Jabberwocky

By Alice Little

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

  The jaws that bite, the claws that

catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

  The frumious Bandersnatch!"

--Jabberwocky by Lewis Carrol

"We're all mad here."

--The Cheshire Cat

Running. She was running for her life in a wood teeming with creatures and no one even gave her a second glance. There was something behind her, something hot and vile and very, very close. And no one seemed to know it but her.

Fell. Downward onto a cold and unforgiving forest floor, her tender knees and elbows ravaged by loathsome rocks, streaking her white apron with red blood. She was up in an instant and running again, legs driving, arms pumping, lungs burning. Sweat streamed down her forehead, mingling with grit and dust and 2painting her face a sickly shade of gray. And as fast as she went, as hard as she went, always she could sense him coming just behind her, the single length between them seemed less her saving grace than his game of choice. Let her think she was escaping him, let her think there was a chance . . . then strike and kill.

Death would be so merciful if only it would come quickly. Yet it would not. This she knew with such sharp clarity it seemed she was looking into his mind and reading what was inside. He wanted to make her suffer. He would make her suffer if she did not keep running.

She was running past familiar territory and familiar faces all the time. Familiar but somehow different. How laughable to think that only a short time ago Wonderland was her fairyland. Her escape from an inane existence she would give anything to reclaim. Now the landscape was dark and all of the once-friendly faces were indifferent to her plight. Indifferent or, even worse, outright hostile. Oddly the hostility on their faces seemed like a mirror image of that she felt for her parents.  How dare they leave her? She needed them!

The accusing countenance of the Hatter flashed by her peripheral vision, and at the same moment it seemed she could hear his very thoughts inside her head.

"I could say the very same for you, my dear."

"You!" she screamed, first in her head, then with her lips. "YOU! You're doing this!"

Tranquil, spiteful laughter echoed in her skull.

"I'm doing nothing, you're doing it all. Everything you touch, you destroy. Everything in your path dies. Wonderland is a withered shell and my soul is rotting even as it does, and it is all your fault, Alice."

"It is not my fault!" she cried, tripping over a branch as she spoke. Another fall, but she recovered so quickly he had no time to gain ground. "Do I control what happens here?"

"Do you? You come here to escape when your world proves unsatisfactory. You created this place and now you are destroying it even as you are destroying yourself. Who did start that fire, Alice? Whose lamp was it that fell to the floor? Was it yours? Did Dinah knock it over?"

"No no no no no!" she chanted, holding her head as she ran. But she couldn't block out the images the Hatter's words evoked. Behind her she could hear the raspy panting of the creature, closer now.

"Was the cat supposed to be in the house, Alice? Was it not a rule of your mother's that Dinah stay outside in the nighttime to hunt for mice? Why was she in the house, my dear? Who brought her inside?"

"Me, but I didn't . . ."

"You didn't what, Alice?" Inside the white worms of her brains she could feel, as well as hear, the sound of the Hatter's laughter. "You did not mean to defy your mother? Now she is dead, your father, too. They are dead because of you! You killed them!"

Her eyes were screwed shut as she ran, hands pressing into her temples, hoping to block or perhaps crush the memories from her mind. But she could not block out the sound of the Hatter's voice or the affect it had on her.

"They are dead and you are alive, dear Alice." The Hatter chortled happily. "And they say that mine is the world without reason!"

"STOP IT!" she screamed, inadvertently halting her forward movement as her hands tugged at her hair, clawed red gashes into her arms. "I didn't kill them! It was an accident!"

"So it was," the Hatter conceded willingly. "And," he added, "so is this."

She spun around, opening her eyes just in time to see the monster's jaws gaping over her. She smelled the fetid odor of dead things on its breath as the huge mouth closed in around her, and then there was a horrible, crushing pain such as she had never known.

Then there was nothing at all.

Rutledge Asylum

The small, plain room was in chaos – and this despite the fact that it was almost three in the morning. People moved in and out, grabbing instruments and blankets and wet cloths, calling orders to each other over the din of a horrible shrieking. Only snatches of conversation could be heard.

" . . . Done this before."

"Yes, but never so bad."

"Get the doctor, will you! Get the doctor!"

"She is bleeding."

"Her lip. She's biting it."

"Help me hold her down!"

" . . . Strong for a little girl."

"Here comes the doctor!"

A kind-looking man with a white coat and sleepy eyes strode into the room. He took one look at the writhing, screaming figure on the bed and demanded, "How long?"

"A half-hour, Doctor," One of the nurses answered for them all. "We thought it was like the others and saw no need to wake you. But it went on and on, and only seems to be getting worse."

"Get me my bag from the office," the Doctor ordered her. "I'll give her a sedative. In the meantime let's strap her down, for pity's sake, so she won't be able to hurt herself any more."

With an efficiency shown only in front on authority figures, the nurses buckled leather restraints on the young girl's wrists and ankles, as well as one big strap that went over her middle to pin her to the mattress. A strip of leather was forced between her lips and teeth to prevent her from biting her tongue. By the time all was finished the first nurse had returned with the doctor's bag.

He took it without a word of thanks and sat down on the edge of the bed. In a moment he had pulled from it a small vial of clear liquid and a syringe. He was speaking to the girl all the while. "It's all right," he said soothingly as he drew up the injection. "You'll be all right. This will help the nightmare pass and you will rest."

He tapped the plunger to remove air bubbles, and then gently grasped the girl's elbow with his free hand, holding off the vein. "It's all right, Alice," he murmured, easing the medication into her bloodstream. "This will make you all better . . ."

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

   All mimsy were the borogoves,

     And the mome raths outgrabe.