December 17th, 2014.

12:31 P.M.

Black tears. Mascara stains painted cake in smudges on her cheeks. A blue gown tied with loose string. White pinafore. Bloody ribbon. Ballet flats.

And blonde hair.

She stirred, moaning softly, eyes weary and bloodshot and stinging. She looked around. Then she gulped. Then she cried.

This was Alice, which was not her real name, of course, but her past meant nothing anymore. It was forgotten. Discarded. Cleansed. Sterilized. It didn't even matter. This was simply Alice.

And nothing more.

Bonded. Gagged. Afraid. Tied to an old, time-beaten Grandfather chair; the upholstery ripped to bits, revealing a bright, smooth plush of beige color underneath. She shuddered. She yelped deeply in the bottom of her throat, and it traveled all the down to her gut. She writhed and twitched her muscles, but the ropes were tight. Too tight. Especially around the abdomen, as if the bundle was some iron-clad, medieval, torture corset.

And her legs were immobile and sealed together as if by wielding, and aching numbly like a limp, flaccid tongue as they lay loosely at the floor; motionless, tired, and unable.

The cloth in her mouth was also alarmingly damp with salvia.

She saw the colorful pots and mismatched cups and glass saucers. She saw the checkered oilcloth draped over the wooden edges. She saw the chandelier, swaying gently like a pompon in a light brush of wind, haphazardly organized garnishes and the buckets of flowers and the greasy factory floor that smelled of exhaust fumes and gas leaks all beneath its dimly lit sway. She saw the shadows creep in around at her sides, the blackness engulfing everything but this extravagant display of decoration and obsession.

And then she saw him.

Her heart began to beat fast. Too fast; larruping against her chest with a dangerous dart of velocity. She felt like screaming.

And when Jervis jumped up on that ridiculously long table and sauntered his way down towards her seat, she did.

"MMM!"

"Shh," he said. It's going to be ok. He spoke softly, his dirty, wind-beaten bucks clinking against the utensils on all those empty plates. "It's all going to be O.K."

"MMM!" She cried again, but her voice was faint and muffled behind the wet cloth wrapped around her jaw. "MMNOO!"

He continued down the oilcloth, cracking the rim of an antique Melamine plate underfoot. A pocket watch emerged from his pocket, a small glint of bright gold rising from its brass disc. The chain dangled. The hands moved. It ticked. And ticked. And ticked.

"MMM!"

Halfway there, he saw her petrified face and bit his lip, hard enough to draw blood but doing no such thing. He turned around, grimacing. "I'm sorry," he breathed unsteadily. "I'm so sorry, Alice."

She sniveled and her arms broke out in cold gooseflesh. Her back shuddered. She gulped.

"I didn't want it to be like this," Tetch whispered, more to himself than to her, "I really didn't. I love you! You know that, of course you do."

She said, "please." She hollered, "let me go." She mumbled, "I'll do anything." Then she shrieked, a horrific, goatish shriek that echoed silently towards the darkness around them. "I have a family! A little girl! Oh god, please!"

But he didn't hear her.

"You just fought so hard!" he shouted, roared, and then pulled at his hair, salt and liquid bubbling up into crude tears within his fragile eyes. His posture slumped lower as he crouched, elbows meeting knees in an awkward squatting position.

"You just . . . couldn't be content! You couldn't be happy! Happy with me!"

Alice winced. Jervis wrinkled his nose and stood in response, disgusted, angry, and sad; his reason for being so, however, considerably different than that of his cold, sweaty victim's.

And then there was a pause. A painful one; one that held fast with a patent, inexpugnable thickness; a pause that seemed to snuggle up into a bundle, right then and there, and tucked itself in for the night, naturally and seamlessly immune to any sense of respite or composure.

Jervis spun around, a tad frantically, his unbuckled belt flapping about, and he was suddenly back to his smiling, confident self.

"But I can make you happy, dear," he said, wiping at his eyes and beaming. "I can make it all better."

She knew what was coming. She had gleaned information of his brainwashing proclivities in bits and pieces from what she either heard on the local news or read in those online news articles. And even though reports were abundantly vague, and her current mind was dangerously over-clouded with thoughts of despair and the linger of some bootlegged, opiate-laced narcotic, the impending diminution of her free will-the true fate that awaited her-was the first, skin-prickling dawn of realization that bobbed up to the surface of her brain as Jervis took off his top hat.

She knew she would not be able to think on her own soon. She knew, and everything, every boiling dumpling of terror and lamentation inside her, was churned over and turned inside out and then lurched up and down her stomach in this terrible, sinking fit of acid indigestion. And when her captor held that hat closer to his chest and plodded nearer towards her seat, her whole body reverberated in trembles and rivers as she let out a croak as wild and hysteric as the slowly crescendoing shrill of a madwomen banging her fists on the guardrails of her hospital bed.

"MMMMMAAAA!"

"I love you. I love you."

"MMMMMMRRRAAA!

"Just let it go black Alice. Just fall down the rabbit hole and let it all go black."

She reared back, the Grandfather chair skidding across the linoleum with a screech.

Jervis cringed.

"You think I want this?!" he shouted. "You think I want you to be some lifeless, brain-dead puppet at my disposal? You think I'd like that?!" As he treaded forward, he grunted and kicked over a teacup and it slid nosily across the table of silverware and shattered onto the floor.

"I don't want that, Alice! I love you! I goddamn love you!"

"MMMMOOO!"

She shuffled back some more until the looped, golden-colored legs of the chair thudded against something thick and sturdy and unmovable.

Until it thudded against a wall.

Jervis balled a hand into a fist and moved it against his puckered face. "Now look what you made me do," he said complacently and gently, the anger lifting away from his tongue.

"You made me swear."

He leaned in and smiled. "I don't like swearing, Alice. Never have."

Turning, he gazed off into the black reflectively for a moment, and then took a few inches behind, slowly treading away.

"So, I'm sorry dear, I didn't want you to see that side of me. But now that you have, it's all the more reason to do what must be done. To make it all go away, make it fade, to pick the drab, unpleasant little thoughts clean from your pretty little mind."

She shook her head desperately, imploringly. Drenched in perspiration, terror, hate and sorrow.

He didn't notice.

"I really do love you, Alice. I do."

"MMM!"

"I love you."

"MMMMAAAAAAAAAAAMMM!"

"I love you so much."

And that was when he gave her his hat–brown and stitched, a "10/6" price tag neatly taped to its dish-shaped bond by a sash of cut-off tarpaulin. That was when the thing smoothly folded down his arm; Alice kicking and wiggling in the last few, fleeting seconds of her defiance, expecting a hot lance of pain to cut down her scalp, or maybe even an electric shock that would rewrite her brain somehow.

But the hat just slipped off his fingers, and landed onto her beautiful, blonde head without anything more than a soft thump.

The magnetic beep sounded off and then her eyes contracted into pins: these small, discolored, beady black-dots. Her face deadpanned and her eyes fluttered weakly and then settled.

She looked up, emotionless.

Jervis grinned and took out the cloth from the sore, pained crevices of her lips.

"Now say you love me back," he said.

She did.