Malice in Wonderland #1: Alice the Assassin

by Rose, Lotus

  At this point, Alice has circled back around where she began, facing up at the egg-shaped man sitting atop his perch.

  She says, defiantly, “Now that I have no heart, perhaps you should be afraid. I might strike back now, be ruthless.”

  “Poppycock, brat! I’m still stronger than you and the weak succumb to the mighty.” And here he raises his arms in the air like a victorious gladiator—and a glint of metal flashes in his hand—she focuses her eyes and realizes it’s the razorblade.

  “Yes!” he says. “This is the second possession. It is the very same one. The same one I cut you with at your unhappy unbirthday party, do you remember?”

  “I remember. I had the sniffles, so you offered to help me by bleeding me. That was kind of you. It cured me. It made me think perhaps you weren’t so bad.”

  He laughs. “You idiot! Bloodletting doesn’t do anything for a cold. I tricked you! Are you really so dense? You willingly let me slice you! All the other fellows and I had a great laugh at that behind your back. We were just waiting for the perfect moment to reveal it to you. It’s all about timing don’t you know.”

  Her face shows shock and outrage, but before she realizes and tries to hide it, it’s already too late—he’s seen.

  He laughs at her. “A priceless expression. Worthy of a portrait. So what are you going to do, now that you’re heartless? Are you thinking you’ll topple me? Is that it?” He quickly slices the blade through the air then calls out:

  “I’m Humpty Dumpty, here on my wall!

  I’m Humpty Dumpty, and I cannot fall!

  I’ll kick you and slice you and kill you and more!

  And when it all ends, you’ll be covered in gore!”

  Alice feels such hatred come over her towards him—she had felt it before, when she had a heart, but she had never acted on it—because she couldn’t bring herself to harm another. It was much nobler, she had felt, to suffer in humility. She felt she would be rewarded in the end, for there was the saying—the meek shall inherit the earth. And she had been as meek as she could possibly manage. And she used to try to be so trusting of others.

  But now that she is heartless, she is much less naive and she almost expects everyone to be deceitful, for she now realizes there is so much advantage in it. Why should she believe a word this egghead says? Perhaps he had grown curious and taken the heart as his own. She wouldn’t put it past him. She wouldn’t put anything past anyone. And she now marvels at her old self—how could I have been so naive before, thinking perhaps everyone had good motives, that everyone has a good side to them, even though it may perhaps be buried deep. When the truth is there is much to be gained from being heartless, immoral.

  She says to him, “You know, when I asked if you had a heart inside you, you asked, ‘What do you think?’ You never said no.”

  He waves his razorblade brandishing hand. “Technicalities. Pish posh. Haberdash.”

  “So I’ll tell you what I think. I think I don’t know what to think. I know you say you’re not an egg, but you sure look like an egg. And whatever you are, you could certainly fit a lot of things inside you. And just a short while ago, the Tweedles recited to me a most curious poem. About when one of them broke you open. Do you know it?”

  The egg-shaped man grimaces. “That I do.”

  “There is a particular couplet I find most intriguing. Do you know the one?”

  He grins ferociously. “Why don’t you tell me, earless girl.” He points with the razorblade.

  With a fright, she lifts her hands to her ears, feels them still there. She scowls at him, sure her face must be scrunching up severely.

  Humpty says, “Sorry. Just practicing calling you that. You were speaking of the poem.”

  She nods, lowers her hands that form fists. “‘If you just rush, and don’t stop for a minute, you’ll end up with too much of your own self within it.’ They wouldn’t explain. It seems to imply that if someone like me broke you open and tried to cook the insides, I’d ‘put too much of my own self in it.’ It might be a play on words, or perhaps you literally have a part of myself inside you. Like my heart.” She glares at him suspiciously.

  He glares at her. “Is that what you think?”

  She decides to taunt him, before her next planned move, which is to topple him. It looks like it would barely take a nudge. “Which one pushed you over? Tweedle dee or dum? It only took one? Did the other sit and watch and laugh and point?”

  Indignantly, “Why, the other one wasn’t there yet!”

  Alice fights to keep from grinning. She had tricked him into revealing more than he had intended. She could get used to this being deceptive without a heart thing. But no! I have to get my heart back! I mustn’t lose sight of that fact, even if I start forgetting the reasons why…

  She looks at him in a pitying expression, “And yet, still, it only took one? Is it because you’re egg shaped?”

  “He just caught me off guard is all! But that was a long time ago. I’ve been practicing my balance. It would take a hurricane to knock me off now. A hurricane! And you, little girl, though you blow hot air, are not one.” And he crosses his arms.

  Alice decides to lie again, just to see if she can tease more information out of him. “So they said, that after they both broke you, they made a scrumptious omelet. Bacon, cheese, and ham! Yummy!”

  His cheeks flare red. Why if he were an egg, he might be hard boiling himself right now, she thinks with a giggle.

  “Lies! I cannot stand a liar! I hope those two do end up killing each other over that rattle!” He crosses his arms, harumphs.

  “Oh I bet you can’t name one lie in what they said. I think they’re quite honest.”

  He scooches his head slightly to the side, disdainful. “First of all, I am not an egg! So they made no omelet! That’s a bald faced lie! And second, it wasn’t the both of them that broke me. Why the other one had not even been born yet!”

  “What do you mean, not born yet?

  He clamps his mouth. “You ask too many questions!”

  “So it only took one of them to topple you!” Mocking laugh.

  “It’s not like that! I was caught off guard from my usual superb balance. There was a snake.”

  “A snake?”

  “Yes, I’m deathly afraid of snakes. Snakes like to eat eggs you see, even though I’m not one. An egg, that is. The snake gave me such a fright that I lost my superb balance a bit, and Tweedledee nudged me over, and well, I had a great fall.”

  “Boom! Crash!” She jumps to add drama, making clawing hands.

  Humpty Dumpty leans back in surprise, teetering a little, but doesn’t quite completely lose balance.

  She sneers. “So did you land sunnyside up?”

  “I tell you I’m not an egg!”

  “So what was inside?”

  “You’ve irritated me so much, now I won’t tell.”

  She peers at him. “It seems maybe you could store things inside, to hide things away.”

  “We all hide things away.”

  “So what is inside you?”

  “You want to know what’s inside? I’ll tell you:

  Oh, I am just like you within,

  Just like a heartless Alice.

  Just like your dark and hateful twin,

  Who’s brought to birth by malice.

  That dark and hateful twin who shows

  Inside the glass reflection.

  Who with time only stronger grows,

  From all your imperfection.

  We all have that dark twin of us,

  Who gazes from the mirror,

  Who threatens to replace us,

  As darkness edges nearer.

  ‘Where’s my old self?’ one day you’ll say,

  As you gaze into the glass.

  The dark twin now is here to stay,

  And your old self’s gone and past.

  Maybe he’s hiding my heart inside him, maybe he’s not. Either way, he deserves to die.

  She ch
arges him—as she runs, the rattle sounds—she slams her palm under Humpty’s mouth. As she pushes with all her might, the rattle sounds again.

  Humpty sways backward precariously but doesn’t fall—he slashes out with the razorblade and Alice instinctively jumps back.

  Humpty is looking around with worried eyes. “What was that sound? Did you hear it?”

  Alice doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Now she feels the trickle of liquid rolling down her cheek. She touches her face. She sees red blood on her fingertips. She won’t know how bad she’s cut until she can get to a mirror.

  Humpty’s glaring at her. “You’ve got a little boo boo.” He licks the side of the razorblade.

  Alice doesn’t want to risk any more injury. If I leave him there, he won’t follow me. He never leaves that wall except for my unhappy unbirthday parties, but I’ll have to worry about that later.

  Now something nags at the back of her brain. The rattle. Could it be he’d thought it was a snake?

  She gasps and points at the base of the wall. “What was that? I thought I saw a rattlesnake!” She hopes her acting is convincing enough.

  In a shrill voice he says, “What, a snake? You lie! Where?”

  Alice approaches the wall with a look of grave concern, with her hand crinkled against her mouth. “I—I think it slithered to the other side, behind you!”

  “What?”

  Alice watches Humpty’s eyes. He turns slightly to look and when he’s no longer watching her, she reaches into her dress pocket and gives the rattle a jostle.

  Humpty shrieks, panic on his face. He quickly turns to face Alice, begins swiveling, looking around. “Where is it? Kill it!”

  “There!” She points to her left, where he’s not looking. As he turns to look he seems very careless in his balance and teeters quite dangerously.

  While he’s looking she runs to the other side of the wall and shakes the rattle.

  “Eeek!” he shrieks and lurches around to look, wobbles precariously and almost topples forward. He barely saves himself by windmilling his arms.

  Alice briefly considers pulling him forward to topple him but she still fears getting cut.

  She shrieks, points. “There behind you!” She doesn’t explain how unlikely it would be for a snake to be floating in midair, which is where she is pointing.

  Humpty roars while twirling, lashing out with his blade. He’s quite off balance now, he almost fell just then.

  And now Alice roars as she shoves him with both hands and he screams as he falls off. She hears a cracking crunch sound from the other side of the wall, then the sound of eggshell parts settling.

  She proclaims:

  “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

  Humpty Dumpty said, “I can’t fall!”

  But he got so afraid from just a toy’s sound,

  That he lost his safe seat, and slammed into the ground!”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Malice

  She rushes to look. She sees no yolk or egg white, though she sees many bits of broken egg shells on the ground, and here and there are different parts of Humpty’s facial features. And she sees a young girl, partially covered in egg shell bits. The girl’s in an odd position—she’s upside down balancing on the back of her neck, her body bent with her legs flung over and bent so that her feet rest on the ground.

  Alice gasps. “Oh, dear! Are you okay?”

  “I don’t know. It’s kind of hard to tell in this odd position. Are you gonna just stand there?” She wiggles her hand a little bit.

  “Oh, I’m sorry! Where are my manners?” Alice helps the girl right herself.

  The girl sits on the ground amongst the debris, patting eggshells off herself. The girl looks just like Alice!

  Alice shouts, “Why you look just like me!”

  “Do I?”

  “Why yes, with the very same clothing! And…” Here she points at the clean straight slash upon the girl’s left cheek, which had left a small streak of blood. “You have a cut on your cheek, just like me! Only yours is on your left cheek!”

  The girl lifts her hand up to her cheek and gasps when she sees the blood on her fingers.

  Alice notices that the girl uses her right hand, so she asks, “Are you right handed? I’m left.”

  The girl says, “Well, I suppose I am, right handed that is.”

  “Why it’s like you’re the mirror image of me! I’m Alice. What’s your name?”

  “I am…” She ponders for a moment, her eyes moving to gaze upward. Her mouth switches between rising on one side then the other. Alice recognizes it as something she does herself. The girl says, “I don’t know!”

  “Where did you come from? Do you remember being inside the egg?”

  “I don’t know, and no!”

  Alice asks, “Remember being cut with a razorblade?”

  “No, I remember nothing! All I know is the past few moments.”

  “Oh, dear. Well you’re the only person I know who was born from out an egg! But, first thing first, you need a name I should think, so we can be told apart!”

  “Okay,” says the girl. “I want your name.”

  Alice tries to take on a patient tone, as if she were lecturing someone. “Oh no, I had it first. But…I have an idea. You came from an egg-shaped man who claimed not to be an egg. But that’s beside the point. He recited a poem to me before he fell. His poem spoke of a twin ‘brought to birth by malice’. I’m not quite sure if you have much malice, but it rhymes with Alice in any case and seems a fine name to me! What do you say? Do you like it?”

  “Yes,” says the girl with a smile that Alice finds both alluring and creepy at the same time, “that suits me just fine.”

  Alice helps Malice to stand.

  During the next moments, they talk and Alice gathers the tape, razorblade and rattle up and puts the items in her pockets. Alice does her best to explain things to Malice in a brief manner. Alice is sure she must have forgotten to mention at least one important detail, but she wants to continue with her mission to regain her heart. She has no intention whatsoever of trying to put Humpty Dumpty together again, because the guy was a sadist and she’s glad he’s broken, even though the old Alice with a heart might have felt much guilt.

  When the subject turns to hearts, it’s soon found that Malice is heartless as well, for none beats in her chest.

  “Oh dear,” says Alice. “Why, whenever we do regain my heart, there will be only one of them between us! Perhaps if we shared?”

  But Malice waves that off. “Let’s not worry about that right now. Besides, from what you told me, having a heart seems like such a burden. I would think it might be better to go without one!”

  Alice doesn’t have a good answer to that, because she feels the same, but the fact of the matter is that some of her property has been stolen from her, and she can not abide the insult. She will do whatever is necessary to recover her rightful property. And who knows, maybe afterwards, she’ll realize how great having a heart can be.

  “Come,” Alice says, “Let us now go back to the Tweedles. I’m hoping by now, one has killed the other. If they’re still alive, though, don’t give them too much information. And for that matter, don’t let anyone know that we’re heartless, for we can use their ignorance to our advantage. I realize that now.”

  A few minutes later, they stop walking as they see, appearing above the ground in front of them, a feline grin.

  Alice says, “It’s the Cheshire Cat. Watch, and soon his head will appear.”

  Moments later, the cat’s eyes appear, then the rest of his head. To Alice, he says, “Not only are you not dead, but you’ve doubled since before.”

  Alice says, “I’m so sorry. It’s just that I haven’t had time to kill myself. It’s just that I have odds and ends to take care of, you see.”

  “Well, I can be patient, but I can’t wait all my last life!” He chuckles, now he shifts attention to Malice. “Greetings. Who might you be?”

  “
Malice.” She looks confused for a moment before curtseying with her black dress.

  The cat says, “Well you two are like mirror images of each other.” He speaks even as he grins that huge grin of his. “Twice the fun. Imagine. A double suicide! Wonderland’s first!”

  Malice opens her mouth to speak, but Alice cuts her off, saying, “Yes, Malice wants to kill herself too. In fact we’ve signed a suicide pact. It’ll be very soon and you can watch!”

  The cat says, “Yessss…I want to watch. Will you cry first? Yummy yummy.” He licks his lips. Everyone thinks Alice’s tears are magical and delicious, but she wonders if that’s still true now that she’s heartless.

  Alice uses a cooing, purring. “Yes, we’ll cry our delicious tears. We’ll even let you lick them, because you’re going to help us both escape this horrible world.”

  “Yessss.” The cat purrs. “Lick your sweet innocent faces, taste the tears of your sweet sorrow mmmm.”

  Alice cocks her head to the side flirtatiously. “Yes, there’s only one problem, though. The gun you gave me only has one shot. It’s a dueling pistol. We need another one if we’re going to both blow our brains out.”

  “Yesss, yesss. I see. And you both promise to kill yourselves and let me watch? Soon?” His voice sounds whiny, pouty.

  Everyone in Wonderland knows that Alice would rather die than break a promise. That was the old Alice with a heart, though. But so long as he didn’t know that she and Malice were heartless, she’d use the deception to her advantage.

  Alice says, “I pwomise.” Ending with a cutesy pout. She looks over at Malice.

  “And I pwomise too, Mister Cat!” She places her finger to the edge of her mouth then shifts her eyes to look upward and to the side.

  The cat says, “Okay, just so long as you don’t go shooting yourselves without me. But the most I can manage is the other dueling pistol in the set. These things don’t grow on trees you know. So don’t become triplets. Hold on while I fetch it, and I must insist that afterward you refrain from speaking, as I have a lunch date I must attend to. Hold on…” and the cat begins to disappear, in this order: outside, then eyes, then mouth, then reappears in the opposite order, but this time, his grinning mouth holds an ivory handled pistol. When his head again fully appears, (He, as usual, neglects his body.) He gives the pistol to Malice