In the books, the movies, the adaptations, Alice loses herself in a make-believe world, all in her head. The people in her life take the form of deranged, crazy characters in a place so aptly named Wonderland. Since one does tend to wonder what is wrong with this land. A cat that's never all there. Unbirthday parties with Mad Hatters. Rabbits late for being late. Queens with no regard for her Kingdom. Caterpillars high out of there minds.
And yet, people make her out to be a normal child. No problems seen, no worries detected. One would think this odd.
It is.
Here is the true testimonial. The proof of poor Alice's utter insanity.
- - - - - - -
Cheryl beamed at the woman in front of her. The raven-haired woman was tall, with a thin face and high cheekbones, her nose so sharp and skinny that it was a wonder the lady could breathe. Her dry-looking hair was up in a tight bun, pulling her already stretched features back further. Her eyes were slits, and she appeared to be glaring at everything around her. Needless to say, the woman was intimidating.
"Yes, ma'am. Your daughter's room is just this way. I'll direct you." The red-haired young girl smiled, and walked down the hall, tugging down the bottom of her white, standard issue nurses gown. She turned to her left, walking under a sign that nearly hit the woman's head. She came to the sixth door on her right, labeled "Room 280". Under the number, the name "Alice Dodson" was printed. Cheryl opened the door slowly, and glanced in. The girl was sleeping peacefully.
"We just gave her sedatives, ma'am. We'll ask that you do not make contact, and take no longer than twenty minutes. We still don't know what sets her off." Cheryl watched as the woman entered the room, and closed the door to give them their privacy.
Marie Dodson sat in the metal chair beside her daughter's caged bed. The girl was not moving, and the only way one could tell she was even alive was the slow, steady rise and fall of the brunette's chest. Marie sighed audibly. "Foolish, foolish girl. You disgrace our family with your antics. I don't want to know what you have to say for yourself. You were a dreamy girl, Alice, but I didn't dare think it was madness. Should you ever awaken out of this stupor, don't think of coming home."
Marie was about to stand again, when a flash of utterly pale skin caught her eye, just moments before a cold, hard grasp was tight on her wrist. Luminescent green eyes stared unblinkingly at the woman above, wide and dangerous. Marie began shaking.
Alice's voice was high-pitched and screeching. "You dare defy the Queen of Hearts?!" Her grip tightened, and Marie's eyes began to water. "Off with her head!!" Alice shot bolt upright in her bed, free hand latching itself to Marie's upper arm. "We're never really all here are we? What's the difference between a raven and a writing desk?" The raven-haired woman let out a sob, as tears poured from her brown eyes. Alice didn't relent. "What's the difference??" She shrieked, as doctors in white lab coats and nurses in gowns rushed in, tearing the girl's hand from her mother's arm.
"Off with her head!!" Alice shrieked again, thrashing against the grasp of the doctors as they held a syringe to sedate her. "I'm late!! Can't you see? Let me go! I have a very important meeting! The cat says I'm mad!! We're all mad here!" Alice was screaming at such a high pitch, some of her words were almost lost. Her wide green eyes fell on the syringe, and she yowled like a cat, grabbing it and breaking it in her hand, causing her to bleed.
"I'm mad! You're mad!" She howled, thrashing hard enough to have the grip on her loosened. She fell from where she was being held, above the floor, to the ground. She jumped up, and backed against a wall. Alice was bleeding from several places, but didn't seem to care. She was regarding the doctors with little more than seething anger. "Again and again you come and you harm me. You're no better than that God awful Queen!" She picked up the chair her mother had been sitting in, and threw it at the group of doctors around her.
Her mother, by now, was out of the room and listening to her daughter's ramblings, as a nurse tended to the scratches and bruises Alice left from her vice grip. Marie was still crying.
Alice grabbed shards from the ground, and aimed it at the doctors. "Off with your heads!! Off I say!" Alice jabbed a shard forward, slicing through a doctors lab coat, and meeting flesh. Alice let out a screech of laughter. "We're all mad here!" She screamed, dropping the glass, and scratching at her eyes with her bloodied hands. "We're all mad!!" She started sobbing; raw, swelling lines appearing under her eyes. The doctors took her distraction as a window of opportunity, and stuck her with an extra syringe, the sedative working it's way into her bloodstream quickly. Slowly, Alice's green eyes dulled, and she slumped to the floor, her brown locks covering her red face. She started sobbing.
"We're all mad here... but I don't want to go among mad people..."
And then Alice was asleep. In her sedated state, one would almost say she was a beautiful girl. Her features were soft, much softer than her mother's, and her straight brown hair had the potential to be silken and shiny. Marie pulled a tissue out of her pocket, and regained her composure. The doctors came out, as the oldest one came to talk to the woman. "What did you do?" He asked sternly.
"What did I do?" Marie hissed, indignant. "I only spoke to her! You told me she was under sedatives. I thought that meant she couldn't wake up!" Marie straightened her dress, which had become ruffled during the previous episode. "I only told her that if she were ever to find herself in good health, that she would not find a home with our family, any longer."
The doctor closed the door to Alice's room, running a large hand through his white hair. "Ma'am, your daughter won't be getting better any time soon. She has a sever case of Schizophrenia, and at this point, it's irreversible. I'll ask that you tell me again how this started. You can tell me on the way to my office."
Marie took a breath, and let it out, tucking a loose hair behind her ear. "Alice first started all this non-sense about "Wonderland" when she was a little girl. At first, it was just a simple little fanciful world. She'd tell me that she'd been to her happy place again. I passed it off as an active imagination.
"Then she started talking about, and drawing, all of these... mad and deranged characters from this Wonderland. First was that cat. The Cheshire Cat. When she drew him for the first time, I took the drawing and burned it. The cat's eyes were leering, his paw was fading, like his tail, and there was blood dripping from his teeth and around his neck." Marie stopped to let out a small weep, as her eyes filled with tears once more. "It was frightfully real. I felt as if it would jump off the page and kill me. The eyes were bleeding out of their sockets, and... and...
"That smile. It haunted my sleep, doctor. It was much bigger than even humanly possible. It literally split his head in half. His face was just murderous. And he was all skin and bones... not an ounce of fat. But that wasn't the last. The Mad Hatter was much the same.
"He was an ugly troll. Grotesque with green skin, covered in warts and welts, his nose hooking enough for him to pierce something with it. His eyes were glowing yellow, and his tea table was littered with broken glass. His hand was holding lever that was connected to a saw. The saw was covered in blood... And that's what was in his tea cup... Blood. There were these horrible experiments behind a glass window... children, with mechanical legs and arms, holding their throats and falling over dead, a mouse, sleeping, with its innards on display." Marie sobbed again, her eyes frightfully wide and unblinking, as if she were seeing them all move about before her..
The doctor screwed his face up in disgust and worry for the woman, and opened the door to his office for her. She slumped into a chair, dabbing at her eyes with her tissue.
"The least worrisome of her creatures was the White Rabbit. He resembled her stuffed rabbit that she slept with every night. But the fur was much too similar to flesh, held together at the seams, stitches stretching the fur as they would skin. And the stuffing wasn't cotton or anything relatively normal like that. It was muscle and meat. And it poured from rips and tears like a horrid and disgusting soup.
"But the Queen... the Queen of Hearts was a drawing of herself. She had a crown atop her head, blood dripping down it and into her hair. She was holding a severed head in her hand, still bleeding, by the hair. She was crying, but the tears were not clear as they should be, and left crimson stains down her face. But she was smiling. Smiling as if all of this made her infinitely happy. She was holding hands with another drawing of herself, in her normal clothes, though covered in blood, dripping off a butcher's knife. There were many more, doctor, but I no longer have the energy to relive my fear at seeing them. It was horrid."
Something seemed to be nagging at the doctor. "But... how do you know these names?"
"She titled all of her drawings. Even the first one, The Cat, before she knew how to write! And her penmanship was perfect! She was five, doctor. Five." Marie began to cry incessantly.
- - - - - - -
Alice sat in the middle of the meadow, holding her elbows and sobbing to herself. "They did it again! They stuck me with that horrid, awful thing again." She let out a choked sob. "And that woman... that hateful, spiteful woman had the nerve to visit me." She hissed through her tears.
The Rabbit rested a stuffed paw reassuringly on her shoulder. "It's alright, Alice. You know we're here for you." The brunette pulled him into a tight embrace, reaching out and scratching the Cat's head.
The Cat nodded. "Yes, Alice. Should you ever need help, we're here." His voice echoed eerily inside his throat.
The green-eyed girl smiled happily at her companions. Insanity was now her only home.
A/N: Please note that I don't own Alice in Wonderland, nor the descriptions, as they were loosely based off of American Mcgee's characters.
Ahhhh! Wonderful. I did enjoy that. I dunno if you guys find this horror, but I'm putting it in that category, just cause I don't know what else it would go into. I urge you all to go play/watch the scenes from Alice. It's such a wonderful game for it's time, and it just so amazing. The Cat is definitely my personal favourite.
Feel free to review, criticism welcome and adored. I hope you liked it as much as I did!
