Down ,down, down…
Down into the darkness. The filth. The rot and decay. Down into the innermost portions of the damned asylum, where there is naught but madness and deep despair, the Lord of it all dwelt. And there he stays, and thinks. He puts to work the mind that has been mutilated and utterly twisted by the very substance that gave him his trade. Quicksilver. Mercury. Silver insanity. Madness in a bottle.
Yes, the Mad Hatter, pocket watch in one hand and screwdriver in the other, was thinking of expansion. His portion of Wonderland was not nearly as big as he wished it to be. Jealousy scorched him, thinking of the Red Queen and her dominion over all. Over him. He paid no tribute, preferring to be left alone. But she was growing gluttonous and greedy. A letter had arrived just yesterday, ordering him to create a force of two hundred Automatons for the already impressive royal army. She gives me orders like some kind of slave, thought he, tightening a minuscule screw on his watch. Paranoia ate at him, amplified by the madness within. What if she sets a trap, and he is ambushed? What if she turns his own creations against him? What if…?
Through his thoughts, he realized that he had been tightening the same screw. Looking down, he saw that he had stripped it. He would need another screw. Disgusted with himself, he threw the watch and screwdriver onto the table in front of him. He needed to formulate a plan as soon as possible. If he did not meet the date set for the delivery, the Card-guards would be knocking down his doors. Smashing his clocks. Destroying the mirrors in the Funhouse. Spilling his precious chemicals. Chaos would reign. The Hatter shuttered at this thought. If there was something that he hated more than the Queen, it was chaos.
But what to do? The situation was really very complex. One action would usually lead to another that he disliked. For example, he thought of using Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum in some sort of offensive strategy. They would make interesting kamikaze units, that was for certain. If he stuffed their stomachs with bags of gunpowder and acid, strapped on massive amounts of explosives, sent to them to the Queen to negotiate (though the dumb idiots probably don't even know the meaning of the word), and detonated them right in the throne room, it may do the trick. It certainly was an amusing thought…but he soon thought better of it. Those two would probably mess everything up and drag my problem down lower than it already is.
A smile in the dark. Though pitted with holes and bloodstained in some places, it was a smile nonetheless. Glowing eerily from the darkness at the other side of the table, it was soon joined by two glowing yellow eyes. There was a soft padding of feet, mixed with the tapping of talon-like claws. The Cheshire Cat emerged from the darkness, standing about six feet away from his enemy.
The first thing that the Mad Hatter thought to do was to strangle the life from this mangy creature and break his body over and over again, until the entrails covered his gloves in steaming ecstasy. But, as sudden as the swing of a pendulum, he changed his mind, and stayed where he was. He was no longer a threat. Alice had been killed about a week earlier in a climatic battle with the Hatter himself. Still, suspicions were raised.
"Cat…come to mourn for your defeated champion? At least while her body is still whole and…unspoiled?"
The Hatter's unspoken plans for Alice's corpse caused a brief surge of anger within the Cat. But it quickly subsided. This was no time to get angry.
"The body is of no concern to me, Hatter. It is merely a shell now, and has no use even to the Mock Turtle. What resided within it before she came across you was much more interesting."
"Then why have you come?" the Hatter snarled, gripping his cane tighter. "As you know, there is a rule here in the asylum, and that rule is no animals may roam free and un-experimented on. So unless you wish to surrender yourself to me, the same way the March Hare and Dormouse have done…"
"They never surrendered to you. You merely captured them and drugged their brains out so they still believe that everything is the same."
The Hatter let a dry laugh leave his lips. "I see that, definition-wise, you are a cat of very little brain. They were weak. What I did was a mercy to them, for they could never handle the changes that Wonderland went through. Had it not been for my keeping them safe, they would have surely perished in a matter of days!"
"And what is payment for their room and board?" asked the Cat, pacing slowly. "An organ or two? Then three, and four, and finally the whole bloody torso?"
"What I gave them in return is far superior to their original parts."
"Oh, the noble hero," said the Cat sarcastically. A mock bow followed the statement. "You act like a savior…but really you have damned us all!"
A silence followed. "Cat," the Hatter began, breaking the silence, "I presume you've developed some sort of death wish, coming here? Questioning my actions so freely? Fearing the truth as Alice did?"
"And what truth is this?" questioned the Cat, still pacing from side to side.
"The truth is that we must always stay this way; that there is no escaping the insanity that has changed us. Alice could not see that, and therefore was a threat to us. Her sanity has no place here in Wonderland. So you see, I did us all a significant favor."
"So says a mad hatter," said the Cat, still now, staring and smiling and hiding the rage that consumed his bony frame. Besides, cats like himself were not supposed to show rage. It was not his species way. Smiling, much like cutting, kept hidden physical emotions that would originally hinder his thoughts. "Then I'm afraid that you are also in hiding from the truth. An insane mind does not have any sense of compassion, friendship, or loyalty, so you could not have been doing us a favor. But yet a 'threat' is sensed. A threat to what? To your perfect little world that you have created? To the madness that you owe it all to? Thought she wielded a knife and a terrible bloodlust, she never threatened me, Hatter. You simply reacted to a new instinct that this madness has gifted you with…much like a fatal disease, or a parasitic worm."
A pause. "She still loved you, despite it all," said the Cat, disappearing little by little, "you know that."
The Hatter smiled wickedly, and got to his feet. "Yes…and I still love her. Now go, or I'll disembowel you. I've already wasted enough time chatting. There's still so much to do…and so little Time."
The glowing faded, and the Hatter was left alone. Cane in hand, he walked to the door of his workshop and opened it. On opposite sides of the room lay the March Hare and Dormouse, tortured and mangled. But the body in the center of the room showed no such signs of neglect, except for the rips of the dress and bloodstains on the apron. There laid Alice, pale, unmoving, and plainly dead. Just seeing her from afar like this made him almost giddy with anticipation. She's mine. All mine, at last. Unarmed, unmoving, unable to wound or think or gasp or scream. The possibilities were endless. So he simply picked the one that grabbed at his attention the most. Besides, he deserved some fun.
The Hatter turned, and locked and bolted the doors. He would be in there for quite a while, and it would be such a pity if someone disturbed him…especially in the first hour or two…