The Complete Alice Wonder Series - Insanity - Books 1 - 9

by Cameron Jace

  “Why?”

  “I guess it has to do with both of you crossing over through the Looking Glass. He saw you raging and was secretly scared of you.”

  “That doesn’t sound like an impressive villain. It would make a bad movie to have a cowardice villain like him. I thought he was the devil himself.”

  “He might be,” the Pillar smirks. “Did you ever notice the devil’s greatest trick was using others to do the work for him?”

  I nod. It makes sense. “So the Reds were sent to kill me and saw I will fight back, then?”

  “They saw my limousine and decided to deal a last card in their boss’s favor,” he explains. “Tell you that you should kill me.”

  “How would they benefit from me killing you?”

  The Pillar looks offended as if I should utterly get it. “Really, Alice?”

  “Really, Pillar. Answer me.”

  “You’re weaker without me, Alice.” He says it bluntly, unapologetically, in a tone that’s neither serious or happy. He is just reciting a fact.

  And he is damn right.

  Whoever he is, whatever his intentions are, and whatever darkness lurks in his past, he has always been the father whom I’ve never had. It’s hard to admit but it’s true.

  But I don’t make a big deal of it. My own hands betrayed me after all. I take a moment to think. All I need is more info to understand what’s going on.

  “What do you know about the phrase, ‘I remember tomorrow!’?”

  “So you talked to the March,” he says. “Did you unlock his mind with the six keys?”

  “Should I assume you don’t know yet what the six keys are?”

  He shakes his head into a no. It’s ironic how the rare moment the Pillar says the truth shows on his face. It’s like he truly becomes human for a second. Like he is capable of emoting in all honesty.

  “The cap on his head,” I tell him. “The six keys have been in front of our eyes all the time.”

  He doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t think it’s ironic. I think he is mad at himself for never figuring it out. “That’s…” he searches for words. “frustratingly genius on Lewi’s behalf, so genius I rather regret giving him the mushrooms to forget.I assume the bolts simply unlocked his memory—that’s why Black Chess planted a light bulb in his head at some point.”

  I nod in agreement. “He told me all about the Looking Glass. Lewis, Jabberwocky, and I crossing over and—“

  “I know the story.”

  “But you never told me.”

  “There is a lot I’ve never told you. Tell me what he told you about the children? How do we save them from Jabberwocky.”

  “He was sort of cryptic about it, or he didn’t have enough time,” I explain. “The mushrooms erupted and he fell. I lost him.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “Could be,” I imitate the Pillar’s bluntness, avoiding the guilty emotions of killing everyone around me—even if by accident. “All I know is that I should fight the Jabberwocky like Lewis predicted in his book, and then it will be shown to me how to save them.”

  He nods absently, rather in disappointment. “I remember tomorrow means…”

  This is when someone shouts my name in the distance and interrupts this crucial information.

  “Alice!” the woman’s voice shrieks. “Don’t let him fool you!”

  Oh. My. God.

  It’s Fabiola.

  “You should have killed him!”

  12

  Earlier That Day: Yellow School Bus, London

  Jack Diamonds’ jaw hurt from the surprise.

  He sat in the back of the bus and watched Alice drive recklessly, attempting to save the March Hare. The yellow bus jostled all over streets filled with mushrooms instead of buildings. It swung left and right as if int a cartoon show. Alice drove amidst fire and could have possibly run over people— he could not tell.

  After all, Jack’s life had been an insane and unexplainable ride lately, so much that he sometimes wondered if he were still dead.

  He hung tight to his seat, thinking about books being described as ‘edge of your seat thrillers.’ This wasn’t a book, he thought. But then he swallowed his own thought back. Who was he kidding? Each and every one here was a character in a book at some point.

  Still, the bigger question remains, who came first: the egg or the chicken; the characters in a book or the people who inspired the characters in a book?

  Such a hard question to answer. In fact, Shakespeare’s ‘to be or not to be ‘ seemed like an easier question to answer—if it ever was a question.

  Jack was losing his mind. It helped to watch the other passenger’s horror to stop thinking. Other people’s misery had always been great entertainment. We just never admit it.

  Everyone else was shocked and scared and hardly breathing. While they were either screaming or praying, Jack could only sum up his conflicted emotions with one word. A very articulate one. Most underrated yet overused word that even the Merriam Webster dictionary got wrong: shit.

  Right to the point. One syllable. Easy to remember. And it happens.

  Not that it really described the wonderfully painful act of defecating in the bathroom. It only describes that moment when life humiliates our hopes and expectations, leaving us speechless enough we can only think about our own poo.

  But this time Jack’s response wasn’t to the fact that Alice was going to get them killed.

  It was due to the fact that Alice will kill him again.

  “Slow down, Alice,“ Fabiola demanded in a shriveled voice. Having been hit in the warehouse already weakened her—if she wasn’t going to die soon. Jack knew Fabiola didn’t mind dying for a cause but not in a school bus.

  Lewis had dozed off already. His addiction to mushrooms and his darker Carolus were tearing him from inside out.

  Tom Truckle was nowhere to be seen. Jack wondered if he had died. The sneaky bastard.

  But what about Constance, that feisty girl?

  “Don’t worry Jack,” Constance sat right in front of him, gripping at the edge of her seat and looking back. “Death is just another brick in the wall.”

  He wondered if he imagined this. What did she just say? Did she just quote a Pink Floyd song about anarchy and the end of the world in a twisted Alice in Wonderland way?

  “You died before,” she told him, “and you came back.”

  The bus still jostled left and right. Jack had no idea how Constance remained so calm. She was so freakin’ young. Practically a child.

  “How does it feel to be dead yet also alive?”

  “It’s confusing,” he burst out.

  “You know why you’re still alive?”

  Now, this question changed everything. Death can’t oppose whys. Jack wanted to know. Why was he alive again? He was grateful, but it didn’t make sense.

  “Because Alice loved you enough to believe in you.”

  Jack threw a glance up ahead over Constance’s shoulder. Alice was definitely going to kill them again. If that was love, he had enough.

  “Her belief in you - and her guilt - was so strong it opposed the universe’s fate and brought you back.”

  “Then why is she about to kill me again?” He shrugged, being taught a lesson before dying by an eight-year-old or something.

  “Because we have to remember tomorrow.”

  Jack didn’t care if he had heard her right. It didn’t matter. He was probably hallucinating. His white tunnel of death was a young girl teaching him about the afterlife. Tomorrow, in this case, was afterlife right?

  “When we keep the memory of one person vivid after their death, they will forever stay alive,“ she said. “And children are the strongest who can keep memories.”

  It really didn’t matter what Constance said. Jack saw Fabiola was screaming at Alice again.

  Alice was going over a broken bridge. Death was one twist of a wheel away.

  “Don’t look in the mirror!” Fabiola said.

  Jack couldn
’t see. His position was twisted and tangled and he could hardly tell where he was. Constance had stopped talking to him.

  “Don’t look in the Looking Glass!” Fabiola yelled in pain and frustration. “Don’t look back at the rabbit.”

  It escaped Jack why Alice would have a mirror inside the bus but he couldn’t investigate from his awkward angle. All he knew was that Alice always feared mirrors because of some rabbit inside that scared her.

  But then Fabiola said something that made Jack’s head spin and spin, “Not again!”

  What? Did she say not again?

  That’s when Jack began to remember something. He wasn’t quite sure it was a memory. Not with a racing heart and fear of death. Did he just glimpse a memory of the yellow bus he died on? Did he just glimpse himself and Alice’s classmates? Did he see Lorena and Edith, Alice’s sister’s laughing at her? And did he just see Fabiola on the bus as well, hiding in the back, dressed as a school teacher?

  If Lewis always talked about six impossible things for breakfast then Jack just needed one possible thing before death. To understand what the heck was going on.

  But death waited for no one. Amnesia or not. Insane or not.

  Here it came. Sudden, brutal, and with a punch.

  The bus free-fell off some bridge or mushroom or whatever, and made Jack’s heart plunge up into his throat. His bones cracked. A smash. Blood everywhere. Blackout.

  And then…

  Death.

  He needn’t know more. This was death.

  Ask a man who died before and he will recognize death when it comes again. Was this what Constance meant by remembering tomorrow? Cause tomorrow he’d wake up both dead and alive at the same time.

  Everyone on the bus simply died.

  Again!

  13

  Present: The Wonderland War, London

  “Fabiola!” I say. “You’re alive?”

  “Why in Wonderland’s name didn’t you kill him?” Fabiola limped in the distance, blood covering her face.

  I am stunned and numb. Almost dizzy with both shock and happiness.

  “How come you’re alive?” I say, my legs cemented in my place, unable to run toward her and hug her.

  “Just stab the Pillar in the neck,” Fabiola was running closer.

  “Is everyone else alive?” I can’t stop myself from asking.

  “Then after you stab him, grab his hookah,” Fabiola wouldn’t answer my question. “Then choke him with its hose. It’s the only way to kill him forever.”

  It escaped me why Fabiola wants the Pillar dead now. She had all the time in the world. I can understand the Reds playing games with me and convincing me I should kill him. But Fabiola certainly wouldn’t lie to me. Besides I couldn’t kill him. And how come Fabiola is alive?

  But I’m glad I didn’t kill her. I need to know if Constance is alive. If Jack is alive.

  Fabiola arrives and snatches the Vorpal sword from my hands. God, she looks awful. It’s a mystery how she is still alive. Such a tough woman.

  I let her have what she wants, occupied with looking closer at her and making sure she is real and not a figment of my imagination.

  She swings the heavy sword in the air and aims at the Pillar’s neck. For a moment, I’m so sure she will kill him. Her furious eyes could not miss.

  But the Pillar is no easy feat. He does stop her and in the most unusual way. He doesn’t duck. He doesn’t run. He doesn’t hit back.

  All he does is pull out a mushroom from his pocket and shove it her way up in the air.

  Fabiola stops hands mid-air, looking at the mushroom as if she has seen the devil.

  “Addiction is a bitch, isn’t it?” the Pillar says with a smirk.

  Fabiola is speechless, frozen with surprise, sword in the air. Just like me a few minutes ago.

  But something about the Pillar’s smirk bothers me. I mean this is the man I’ve spent most of my time with for the past few months. I’ve seen him live, kill, laugh, sad, stoned, and I’ve surely seen him smirk. This smirk he gave Fabiola was… fake.

  I am not sure how because he is definitely making fun of her. But something isn’t right.

  While the world is in turmoil all around us, time stands still between the three of us.

  The Pillar smirking. Fabiola gritting her teeth. I am trying to understand what’s going on between them.

  “I will kill you eventually,” Fabiola tells him.

  This time the Pillar’s smirk fades. He nods in a sincere way I can’t fathom.

  The heavy moment is interrupted by the arrival of a fourth person. A man driving a scooter. He stops like a reckless child, letting the scooter roll on as he jumps off it. Looking closer I see he is wearing a Joker’s mask. He snakes his way between me and Fabiola and heads right to the Pillar.

  “Not Fabiola,” the Joker says. “I’m going to kill the Pillar, now that I know how.”

  Somehow I understand this is the Cheshire. True, he never has a concrete face, neither a voice to recognize him, but it’s the devilish way he talks that gives him away. He is like a corrupted kid, aiming to cause chaos for no reason but his own amusement.

  The Cheshire jumps high in the air with hands stretched like a lion’s paws, ready to kill the Pillar.

  But soon enough the Cheshire falls onto his Joker’s face.

  What happened?

  Things happened so fast, I have no concrete idea why the Cheshire lies face down on the street.

  Then I see the Pillar holding a cucumber next to the mushroom.

  Should I smile at the irony now? In all this mess?”

  “He wasn’t going to kill you with the mushroom in your hands anyways,” Fabiola says to the Pillar. “You got the Cheshire addicted to mushrooms, just like me.”

  “I know,” the Pillar said, amusing himself with the look of the sprawled Cheshire on the asphalt. “But I couldn’t resist the fun. I mean why cats are afraid of cucumbers still amuses me.”

  “How about me?” I tell him.

  “Don’t you have a Jabberwocky to kill?” He purses his lips at me. “Stay out of our family business,” he points at the Cheshire and Fabiola.

  “Fabiola and the Cheshire can’t kill you because of their weaknesses,” I say. “Why can’t I?”

  “Well you have another weakness,” he says. “Mirrors.”

  I nod in shame. I know my weakness of mirrors.

  “But walking around with a mirror is a bit of a hassle. I barely carry my hookah and it annoys me sometimes.”

  “You didn’t shove a mirror my way anyway,” I say. “Why couldn’t I kill you, Pillar?”

  “You’re smarter than asking a question like that,” his eyes aren’t looking at mine. He is facing Fabiola.

  “You’re bonded to him,” Fabiola says, looking back at the Pillar. “It’s always been his plan.”

  “Plan?”

  “Oh, God, Alice, you’re so naive,” the Cheshire stands up and puts his Joker face back on. “The Pillar bonded with you by making you like him. All the time you spent with him, knowing him. All the stuff he taught you was his way to avoid you killing him. You’ve always been the only one who could kill him and Jabberwocky.”

  The lump in my throat is thick and bitter enough it can kill. I’m Alice’s naive and fragile soul. “Why?” My voice is barely audible.

  “We don’t know,” Fabiola says. “Since you came back from the Looking Glass, you’ve brought Dark Alice with you. Since then you’ve been both a tender hand, but also a threat to everyone. This is why the Jabberwocky killed your parents, so he can break your heart and weaken you.”

  “Is that true?” I ask the Pillar, unable to stop the tears in my eyes. Goddamn it, I realize I love this man.

  “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled is making you think he is your friend,” he says with that smirk again.

  I can’t tell what’s wrong with the smirk, but who cares. My life and journey with this man makes sense now. Whatever he keeps telling me, Fabiola�
�s story makes more sense. He made me like him and put me under a spell strong enough I can’t kill him. Perfect plan.

  “Go kill the Jabberwocky and save the children, Alice,” the Pillar says. “Let me handle Fabiola and Chesh. We have our own past to resolve.”

  I grab my sword from Fabiola, tears still welling in my eyes.

  “I’ll take your scooter,” I tell the Cheshire, not sure how I feel.

  “I kinda need to go home,” he protests.

  “Shut up,” I wave my sword in the air and pick up the scooter.

  But I stop. I turn around. I have to ask the Pillar one last thing, “If you’re such a scumbag, how come you want the Jabberwocky dead? Are you using me to kill him so you rule Black Chess?”

  “The children,” he says.

  “What about them?”

  “I’m who I am because of the bullies in my childhood,” he says. “What if I can do one last good thing and help the children have a better life?”

  “Blah, blah, blah,” Fabiola says. “Don’t believe him. Just go, Alice.”

  “And what about you?” I ask Fabiola. “Why not warn me from the beginning? Why did you want to kill me at some point from the beginning?”

  “Because we’re all like Lewis Carroll,” she says firmly. “We all have a Carolus inside us. You had Bad Alice, Dark Alice, whatever. And you’re goddamn strong. I feared you would let the Dark Alice win. It’s been a journey full of hard decisions to make Alice. All we care about is the children.”

  I step over the scooter, feeling lonely and without a friend. With the Pillar exposed and Fabiola conflicted, Lewis confused, I wonder if Constance can be my only friend.

  “Is Constance alive?” I ask Fabiola, not bothering to ask how they’re still alive when I saw them die.

  “She is, but you have to find the Jabberwocky.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do,” I tell her. “I will do what I see as right for me. Enough with Alice going to save the world. I want Alice to save herself. I will find Constance.”

  None of them say anything. I guess my voice is authoritative enough they don’t want to confront me.