Alice awoke startled to find Darkland gone. No one. She felt beads of sweat on her brow, her hair a horrible mess. Was it stress? Was it punishment for entering the devil's playground without permission? What were these haunting memories?
As Alice wondered, she began to cry as the tainted memories crept into her mind.
"Alice, another nightmare again?"
Alice looked up she saw it was her mother, the frail lady she had begun ever since Alice's insanity blossomed. Alice looked down at the asylum's floor. Chess pieces layed across the floor, and shredded cards were on the ground, and pieces of the looking glass from the vanity had shattered.
"Oh no...what happened, mother?" Alice said with a bit of a sad tone. Not like she really cared. She hand't cared for a year. Alice jumped from bed and began to clean the floor; Alice's mother helping.
"Well, when she, appeared-" Her mother began.
"Who?" Alice asked.
"Your...not you, you." Mother explained.
"Oh."
"When she appeared, she noticed you were losing in chess and she had the most frightful tantrum, and then tore up the cards thinking the Queen of Hearts was about to behead you." Mother said, before beginning to play with her dress, then tossed her arm behind her back.
"What.." Alice asked, anxiously.
"You..then attempted to kill yourself, with the broken mirror. I stopped you, but you attacked me and got my wrist. They sedated you..." She said, before almost bursting into tears.
Alice was shocked with herself, and stared down at the bandages on her wrists. They were warm and a tad bit damp. Alice held her head.
"Why must I keep this life going like this...?!" Alice said weakly.
"I don't know..I don't know!" Mother said sobbing, and left the room.
Alice sat on her bed, alone, staring at the moonlight. exactly 3 years since she looked at the moonlight and found the gateway to hell.
As she remembered, she felt very stupid and tried to have a long sleep.
Alice woke up shortly and looked at the broken glass. She smirked. Only a smirk. Why smile when you know you can't. She remembered when she was five she loved puzzles. She decided to assemble the glass like a puzzle. Soon, it wasn't a game. It was near instinct. Her life or something depended on Alice's challenge.
"Not here!" She said. "Nope. Ah there we go! Next piece!"
Eventually, Alice found one final piece that seemed near microscopic. Alice grinned, and completely ignored her painful cuts that bloddied her hands, and stuck it smack bang in the centre of the puzzle and suddenly the blood on the pieces acted as some solvent glue, and the mirror was no longer just a shattered mind game. It was a completed mind.
"Alice..." Something whispered.
Alice couldn't have cared less, and purposely fell backwards, into the glass, like a trust fall. It shattered all right, but Alice went right through it. There was no down stairs asylum, no Nurse, no abusive and arrogant doctors, nothing but a black.
"Welcome home Alice..."