Disclaimer: I don't own Alice In Wonderland! I own this fic, but that's it. Oh, and that collection of old glass bottles on my desk. Yeah, that's mine too. And those action figures and quite a few stuffed animals. The bed is mine too, but the cat thinks it's hers... go figure.
A Brief Author's Note: Here, we have the first fic in the LJ 10_prompts community's Table 11 and the start of a new series of Baby Grands. If you haven't read my Repo! or my Sanctuary fics of these titles, let me explain. A thousand is sometimes colloquially referred to as a "grand". The "baby" bit comes from the term "ficlet," which just brings to mind the image of baby fanfics.
1 - Poison
"You aren't wearing a corset!" the voice of her mother scolded in her memory. "And where are your stockings!?"
"Hamish has very delicate digestion, you know," as Lady Ascot twaddled on about her precious pasty-faced son's potential to come down with a blockage.
Identical smarmy female faces floated in the forefront of her sleeping mind. Alice scrunched up her nose and turned over in bed, tangling the covers around her legs. She saw again her loyal sister's rotten husband in a close embrace with some other gentleman's wife. Once more, she kicked herself for not blowing the whistle on him the instant she stumbled upon them, tact and ladylikeness be damned! The same sister nattered at her about marrying the young Lord Ascot, telling her how she wouldn't have her pretty face forever.
Alice mumbled in her sleep and swiped at her itchy nose with one hand. More images floated through her head. She saw herself stretched out on her back in one of Marmoreal's magnificent gardens, no corset and no stockings. Three Bloodhound puppies, soft and wrinkly, cuddled up with her and they all took a gorgeous snooze in the soft sunlight. She watched herself casually ducking out of the way of yet another flying sugar bowl and giggled in her sleep. How often she had thought of simply chucking her mother's horrid old china out the window!
Her dreaming ears heard a million "Stop's", "Don't's", and "No's". Then, louder still, she heard her own voice screaming back "Please!" She thought of everything she had ever truly wanted to do, whether it was wear trousers, or fly, or just kick off her shoes and chase rabbits through the garden. If it promised to bring her real joy in life, there was someone there to tell her she couldn't have it.
Her mother called her scandalous, while her sister took the so-called gentle approach in reminding her just how ugly she would be in a few short years. What was so wrong with not wanting to marry a stuffy fart of a lord who only wanted to dance quadrilles in trousers!? In the Queen's name, who decided what was to be declared "fashionable" on any given day. Who was to say that someday it would not be the fashion to wear a codfish upon one's head? She smiled in her sleep, a rather goofy smile, as she thought of some day's men wearing each a codpiece upon his head.
What in the world would they think of that? What if she had said that to her mother? Or perhaps she might have asked it to her sister? Or to that foul Lady Ascot!? She could imagine the woman sinking to the ground, not really having fainted, but demanding the attention. Her dream self caught the elder Lord Ascot's secretly twinkling eye. He would call her a cheeky young lady, intending it as an endearment – a fatherly way of putting it, for sure, but it still reeked of disapproval.
Alice turned over in her sleep again, sending a pillow slouching to the floor, and a stream of nonsense syllables tumbled from her lips. One of the Bloodhound pups flicked a velvety ear as the cushion landed on his tail, which stuck out from under the bed. The girl's brow crinkled in dreaming consternation – who was even Lord Ascot to call her a cheeky little girl? Who was he to say that she had not the right to be cheeky!? She scrubbed at her cheek with one hand, ridding herself of the small collection of drool at the corner of her lips.
Her mind continued to work on itself. "Wherefores" and "What-ifs" spun through her head like clucking chickens caught in a whirlpool. She imagined each chicken to have the face of someone in London. Yes, that was all they could do – cluck at her. All of them did it, spent their entire lives cluck, cluck, clucking like old hens. Useless noise, that's all it ever was, she realized. Why didn't she think about it before? What stopped her from seeing the truth?
Things were simple when she was a child, when her father was alive. He was like a tonic, like something good that fed a little girl's wonder and imaginitude. Whenever he would come in to reassure her about her nightmares – even then, she had been trained to think of them as nightmares – she always felt better. She knew they weren't really bad dreams, but for the sake of keeping Mummy from nagging, she had to pretend that they were.
Her father had been a wise man, she now realized. He knew being 'round the twist wasn't half as bad as everyone said it was. Aunt Imogen, as sad a figure as she cut, actually seemed to have it best of everyone up there in the Upperlands – no matter what, she would believe that her prince was coming for her.
So when had she, Alice, given in to the demands of the Tweedles around her? She thought of the twin girls who had been at her almost-engagement. Even between them, they couldn't claim a whole and functioning brain. Alice was nothing like them, and to them, that was strange, even wrong. But she had tried her best to fit in, even if she had to do things like "forget" her corset and refuse to wear stockings. It really had pained her to disappoint her dear Mummy so and to make her good sister worry – but was it really their worry and disappointment that hurt?
No! She decided – not at all! That was just them keeping her in line. They didn't care what she thought or how she felt. As long as she looked and danced and acted and walked and talked and smelled like everyone else, dancing the same quadrille, that was all that mattered. It had been no small wonder that she ran away from them! They were killing her!
The people she had grown up around were poison.