The Story After
"Your White Majesty?" resounded a low, curious voice in an odd echo. Alice Liddell could not see for several moments as she slowly woke from her intense slumber.
"Your White Majesty?" the voice repeated slightly louder than before which hurt Alice's delicate ears having not heard a sound in a long while.
"I'm not sure if I am fit to be called 'majesty' but I assure you that I am rather pale," Alice replied in a hoarse whisper. Soon enough she could see the center of her vision. The anonymous voice belonged to a rather old man who had nothing more than a few patches of snow white hair left on his head. It looked like he wore a white trench coat and a pair of bifocals on the tip of his nose. His pale blue eyes blinked at her with mild annoyance.
"Oh? And then what should I call you now?" the old man asked, pushing his glasses farther up the bridge of his nose.
"Why, Alice, of course. And what should I call you?" the innocent girl asked without taking her eyes from his.
A look passed over him that she did not particularly like but dare not ask of what he was thinking about.
Without acknowledging her question, he continued with his. "I see. Do you know how old you are, Miss Alice?"
Alice had to think for a second or two then replied with a sense of pride, "Seven years and six months, exactly."
He wrote this down on a clipboard he held in his arms. You see, Alice had woken in an awfully bright white room filled with only two pieces of furniture - the white and silver chairs upon which either of them sat. The man and Alice were about three yards from one another. Alice herself was dressed in a plain white dress and her brown hair fell in tangles over her shoulders.
After his note taking, he continued with the inquiry. "Do you know what the date is?"
A rather simple question, Alice thought and replied simply, "It is May the twenty-sixth."
"And the year?"
"Eighteen sixty-nine, of course."
His pen ceased moving and his eyes looked up to Alice in question and he sighed deeply. He set down his clipboard on the floor along with his pen and laced his fingers together in his lap. He studied the floor for several seconds and then began with uneasiness visible in his voice.
"Miss Alice, are you aware that the actual date is June the eighteenth… in the year eighteen seventy-nine?"
Alice's brow furrowed and smiled nervously as she awaited to be told that he was joking but his solemn face disturbed her greatly.
"I couldn't just have been asleep for ten years, could I? Could one really just fall asleep one night and miss ten years of their life? Could they?"
Fear dwelled in her stomach because she knew very well that it could happen. She had heard of people going into comas and waking up years later or not even waking at all. She never thought that something like that would ever actually happen to someone like her. Never.
"No," he said while switching the placements of his hands. He hated delivering horrible news to such innocent patients. "People don't just fall asleep. There is usually a cause behind things such as this."
Alice's heart skipped a beat. "But I don't have a reason! Nothing of such has ever happened to me!"
The old man sighed again and his eyes went back to studying the floor. Alice couldn't figure out why the floor was so interesting when he was telling her that everything has changed in her life.
"There isn't a reason-" her voice trailed off until she was completely silenced as she waited with the feeling that she was soon to be sick.
"Alice, what is the last thing you recall before you woke up?" he asked in a slow, steady voice that made Alice feel as if he were talking to a mere child.
The question puzzled her as the last thing that could really remember was dressing for the night and taking down her hair. There was nothing beyond seeing her own reflection in the mirror as she removed the pins. Everything just ended and picked back up from when she awoke in this dreary place. That thought lead her to wonder how she had even got there.
"Alice? What do you remember?" the man seemed braced for the girl to brake into tears but she did not. She just relayed what she actually did remember which made the man's heart sink. Despite this, he picked up his pen once again and wrote down what she had said.
As he did this, Alice asked with curiosity, "What did you say your name was again?" For the man had never actually properly introduced himself earlier which to Alice was extremely rude of him.
He answered in a monotone voice without looking up from his note taking, "Doctor Fredrick Hemming. I'll be your doctor here until you are released under your guardian's consent."
"Released? So tell me this, Dr. Hemming, just where am I to be released from?" she began to fiddle with the hem of her dress.
"You are in the Bangor Hospital for the Mentally Disturbed," the monotone voice continued.
Alice froze as she tried to process this. Did he mean… insane? Her first thought was that it had to be a mistake. She was just at home getting ready for bed. How did things turn out this way? How did she end up in a hospital when she was just removing her hairpins? Her hands began to shake as she tried to conjure up a sensible question.
"Why here am I?"
The man paused as he tried to figure out what she had asked and then set down his busy pen. His face showed sympathy as he thought over what to tell her. It was often that patients rarely knew why they were where they were. Some claimed it had been a mistake until they died but he never thought there were any mistakes made in his hospital.
"Miss Alice-"
"Stop calling me miss! I'm just Alice! Alice is my name!" she had to say it. She felt like all of reality was slipping through her fingers and she wanted her name. She felt like that was all she had left. Her name.
"Of course, M- … Alice. On May 26th of 1869, there was a fire. At your house, Mi- Alice. The inspectors are not completely sure of what started it but they believe it to arson. Your father had many enemies considering his profession. Either way, the result of the fire was complete destruction of the structure and three casualties."
No…
The man braced himself and had the name of one of the nurses on the tip of his tongue in case the girl snapped. "Alice, there was nothing they could do for them. One of the fatalities was your maid, Gabrielle Naihmy. The other two were your parents, Alice. They died in their room where the fire started. The door… the door was locked and in their haste they could not open it. Miss Gabrielle came to unlock the door but when she had the skeleton key in the lock, the door exploded in flames. The three of them died together. Your sister, Claire, found you and you had passed out from the fumes and she carried you out of the house. She saved your life. Afterwards, I… she admitted you here because of your behavior which we suspect is from your parents' deaths. Just now when you said you could not recall the events, I believe you had erased them because of your pain."
He ended there not wanting to go any further in fearing that all of the information given to her would make her have another nervous break down.
Alice sat in silence for minutes with her head lowered and her breath slow and uneven. He didn't try to touch her and took a few more notes on his little clipboard.
She was right. All that she had now was her name. Everything was gone.
"Mama… Papa…" her breath was gone and now her eyes stung with tears.
She slowly raised her head and tilted it to the right and asked to the best of her ability, "This doesn't answer my question. Why did sister put me here?"
She believes it was my fault. Somehow she thinks it was my fault and now she blames me for their deaths. This is her revenge.
The doctor was quite shocked to find that the girl wasn't screaming and even able to speak. Most patients would have been through the roof by this point and would have had to be restrained.
"Tell me, Alice, do you know a man by the name of Hatter?"
"Hatter?" she said in false confusion.
I told sister… I told her of Wonderland. This is what happened. She thought me to be insane! I was a child! Of course I went to imaginary lands… didn't everyone?
She's lying, thought the doctor but he failed to note it because it was expected.
"Alice," he removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Your sister tells me you had gone to a mystical land named 'Wonderland'. Is that true?"
Alice did not reply.
"Normally, I would have thought that it was a typical child dreaming of a far away utopia as most do. But after your 'returning' from the Looking-Glass, which was the same day of the fire, your sister said that you began acting oddly."
"Oddly?"
"Yes. She says you abused your cat's kitten. Oh what was its name…" he leafed through the papers on the clipboard but Alice interrupted him.
"Snowdrop," she said in a faint whisper.
"Ah yes, that was it."
"What did I do?" the tears stung at her eyes once again.
"You don't remember? Either way, I don't think I need to tell you of such things, I-"
"What did I do to her!" Alice screamed as her tears flung from her cheeks. Her face was flushed and her natty hair stuck to her cheeks and forehead.
"You cut the pads of its paws with shards of the large mirror in your den. Then you…" he refused to go any further.
Alice sat in silence again and then breathed deeply trying to regain her cool. "Why am I here, Doctor Hemming? You have failed to answer me."
"Are you sure you do not know Hatter? How about Cheshire Cat?"
Alice clenched her dress in her hand and nodded. "I know them," she hissed under her breath. "I knew them."
The doctor nodded and noted this. Then he crossed his legs and began his diagnosis, "Alice Liddell, you have a rare disorder called dissociation identity disorder, multiple personalities."
Alice laughed. A cruel kind of laugh that frightened the old man in the fact that such a sound would come from such an innocent looking girl.
"You have been mistaken," Alice said as she crossed her own legs. "I am Alice and only Alice." Her eyes narrowed at the old man, "My name is all I have left and now you are trying to take it from me?"
The change in her attitude vexed the man and he jotted it down rather quickly and then replied, "I am not trying to take your name. And you are correct, you are Alice. But you've been uh…" he leafed through the papers again until he found what he was looking for. "Cheshire Cat and Hatter I have mentioned before because they were the main ones that you seemed to keep hold to. A few others are White Rabbit, March Hare, Duchesse, Dormouse, Tweedledee, Tweedledum… and the most recent ones were the Red and White Queens."
"Are you trying to tell me that I am them?"
He let the papers fall and replied, "No. I am saying that you have taken on their personalities for the past ten years. Now we need your cooperation to try to help you."
"Try and help me? Don't you mean 'us'?" she growled.
"No, you are still Alice. You are no one but yourself but you have an illness and you must be treated. I am suggesting psychotherapy. It's a therapy where you and a therapist will talk and he will try to help you through this, okay? Everything's going to be fine."
"There's nothing wrong with me," Alice glowered at the man as she hissed these words.
"Of course," the doctor said with a sigh and called the nurse into the room. He was a rather large man just incase Alice had thrown a fit. "Please usher Miss Alice to her room. Thank you."
The nurse had a pleasant smile but it seemed awfully fake which disgusted Alice. "Right this way, Miss," the man said with a soothing tone.
She followed him without any remarks or trouble. She was lead down a large hallway with duplicate doors on either side of her. The only difference between them all was the numbers.
441.… 440... 439...
A man moving slowly in an odd fashion walked (or should I say "trudged") past them without ever lifting his eyes. This, Alice thought, was rather rude. When she tried to peek into one of the rooms, the man nurse tugged her arm back to him and now she had to walk even closer to him. The walk altogether was awfully uncomfortable.
420...419...418...
"We're here, Miss Alice," he said in his soothing, monotone voice. "Four seventeen."
Alice glanced to the door and found that it was no different than any of the others she had passed on getting there. Though she was curious to see what was inside she was in no hurry in being confined.
The man opened the door with a slide of a heavy bolt that was only opened with one of his keys. He turned back to her with his hideous smile and showed her into the room. He needn't show her around for it was rather small. It was just as any other hospital room with its bleached walls, tile floor, white bed, and mini restroom. The only difference, she noticed, was that there were bars on the sole window.
She stepped into the room and jumped when she heard the bolt slam back into place as the nurse left her alone. Everything then seemed to crash into her as she stood there looking at the barred window. Her parents were gone. Her sister claimed her insane and most likely blamed her for their parents' deaths. She had nothing left, not even her name.
She slowly walked to the bed in a way that oddly matched that of the man she had seen earlier on her way here. Alice pressed her hands to the mattress and crinkled the perfect comforter in the process.
I am to sleep here.
She removed her palms and trudged to the bathroom and flipped on the light only to see it set off an off-yellow hue on the facilities and found that she liked it better when it was off.
I am to wash here.
Her eyes shifted as she left the bathroom and found her way to the window. She raised her hand to the bars but did not touch them. She imagined how many insane people had flung themselves to those bars, grabbing at them and screaming so that the healthy can hear their cries at night.
I am to live here.
Alice went to the bed and set herself upon it despite it being early day. She lied on her back and set her arms stiffly to her sides and just stared up at the ceiling. She wondered how many had lied there before her and counted the same dots she was looking at. How many…
There was a noise within the room but she did not move. The sound came again, she did not move. She knew what it was. She had recognized it because she had been waiting for it. There was a large thump followed by several others. Alice smiled as a thought ran across her mind.
It was arson. They got that correct. But I wasn't unconscious. Oh no. I was quite awake.
She thought of how ironic it was that she was where she was. All those things she had done, she had done because she was trying to avoid this place. But it didn't matter.
Thump.
Because she wouldn't be there for long. No, they couldn't keep her here even if they wanted to.
Thump.
Because he was here. She knew he wouldn't be gone long. Despite what her sister tried, they couldn't help her. Because she didn't need help. She was just happy and they tried to take that away from her. Now, you see what happened when they tried to take away her happiness.
Thump.
Alice rolled onto her side and slid her hand under her head and smiled. She felt giddy all over. "You're late," she said with a giggle.
The white rabbit's watch hung in the air before him and he shook his head. "I'm not late. You are."
"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."