by Cameron Jace
We roll onto our sides on our way to escape. I hold onto my sword. It occurs to me to cut through the plant, but who knows if it will work? What happens if you miss killing the devil? He will haunt you for the rest of your life.
Once we find space with no overhead plants, we stand up and run as fast as we can.
“There must be an explanation to all of this,” I shout.
“What are you talking about, Alice. Run!”
“First the mushrooms, but then plants invading the world and killing everyone,” I talk in chopped syllables. “Where do they come from?”
“It’s the end of the world,” Constance reasons while ducking under an arch of a building. “It’s like raging seas or meteors.”
“It doesn’t make sense, Constance. Someone knew the mushrooms would erupt. Someone almost knew the date. And they aren’t just a sign of the times. They are growing everywhere and now plants kill everyone. This is an invasion.”
“Stop it, Alice. Just run,” she begs me. “You’re hallucinating. Plants are invading the world, trust me. It’s just the end of the world.”
I don’t reply to her. I have an idea in my head. Something just hit me.
The Looking Glass.
The dark man in my past in Wonderland.
The fight between light and dark.
Between the Inklings and Black Chess.
It just hit me.
“Constance!” I stop running. “I know what’s happening.”
Constance stops reluctantly, looking sideways for attacking plants. “What, Alice? Why do you want me to stop?”
“This isn’t a fight between Black Chess and Inklings. Not a fight between good and bad. Not between Alice and the Jabberwocky.”
Constance closes her eyes, her lips twitch and she sighs, “Then what the freaking heck is it, Alice?”
“I know what the mushrooms and plants are for. This is a war between fa—“
My words stay in my mouth as I watch a plant curl like a snake around Constance’s leg and pull her away into the labyrinth of the ashen-colored, mushroom infested London.
25
Past: Mushroom Garden, Wonderland
The Hatter began to feel dizzy and soon he was going to either faint or die. He had to trace back the events that had happened a few moments ago when he first entered the Pillar’s Garden, also known as Mushroomland.
“So, what are you asking me, tea man?” the Pillar puffed into the Hatter’s face.
“Nothing much,” the Hatter said. “Just leave Fabiola alone. You’ve done enough damage to her.”
“And hoo aaahre yooh again?”
“You know me. You just called me Tea Man. Don’t play games, Pillar.”
“I know you’re a Tea Man. I was wondering who are you to order me around?”
“I’m not ordering you. I’m begging you. Just leave her alone. We all know you tricked her to think she loved you with the mushrooms. She has suffered enough.”
“Here’s the thing, Tea Boy — since men don’t beg anyone. You’re a nobody. A delusional happily ever after piece of nothing. You think you love her and you want to protect her. You probably read too many fairy tales, thinking you’re Prince Charming. Let me tell you about fairy tales. They’re all lies.”
“That’s not the point.”
“It is the point,” the Pillar put the hookah to the side and mustered a serious face. “Prince Charming should have been called Prince Asshole, or Prince Darkness, or better Real Man because they don’t ask. They do.”
“I’m doing by coming to you.”
“Well, Mushroomland is a public garden more or less. Public to the addicts. But props to you coming and uttering your devotion to the White Queen — who will never love you back by the way because she is a Queen and you’re a tea clown.”
The Hatter shrugged and fidgeted, just a little, so little that he himself didn’t notice it. But the Pillar, with his keen eye into other’s psychologies, saw it.
“If you were a man,” the Pillar continued. “You would fight me.”
“Don’t underestimate me, Pillar.”
“To underestimate, one has to first estimate. And when I think of you, I don’t even give you the slightest of values. You’re a child in a man’s body. Your happiness is a disguise for your inability to grow up.”
“I’m a grown-up man.”
“Grown-ups don’t throw tea parties and laugh all the time, Tea Weasel, because you know what? Growing up is painful. It’s blood and sweat and evil. You don’t get to think you can come and stare the devil in the eye and ask him to abandon his bride.”
“Are you the devil?” the Hatter seemed curious. It had been on everyone’s tongue for many years. Either the Pillar or Jabberwocky were the devil.
The Pillar laughed, head up, staring at the smokey skies. “I’d squish the devil like a rotten mushroom and bury him six horns under, Tea Sleaze.”
“Listen,” the Hatter couldn’t reason with him. “Whoever you are. Whatever you are, just let Fabiola have a new life.”
“She is mine, and will always be, whether she knows it or not,” the Pillar’s gaze returned to pierce through the Hatter’s soul. “As for you, I’m fed up with you.”
The Hatter took a step back upon seeing the Pillar disembark his throne of mushrooms. The short, ugly Pillar had a weight to his presence. There was something about his proximity that tore through the Hatter’s soul. The Hatter soon realized it may have been a mistake to come here. After all, the Pillar was right. The Hatter was nothing but a hopeless romantic with thin skin.
“You ever asked yourself what these mushrooms are for?” the Pillar asked, advancing slowly toward the Hatter.
The Hatter took a few steps backward now, even trying to lean his torso back as much as possible. He looked like a man on a rope walking backward.
“I don’t care,” the Hatter said. “I’m not here to interfere with your lifestyle. I’m only asking you…”
“Yeah, yeah,” the Pillar rolled his eyes. “To give you a chance with your princess. But your princess is an addict to my mushrooms, Teashroomer. What do you have to offer her?”
“Love.”
“Don’t offend me please,” the Pillar tilted his head, advancing still. “What do you have to offer her that would oppose my mushrooms?”
“Safety.”
“How many times do you want me to roll my eyes, tea puss? I mean how can you offer her safety more than me? Try once more.”
“Happiness.”
“Nonsense.”
“Happiness is not nonsense.”
“But nonsense is happiness,” the Pillar wiggles his eyebrows.
The Hatter continued retreating, now sweating, noticing how the mushrooms moved and formed a canopy above them.
“What’s going on with the mushrooms?” The Hatter asked.
“They’re doing what they’re meant to do.”
“Which is?”
“Invade the world,” the Pillar snickered. “One day they will cross over.”
“Cross over?”
The Pillar stopped and sighed. “Look, tea bag, you’re really boring.”
The Hatter stopped. For some reason, this description bothered him more than all else. He had always thought his mirth and demeanor made him entertaining and far from boring.
“I’d say leave this place and never think about Fabiola and never come back, or…”
“Or?” The Hatter mustered the courage to oppose the Pillar with a flare of nostrils like a madman ready to fight.
“You look like you want to sneeze,” the Pillar said. “Are you allergic to mushrooms?”
The Hatter’s shoulders shrugged and he gave in with a feeble sigh.
“Admit it,” the Pillar told him.
“Admit what?”
“Admit that you admire me.”
“I don’t.”
“Yes, you do,” the Pillar smiled. “You live in a bubble of love and enchantment, thinking the world needs teapu
ppies like you, but then when you meet real men like me you wonder: why is evil always strong? Why is evil so wonderful? Why is it powerful?”
The Hatter couldn’t oppose the argument. In truth, he admired the Pillar’s grandiose and attitude, if only he had used it for the greater good. But then part of being a good person was not to be like the Pillar.
The Hatter’s head dizzied and the realization that he could not protect Fabiola against men like the Pillar angered and battered him. Never was he going to steep tea again. He wanted to grow up. Drink whiskey. Tell loud jokes with beefed-up men in a bar. Be feared.
He wasn’t sure if the mushrooms had affected his thoughts but he wanted to be like the Pillar. So much.
“Or?” the Hatter said again.
“Pardon me?”
“You said I’d either be a wimp and forget about the White Queen or?”
The Pillar sneered then approached the Hatter again. This time the Hatter didn’t retreat. The Pillar gazed at the Hatter with unspoken admiration. He liked it when weak boys turned into men and realized that one has to have vampire’s teeth and stone-cold hearts to grow up from their childhood. Exactly like the Pillar’s own childhood.
“You see this?” The Pillar pulled out his hookah and ripped its hose out then tucked it in the Hatter’s hands and closed it shut.
A sudden move. Fast and nimble.
“This hose is the only thing that can kill me,” the Pillar’s eyes dared the Hatter’s as if seeing through his thoughts.
The Hatter realized he began shivering. Holding the weapon that could kill his nemesis conjured only fear, not relief.
“I just gave you the devil’s fork, tea pimp,” the Pillar said. “You have an opportunity to stab the devil in the back and eat him for dinner,” the Pillar tiptoed, as the Hatter was slightly taller, and whispered in his ears. “It’s your only chance to win Fabiola’s heart. Your only chance to save the children in Wonderland. Your only chance to become a man.”
The Pillar backed off and winked at the sweating Hatter then turned around, giving him his back and walking back to his throne of mushrooms.
You have a chance to stab the devil in the back and become a man.
The Hatter stared at the Pillar ambling away. The hose in his hands swirling like a snake, ready to attack. The Hatter trembled. He realized that what he had momentarily wished for came true.
To save the White Queen he had to turn into a Black King.
26
Present: The Wonderland War, London
My lungs are about to burst out of my chest as I’m running after Constance.
The ashen weather deprives my vision but I glimpse her every once in a while, scraping the asphalt and screaming at the snaky vines pulling her away.
“Constance!” I shout. “I’m coming.”
I think the plants can listen to me because they deliberately swing Constance in the air every time I call her name.
Then they don’t only swing her but swirl her back at me as if she is tied to the tip of an Indiana Jones whip.
Hopelessly I even try to grab her or hang on to her a couple of times but the inertia is too strong to deal with.
It breaks my heart that she gets so close to my face and then disappears again.
“Let her be you obscene…” my attempt to scream at the plants is futile and incomplete because I don’t actually know what it is.
I have a feeling that it would talk back to me like back in Wonderland but I’m not sure.
Panting, the memory of Jack and me back in Wonderland attacks me again. I’m staring at the dark figure of the Jabberwocky, a silhouette of darkness that I wish I could see clearer.
Then another thought attacks me: who is the Jabberwocky? Is it possible that he is someone I know? No one ever reported seeing his face.
“Alice!” Constance laughs hysterically as the plants swing her my direction again.
I fall back to avoid the plow and watch Constance in pain. “What a rollercoaster!” She says.
My admiration for her grows by the minute. In her darker hours, she still finds humor. Sick humor maybe. But still humor nonetheless. I wonder if her being a child makes her stronger than the rest of us. No baggage or dark past. Fresh bones and soul thrown into the world and hardly capable of understanding the gravity and complexity of our existence.
I stand up again and run after her.
The plant slithers farther into a darker ruin of London, and I find myself disoriented and confused, standing still, not sure which direction to go.
“No!”
“Constance!”
“Don’t leave!”
“Come back!”
“I won’t let them take you.”
My succession of verbal desperation is interrupted by a voice. A girl’s voice. Not Constance though.
“You want her, come and get her,” the voice says.
I can’t see the girl’s face but I have heard her before. An evil girl who once lived in a mirror.
Memory attacks and I realize this is the voice I heard entering the Looking Glass. This was the girl who lived inside—or at least talked on behalf of the mirror.
“Show yourself,” I demand in the dark.
“You remember me?” She teases.
“Partially,” I circle around the invisible axis from head to toe, trying to squint and locate her. “Looking Glass.”
“Oh, so you do remember,” the girl says. “You also know that I’m the plant that took your beloved Constance, yes?”
“I assumed so,” I nod. “So you’re everything? The Looking Glass. The plants that talked in Wonderland? Who are you really? What are you doing in the mirror?”
“Shhhh,” she demands. “Too many questions.”
“At least give Constance back to me. This is between you and me.”
“Always has been.”
Silence.
More silence.
Loud enough I hear my jagged breathing. The faint beat of my heart. And the faint vibration in my sword. I think me and the Vorpal are slowly becoming one.
“So?” I ask.
“I will give you Constance,” the plant says. “She isn’t of much use to me, though she is a child and smart, and you know how much I like to devour children.”
“I don’t know about that. Just let her be.”
“Only if you tell me what you meant when you said ‘I know what the mushrooms are for.”
I smirk, “It scares you that I’m starting to put things together, ha!”
“You’re smarter than I thought you’d be, Alice,” the plant muses. “But also dumber than you think.”
“Blah, blah, blah,” I stick out my tongue. “Just let her go and I will tell you what I figured out. And by the way, should I still call you Malice?”
I’ve recognized the voice once she talked. She sounds like me but isn’t like me. It’s a slight resemblance only I can feel. Part of it is scary because when she talks, I feel like my chest resonates a little as if she is using my soul. But I understand we’re attached, yet not the same.
“How does it feel talking to yourself?” She says. “Does it drive you insane?”
“Nah. I’ve talked to myself too many nights in the asylum.”
“You mean to me.”
“Whatever. I don’t like you. It doesn’t matter.”
“Not liking me means you’re not liking you.”
“I don’t like my toes, a little too big, but still they’re mine. Shit happens.”
The plant laughs.
“So you’re me but you can also take the shape of a plant and kill people all around?”
“I’m one of many plants, and I was bored with chopping off heads, so I decided to kidnap Constance and play.”
“Don’t you have anything to do? Are you so much bored out of your mind you just want chaos?”
“What else should I do? Life has no meaning and no resolution. I just want to party before the party is over when I grow old,” she snickers. “No
w tell me what the mushrooms and plants are really doing?”
“Free Constance first.”
Constance drops from the sky right into my arms, like a piece of heavy meat. I struggle to stabilize my body while not dropping her. The poor girl is covered in sticky worms.
“What have you done with her?” I shout upward.
The plant descends from the dark sky and shows itself to me in the dark. It has two big weird eyes like a frog’s. The rest is just a dancing vine that is pretty much thick in diameter like five fire hoses strapped together.
Her eyes, even though like frogs, look like mine.
“She will wake up,” Malice the plant says. “Don’t worry. I kept my promise. Now you tell me what you figured out.”
“This mushroom thing isn’t a war between Inklings and Black Chess,” I say.
“Listening.”
“Well it is, but that’s not why the mushrooms and the plants are growing out of the earth. It’s neither a precise war between good and evil.”
“Then what are the mushrooms and plants her for?”
“It’s an invasion.”
“Whoo, hoo!” She tries to mock me. “Who’s invading the planet? Aliens?”
“No,” I swallow hard. “Wonderland.”
The creepy plant smiles. She doesn’t have a mouth or opening, but the curvature pantomimes a smirk. “Wonderland.”
“The mushrooms are taking over this life, turning it into Wonderland. You, Black Chess, or whoever planned this long ago. That’s probably why the Pillar has so much interest in mushrooms. Not just a profitable hallucinatory drug, but a weapon to invade this world.”
“I’m impressed, Alice,” she says .”Maybe you are the chosen one. So if Wonderland is invading this life, what is the Wonderland War about? Between whom and whom?”
I know the answer. I should have known it a long time ago. The Pillar had always hinted at it. “This is a war,” I say. “Between fact and fiction.”
27
Present: Ferris Wheel, London