The City Behind the Asylum
by Nikki Little
Chapter One: Hatter's Discovery
While my lessons in blowing smoke portals continued, Caterpillar continued to make new discoveries extending his own abilities. His most important discovery was how to keep a portal open continuously for a round trip. Previously, the longest a smoke portal could remain open was perhaps 15 seconds. These "continuous smoke portals" were especially useful if the person – or creature – making the trip was unable to blow a smoke portal for the return trip. At the time, only Caterpillar, myself, and Hatter knew how to blow smoke portals. Caterpillar had started teaching Hatter how to blow smoke portals as well, and Hatter, unlike me, was a brilliant student who learned in two weeks what had taken me months to learn. Hatter and I both then learned together how to blow Caterpillar's newly discovered "continuous smoke portals". He learned the new technique in two hours. It took me two weeks. I feel like such a dunce around Hatter.
Hatter took his first trip "uptop" as a personal favor to me. Now everyone knows that about once a month a woman has a few days when she is, shall we say, not at her best. I didn't have a problem with this before when I was so waifish, but now I get those damn things once a month like clockwork. Sometimes it hurts so bad that I actually wish I was a size 2 again. Then I remember how much I hated looking like a boy. While I was sweating one out, Hatter decided to make a trip "uptop" to a grocery story pharmacy to get some Midol for me. There was still some money left over from the windfall that had popped out the back of a desktop computer that had broken open when tossed down the Rabbit Hole, so paying for it would not be a problem. Hatter blew a smoke portal that opened just outside the Rabbit Hole "uptop" and began hiking along the wooded border of the stream in the direction away from the street in front of the asylum. There was supposed to be a large grocery story located about a mile or so behind the asylum. Hatter continued walking until he came to a long barrier row of trees. He looked around for an opening and didn't see anything obvious. He pushed his way through the branches, and that's when he saw it: there was a huge tent city located behind a shopping center ahead. Ragged, dirty homeless people were everywhere. Now Hatter had never before witnessed such misery in the uptop world, and for all his outer gruffness, he was really a sensitive soul. Hatter walked along the edge of the homeless encampment and went into the grocery store to make his purchase. He didn't talk to any of the homeless people on the way back, and none of them approached him. Hatter told me his story when he handed me the bottle of pills.
Now up until then, I had had nothing to help dull the pain of periods except the double-strength cherry brandy which Bill, Mr. White, and I made occasionally purely for my personal use. It was 140 proof and was kept in my weapons locker. Needless to say, when Hatter handed me the bottle of pills, I was drunk out of my skull. I was not only not feeling my cramps, I wasn't feeling anything at all – not even my toes. Out of pity, I suppose, Hatter sat down with me and had a few glasses of my "period brandy". It wasn't long before Hatter was as drunk as I was. He didn't realize that the brandy was double-strength. Hatter had hurt my feelings six or seven weeks ago on a wild Wonderland Saturday night, and I figured now was a very good time to ask about the snub. I mentioned that Hatter hadn't gotten up on a chair and declared his eternal love for me like he had always done before on our once-every-two-months ritual showings of the Matrix Trilogy on Saturday nights. Hatter always got plastered on Matrix night, and it was then and only then that his feelings for me came pouring out. Then he always got really embarrassed after he sobered up, and he would hide from me for a couple of days. I admitted that I felt just a wee bit hurt and rejected because of this, and wanted to know that actual reason. Hatter looked very embarrassed, but, because he was drunk, he was willing to talk. He was also very blunt: "I like my women thin." Ouch. Since I was drunk, I was feeling no inhibitions at all: "Are you telling me that you don't like me anymore, or are you just telling me you find me less physically attractive?" Hatter looked a bit disturbed. Maybe he realized he was being a jerk. "I've always adored you. You know that. I just don't find you physically attractive at all anymore." I asked Hatter to sit down next to me and pulled his head over on my chest. It was kind of a dirty trick. You might say that I introduced Hatter to the "twins" which I didn't have when I was thin. It didn't work, however. Hatter fell asleep. I guess a pair of Bs weren't worth staying awake for. The next thing I knew, Cheshire had come in, spotted Hatter and me on the sofa, and got a little angry. Cheshire hissed Hatter out the door and confronted me. Yes, I was still drunk. I told him not to worry: "Hatter has no interest in me now. He thinks I'm ugly. Good riddance, Hatter. Does Hatter have any idea just how ugly he is? His face is the thirteenth weapon of Wonderland!" Dumb, Alice. Dumb, dumb, dumb! You stupid drunken slut! You should have just let ol' Furball get jealous. Nothing like jealousy to trick a man...er, cat...into proposing. Cheshire looked amused and was no longer angry: "Hatter doesn't know a beautiful woman when he sees one." Cheshire gave me the long, slow look up and down, and said, "You are stunning -- you take my breath away." Cheshire always seemed to know the right thing to say, but I didn't know if he was sincere or not. Since I was drunk, I brought up the marriage thing again: "When are you going to get me that ring, you furry little coward? Or will I have to get you drunk and trick you into marrying me? You know I can be very devious." Cheshire suddenly remembered he was hungry and scampered off to the Vale to hunt snarks. He always gets hungry when I mention the word "marriage". Men! Er... Cats! Bloody coward! Hic!
This short story is based on the characters of the video game American McGee's Alice. Electronic Arts (EA) holds the copyrights.
The idea for chapter one came from LiannaInHell's "If Alice Were On Her Period" - a short, inspired piece of lunacy!