by Cameron Jace
“It’s not going to hurt much but imagine a flea is biting your insides.” He said.
“Trust me, I know the feeling,” I said, pointing at my abdomen Malice was gutting earlier. “I know the feeling.”
Crawling on all fours in a strange position, I glimpse the black heart nearby. My own heart races. Was I finally going to make it happen and kill him?
I crawl through his gut full of maggots and tentacles and eels to reach his heart. I have to chop these insignificant little obstacles on the way, but it comes as easy and unusual because I have my eyes on the Jabberwocky's black heart.
Jack stands far behind, examining the beast’s tongue and throat. I wonder what’s on his mind.
“I found it,” I shout back to him. “It’s time.”
Jack stares back at me with eyes that are keeping something from me—or are the fumes inside alluding me?
“Once you stab it a few times and the Jabberwocky begins to unbalance, you will have to crawl back fast to me,” Jack demands. “You understand?”
“And then we’ll do what?”
“I pinch his tongue and throat forcing him to open up again and jump out. I think it’s not the craziest distance down to the ground. We’ll survive.”
“Okay,” I nod.
My Vorpal sword’s glitter is the color of lightning again. The purest I have ever seen, so much that I think I’m not only going to stab the beast but electrocute his heart. The same way I’ve suffered in the Mush Room. The irony doesn’t escape me.
This is what the March Hare meant when he said the Jabberwocky returned from the Looking Glass without a heart. It’s simply a black substance coating his real heart. Disgusting.
“Do it,” Jack demands. “Now!”
I raise my hands in the air, gripping the sword, and take a deep breath.
With all my might I stab his heart.
“This is for the mushroomers!”
Volcanoes of blood erupt inside and the Jabberwocky’s screams echo inside of his skeleton. I wonder how he sounds outside, but I grip on his guts with one hand, avoiding to fall into his disgusting guts.
“Hold tight,” Jack says, hardly keeping his balance.
“I think it’s not enough,” I tell him and balance myself to stab the Jabberwocky again.
“This is for the Children!”
The children’s voices gain power again when I stab him. Louder and louder.
“He is not dead yet!’ Jack shouts as rivers of blood flood the Jabberwocky’s inside. “Harder, Alice.”
I raise my sword again, and remember the past. Almost all of it. Including what happened to the Hatter and the Pillar. But another memory brings me anger--and strength.
The memory of my dead family killed by the Jabberwocky. The memory is about to give me a heart attack. I have never remembered it so vividly. The night Lewis began to stuttered upon seeing my family slaughtered.
“This is for my family, ugly fuck!”
I stap him.
Then again.
Again.
And again.
With each stab, the Jabberwocky goes bonkers and we barely keep our positions inside. His deafening roars will stay with me in my nightmares forever. The only antidote will be the enchanting, happy voices of the children. It’s as if they feel the victory.
“Enough!” Jack says.
But I can’t stop.
Again.
And Again,
“Enough, Alice,” Jack is worried. “You’re turning into Malice.”
His final words stops me. I turn and look at him, hardly seeing him clearly across rivers of blood. But his fear is unmistakable. I think I was turning to Malice and he stopped me.
“Don’t worry. It’s the line between good and evil,” Jack says. “Now crawl over or will drown inside this river of blood.
I’m paralyzed with shock--and gratification to having avenged my family.
“Now!” Jack demands.
I crawl back.
Eels and tentacles try to wrap themselves around my legs but I cut through. I’m alive but in a haze. Winning and killing the Jabberwocky feels like a dream. Like everything we wait for so, so long. When it happens, we can’t believe it finally did.
Jack pulls my hand to help me up then pushes me past him.
“Go near the fangs,” he says. “I will pinch the roof of his tongue and he will open up.”
I run toward the big teeth and plan on jumping outside as they part open.
Then I stop.
Jack isn’t following me.
I turn around, quizzically.
Jack isn’t even looking at me. He is knotting the beast’s insides with his hands and pinching them to increase the pain.
“Jack!” I scream.
“Just go!”
“Not without you.”
“I have to do this.”
“You don’t,” I say. “I stabbed his heart. He is going to die soon.”
Jack turns and looks straight into my eyes. This is when I realize he lied to me. “It’s not how he dies,” he says. “I mean it is, but I have to keep him in pain from the inside to make sure, or he will wake up and mend his black heart.”
I’m without words. Without meaning. Without heart.
Now I remember Jack asking me not to hate him earlier. I’m worried this is what he is talking about.
“I’m not leaving you,” I say, attempting to crawl back.
“Stop!” He shouts. “Think about it. You’re Alice. You mean a lot to the children. You have to live. I’m his son, and evil is in me. I have to finish this. No one wins if you die as well.”
“Nonsense!” I say and stand up to him, the Jabberwocky’s mouth behind me.
Jack looks at me. It’s a confident look that worries me. As if he knows what will happen next, and I don’t.
“It’s been a pleasure, Alice of Wonderland,” he approached and touches my face and then runs his hand through my hair. “You’re the bravest I’ve met.”
“What are you talking about?” Saying that I’m puzzled is an understatement.
“What I’m about to do now,” he says. “You’ve done the same back in Wonderland. You did it to Malice.”
“What are you talking about?” I remember Malice hinting the same.
“My respect, Alice. I only learn from the best.”
I have no idea what he is talking about.
Then he slowly pulls his hand from under my hair and, like a magician, shows me a card.
I stare at it. It takes a moment to put two and two together.
The card is not a Jack of Diamonds like he usually does. It’s the last kind of card I’d ever expected to see.
A spade.
“I’m not Jack of Diamonds,” he says. “You killed Jack of Diamonds with your sword. Malice played you.”
“Holy shit…” I’m cupping my mouth with my hands.”
“Don’t worry,” he says. “My diamonds part isn’t mad at you.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Jack Spades,” he says. “The Jabberwocky’s favorite version. The darker side in all of us. The darker side evil loves in us.”
“You’re lying,” I hold back the tears. This isn’t happening. “If you’re Spades, then why are you helping me and sacrificing yourself for the children?”
“Because of what Jack told me about you, about how he loves you, about how strong you are and what you went through,” Spades says.
“I don’t believe a word,” I punch him in the chest. “Why are you doing this? You’re Jack Diamonds. You have to be,” I’m crying in his chest now. In the chest of Jack’s darker side. A gut feeling tells me he is telling the truth because Jack’s heart isn’t beating, like his father it must have a black coat to it. I just don’t want to believe it.
“Would Jack Diamonds know the secret of his father’s black heart?” Spades challenges me.
Then he pushes me violently to the back.
I might be the chosen one, and I have s
tabbed the Jabberwocky in the heart, but I’m a fragile girl when it comes to my heart. Thus I have no power pushing back.
At the edge of the Jabberwocky’s mouth, I feel like I want to tell him that I love him, but I see it in his eyes. It’s not him. I killed Jack Diamonds. This one is Spades, a dark soul who wants to do good, and is my only hope to kill the Jabberwocky once and for all.
“Thank you,” I say as he pushes me out. “For saving me.”
Then he says, “Don’t thank me. Thank you--or Jack. One day you will remember that you have done the same in the past.”
59
Present: Outside the Jabberwocky, London
Outside, I topple backward midair, wondering if my life is a long night of hallucinations.
Whether it is or not, I land on the ground almost safely, which puzzles me. Having little time to comprehend what just happened inside the Jabberwocky, I’m as confused outside.
The world is still in chaos. Nothing has been solved. The only difference is that the children chants are higher angelic voices.
It takes me a few seconds to realize that I’ve landed safely because the Jabberwocky’s head has already dropped to the ground. It wasn’t a great distance.
The Beast is still growling and aching in pain, but lying almost-dead on the ground.
Propped on my elbows, I see his pain comes from inside. Jack is still hurting him from inside-out. It’s unclear to me how long it needs. All I know is that his black heart has the capacity to heal itself unless Jack—I mean Spades keeps him in pain.
“Alice!” Constance comes running into my arms. “You did it.”
I barely lift an arm to hug her, wondering if she has enjoyed the ride on the Jabberwocky’s back. In my mind I think Constance doesn’t need supervision. She will get through this life on her own. She just doesn’t know how strong she is yet.
Her hug however is like a healing touch.
There is a bubble of light in the sky where children read the poems and books, right above the beast. Maybe this is what’s keeping him weakened. Whatever it is, I just learned a lesson. Defeating evil isn’t a one girl’s job. It takes a team. Evil only kneels to numerous hits from all sides of the good people.
“I’m born again,” the Cheshire says next to me in his priest face and outfit. “After what you’ve done, Alice. I’m an Inkling.”
“Too late,” I tell him, the one who once was my enemy—and probably still is. “We’ve done it. Inkling’s job is over.”
“Better stay a stupid cat,” Constance says, then she turns to me. “Where is Jack?”
Her question is incapable of bringing words to my tongue, only tears to my eyes. Conflicting emotions that I have no idea how to deal with at the moment.
And like all good nonsensical endings, loose ends simply tighten all of a sudden. I see Lewis and Fabiola approaching me in the distance.
Fabiola is limping. I know she has suffered greatly. That must be why they’ve disappeared. Lewis must have been tending her.
The look on Lewis’ face is priceless when looking at the sleeping, yet breathing, Jabberwocky.
“You killed him,” Lewis cheers.
“Jack did.” I say.
Fabiola feebly asks, “Jack?”
“Yeah,” I nod. “His darker side.”
Lewis pats Fabiola while telling him she was wrong about Jack. I guess Fabiola thought Jack’s dark side would never heal, like she thought about me.
She blinks, her pride taking over. She isn’t bad or reckless. She just doesn’t trust anyone anymore. Once she wanted to kill me because the evil inside me, now the evil inside Jack decided to be good.
“Son kills father,” she nods. “I didn’t expect he would do it.”
I’m not in the right mind to explain Jack Spades killed Jabberwocky with me. We should simply celebrate the win.
“So is the world better now?” I ask Lewis.
“I don’t feel Carolus inside me, so I believe it is, but it will take some time,” he says. “They will have to rebuild.”
“They?”
“We don’t belong here, Alice,” he says. “We should go back to Wonderland.”
Even though I’ve never comprehended the fine line between Wonderland and Real life, I agree. I don’t feel like I belong to this place. Wonderland is my childhood, and I’d rather go back there in the comfort of peace and naivety. Maybe I can go back to yesterday where I was someone else then. Who knows?
Then I ask about him, the one and only, “The Pillar?”
Constance taps my shoulder, “I’m sorry, Alice.”
I think she is saying he died. “How?” I ask.
“His sickness,” she says. “I tried to help but he really wanted to go,” Constance turns to Fabiola. “Which reminds me. There is something he told me to tell you?”
Fabiola is taken aback. In her darkest hour, her eyes widened with curiosity. “Me? I don’t want to know. I’m just glad he died--if he died.”
“Trust me, you have to know.” Constance says.
Fabiola looks reluctant. “Whatever.”
“I have to whisper it in your ears,” Constance says. “His orders.”
Constance scooches over and is about to tell her when the Jabberwocky spews fire again.
60
We scatter like rats when this happens.
I thought Jack told me the Jabberwocky can’t spew fire when stabbed in the eyes. On all fours, my heart races, as one conclusion comes to mind: Jack Spades failed. The Jabberwocky’s heart is self-healing again.
I stand up with my sword in my hand, watching the beast rise again. I have no clue what to do this time.
“Here we go again,” the Cheshire rolls his eyes. “It’s like the Terminator movie. Is this real or fiction? Evil has to rise for one last time.”
“Except that I have no clue how to kill him,” I say.
In the air, the children’s voices diminish with the Jabberwocky’s rise.
“We ” Fabiola coughs, barely being audible. I guess she hadn’t time to listen to Constance’s words from the Pillar.
“Alice!” Constance screams behind me.
I don’t pay her attention, thinking of a way out. I’m not going to run away. I have to kill the Jabberwocky. How can I kill something as big?
“Alice!” Constance insists.
I turn and look at her.
She is pointing at something.
Someone.
A limping, worn out, almost dead, Pillar.
“Why do I have to always put the final touch,” he says with his beady eyes.
“Cockiness isn’t helping now, Pilly,” the Cheshire says. “You’re barely alive. Look at you.”
Beside me I see Fabiola looking like wants to kill him now, if only she isn’t worried about the Jabberwocky.
I watch the Pillar walk as if drunk with skin peeling off everywhere. Not only that. I think his guts are bursting open like a pillar turning into something else. A butterfly?
In all his drunkenness, he nears me and says, “Alice, darling, take care of my hookah. Put in the louvre, next to an Egyptian mummy.”
I have no strength to smile, but his don’t-give-a-fuck attitude while dying will be something I will never forget.
The Jabberwocky spews fire again, as if jealous the Pillar stole the show from him.
We run away again.
But the Pillar doesn’t. He stays facing the beast.
“Jabby, Jabby, Jabby,” the Pillar shakes his head. “You ever wondered what becomes of a pillar?”
The Jabberwocky dismisses him and looks for me.
But then the Pillar pulls his final trick. The greatest of all. A trick that he has been cooking for so long. This wasn’t a magic trick because it was himself in his final transformation.
With awe and wonder we watch the Pillar’s inside open up.
I think I finally understand the Pillar’s sickness. It’s not really a sickness. It’s He a time bomb. A lifelong transformation. His wiry in
sides grow into the air with thousands of butterflies flying around.
Now the dead Pillar has caught the Jabberwocky’s attention.
In a morbidly beautiful metamorphoses, the butterflies from the Pillar’s inside knot together and begin to shape into something.
Something larger than the Jabberwocky.
An enormous beast made of butterflies.
You ever wondered what becomes of a pillar?
All of us are staring at Carter Chrysalis Cocoon Pillar, the beast.
In awe and shock, we stand and watch as the Pillar’s after-death beast devours the Jabberwocky like an afternoon meal.
In the back the Cheshire says, “So this is what happens when he dies on his own. I should have killed him. Shit, I should have been this monster!”
The children in the bubble of light stop reading and high five each other. That’s when I know that we won.
Then beast of the Pillar splatters into millions of butterflies flying all over London. From the corner of my eye, this brings a tear to Fabiola’s eyes. She doesn’t understand how he did this?
Frankly, neither do I. I will have to ask Constance later, but as for now, I can smile with a peaceful heart at everything he had done for me--even though I’ve only understood half of it.
“So we’ll never know who he really is?” The March arrives finally, wondering what the hell happened. I guess he had been asleep after falling from the mushroom.
“You mean the Pillar?” Constance says.
We all nod.
She looks at Fabiola and takes her hand again to tell her. I’m dying to know. We all are, but we have to respect his wish, and Fabiola’s privacy.
Later, I sit in farther corner of a building remnants alone. I try to put back some of the other missing pieces. Even though I know that part of the insanity is to never have an answer to everything—like life itself—I can’t help but want to know what Jack Spades meant: you have done the same, Alice, back in Wonderland.
But then it hit me. I remember what I saw inside the Jabberwocky. I remember what Malice said by me using her to do good.
61
Past: The Hatter’s Grave, Wonderland