Shortly after I discovered American McGee's Alice and Alice: Madness Returns via YouTube, I started looking for stories on this site. Checking out the crossovers between Alice: Madness Returns and Rise of the Guardians, I came across "Winter Wonderland" by Scorpiofreak. She had the idea for the crossover when she realized that Alice would make a good Guardian. I have to agree with her on that point. Also, Ice Tea is one of the best crossover pairings I've ever come across.
I started wondering to myself what other spirits inhabit the world of the Guardians and Alice. I typed "mythological insanity spirit" into a Google search engine and hit pay dirt. Slowly but surely, I knit together a Frankenstein that won't soon be forgotten. This may be one of the most evil OCs ever born. May the Fanfiction Gods have mercy on my soul. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, the "Immortal Madness."
Immortal Madness
The wind whirled outside the large collection of buildings high above the Arctic Circle. Strangely, someone passing by wouldn't have noticed anything except for some large, odd-shaped rocks poking out of the mountainside. From within came the sounds of laughter and merry-making that came with a party, for a party it was. This was one of Santa Claus's New Year's Eve Parties, a party of spirits, immortal beings that were invisible to those didn't believe in their existence.
This party was one of the few New Year's Eve parties that Santa, also known as North, had ever thrown. Usually, the party was thrown on Christmas Eve, preceding his annual flight around the world. This year, however, the party was moved to New Year's Eve thanks to the machinations of Pitch Black, also known as the Boogeyman. Whatever resentment had existed towards North for cancelling the traditional party had evaporated in the face of the New Year's Eve celebration.
It was also the guardianship party of the newest Guardian, Alice Liddell—giving the spirit community the golden opportunity to finally have the chance to meet her. The main character of the beloved books was one of the youngest spirits at nearly 160 years old, one of the most powerful, and also one of the less well-known. She had locked herself within the pocket dimension of Wonderland for the entire 20th century and everyone was eager to meet her, or to at least catch a glimpse of the reclusive girl.
Amongst the strange and fantastical beings that talked, danced, and ate on the floor of Santoff Claussen's ballroom, one in particular stood out like a sore thumb. That was mainly due to the fact that she looked and dressed almost like an ordinary human being. She was a tall woman, with an olive complexion, light blond hair, wideset blue eyes, and a Roman nose. She wore glasses, a black dress that ended at her knees, and oddly enough, a doctor's lab coat. She kept mainly to herself, sipping a glass of champagne and occasionally making small talk with some of the other spirits. Not very many talked to her, and they had something of a good reason. She was Lyssa, the Spirit of Insanity.
She certainly didn't look like the incarnation of all madness; instead, she looked to be the very picture of a balanced psyche and a calm, rational mind. Her posture was perfect, her eyes clear and lucid, her hair curly, and her clothes were spotless. Those spirits that talked to her were surprised to find a charming, intelligent woman instead of the stereotypical lunatic. The only reason why most of the people she knew were just acquaintances was because of her reputation.
One of her favorite activities was to find someone who had just been through a terrible tragedy, something that had completely destroyed everything that they loved and cared for in their lives, and push their minds the rest of the way into insanity. The effects of this varied per person: Catatonia, hallucinations, multiple personalities, paranoid schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress, psychosis, and other types of mental disorders. Sometimes there were even multiple symptoms. She mainly targeted adults for two reasons: First, adults were more susceptible to mental disease as they got older and more understanding of life's tragedies, and second, she was cautious of the Guardians.
One time, she had come across the child of a victim of the Salem Witch Trials, a little girl who had just witnessed the hanging of her own mother. The newest Guardian at the time, E. Aster Bunnymund, had happened upon her just as she was about to reach into the child's mind and unravel what little stability remained. Lyssa wound up bruised, bloody, different shades of the primary colors, and with a real dislike for rabbits and Australians. She hadn't messed with children much before, and she most certainly didn't after that. The Guardians had kept an eye on her after the incident for a couple of centuries.
Lyssa took a sip of her champagne and looked over the crowd, noting who was there and what they were doing. She spotted the Sandman stuffing his face with pudding from the buffet line. He probably just turns it all into sand, she mused. North was currently frowning at something up in the rafters. Adjusting her position, she was able to make out a crowd of elves walking along the rafters, showing off what they had snatched from the buffet tables, and making fools of themselves. And to think, children believe that they make the toys. All they can make is a mess. She noticed the group of females that included the Tooth Fairy, all talking animatedly and occasionally giggling. They had shared a polite hello earlier and that was it. Memories are only good for nostalgia, though she does have good taste in gemstones. She and the Easter Bunny made eye contact. All he did was to narrow his and turn his attention back to the crowd. What she wouldn't give to rip his mind to pieces and dance on whatever remained. The Spirit of Insanity didn't forget and she rarely forgave. She had noticed Jack Frost wandering around with the Sandman earlier, but she couldn't spot him right now.
It was something else that piqued her interest the entire evening. Ever since the commencement of the party with dinner, she had been sensing a mind appearing amongst the guests. The only time she could sense someone was when they were mad, and this particular person was just plain demented. Its idea of fun was to give strange riddles and pieces of advice to others; a rather sick pleasure that came from barely helping those who needed it while watching them burst their brains attempting to understand its wordplay. It also liked to spy on others and then vanish from both sight and her senses whenever they began to suspect they were being watched.
Another thing that had also grabbed her interest was a scent. When she had arrived, she had caught a whiff of something from the ground floor of the workshop. It was a scent that was both familiar and pleasant to her: The odor that came off someone experiencing a psychotic episode. It was old but it had been there. The combination of fear, rage, confusion, and pain that rolled off those who had first lost all hope and then all rational thought, turning them into a wild, vicious animal. It was in her opinion the purest form of madness in existence. The only other thing that came close was the self-righteousness and pride of the power-mad.
Whispers started filtering through the crowd. Lyssa turned from her musings in a half-annoyed manner and then spotted the cause of the unwanted distraction. Alice Liddell and Jack Frost were dancing so close to each other, it was almost an embrace. My, my, personal space invaded with both parties. Certainly a mutual attraction. Lyssa didn't need the knowledge of a psychiatrist to see they both had a deep-seated fancy for each other, though she definitely had it.
One of Lyssa's more unique characteristics was that she was perhaps the only spirit with actual mental issues. Every year or so she would have a psychotic episode usually lasting about ten minutes. The longest time between episodes so far had been five years; the shortest was eleven months. She kept it to herself since she didn't want to be stigmatized like Pitch Black. She didn't groom this image of calm and confidence for nothing. She actually didn't know if she was the only one. Of course, she couldn't ask around about the mental soundness of her fellow spirits since it was an awkward conversation topic and she didn't want her own sanity, or lack thereof, called into question. As a result, she habitually psychoanalyzed the other spirits whenever she got the chance. Insane humans were considered common; a mad spirit was unheard of.
Lyssa was disturbed from her musings again as Jack and Alice suddenly passed by her. For a very brief instant, a faint scent tickled Lyssa's nose. She almost missed it. It was the same mixture of fear, pain, rage, and confusion that she had picked up earlier, the same kind of hysteria—and it was coming off of Alice Liddell. Lyssa stared after them even after the door closed behind the two. Looking around, she noticed that the other Guardians were nowhere to be seen. It's close to midnight. North must have something special planned for the finale. He's got a flair for the dramatic as big as his stomach. She almost laughed at her private joke.
Just then, she sensed that same crazed psyche from before, right behind her. She shot around and nearly jumped out of her coat. Sitting a few yards away was an enormous, bizarre cat. Its body was thin and angular, and she could count every rib and vertebrae. Its fur was mangy and grey, with what looked like tribal tattoos covering its body. The most unnerving part was its enormous head, coupled with its eyes and grin. Its eyes glowed an intense orange, and its grin was surprisingly human, in an almost frightening manner. She could see the psychosis that sparked those eyes and lit up that smile.
The two regarded each other for a moment. If the cat was surprised at being found out, it didn't show it. It just stood there, seeming to mock her. An idea popped into her head right then. In an instant, her face shed its mask of calm and collection and spasmed into a mad grimace. Her mouth stretched into a grin that matched the cats, and her eyes took on the exact same glow. The look was unsettling on the cat; on her, it was nightmare fuel.
The cat actually jumped a little. You weren't expecting that, were you? Its eyes narrowed and its grin wasn't quite so large. Then it, and its mental signature, vanished.
Lyssa chuckled and hurriedly resumed her calm aura before anyone spied the lunatic's smile she had just sported. Why does that animal seem so familiar? Lyssa had seen the creature before somewhere. She just couldn't place her finger on it at first. It looked like some demented version of the Cheshire Cat. Wait a minute, that odor of hysteria was coming off of Alice. Does this mean…? Was that really…?
Lyssa had met Alice before, in Rutledge Asylum, 1865. She had just come over from America, where she had been driving a few victims of the American Civil War into madness over what they had lost. Ever since the founding of the first lunatic asylum in early 1600s London, Lyssa always made sure to visit the capital of Great Britain often. From the 1600s to the late 1800s, Lyssa made London her primary hunting grounds, driving the downtrodden into insanity, while studying those who managed to go off their heads without her help. She had especially loved the rise of the Industrial Revolution. So many different ingredients for madness, all in one place: Dismal surroundings, social inequality, constricting societal norms, little economic mobility, horrific living conditions, rampant crime, and ultimately, man's inhumanity to man. Whether she merely observed madness or created it, Lyssa gloried in all of it.
When she had come across Alice Liddell, she was surprised to find a child that young in a mental institute. Children were usually quite adaptable. Her surprise evaporated when she caught scent of the child's emotional state. The feelings of self-loathing, guilt, and pain were almost tangible to the spirit. Alice was staring up at the ceiling with wide, unblinking eyes. The acid-green irises did nothing to take away from the maddening aura she projected. Suddenly, she had started screaming.
"I could have saved you, I should have died too! Why did I live when you had to die?"
Lyssa had studied the girl for hours until she tired of screaming and closed her eyes from pure exhaustion.
Pitch Black's appearance had startled her. They knew each other better than most. Fear often begot madness and vice versa. The only reason why the Guardians considered Pitch more of a threat to children was that children were far more susceptible to fear than they were to madness. The Dark Ages had been Pitch's time after all. So much irrational fear and superstition from childhood had bled over into adulthood, keeping the human race, especially Western Civilization, from looking for the light.
Pitch had explained to her that the girl's family had perished in a house fire, leaving her as the only survivor. She had developed an extreme form of survivor's guilt, earning this cramped cell in Rutledge. He had invited her to take a look at her nightmares and Lyssa had accepted. What she had found in the little girl's head had been astounding. Such horrific and bloody images, all of them a product of this little's girl vivid imagination and insanity. Lyssa had nearly wept with delight. The utter chaos within Alice's head was a living testament to Lyssa's personal views upon the nature of the world. Pitch just enjoyed how frightening the creatures in Alice's head were and fantasized about transplanting them into the nightmares of other children.
She had visited the girl many times with Pitch after that. She had also seen the Sandman, who had been attempting to send Alice some good dreams. Lyssa hadn't been surprised that he had failed. Good dreams didn't mean a thing in a place like Rutledge, or in any other asylum for that matter. Lyssa didn't get surprised often, but she was when Alice miraculously recovered from her insanity.
When Lyssa had passed the nineteen-year-old in the street later on in the year, she had been delighted to find the girl was starting to lose her mind again. Somehow, the girl was resisting Dr. Angus Bumby's treatment. You'd think that Lyssa would have hated the man, but truth be told, she didn't care either way. She suspected that he had an ulterior motive behind his anti-memory methods, but she wasn't interested in the man's business, just what he did to the orphans' minds. She had learned quite a bit from psychiatrists about the human mind, and it only annoyed her when they succeeded in curing someone, though she hated being in the patient's head when it happened. Besides, quite a few of the doctors and other staff in the asylums were insane themselves. Working in the conditions they did, it was hardly surprising. Sociopaths thrived as lunatic asylum staff, at least in those good old days.
Lyssa wouldn't see Alice again for a few years until one day when they were walking on the same street. Alice had been wearing a nice, blue dress and looked surprisingly healthy, but before Lyssa could wonder why, the girl had walked right through a huge man. The Spirit of Insanity was struck speechless for so long that when she had regained her ability to speak, Alice Liddell was long gone. She wouldn't see her again, until this day.
Lyssa was drawn back into the present when a large clock signaled one minute before midnight. She joined the other spirits in counting down the last minute of the old year.
"Ten…nine…"
Yet another year was coming to a close.
"Eight…seven…"
And yet another was beginning.
"Six…five…"
What was the point of all this, this immortality, living forever, watching the years go by without end? Why did the mortals enjoy their lives as well? What was even the point of living, period?
"Four…three…"
She theorized that every person, mortal and immortal, instinctively knew the answer. Acknowledging it, however, would lead to losing your mind. As far as Lyssa was concerned, trying to keep a sound mind was just foolishness.
"Two…one…Happy New Year!"
Lyssa drained the last of her champagne away and looked for a place to set the glass down. She looked up as a shriek sounded and a burst of light went off in the night sky. Of course, fireworks. Dozens more lit up the sky, showering Santoff Claussen in explosions of multi-colored lights. The spirits admired the rockets as they went off. North knew how to throw a party, that was for certain.
Lyssa watched as a stream of bright red and yellow ones exploded. Suddenly, a splitting headache ripped through her brain, making her grimace. Her vision blurred, and then the ballroom and night sky of Santoff Claussen was replaced by a hellish image. A city lay in ruin, its buildings and monuments crumbling, a layer of ash covering it. In the background, a mountain, glowing red and yellow at its summit, spewed forth a massive cloud of dust and ash. The only sounds she could hear were the howling wind and her own voice, gibbering, shrieking, and laughing.
The headache and the vision ended as suddenly as they had begun. Lyssa saw that her glass had just shattered in her hand, thankfully without cutting her. She nonchalantly swept the pieces under a table with her foot and then went looking for North. When he came back down to the ballroom, she thanked him politely for the excellent meal and grand evening, but she had to run. Personal business. She did accept his offer of the use of a snow globe.
She used the portal to transport herself to New England; she preferred to keep the exact whereabouts of her primary home to herself. From the small road where she had landed, she began what she called "mind-jumping." She didn't actually get inside anyone's head; the closest thing she could come to describing mind-jumping was the monkey bars at a playground. She would come into contact with a human mind by touching it and then launching herself towards the nearest person. If a fellow spirit saw her doing this, they would see a small ball of green light shooting from one person's head to another and so forth.
She finally came to a stop inside the lobby of the administrative building of the McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts. McLean was the largest psychiatric facility of Harvard Medical School. Globally, it had the largest neuroscientific and psychiatric research program for a private hospital. Personally, she preferred the lunatic asylums of Victorian London, such hotbeds for lunacy they had been. These days, people actually cared for the mentally unsound. It made her sick for a number of reasons. The two biggest were: First, that attitude actually allowed for people to recover from their illnesses, and two, the psychiatrists saw the inmates as suffering human beings, not as animals, preventing them from causing abuse and losing their minds to the power that that brought. One made do with what one had, however.
Ignoring the lobbyist, who had suddenly developed a splitting headache, Lyssa started for the lower levels of the hospital. She passed the offices of the psychiatrists and doctors employed at the hospital, personally wishing they knew just how utterly silly she thought they were. What really miffed her was when she was enjoying the madness of a patient and they chose that moment to give the person psychiatric drugs. Watching and feeling a lunatic's mind regain order, or some sense of it, annoyed her. Whenever psychiatric drugs entered a patient's nervous system, Lyssa literally had to fight the urge to vomit. She shivered as she thought just what a syringe or a pill would do to her.
She walked down the stairs to the basement. Locked doors weren't a problem for her. She simply let her powers randomly jumble the mechanical or digital parts of the lock until they fell into the right combination. Behind the furnace, there was a door invisible to mortal eyes. She opened it and stepped inside.
The room looked like the office of a very wealthy psychiatrist, albeit one with very strange tastes. There was the desk for the shrink, the couch for the patient, and bookshelves all over the place. Most of the shelves featured textbooks and scientific journals that dealt with the study of psychology and the human brain. There was a smaller bookcase that she kept by her desk that dealt strictly with fictional works.
The authors that most graced this private collection were Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, and Stephen King, the masters of horror, terror, and madness. She also enjoyed the occasional trip to the local theater to watch an asylum/insanity-themed movie. Some examples of Lyssa's favorites in cinema included The Good Son, The Silence of the Lambs, Sucker Punch, Session 9, Shutter Island, and Stonehearst Asylum. On the desk besides a few odd books and photographs were some toys. They were action figures of Batman's rogue's gallery. The Joker, the Scarecrow, the Mad Hatter, and others made their home on top of her desk. If you looked closely amongst the few fictional books she kept, you would have found comic books featuring those well-known scourges of Gotham City. She was also a fan of the TV series Gotham and American Horror Story: Asylum.
Lyssa walked into an adjacent room and closed the door, emerging from within after changing into slacks and a blue button-down shirt, though she kept the coat. She crossed over to her desk and took a seat. She steepled her fingers and wondered what Alice would think of Sucker Punch.
'She and the main character have quite a bit in common, except Alice avoided receiving a lobotomy. Pity.'
Another splitting headache occurred with another flashback. This one was of a flaming rock flying into a Roman-style building and flattening it. These headaches and flashbacks always signaled the onset of an episode. Many centuries ago, she had tried fighting against them. Now, she saw that there was no point in resisting. In a way, they symbolized just what she was: The incarnation of all lunacy, madness, and insanity.
Lyssa closed her eyes and thought back, back to the time when she herself was human, concerned with all the things mortals worried so much about. She had been born in the Roman city of Pompeii in the year 42, A.D. She had grown up in the city as the child of respected parents, nobles of the city. She had married a captain in the city garrison, who worked his way through the ranks to command the Roman garrison of Pompeii itself. She had three children: One handsome son and two beautiful daughters. Her family had been present at every major sporting event in the colosseum. She had been respected whenever she went to the market with her servants or slaves. Her household was in complete order. Everyone who worked for them, whether for wages or for nothing, knew their place and their duties. That was one of the things that she had enjoyed the most about her life then, the orderliness and stability. The city was kept in order by the officials, including her husband. Her husband had led an army of hard-trained and disciplined troops, all dedicated to protecting Pompeii from barbarians, thieves, and brigands. Her children had been looking into marriages with respectable families within the city. Meals had always on time. People looked up to her and her family. In short, she had loved her life.
Then a particular day came along: August 24, 79, A.D. It had started out like any other day at first. Around midmorning, the city had been rocked by a small earthquake shortly after every bird in the city had flown away all at once. Later, she would remember that a wisp of smoke had started rising from Mt. Vesuvius. She hadn't really noticed it at the time. Nothing else happened until that afternoon, when the wisp had become a large plume.
She and her husband had been finishing the midday meal in their home's courtyard when a larger quake had struck. Tiles from the roof had clattered down around them, followed by a hail of small rocks. As her husband left for an emergency meeting with the city's leaders, she had watched as a darker, more ominous cloud had risen from the mountain. As the afternoon passed, more rocks fell from the sky, along with ash from the smoke cloud. More quakes had struck, bringing down parts of buildings. She had thrown herself before the statues of the gods that her family kept in the house, imploring Jupiter and Neptune not to destroy the world, to intercede with Vulcan for whatever had offended him. She had heard the priests in the temples imploring the same thing, asking Vulcan if something had offended him yesterday at Vulcanalia, the celebration in honor of the fire god.
Panic took the streets and people began leaving the city as fire began to rain down from the sky. Looters also made their appearance. The garrison was stuck between evacuating the city and fighting off the looters. Lightning had also joined the fray. Some cried that the gods had come to destroy the world. Her husband had returned with her son and daughters, saying that he had procured safe passage from the city.
Her son had left the house to try and find his fiancée and her family. Two steps out the door and a huge boulder from the mountain flattened him before rolling into the slaves' quarters. Horrified, she could only stare ahead as her husband led her and her daughters to the shipyards. On the way there, a building collapsed, separating their daughters. Her husband yelled for them to meet at the harbor and had continued with her. She had finally snapped out of her trance when the lava came upon the city. Running and pushing, she had managed to get out of the way of a lava flow. Realizing that her husband wasn't at her side, she had turned around just in time to see him fall. The heat from the lava killed him before it even reached him.
She had run from the city in a mixture of wild fear and trauma. It was late evening when she had reached the outskirts and then turned once again to behold her city in flames. The part of the city where she had lost her daughters was covered in ash, ash so thick there was no chance that they had survived.
It was right then that it happened. Her city was destroyed, her son smashed like a grape, her daughters suffocated, her husband burnt to a crisp, her home gone, her orderly, peaceful, happy world up in flames; she snapped. Her mind was shattered into a thousand pieces. She laughed, shrieked, gibbered, and foamed at the mouth. She pulled her hair out, raked her arms with her fingernails, and ran blundering from nothing and everything. Her vision wheeled with colors and shapes, strange noises assaulted her ears. It was a wonder she wasn't killed.
It was the next morning when she came to. She wasn't back to her old self. That person had started dying the instant her son had died. She was apathetic. She didn't care whether she lived or died. The city was far behind her. She had wandered away from it during her first episode. Even from where she stood, she could see that the once proud city of Pompeii lay in ruins. She couldn't even see Mt. Vesuvius anymore, it was too obscured by the massive cloud of black ash surrounding it. She half-expected Vulcan to step from it and continue his rampage across the world. She heard a faint boom, followed by a wave of ash moving across the city. Each time the wave stopped, a new boom would sound, upset more ash, and create a new wave. She watched as Pompeii was covered anew by the waves and then she collapsed to the ground.
She never found out how long she slept. It was early morning again by the time she woke up to the sound of sobbing. She had walked up to the man; he was one of the city officials and had often dined at her table. She had called out to him, asking if he had any news about help or food. He had just continued sitting on the ground and sobbing. In a temper, she had tried to kick him, only to have her foot pass right through him with a curious sensation. She had put so much force into the kick that she wound up landing on her rear-end.
Recovering, she realized that not only couldn't he hear her or get hurt by her, he couldn't see her as well. Her hands passed right through him, except when she touched his head. There was slight resistance there, like she was putting her hands through muddy water. At the very center of his head she felt something. It was harder than the rest of his head, but felt fragile. She carefully gripped it with her hand, only to have it shatter. The man had instantly screamed, startling her. In two separate voices, he began both praising the gods and cursing them. She watched him for a few minutes, and then hurried away, wondering what was happening to her.
It was about noon when she had happened across a small fishing village that had escaped Mt. Vesuvius's destruction. It was about three to four leagues north of the mountain, while Pompeii had been the same distance to the south. She had cursed the wind then.
Entering the village along with other Pompeii survivors, she quickly realized that nobody could hear her, see her, or be touched by her. She had nearly lost it again when she heard about a man being held in a nice house. She walked up to the guards, oddly intrigued by the gossip she had heard about him. He was the son of someone important in Rome who had sent him there to avoid the embarrassment he caused them. He believed that famous senators and heroes met with him daily. The thing was, nobody visited him, and most of his guests had either been dead for centuries or only lived in myth or legend. It was easy for her to slip in behind the servant girl bearing the youth's food.
While he was eating his food and chatting with people that weren't there, she came up behind him and put her hands into his head. His mind perceived the heroes of oration, war, legend, and myth sitting with him, enjoying a feast. The Greeks Homer and Ulysses conversed about writing a sequel to The Odyssey. Hercules and Perseus arm wrestled on one end of the table. Julius Caesar asked the youth how the Roman Senate was working without the youth's great mind, and the boy replied that Socrates, now an honorary Roman, was presently filling in for him.
She had leaned against the room's wall and gone over everything that had happened to her. The destruction of her city and her life, her brief dance with insanity, her newfound abilities, the former city official, and this hallucinating lunatic; slowly the realization dawned upon her. All the order that she had seen in the city, in the world, in her own life, it was all a lie. All order, whether it be physical or mental, would devolve into chaos. The very nature of the universe was anarchy. The gods hadn't done a thing for Pompeii after all the statues and temples erected for them, after all the sacrifices. They either didn't care or they simply didn't exist.
Chaos was everywhere. A room left alone gathered dust and the objects within rotted away. Food spoiled if it was left out for too long. The young turned old and grew feeble in mind and body before dying. All good and beautiful things in the world would sooner or later turn ugly and imperfect. The mind was no stranger to this. She remembered the madness that had inflicted her not a day past. She remembered how she had crushed something within the official, leaving him talking with two voices, and now here was this young man who talked to dead men of history, legend, and myth.
Yet this revelation didn't truly disturb her. If anything, she had embraced it. She could see the underlying chaos of both the physical and mental realms, and she felt like she had just come home. She didn't hate her old life, she had just realized the truth. She would forever miss her husband and children, but she couldn't bring them back and that was that. She could walk through people, drive the unstable to madness with a touch, and even see into the mind of the mad. She was no longer human; she was something else now. She did a thing she hadn't done since the whole mess had begun. She smiled.
"I am Lyssa, the Spirit of Insanity, the Incarnation of Madness, and I know the truth now."
After this declaration, she had eaten some of the youth's food, left his house, and stolen some clothes from the local market. They had become invisible as soon as she was wearing them, a plus for her. With her stomach full of food, and clothes on her back, the former wife of Pompeii's garrison commander began her journey as the Immortal Madness.
She had traveled all over the civilized world, breaking minds and looking into those breaking or already broken. One by one, she had come across the other spirits: Mother Nature, Father Time, the Boogeyman, the Sandman, and a few others. She learned that just what a spirit was, and why children could see the Sandman and Pitch Black. Belief enabled a spirit to be seen by those who believed in them. She didn't care if she was believed in or not. If she was, it frightened her would-be victims. If not, they never saw her coming.
The name "Lyssa" had belonged to a mythical Greek spirit that the Romans believed in as well. The mythological spirit had driven Hercules mad, and as she could do the same, she had taken the name as her own. Enough people believed in her name that whenever they saw her reach into someone's mind and unravel the fraying strings of the victim's sanity, they would run off screaming in fear. She and the Boogeyman had quite a bit of fun with that.
It was during this time that she had been fighting off her episodes. As mad as she was, she didn't particularly enjoy reliving the sensation brought on by her family's deaths. The longer she resisted though, the more intense they got when they finally overcame her defenses. She had quit fighting them by the third century.
Time flew by, and the world changed as it did. Lyssa noticed this more than the other spirits did since she walked amongst mortals much more than they. People stopped believing in her namesake and so, she walked unhindered through the streets of humanity's cities, sowing her seeds wherever she could. The Dark Ages came along and with them, the Nightmare King's rise to power. So much fear, from so many things; he was the kid in the candy-and-toy store. Lyssa had merely shrugged her shoulders and continued with her hobby. Broken and to-be broken minds existed in good times and in bad, though fear was an excellent catalyst.
She and the Guardians had a neutral relationship. She didn't purposely target children and they didn't come after her like they had with Pitch. That incident in Salem had practically put her on a watchlist; Tooth's fairies made for excellent spies, to her chagrin. Good behavior does wonders with people like the Guardians, however, something she thought that Pitch could and should learn.
One of the things she liked most about modern society was the rise of the horror genre, particularly anything that had to do with insanity. Writers and many others rushed to satisfy the public's morbid appetite for frightening and thrilling stories, much to Lyssa's delight. Her favorite three were Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, and Stephen King. Looking into their minds and seeing the dark, twisted things of their imaginations was ecstasy. The only thing she found to be just as entertaining was actually reading their books. The many hours she had spent pouring over Poe's dark poetry, fantasizing about the insanity-inducing scream of Cthulhu (which would have been music to her ears), and rereading The Shining, those had all been grand ones.
She always thought that the Guardians should thank the Man in the Moon that Pennywise the Dancing Clown was a fictional character and not a real entity. She remembered fondly when she had sent each of them a copy of Stephen King's It in 1987. That was also the year that North hadn't invited her to the Christmas Eve Party. The glee that that joke had brought her had more than made up for it.
She had also enjoyed the rise of asylums. So much madness, all in such cute, building-sized packages. Before their rise, she had dwelt among the private houses that the relatives of the wealthy insane made for them, or out in the streets with those less fortunate. She had made a number of lairs in asylums all over the world and especially in England. Her main one for the 1600s to the late 1800s had been the Bethlem State Hospital, better known as the infamous Bedlam. She had many a home in many an asylum, frequently moving from one to another, always making sure she could come back. She was a roamer, and staying in one place sounded far too orderly and boring for her taste.
For the late 19th and then 20th centuries, she had made her primary lair in the Danvers State Hospital, one of the most infamous asylums in Western Civilization. It was there that the first pre-frontal lobotomy had been performed. She would know; she had been present after all. The place that had served as the inspiration for both Arkham Asylum in Gotham City and Arkham, Massachusetts always made her feel at home. When the buildings had been torn down in 2005-2007, she had done her best to drive the project's directors out of their heads, but no such luck. Remembering sorely the destruction of her home in Pompeii, she had grudgingly moved her things in Danvers to McLean. Again, she would have preferred somewhere that was much more like the fictional Arkham, but McLean had its good points. Neuroscience had always fascinated her since its beginnings.
Alice Liddell was truly an interesting case. A decade spent in Rutledge, one of Lyssa's many haunts before Danvers, with no hope of recovery. Her return to a sound state of mind had been nothing short of a miracle, especially back then. A year later, she had started showing signs of a relapse, only to wind up a spirit and now a Guardian. What had she done to show the Man in the Moon that she was Guardian-material? Maybe Lyssa should have paid more attention to the girl when she had the chance. The girl apparently had a strange mind; all those delicious, mad nightmares and yet here she was, completely sane.
Or maybe not as sane as she would like us to think. Lyssa recalled the Cheshire Cat and contemplated what his appearance meant. Besides that manic grin, there was no resemblance between that…incredible creature, and the animal portrayed in the books and movies. Take that, Walt Disney. She couldn't help but smirk as she thought how quickly Disney would have dropped the idea of an Alice in Wonderland film if he had known the truth behind Carroll's books and the girl they were based upon. The cat begged the question: What did the other Wonderland creatures really look like, and just how mad had she been to have turned them like that?
There was also the smell of hysteria in the workshop and on Alice. Apparently, Alice was still unstable enough that she had completely lost it, if Lyssa's nose was correct. She wondered what had caused it. North had been spouting about the rise of this "Dollmaker," and Alice's defeat of him. From what she had heard, the Dollmaker had teamed up with Pitch in an attempt to destroy the Guardians. One of the results of this was the kidnapping of the Easter Bunny, who a few months ago had been Alice's only friend from the outside. Was it more than just friendship? Alice had seemed to fancy Jack Frost, so her relationship with Bunnymund was either brother-sister or father-daughter. The girl had never had a brother while mortal, or did she find a surrogate father in the pooka? Personally, Lyssa wished that Pitch had let her in on the deal with the Dollmaker when she had heard about the abduction.
'I'll get that interfering Aussie yet.'
In the back of her head, Lyssa felt the by-now familiar sensation of an episode finally starting. It felt like her very psyche was starting to crack and splinter, the chaos of insanity seeping in. A normal person would have been terrified by it, but to her, it felt like her brain was taking a cold, refreshing shower. Lyssa leaned back in her chair and let the sensation overtake her mind.
For a moment nothing happened. Then, slowly, she began to smile. The smile lengthened itself into a grin and she began to chuckle as well. A light began to gleam in her eyes, a mad gleam. The grin got wider and wider until it seemed her face would split open at the jaw. The chuckles turned into guffaws and from there into a steady stream of insane, loud laughter. The light shown forth from her eyes like a candle, flickering wildly. She hugged herself, laughing riotously, and then fell from her chair to the floor. She started rolling around, continuing her wild cackling.
The lights dimmed, and darkness seemed to creep around the room's edges. The walls groaned and cracks appeared in them and in the ceiling. Slowly at first, and then faster, the clean walls began to transform. The plaster began to resemble some sort of padding. Within seconds, the walls and ceiling transformed from those of a successful psychiatrist's office to that of a revolting padded cell. The cracks became rips and tears, spilling out stuffing on the floor. Mildew grew in the corners, as cockroaches and rats began chewing their way out of the walls. Lyssa's slacks, shirt, and coat gave way to a strait jacket, to which she just chortled. Everything in room began to shake wildly and then, chaos struck.
A mirror on the wall to the desk's right shattered in a spiderweb pattern, followed an instant later by the lenses of her glasses. The books flew off of their shelves, bursting open in a shower of paper. The pages flew around the room in a wild maelstrom. The lights flickered wildly, creating a bizarre strobe effect. A dripping wet tentacle protruded from the remaining pages of a copy of The Call of Cthulhu, leaving a trail of disgusting slime in its wake. Similar things tried to get out of the other books. Bloody, grasping hands. Huge, sharp knives. Laughing, wild-eyed heads, these and many other abominations struggled wildly to get out into the real world. Rips and tears appeared all over the couch. All the drawers in the desk opened and closed violently, sending the contents shooting out of them. The action figures of Batman's enemies scampered across the desk, attempting to slay each other. The whole time Lyssa rolled around on the floor in her strait jacket, laughing maniacally and grinning a grin that would make the Joker envious.
Her wide eyes saw both the terrifying manifestations of her power, and something else. The truth that had been revealed to her outside of Pompeii as the city burned. The truth about existence itself. The truth about the very nature of reality: All order descended into disorder, all balance turned into disharmony. Everything was doomed to chaos in time. She had seen all this while running wild away from Vesuvius, and had comprehended what she had seen in that lunatic's private house. There was no point in attempting to preserve order; the only thing that held meaning for her was anarchy, especially that of the mind. The only way for one to realize the truth, to draw meaning from reality, was to lose one's mind.
After ten minutes of this nightmarish display of power, Lyssa's grin began to disappear and her laughter began to subside. The action figures stopped fighting and fell to her desk. The contents of her desk shot back into their respective drawers and they closed themselves. The horrendous things which extended from her books sank back into their homes, while the pages that flew around the room went back into their books. Once repaired, the reading materials sprang back to their places. The lights ceased flickering, and the mirror and glasses repaired themselves. The mold, rats, and insects disappeared into the walls, as they turned back into an office. The room was set back to order, as Lyssa lay quiet and emotionless on the ground, clad once again in her casual clothes and white coat. Finally, she got to her feet and then resumed her seat at the desk.
Within one-to-two years, the same thing would happen again. The calm and order shown to her fellow spirits was a just mask, one she had never revealed to anyone, not even Pitch. The problem was that she was the Spirit of Madness, yet her bouts of insanity only lasted a few minutes and they occurred annually or biannually. What she wanted, and needed, was someone that was far more insane than even she was. Quite a few of the mentally-abnormal humans she had come across fit the bill except in one vital area: They were mortal, and she required an immortal for this. So far, Alice Liddell seemed to be the best candidate. If she had gone that hysterical over the kidnapping of the Easter Bunny, what would she do if her world was completely demolished?
Lyssa imagined it: The destruction of all the anchors that held Alice's psyche together, just as her own had been at Pompeii, driving the girl so out of her mind into an hysterical state that she would never come out of it, and then unleashing her upon both the immortal and mortal worlds. A spirit of that caliber, completely and permanently insane, under her control, she quivered with excitement at the thought.
Everyone had anchors: Things, places, and people that kept their minds from unraveling. Destroy most of them with the right people, and they would completely lose it. A few months ago, Alice's anchors had included Wonderland, its inhabitants, and that blasted pooka. Unfortunately, her anchors had now extended to include the rest of the Guardians as well. Lyssa had learned how to fight with both her body and her powers after Bunnymund's total victory, but she wasn't anywhere near being good enough to take on the Guardians. She needed a way to destroy them or their bond with Alice. She needed an edge.
Lyssa picked up a framed photograph from her desk and studied it. It was a picture of herself and the Nightmare King from when she had moved into Danvers. He had helped her pick out the spot. And he and this Dollmaker had nearly succeeded in actually making children fear the Guardians before throwing away their belief in them. She had come across Pitch's Nightmares before and had admired the perversion of the Sandman's dreamsand as art. But when she had found one of these "Night Ruins" causing a seven-year-old to experience a night terror, she had nearly swooned over how beautifully maddening and terrifying the beast had been. In the morning, she was going to pay her old friend a visit. He likely had information she needed, and he would especially want to help if it meant hurting the Guardians.
She put down the photo and picked up the figures of the Joker and, ironically enough, the Mad Hatter. Kudos to whatever DC writer had seen fit to base a madman off of one of Alice's creations. What was it that the Joker had said in The Dark Knight?
"Madness, as you know, is like gravity. All you need is a little push!"
Lyssa smiled a cruel smile. She intended to give Alice Liddell one hell of a shove.
This one took me a while to write up. I wrote this at home, in the family suburban, and in a yurt in the Rockies. I'd like to thank Scorpiofreak for proofreading this story and for the suggestions she gave me. Please tell me what you think of Lyssa in a review or PM me. This is one of the most multi-faceted and evil OCs I've written so far. I really want your feedback.
After I'm done with my X-Men: Evolution fanfic, I intend to start a multi-chapter project where Lyssa goes after Alice and the Guardians in an attempt to finally drive Wonderland's creator into madness. How evil is someone that wants to hurt or destroy six people all so they can drive one of the six into insanity? Yikes.
I'll be going to college soon, and that means I'm going to have to put away my fanfiction for a while. My classes and studies will have to come first. Ironically, my classes start on August 24th, 2015, exactly 1,936 years since Mt. Vesuvius blew its top. Hopefully, it won't be a disaster of that caliber or any other. Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed this fic. Happy reading and writing everyone!