And in the end in Wonderland
We all went mad~
When the darkness faded away at long last, the only sounds were the hushed whispers of the flowers.
Wait. The flowers?
Clary was not one for thinking she was going mad—she had gone through too much to think that — but as she opened her eyes, the smell of the rich, moist earth almost pungent in her nose, she knew she had finally gone bonkers.
One moment the demon, one with a decomposing head of a goat had been hurtling towards her... the next moment, here she was.
The nearest tulip, a bright blood red one with velvet-like petals, tutted softly. "What a little thing she is. She stood no chance against that demon."
A high pitch laugh sounded now from the rose, thorns bristling. "Dear, my dear, though she be but little, she be fierce."
"That is Shakespeare" Clary mumbled into the earth, coughing as the soil brushed her lips as she pulled herself to her feet. The rose and the tulip were over seven feet high, leaves forming hands and vines twisting around their stems, writhing and a sickly purplish-green colour. They pulsed as if diseased.
Clary frowned, brushing the dirt from the front of her black gear. "You don't look so good" she told the pair, indulging in her craziness as she tried to gather her thoughts that resembled nothing more than tiny shards of a shattered window.
She had been hunting with Jace at her side and Isabelle on her other. They had uncovered a cache of demons that had been larger than they'd originally thought. Oh, the lead demon, the goat-headed freak one, had realized who she was. Gone for her specifically while spitting out the word Morgenstern.
When Clary glanced up at the pair of flowers, she jolted back, almost tripping over the uneven ground inside the clearing.
The flowers had the faces – the contorted and bruised faces – of Aline Penhallow and Helen Blackthorn. Their faces were rough as if made moulded by someone with next to no experienced with wax. Aline smiled, her mouth full of thousands of tiny needle-like teeth that were suspiciously dark red at the tips. A line of maroon dribbled from her torn lips as she leaned towards Clary.
Clary turned and fled.
She ran until the sun fell from the sky and crashed into the ocean, whining as it was enveloped by the waves. Then, slowly from her perch up a neon pink tree, she watched the crowd on the beach heave without rest with their rope until the moon was high in the sky. It was only when the moon was securely tied to the mountains that the crowds left.
This place reminded Clary of a book she'd read as a child. It was a place where everything was distorted, simply impossible. Bonkers. A place where up could be down and trees could talk.
Wonderland.
Clary gasped as something burned her arm, grasping her forearm and forcing back a scream that would most likely shatter the moon. It was like her arm was being bitten by something with poisonous teeth. And sharp ones at that.
When it vanished as if never there, she yanked up her sleeve and inspected her forearm; there was indeed a bite there, but it was rapidly vanishing. And then it was gone.
A Djinn demon, Clary reminded herself. That was what she had been facing. But one much more dangerous – this one could...
She groaned and closed her eyes; it all made horrible sense as a new memory rose to the surface. This super Djinn could induce very realistic nightmares and visions that would claim the victim if they didn't escape from the literal rabbit hole before the poison shut down their body.
"Great (!)" Clary grumbled, yanking her sleeve back down and shivering slightly as a chilly wind blew. "I'm literally in Wonderland. At least, my own version of it."
It was like she'd slept only five minutes before the moon was dropped into the ocean and the sun pulled up and ignited with a candle, casting a warm glow across the multicoloured world below it.
After fashioning a spear from a sharp flint of rock and strong stick, Clary ventured into the woods, keeping to the rough trail that led through it. The woods was quiet, almost eerily quiet at that. It was almost like it was holding its breath like she was.
How did Alice escape Wonderland? She couldn't remember. If this was her nightmare, where would she put the exit?
As if by cue, a crossroads appeared before Clary and one of the signs, thankfully, read EXIT in big, bold black letters. She let out a sigh of relief and started forwards; if she was on a timer before the Djinn poison destroyed her, there was no time to lose.
"I really wouldn't go that way if I were you."
Thrusting her spear before her, Clary spun around with her heart hammering inside her chest.
She sighed in relief and lowered the spear instantly at the sight of the person stood before her.
"Jace" Clary breathed in relief, taking a step forward, her eyes taking his bizarre ensemble of clothes; His legs, feet and torso were clad in a tight pink leather so dark it looked almost black. His hair was smoothed back from his face, his eyes blacked out with a line of dark purple. Where his golden eyes had been bright before, they were illuminating now. A flicker behind Jace of dark pink the same colour as his clothes – his uniform – stopped Clary from taking a step forwards.
This wasn't her Jace, Clary realized, raising the spear once more with her eyes narrowing. The Jace before her grinned, showing teeth as sharp as the flowers she had ran from. But thankfully, his teeth were pearly white. One even had a chipped incisor in exactly the same as her Jace.
"I come in peace" he purred, the long thin tail that resembled, Clary was startled to think, a lizards tail with dark purple spikes running along it at every few inches. When he shook his head, shaking back a lock of hair that had escaped its neat style, Clary saw pointed ears that were not unlike a fae's.
"Are you Jace?" she asked, glaring at the creature that resembled him... yet didn't. "No... you're the Cheshire Cat of my... vision thing, yeah?"
The devilish smile widened and Jace vanished before her eyes only to reappear behind her, lips at her ears and arms tight around her waist.
"I have many names, my dear" he whispered, fingers curling into her rigid gear, the talons at the tip of his fingers digging into the black material. "And most would terrify you."
Clary winced as his needle-like teeth nipped at her earlobe, opening a few small wounds where drops of blood oozed from them. His breath made Clary think of death and despair. His tongue flicked out and caught them, a soft growl in his throat. "Your blood reeks of fear, my dear. And lust. You-"
As Clary twisted to plunge the spear into his chest, Jace was gone.
A laugh sounded overhead and Clary's head jerked upwards to see the boy lounging upon a tree branch with his long reptilian tail hanging over the side, twitching as if it belonged to a cat. A cat with a taste for the dead.
"Too slow" he mused, turning an apple over and over within his palm. "Confound it all; how are you to destroy the Mad Hatter if you can't slay a simple cat? But then-" he tossed the apple down where it landed at Clary's feet. "I'm no ordinary cat. I won't scratch your skin, my dear, I will scratch your soul and devour it while you stand and scream."
Clary ignored his other words. "The Mad Hatter is not a bad character in the original story. Neither are you. Why are you bad?"
The tail stopped twitching. Before Clary could react, she was pressed against the floor with the teeth as sharp as toothpicks so close to her face. The monster – Jace? – snarled, breath that smelled like congealed blood.
"He ruined me!" he growled into her face, talons digging into her wrists. "I am ruination now! I look a monster with a hunger for souls that will never be appeased!" Clary thought she could hear his stomach growl and feel it twist below her own stomach as if something was trying to escape. Jace groaned and retracted his claws, vanishing instantly.
Clary climbed to her feet and ran without looking back, wishing she could block out the piercing screams that echoed behind her, the tearing of skin and insane, wild laughing. She didn't know what was happening and didn't want to.
It felt like she was wandering through the endless woods for years, but in reality, it was only two hours. When Clary finally found herself outside the deep and dark forest that was now loud with the cacophony of screeches and catatonic laughter, it was a relief.
Now she stood on the edge of a flower garden. At least, she thought it was a flower garden. The flowers themselves were made of bone and their colour red from blood. Even the sky was tinged red. The castle that sat in the midst of the carnage was a castle that was as high as the sky itself and made of black bone. It was twisted, spiralling higher and higher into the maroon clouds. The red hurt Clary's eyes to look at.
A flower next to her twitched and Clary retched at the merest glance; the centres of the flowers were set with a severed head that still blinked and watched the world revolve around them with dead, blank eyes.
This bone flower, smaller than the others, was no one other than Max Lightwood. His eyes, blank and glassy, watched her with his head-
Clary whimpered and carried on through the forest of the dead. It grew harder and harder to ignore the faces as she recognized them more and more; Luke, her mother; Simon; Alec; Magnus and so very many more. Dead. All dead. Mounted upon their own blood and bones, bound by muscle and sinew. Yet somehow, horribly, still alive.
She needed to escape before she herself lost her mind and her head.
Something long and thin wound itself around her neck, jerking hard so the makeshift spear was knocked from her hand as if she was a child with a stick.
"The Mad Hatter has been waiting for you" the voice told her. "When I hand you in, he will return me from my half-life."
Jace.
The tail tightened and Clary choked as she was dragged through the ground that wasn't just red, but soaked with the souls of thousands of lost souls.
Inside, the first thing Clary noticed as her vision flickered as she hovered at the edge of consciousness, was how dark it was. You couldn't see anything, yet Jace certainly knew where to go as he heaved her along, muttering to himself "so close now. Too close... need to rip... tear... feast..."
The throne room was red too. And bright. Clary wasn't surprised. She also knew who the Mad Hatter was going to be; who else could be responsible for such carnage and death? The clue was in the name – Mad.
On his head sat a crown of bones and thorns that when he moved, cut deep into his head, causing trickles of blood to seep into his once white-blond hair. It was now so crimson that Clary knew it would never lose that colour.
Her brother's bat wings rested behind him either side of the throne of black marble. They easily reached at least nine-feet each side. He didn't wear anything but for a pair of black leather shorts, his chest and body as red as his hair from the sheer amount of open wounds adorning his body. His stained ankles were crossed atop a skull that still had half its decomposing face still there; it was Isabelle Lightwood, her face frozen in nothing short of fear.
Jonathan had teeth like Jace's, but Clary knew they would be sharper than Jace's. When he bared them at her and rose to his feet, kicking the skull aside where it rolled into a pile of something Clary didn't want to look at, he spoke, wings rustling as they were unfurled, tall and majestic behind him.
"Finally."
Clary closed her eyes and kept them closed, reminding herself over and over that this monster was dead. He had been burnt. His ashes were at the bottom of Lake Lyn. Dead. For good this time. Her brother was not coming back.
"My queen" the monster whispered, raising a hand and catching Clary's chin between taloned fingers. "Open your eyes."
Clary opened them, bile in her throat at the sight of him up close; his eyes were completely black, no white within them at all. His eyelids were gone, torn off. Underneath the grime and filth, his skin was scarred with sharp lines across his cheeks. As if a knife had been repeatedly dragged across his face.
"Why is everyone so monstrous?" Clary asked haggardly, Jace's whip-like tail loosening slightly.
Jonathan's dark eyes flickered down to his bleeding chest, then back to her face. "Have you seen yourself?" he smirked, eyes endless tunnels of obsidian darkness. Jonathan snapped his fingers and Jace holding her instantly let go, stumbling backwards. Clary watched in awe as his features warped and twisted, his screaming loud in her ears. A moment later, the Jace she knew was kneeling before them, chest heaving.
She never saw Jonathan return to his throne, but she did see him return to slit Jace's throat with one swipe of his razor-edged wing. Clary stood frozen, terror and fear flooding her from head to toe as the king wrenched the boy's head back, letting the blood flow steadily into a black goblet.
And then Jace was dead and Jonathan chuckled as if watching puppies playing with a ball. "I'm a man of my word; you are free of your torment." A snicker and Jonathan thrust the goblet of blood into Clary's hands, winding a hand into her hair and forcing her to look down.
When the ripples settled, Clary saw that her face was frightened, but clear but for the odd spot of blood. She also had wings. But where his wings were black, hers were white. Soft feathers, not taut leather like Jonathan's.
The king snarled, a tail that ended in a deadly sharp tip unfurling above his head. "Now to make you a fitting Red Queen-"
And the tail whipped across Clary's face, the pain blinding and hot, salty blood filling her mouth. Again and again it tore through her face.
She couldn't hear her own screams over the sound of her brother's maniac laughter. When everything drained to black, the laughter still seemed to echo.
When Clary woke up, her wrists were bound to the bed she was lying upon. The ceiling was a familiar pattern of angels. Bright sunlight was streaming into the windows and there was someone sat next to her bed reading a book. But as soon as she groaned and tugged at her bindings, the book was placed down immediately onto the table beside her bed.
"Clary?" the voice called, evidently worried. "Talk to me."
It took three hours for Clary to return to her senses enough to understand that the Jace sat next to her bed was her Jace, not the monstrosity of that dark Wonderland.
"I had a tail?" Jace mused when she told him what she had seen, watching Clary sip at a hot, sweet cup of tea. "Kinky. But what is Wonderland?"
"It's this story about a girl who fell down a rabbit hole into this... twisted world" Clary shrugged, staring into the depths of her cup of tea. "Cats that could talk, weird stuff. It's a kids story."
"If it's a kids story, why was yours so... imaginative, then?"
Clary shrugged, setting her cup down. "It was terrifying," she told Jace, shivering slightly, raising her hands to her face, running her fingers across the smooth skin there. "Jonathan was there. He made a garden out of everyone's bones." She sniffed back tears but one still managed to escape. A tissue was instantly before her eyes and Clary took it with a weak smile.
Jace's hands were still clasped in his lap though, so how had he given her the tissue? Very slowly, Clary turned her head slightly to stare at the tail retreating behind Jace's back. He winked and grinned, showing needle-like teeth. She swallowed hard; was she even home yet?
"Sorry Clary," he told her, eyes growing brighter with every second until they shone like twin suns. "I know what Wonderland is."
Clary shivered. "How do I get out of this nightmare? How do I wake up?"
The grin widened. "You're wide awake, Clary."
oOoOo
Thank you for reading my weird and disturbing Halloween piece. Just a quick one that came to mind after listening to a song. I've left the ending open for interpretation. What really happened? Is she awake or not? Is it the demon poison? You decide personally. Reviews are much loved. Don't have nightmares now! Next update for Chasing The Sun should be very soon now, but I'm taking part in NaNoWriMo as per usual, so if it doesn't appear soon, you know why! But the plot is more or less ready to rumble, so after NaNo, things will be nice and regular. Hoping at least.
Happy Halloween!