“Lewis,” the March smiles. “It’s been long, dude. Where have you been?”
“Dude?” Jack is both offended and confused. Why would the March use the word dude?
“That cap on his head is messing with his brain,” Constance tells me telepathically.
“All right,” I tell the March. “Where in London, then?”
“A garden, one of my designs,” he says. “I can’t remember which.”
“A garden of mushrooms?” Tom Truckle arrives, so interested, now that we are safe. I hope he is not after the Keys as well. “In London?”
The March nods. “But I am not sure about the London thing. I am just speculating.”
“If it’s a garden then it could be the Poison Garden in Alnwick, Northumberland,” Lewis suggests. “It’s where the Pillar used to live. His portal between real life and Wonderland.”
“So it’s been there for centuries?” I wonder. “It means the March didn’t design it.”
“We don’t know when the March started designing gardens,” Fabiola says. “It could be an old thing in Wonderland.”
“I don’t know either,” the March says. “Poor March,” he pats himself.
“He is hallucinating,” Constance tells me telepathically. We can’t trust him.
I nod at her, letting her know it’s okay. The March is always trustable.
“Also the Poison Garden isn’t in London, Lewis,” Fabiola says.
“He said he isn’t sure about London,” Constance remarks.
“Why does everything have to be so complicated?” Tom growls.
“What if it were out of London,” Fabiola says. “We can’t leave London in this mess outside. We should take the easier solution.”
“Which is?” I ask him.
“The Mushroom Garden in London,” she says, �
��It’s well known and is closer. A lot of people have their wedding there. They call it the Kew Garden. It’s our fastest solution and our best bet.”
“Let’s go,” Jack says. “I’ve found an ice-cream truck outside. We can take it."
King’s Cross Station, London
Margaret stood in the bathroom, staring at her reflection in the mirror. She still wore her hoodie over the top of her face, counting on its shadow to conceal the rest. She just couldn’t stare at it anymore. She hated the Pillar so much.
Back in the limousine when she accompanied the Queen, she’d thought that this was the end. That she’d just met her maker in a glorious explosion. But she didn’t. She made it out alive.
On her back, amidst the smoke and the screaming all around her, she saw the Pillar’s shadow looming over her. With a machine gun in her hand, she was sure he was going to finish her.
“Why are you doing this?” She coughed at him. If she could have run or defended herself, she would have, but she was weak.
“Look at you, ugly Duchess,” the Pillar said. “The explosion took your fake beauty back.”
“That’s none of you concern Pillar,” she said. “You know the price I paid for this beauty.”
“You mean the price you made someone else pay,” he spat on the floor next to her.
“You’re not a saint yourself,” she said. “In fact, you might be the worst. You are the worst.”
“I guess I am,” he said absently, looking behind him. He had to move fast, or the police would catch him.
“So you’re going to finish me now?” She asked.
“No,” he said. “I will give you one last chance. Not to live, but to know — and of course, let Mr. Jay know.”
“About you?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me, please. I don’t think mid dying, but I just can’t understand. Why are you doing this?”
“I wrote the reason behind all of this in a yellow Wonder note, which I gave Alice, earlier,” he said. “She refused to read it, and buried in the bottom of her Tiger Lily pot.”