The Red King Cometh
Disclaimer: I don't own Alice or American McGee's Alice but I do think they are damn cool. The following story is meant as a sequel to the video game somewhat though I don't think there is exactly too much in the way of spoilers there being as it is a first person shooter to sanity. I wanted to do a story however tying it a bit more to Lewis Carol's most intriguing character (in my opinion) The Red King. This story is primarily a horror story but there is a little bit of romance involved though nothing any normal human being might call healthy.
The clock struck twelve as the grandfather clock in Alice's sister's home. It was an unseemly hour for a woman to still be awake at this time but Alice couldn't help it. After so many years at the asylum to suddenly be free of the guilt, the catatonia, the horror that she had seen....it was almost too much to bear. Her sister had accepted her as family and so had her husband and children but Alice wasn't really a part of their lives. To them she was an embarrassment and it was obvious they were also a bit afraid of her. It wasn't this frustration that kept her awake this night, they couldn't relate to her with what she'd seen but she didn't want them to. After walking through Wonderland for a second time and seeing all the phantoms of her childhood through a shattered mirror, she never wanted to those experiences shared by anyone else but they haunted her still. Alice thus just sat in the queen size bed in the northern most part of the estate's hall and looked out the open balcony doors into a moonlit night.
"Meow." the sound was almost an echo in the night and one that sent Alice to grabbing the sheets with instinctive dread.
"No." Alice said firmly, it wasn't possible.
"Oh yes Alice. I'm back." The grin of sharp greenish-yellow teeth appeared before the rest of the emanciated cat. It hovered over her bed before gently floating down onto her lap.
"Your dead." Alice stared her eyes at the Chesire Cat and considered reaching her hand out to strangle her mentor.
"As I recall you left all of Wonderland dead. You set aside you little girl things and thus thought you killed us all. Careless. Tut Tut tut." The cat walked up her chest and placed it's paws on her breasts.
"I thought I left Wonderland because I killed damn near every last living in the....kingdom." Alice wanted to scream out obscenities but she didn't want to disturb her sister or her family. Tears began to well up in her eyes as she thought about having to go back to the asylum.
"Oh you did. Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dumb, the Mad Hatter, legions of cards and chess pieces, flying ants, The Duchess, and of course the Queen. However unfortunately Alice we're not beings of flesh and blood." The Cheshire cat counted on his paws as his flesh slowly disappeared. The process left nothing but muscle but before long even that disappeared and a skeleton was all that was visible but still quite animate.
"Yes but bone breaks just as well as flesh squishes." Alice reached for a copy of the book Lewis Carol had written about her experiences (before she'd lost her mind) to crush her guide with.
"Tut tut Alice, you shouldn't worry about going mad again. Though truth be told I would say that no one can truly escape madness. It's just which types of madness are more socially acceptable than others. For instance, war on a nation that kills fifty thousand civilians and soldiers as opposed to cracking your neighbor's head open with a hatchet to see what color his brains are." The Cheshire Cat faded back in and licked what looked like blood off his fingers.
"Sane people don't see talking magical cats." Alice said putting the book down.
"Well then they must be doing something wrong. Actually Alice it never really was your fault you saw all the things you did. It wasn't really your fault that your parents died either though try telling that to...." The Cheshire cat raised a few whiskers as Alice pulled a butcher's knife from under her pillow.
"Mention my parents again at your peril." Alice said, recognizing how stupid it was to threaten a hallucination.
"My our attitude towards purveyors of nonsense has taken an even worse course than when I last left you." The Cheshire Cat said.
"Let's say I've learned better than to trust you and the people from Wonderland." Alice remembered the butchery she had cut across the fantasy world. Butchery she'd loved in some sick twisted part of her heart. In that respect she was no better than the Queen of Hearts.
"Or the Red King." The Cheshire Cat said, reading her thoughts.
"The Red King back too?" Alice asked dryly.
"Oh yes as is the Queen of Hearts. However the Red King has never left. The Red King cannot leave because the Red King is the heart of Wonderland and he who dreamed us all up....including you." The Cheshire Cat stopped for a moment and smiled at Alice malignantly.
"I'm nobodies dream." Alice decided that if she was going to be insane, she might as well make a decent go of it and be insane out of her bed. Getting out with her long white nightgown trailing around her body, Alice lit a lamp and sat down at her room's breakfast-table.
"Well unless you count the tiresome deity the Vicar's rant about continually, you are technically correct. However the Red King brought you to Wonderland when it was still a place of happiness and beauty. The Red King also brought you to Wonderland when it was Hell. The Red King brought all those laughing happy children like you who unfortunately went completely stark raving mad and ended up wandering dreadfully screaming through the night." The Cheshire Cat let his words linger a bit as Alice shuddered. The betrayal of those she'd befriended in Wonderland had been less painful than seeing the faces of all those insane little ones wandering through the horror filled dream-scape.
"Speak plainly." Alice eyed the cat who was now sitting on the table looking her square in the eye.
"The Theosophy nutters speak about men with supernaturally powerful minds who can read thoughts, project their souls from their bodies, and talk to ghosts." The Cheshire Cat disappeared and suddenly the lamp she had lit flickered in a heavy wind from the outside. It was just like a ghostly manifestation from a tired parlor room mystery.
"And what does this have to do with the Red King?" Alice asked as she covered the lamp with her hand even though it was rather pointless since it already had glass between the flame and the wind.
"The Red King was beyond all that. The Red King could create entire worlds by retreating into his mind and make those dreams that people have every night last indefinitely. Eventually loneliness or desire to share his creation led him to draw other children into his own private Heaven." The Cheshire Cat stopped to wash his paws off with Alice's pitcher of water. Alice didn't blame the Chesire Cat for not cleaning himself as other cats did, she'd would hate to touch his grime covered fur with her tongue.
"And then my parents died and I somehow turned it all to Hell?" Alice asked crossing her arms and getting up, careful to keep the knife in front of her. If the Cat had shown up he might have brought friends though being she still believed this to be a hallucination it was rather pointless to stab them. It would make her feel a great deal better however.
"Right events, wrong sequence. The Red King was the one traumatized and his scream of horror was heard all across the world. As the Red King went mad so did his insanity go into the minds of every single child he touched. Around them tragedies struck to make sure that they did. Pyro-kinesis Alice resulted in your parents death but left you untouched. The Red King would kill your family Alice but he'd never hurt YOU." The Cheshire cat pointed at her with his left paw and his smile wider than ever.
Alice blinked as she let the knife drop to the floor. Her memories of the fire were crystal clear and what she remembered most and was most horrifying, the key that had led to her insanity was that the FLAME HAD NOT BURNED. If she was insane this could just be a false memory but something felt right. The rest of the statement then struck Alice like a lightning bolt "Then the insane children?"
"Every last one of them lost their minds. Sometimes it was a fire, sometimes it was a carriage accident, sometimes they just took weapons and did in the adults themselves. I thought they might have been salvation for the Red King at one time but none of them proved to have the stones in the end. Only you Alice succeeded in freeing yourself from the twisted dreamscape and healing. The Rest....just rot still." The Cat sighed and wagged it's tail a bit under Alice's nose as she leaned down to pick up the cat.
"What do you want then?" Alice said and looked at her cat with new eyes, he was the only one who understood her.
"Wonderland has returned to the way it was or at least has taken on again a dark cast. Your freeing yourself bought many inhabitants back their sanity but it's not enough to drive away all the insane children's dreams or the Red King 's evil. You did affect me enough that I have some sentimental feeling however...enough feeling that I want to see the children freed and the Red King killed." The Cheshire Cat smiled as Alice lifted him up into the air. The Cat slowly faded from view and his grin broke into a dozen teeth before reassembling before Alice's eyes.
"I don't kill....people." Alice added the last part at the end.
"I think you'll change your mind once you see what he's done lately." the Cheshire Cat took Alice by the hand and they went flying out the night door and down the rabbit hole to their fate.
***
The Red King struggled in his bonds even as he was not aware of what was going on around him. His eyes had a vacant look about them that betrayed with every fidget and eye movement that his mind was still there. He was trapped though, trapped in in a never-ending dream that would have him violently mad if not for the straight jacket wrapped around him. The Asylum in North Umberland was prized for it's "discretion" but it was still filthy and worse was known for it's revolutionary treatments that required a great deal of people to experiment on. What was worse was that the Red King was no older than Alice and he might have actually been a handsome man underneath all the hospital filth and grime had his life gone different. His hair was grown long though and so was his beard. Red hair and green eyes stared outwards even as they took in nothing. The door to the cell then opened as the midnight visitor came to the madman who started the cycle of insanity so many years past.
"Merriweather McTaggert. Catatonic for...well as long as anyone can remember." Assistant Head Physician Doctor Edwyn Jameson looked over the chart that had been given him.
"Beware Doctor, that one can snap any minute. He's only done it a few times but that night that Alice girl woke up he broke an orderly's back with his bare hands." Nurse Ratchet said with a slight warning to the Doctor from Edinburough as two other orderlies wheeled in his equipment.
"The McTaggert family is a very powerful and wealthy one Nurse. If I can cure this man of his affliction then the entire medical community will hear of it. I think for something like this, I can handle one unruly patient." Doctor Jameson said and ushered the Nurse a way. For his electrical healing process the Doctor would have to have complete privacy with his subject. Frankly the treatment had been known to kill the person involved and while he was sure that wasn't going to happen this time (Mr. McTaggert was very important after all) he didn't want any witnesses just in case.
Merriweather stared blankly at the wall as the machinery was slowly attached to his body.
"Don't worry, this won't hurt a bit." Doctor Jameson walked back to the generator and cranked it up for several minutes with an awful whine. It was so loud that he completely missed the Red King speaking in a low, hushed, whisper.
"Alice....your coming back to play with me." The Red King smiled.
TO BE CONTINUED
-Charlemagne
Disclaimer: I don't own Alice or American McGee's Alice but I do think they are damn cool. The following story is meant as a sequel to the video game somewhat though I don't think there is exactly too much in the way of spoilers there being as it is a first person shooter to sanity. I wanted to do a story however tying it a bit more to Lewis Carol's most intriguing character (in my opinion) The Red King. This story is primarily a horror story but there is a little bit of romance involved though nothing any normal human being might call healthy.
The clock struck twelve as the grandfather clock in Alice's sister's home. It was an unseemly hour for a woman to still be awake at this time but Alice couldn't help it. After so many years at the asylum to suddenly be free of the guilt, the catatonia, the horror that she had seen....it was almost too much to bear. Her sister had accepted her as family and so had her husband and children but Alice wasn't really a part of their lives. To them she was an embarrassment and it was obvious they were also a bit afraid of her. It wasn't this frustration that kept her awake this night, they couldn't relate to her with what she'd seen but she didn't want them to. After walking through Wonderland for a second time and seeing all the phantoms of her childhood through a shattered mirror, she never wanted to those experiences shared by anyone else but they haunted her still. Alice thus just sat in the queen size bed in the northern most part of the estate's hall and looked out the open balcony doors into a moonlit night.
"Meow." the sound was almost an echo in the night and one that sent Alice to grabbing the sheets with instinctive dread.
"No." Alice said firmly, it wasn't possible.
"Oh yes Alice. I'm back." The grin of sharp greenish-yellow teeth appeared before the rest of the emanciated cat. It hovered over her bed before gently floating down onto her lap.
"Your dead." Alice stared her eyes at the Chesire Cat and considered reaching her hand out to strangle her mentor.
"As I recall you left all of Wonderland dead. You set aside you little girl things and thus thought you killed us all. Careless. Tut Tut tut." The cat walked up her chest and placed it's paws on her breasts.
"I thought I left Wonderland because I killed damn near every last living in the....kingdom." Alice wanted to scream out obscenities but she didn't want to disturb her sister or her family. Tears began to well up in her eyes as she thought about having to go back to the asylum.
"Oh you did. Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dumb, the Mad Hatter, legions of cards and chess pieces, flying ants, The Duchess, and of course the Queen. However unfortunately Alice we're not beings of flesh and blood." The Cheshire cat counted on his paws as his flesh slowly disappeared. The process left nothing but muscle but before long even that disappeared and a skeleton was all that was visible but still quite animate.
"Yes but bone breaks just as well as flesh squishes." Alice reached for a copy of the book Lewis Carol had written about her experiences (before she'd lost her mind) to crush her guide with.
"Tut tut Alice, you shouldn't worry about going mad again. Though truth be told I would say that no one can truly escape madness. It's just which types of madness are more socially acceptable than others. For instance, war on a nation that kills fifty thousand civilians and soldiers as opposed to cracking your neighbor's head open with a hatchet to see what color his brains are." The Cheshire Cat faded back in and licked what looked like blood off his fingers.
"Sane people don't see talking magical cats." Alice said putting the book down.
"Well then they must be doing something wrong. Actually Alice it never really was your fault you saw all the things you did. It wasn't really your fault that your parents died either though try telling that to...." The Cheshire cat raised a few whiskers as Alice pulled a butcher's knife from under her pillow.
"Mention my parents again at your peril." Alice said, recognizing how stupid it was to threaten a hallucination.
"My our attitude towards purveyors of nonsense has taken an even worse course than when I last left you." The Cheshire Cat said.
"Let's say I've learned better than to trust you and the people from Wonderland." Alice remembered the butchery she had cut across the fantasy world. Butchery she'd loved in some sick twisted part of her heart. In that respect she was no better than the Queen of Hearts.
"Or the Red King." The Cheshire Cat said, reading her thoughts.
"The Red King back too?" Alice asked dryly.
"Oh yes as is the Queen of Hearts. However the Red King has never left. The Red King cannot leave because the Red King is the heart of Wonderland and he who dreamed us all up....including you." The Cheshire Cat stopped for a moment and smiled at Alice malignantly.
"I'm nobodies dream." Alice decided that if she was going to be insane, she might as well make a decent go of it and be insane out of her bed. Getting out with her long white nightgown trailing around her body, Alice lit a lamp and sat down at her room's breakfast-table.
"Well unless you count the tiresome deity the Vicar's rant about continually, you are technically correct. However the Red King brought you to Wonderland when it was still a place of happiness and beauty. The Red King also brought you to Wonderland when it was Hell. The Red King brought all those laughing happy children like you who unfortunately went completely stark raving mad and ended up wandering dreadfully screaming through the night." The Cheshire Cat let his words linger a bit as Alice shuddered. The betrayal of those she'd befriended in Wonderland had been less painful than seeing the faces of all those insane little ones wandering through the horror filled dream-scape.
"Speak plainly." Alice eyed the cat who was now sitting on the table looking her square in the eye.
"The Theosophy nutters speak about men with supernaturally powerful minds who can read thoughts, project their souls from their bodies, and talk to ghosts." The Cheshire Cat disappeared and suddenly the lamp she had lit flickered in a heavy wind from the outside. It was just like a ghostly manifestation from a tired parlor room mystery.
"And what does this have to do with the Red King?" Alice asked as she covered the lamp with her hand even though it was rather pointless since it already had glass between the flame and the wind.
"The Red King was beyond all that. The Red King could create entire worlds by retreating into his mind and make those dreams that people have every night last indefinitely. Eventually loneliness or desire to share his creation led him to draw other children into his own private Heaven." The Cheshire Cat stopped to wash his paws off with Alice's pitcher of water. Alice didn't blame the Chesire Cat for not cleaning himself as other cats did, she'd would hate to touch his grime covered fur with her tongue.
"And then my parents died and I somehow turned it all to Hell?" Alice asked crossing her arms and getting up, careful to keep the knife in front of her. If the Cat had shown up he might have brought friends though being she still believed this to be a hallucination it was rather pointless to stab them. It would make her feel a great deal better however.
"Right events, wrong sequence. The Red King was the one traumatized and his scream of horror was heard all across the world. As the Red King went mad so did his insanity go into the minds of every single child he touched. Around them tragedies struck to make sure that they did. Pyro-kinesis Alice resulted in your parents death but left you untouched. The Red King would kill your family Alice but he'd never hurt YOU." The Cheshire cat pointed at her with his left paw and his smile wider than ever.
Alice blinked as she let the knife drop to the floor. Her memories of the fire were crystal clear and what she remembered most and was most horrifying, the key that had led to her insanity was that the FLAME HAD NOT BURNED. If she was insane this could just be a false memory but something felt right. The rest of the statement then struck Alice like a lightning bolt "Then the insane children?"
"Every last one of them lost their minds. Sometimes it was a fire, sometimes it was a carriage accident, sometimes they just took weapons and did in the adults themselves. I thought they might have been salvation for the Red King at one time but none of them proved to have the stones in the end. Only you Alice succeeded in freeing yourself from the twisted dreamscape and healing. The Rest....just rot still." The Cat sighed and wagged it's tail a bit under Alice's nose as she leaned down to pick up the cat.
"What do you want then?" Alice said and looked at her cat with new eyes, he was the only one who understood her.
"Wonderland has returned to the way it was or at least has taken on again a dark cast. Your freeing yourself bought many inhabitants back their sanity but it's not enough to drive away all the insane children's dreams or the Red King 's evil. You did affect me enough that I have some sentimental feeling however...enough feeling that I want to see the children freed and the Red King killed." The Cheshire Cat smiled as Alice lifted him up into the air. The Cat slowly faded from view and his grin broke into a dozen teeth before reassembling before Alice's eyes.
"I don't kill....people." Alice added the last part at the end.
"I think you'll change your mind once you see what he's done lately." the Cheshire Cat took Alice by the hand and they went flying out the night door and down the rabbit hole to their fate.
***
The Red King struggled in his bonds even as he was not aware of what was going on around him. His eyes had a vacant look about them that betrayed with every fidget and eye movement that his mind was still there. He was trapped though, trapped in in a never-ending dream that would have him violently mad if not for the straight jacket wrapped around him. The Asylum in North Umberland was prized for it's "discretion" but it was still filthy and worse was known for it's revolutionary treatments that required a great deal of people to experiment on. What was worse was that the Red King was no older than Alice and he might have actually been a handsome man underneath all the hospital filth and grime had his life gone different. His hair was grown long though and so was his beard. Red hair and green eyes stared outwards even as they took in nothing. The door to the cell then opened as the midnight visitor came to the madman who started the cycle of insanity so many years past.
"Merriweather McTaggert. Catatonic for...well as long as anyone can remember." Assistant Head Physician Doctor Edwyn Jameson looked over the chart that had been given him.
"Beware Doctor, that one can snap any minute. He's only done it a few times but that night that Alice girl woke up he broke an orderly's back with his bare hands." Nurse Ratchet said with a slight warning to the Doctor from Edinburough as two other orderlies wheeled in his equipment.
"The McTaggert family is a very powerful and wealthy one Nurse. If I can cure this man of his affliction then the entire medical community will hear of it. I think for something like this, I can handle one unruly patient." Doctor Jameson said and ushered the Nurse a way. For his electrical healing process the Doctor would have to have complete privacy with his subject. Frankly the treatment had been known to kill the person involved and while he was sure that wasn't going to happen this time (Mr. McTaggert was very important after all) he didn't want any witnesses just in case.
Merriweather stared blankly at the wall as the machinery was slowly attached to his body.
"Don't worry, this won't hurt a bit." Doctor Jameson walked back to the generator and cranked it up for several minutes with an awful whine. It was so loud that he completely missed the Red King speaking in a low, hushed, whisper.
"Alice....your coming back to play with me." The Red King smiled.
TO BE CONTINUED
-Charlemagne