by Cameron Jace
“Killing Jack will only bring you wrath like last time,” Malice says. “The Jabberwocky will be upset, that’s all.”
I’m not sure what she means. The memories that have attacked me about the bus don’t confirm I killed Jack to get to his father. I wish I could remember the rest.
“As for Constance,” Malice says. “I know you see yourself in her. She means a lot to you. The first girl you’ve ever saved. Not finding her will break you and shatter you into pieces—and you know how much this pleases me.”
I spit on the ground, disappointed. Also, why has my sword dimmed after killing Jack?
I turn to face Constance. “You don’t want your better side to die, right? She is still you.”
“She isn’t dead. She is only suffering.” Constance snickers as well.
I grip my sword and point it at her.
“Are you going to kill a little girl?” She is as annoying as Malice. I’m in a madhouse of doppelgangers.
I take a moment to think things over. Instead of going on with my purpose, I have been double-crossed by the darker sides of people since the mushrooms erupted.
I take a deep breath.
The hardest thing when catastrophe occurs is to take a step back and reconsider. We’re all trapped in our temporarily spiked emotions, we end up responding in the most ridiculous ways.
I needn’t go that route.
The greatest revenge against evil is to neglect it. It will take a piece of you, but you will not feed its fire. And then you will cross over. Wounded a little, but you will have survived—and you can always heal with time.
The slight glitter to my Vorpal sword proves I am right. It resonates with my attempt to escape the moment and think.
“I will find her,” I tell the two lunatics in slow, calculated syllables. “She won’t be far from here. I will go back to where she was kidnapped by Malice.”
The look on Constance and Malice’s faces are priceless. Ironic how evil is dumbfounded when you don’t pay attention. Imagine a demon snarling at you and you just wish it good luck and go back to sleep. Malice and Constance aren’t angry at me leaving. They don’t even try to provoke me. They just stand silent and in awe. Frozen, would be a better description.
Surely they won’t give up that easily, but for now, I am winning by not participating.
Then suddenly someone snatched my Vorpal sword from my hand.
I snap, turning, upset at my weak grip. This sword has to return to me. Now!
It surprises me that it isn’t Malice nor Constance who have taken it. In fact, there is no one else around on the ground.
Because the sword isn’t nearby anymore, but flying in the air.
I raise my head and squint against the gray sky, glimpsing my sword pulled up, as if tied to a loose rope, with almost invisible hands.
Puzzled, I look further upward at the enormous, dark shadow, blocking the skies. At the end of my stare, I see two coal-red eyes.
If Malice and Constance haven’t shrieked and lowered their bodies to the floor asking for forgiveness, I would have taken the time to study the beast.
Now I am as scared.
“Please don’t hurt us,” Malice says.
“We can explain,” Constance follows.
Nothing comes out of my mouth.
I haven’t seen a monster this huge. A monster? An entity? An unholy bigger mushroom?
Then I hear the flapping of large wings. I don’t see them, but a foul smelling wind rattles the air and blows Constance a few feet away and makes Malice curl around herself.
I stand my ground, balancing with my hands, refusing to fall, though I’m about to.
Glass shatters in the buildings all around me. Mushrooms slowly melt like lava from a volcano, and only few people shriek because most of them have died instantly.
My eyes don’t leave the line of my Vorpal sword in mid-air above me.
I still stand my ground with memories swirling around me. Too many to absorb, but easily deciphered. The message is clear. This is the final battle. The one that didn’t happen the last time.
I am staring at him.
In the flesh.
The one who rocks the cradle of evil.
The Jabberwocky.
41
Present: Near the Ferris Wheel, London
The gust of air flipped the car two more times on its axis. The Cheshire felt as if someone had punched him in the chest. His mask barely hung on his face, causing pain to his cheeks and nose.
In the distance, the plants the Pillar fought ducked as if in a praying position. They looped downward and flattened onto the earth. Mushrooms behind them began to melt into hot lava the color of marshmallows.
Even the Pillar was blown off his feet to the ground, gripping his hose as it flailed and pulled its jagged edges inward.
Only the children stood protected in their bubble of light, lifted upward as they sweat while reading louder and louder.
The Cheshire heard them read a different phrase all over again. It wasn’t from Alice in Wonderland, but from a well known poem by Lewis Carroll.
They read, ‘Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!’
“Is this real?” the Cheshire asked the Pillar.
“I haven’t seen him with my own eyes in beast-form before,” the Pillar said, frightened and covered in blood.
“So it’s happening,” the Cheshire could feel the fear in his gut. He had never seen the Jabberwocky too, but had only heard of his atrocious looks and enormous beast size. Now he had to ask the Pillar a question. “So the Jabberwocky never appeared in any of your and Alice’s previous attempts through the Looking Glass?”
The Pillar shook his head. “Never. He always managed to have Alice’s final battle with another evil force.”
The foul wind with fiery fumes attacked the Cheshire’s nostrils. The odor of all demons combined, he thought.
The children kept reading. “Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!”
“You’re only alive because the children are reading,” the Pillar said. “I hope you understand now.”
The Cheshire began reciting, “Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!”
The Pillar laughed, “Not you, you moron,” he said. “You mean nothing. You and I are adults with exhausted souls. They are pure and have the power of both ignorance and hope.”
“Ignorance of what?” the Cheshire’s words hardly sounded in the whizzing whirlwind of stinky air.
“Ignorant of how evil the Jabberwocky is,” the Pillar said. “They think he is a villain in a book, thus they’re not afraid of him.”
“I see,” the Cheshire clung to a lamp pole that didn’t yet give in. His legs elevated but he held on with his hands. “One last question.”
“You’re being boring, Cheshy,” the Pillar said. “Just try to stay alive.”
“I need to know this before I die,” the Cheshire insisted. “Why now?”
“Why now what?”
“Why did the Jabberwocky show himself now?”
“Alice provoked him somehow. He has no choice but to confront her.”
“And she couldn’t provoke him the previous times?”
The Pillar took a moment to think it over. The memory of the last time in the bus came to him. Still, it puzzled him why the Jabberwocky hadn’t shown before, even when Alice did the unspeakable to save the children of the world. “I don’t know, Cheshy. She had done everything last time. And it cost her a lot. This time, I have no idea how she provoked him.”
42
Past: Yellow Bus, London
“I’m not going to kill you, Jack.” Alice gritted her teeth.
Jack’s grip was as hard. “All you have to do is run the bus into a wall or off the bridge, then jump or something.”
Alice’s eyes moistened. “No way.”
“I know you don’t love me,” Jack said. “I know you thought I fo
rgot and made me your boyfriend to get to my father.”
“That’s not true.”
“I know, Alice.”
“Okay, only in the beginning, but then I realized that I…”
“Don’t say it,” Jack insisted. “Don’t lie to yourself.”
“But I do…”
“Think of it. When were you there for me? I’m always there for you. You never come to save me. I’m not blaming you. I’m saying you have a duty toward the children and yourself. I’m not on the list. Hardly.”
“Jack, it’s not the time for melodrama. You have to know that I love you.”
“Stop it,” his grip hurt her now. “If you kill me, my father will go crazy. He will show up and you will kill him. It’s your only chance. None of the others can. Fabiola, Lewis, and the Pillar, they are barely dealing with their troubles. I can help.”
Alice finally pulled her hand away, her eyes as moist as before, but focused on Jack’s eyes. She admired his strength. His no bullshit stare. There was no tinge of hesitation in it, and he wasn’t suicidal. He wanted to help. He wanted to play his part in saving the world.
He wanted to be remembered as Jack Diamonds who saved someone, not as Jack Jabberwocky who had changed his name to Diamonds for the love of cards, and to escape the shame of being the son of evil itself.
“I won’t kill you, Jack,” Alice said firmly.
“You will,” he said and pulled out a mirror.
In an instant, he pulled her again and forced her to stare into the mirror.
The other students said nothing.
Why?
After the Pillar, Fabiola, and Lewis left, only followers of Black Chess were on the bus. Disguised as students. Some of them were human but with loyalty to Black Chess.
They watched Jack force Alice to stare in the mirror, unaware of his plan.
They thought Jack had awakened the darkness in himself, after resisting for years, and began torturing Alice by making her darker self, Malice, resurface.
Everyone knew Alice feared mirrors because of Malice.
It was time to bring her back.
Alice had been taken by the noose and had little time to comprehend. It only took one look in the mirror to see the white rabbit which resembled Malice in her face.
“Missed me?” Malice snickered.
Alice would have fought the change, hadn’t she been totally shocked by Jack’s doing.
Little did she know of his plan.
Once Malice snickered in the mirror, Jack removed the mirror and tucked it back into his backpack.
This prevented Malice from appearing but left Alice in a state of fear with a tinge of evil and with little reason in her system.
He stared into her eyes and said, “Get in the driver’s seat and drive the bus over the bridge.”
Hesitant, hypnotized, she surrendered to the evil inside her, aware of Jack’s theory. Sometimes one had to use evil to fight evil.
She found herself running to the driver and kicking him off his seat.
That was when the members of Black Chess on the bus realized the devilish plan of Jack’s. They were too late.
When they went to stop Alice from driving the bus over the bridge and killing Jack to provoke his father and force him into a final battle, Jack stood in their way.
Jack began slicing at them with his edgy playing cards.
He could only sustain the fight for so long before the members of Black Chess themselves attacked him, and in an ironic twist of fate, killed him.
Alice hadn’t known Jack was killed by them when she drove the bus over the bridge and jumped out before it hit the ground.
She lived the rest of her life thinking she had killed Jack like he asked her. A guilt so strong she could not handle reality anymore and subconsciously gave in to her mind preferring to reside in madness and not face the pain of real life.
Madness had this strange quality to it, one that people rarely consider; it made you forget the pain.
43
Present: The Wonderland War, London
The world is turning into a whirlpool of spit and rotten ashes. The Jabberwocky’s presence not only scares the public but his own followers from plants and mushrooms to everything.
I’m standing still, cementing my feet to the ground, arching my back, staying low, spreading my arms for balance and staying focused on the entity in the sky.
“I’m here!” I scream at him. “What are you waiting for?”
I’m afraid my words can’t reach as high, not under the reign of hell he is bestowing upon the world.
“I want my sword back!”
In the far distance, I can’t see it anymore. How was I so stupid to let him have it. I need to provoke him to get it back.
“Stop flexing your muscles and come down here!”
Nothing.
The Jabberwocky continues to spread wind that is spewing sparks of fire all over the place.
I wish he would talk to me. How can he be so big?
Lewis Carroll’s poem depicted him as big but not this big. In some illustrations, the Jabberwocky looks like a medium-sized dragon. But then I have to remind myself that the Jabberwocky is Lewis Carroll’s personal illustrator. He could have deceived us all and drawn whatever served him best.
“Duck down!” Malice roars at me.
“Yeah?” I sneer back. “I didn’t think you were such a pee-in-your-pants plant.”
“You don’t understand,” Malice says. “He never shows himself to anyone.”
“So why is here then?”
“Who knows,” Malice whimpers. “This has never happened. He has always been like the Devil. His greatest power is you never know who he is or see him.”
“You never knew he was this big?”
“I’ve heard stories,” she says. “But I know it’s him because of the smell. Whenever I was near him in Wonderland, this is how he smelled. Rotten.”
“From what?”
“The smell of the corpses he has on his hands. The stink from their bones in the graves.”
None of this is helping me. I turn to evil Constance. “You know how to get him to talk to me?”
Constance can barely speak against the wind. Evil or not, she is smaller in size. “I’m puzzled why he showed himself. You provoked him.”
“I’m glad I did,” I say then shout at him up there. “So you’re all show no action?”
“Please don’t!” Malice says. “What did you do to provoke him?”
I stare at Jack’s chopped off head. “I could say that it's because I killed his son, but I apparently did this before.”
“No, it wasn’t you,” Malice says. “You drove the bus, but the other Black Chess students killed Jack when he tried to protect you.”
The revelation doesn't help. If I hadn’t killed Jack back then, those two doppelgangers have just duped into killing him now. It’s all pain to me, and I have no capacity to think about it now.
I turn again and speak to the sky. “So that’s it? You’re pissed because your son is gone?” My heart breaks when I remember but I keep my composure. To silence the mourning pain in my heart, I kick Jack’s head like a football. “Like that?”
“No, please,” Malice is losing it. “You have no idea what he can do.”
“I don’t give a damn,” I say, thinking. “Apparently he isn’t pissed I killed his son, or he would have huffed and puffed more and more.”
“He has your sword, so you have no chance anymore,” Constance says.
“Then why doesn’t he try to kill me!” I shouted higher and higher.
The sky cracks with lightning this time.
Malice and Constance look like they want to bury themselves alive under the asphalt.
“He will play games with you and kill you slowly,” Constance says.
“Why play games?” I ask her, still staring above.
Constance doesn’t answer, and I don’t care. The same feeling from earlier returns. The moment where I take a
look at the bigger picture without sentiment to the current moment.
That’s when I realize why the Jabberwocky finally appears to me. If only I had done this so long ago.
With hands on my waist, I talk to him in the sky. “So that’s it?” I say. “You came because a few minutes earlier I decided not to let the evil affect me? When I was talking to Constance and Malice and decided to reside to silence and take a step back? When you realized I may neglect evil and move on?”
This time the lightning strikes turn into a roar in the sky.
“I get it,” I shout at him. “The Pillar told me this before. If I feed my fear it wins, if I act as if it doesn’t even exist, it blemishes and withers and dies.”
The red eyes show against the ashen skies again. This time nearer. I can see the real size of the Jabberwocky. Not as big or as high. He is standing up there somehow. In actuality, he is the same size as a small dragon like in the books. I’m not sure if I can confirm he looks like one, but he has wings and claws.
I stare into the red eyes, “I’m not afraid of you. That’s what bothers you. When I killed your son before, I was wrong. You don’t care about your son. All you care about is me, your victims. If we don’t feed you, you wither away.”
His growl deafens me for a moment as he lowers his head to meet my eyes. Well, now he is big. He also has a tail. A cliched look of evil and ugly as fuck.
The Jabberwocky dragon thuds onto the ground before me, his stench wafting through the air, I almost feel the need to vomit. The death and the pain lingering on his body.
I see his wings fluttering slowly behind him. The mucus of a melting substance dripping off his body. He doesn’t talk. Eyes red with anger.
Now I don’t only feel the need to vomit, but also to pee in my pants. I don’t show it.
“Ugly fuck,” I raise my chin up against my real feelings of dread. “Are we just going to stare at each other?”
And finally, he talks. He sounds hollow with a centuries-old grudge, as if thick saliva is stuck in his throat. Still his voice is low, more like a drone that thuds against the ground. “No one walks away from my fear.”