Eleven long years had passed since Rutledge and Wonderland. But in the last six months, Alice had been feeling something. A tingling, if you would, the slightest whisper of the Cheshire Cat in her ear, its riddles cutting into her mind like precisely sharpened and targeted knives. The whispering and brushing on her ears had grown louder, and in the past week, she had begun to walk. Walking and riding when she could, she had returned. To Rutledge. The facility was still in operation, but that did not mean it was normal.
Nurse D and her former psychiatrist had long since left or had been transferred. Instead, she had been placed with a Doctor Willis. She watched out of the corner of her eye as the psychiatrist scribbled something in a book, alternating glances at her eyes and the words that he was writing. Most of her attention was focused past him, at the looking glass so perfectly positioned so that when she was sitting on her worn bed, she could see herself. A worn young woman, diagnosed as deranged and paranoid, with wide green eyes, staring listlessly at her doppelganger, on the other side of the looking glass.
"Right, hello, Miss Liddell."
She snapped back to attention and met the new doctor's eyes behind thick spectacules. He was studying her with rapt fascination. "I believe you have come here of your own accord, yes?" Alice nodded wordlessly, studying him.
"I retrieved your previous records from our files, and they were in surprisingly good condition." He reached behind him and picked up a manila file from where it lay, surprisingly fat. Papers shuffled for a moment as he appeared to be looking for several specific papers. He laid them out one by one, and, even years later, Alice recognized the images immediately. Slender fingers reached out and traced the figures of the Cheshire Cat, the Dormouse, the Mad Hatter, drawn from her own imagination... Her breath caught slightly as she turned over the fourth, slightly crumbled paper – a less twisted Queen of Hearts stared up at her, a slightly cruel smile playing at the corner of her perfect lips. Snapping out of her reverie, she looked up and gave Doctor Willis a painful smile. "Yes. These are mine."
"Of Wonderland," he said.
"Wonderland," she repeated.
The final word was nearly foreign on her lips. She had not spoken or thought of it in so long – the mere whisper of it brought back long buried memories. Meadows, sunlit with colorful flowers dotting every so often along it, stretched on for miles. Queensland could just be seen, far in the distance, its towers far above those average Wonderland buildings. In the midst of rolling hills lay a small round table. Laid with a white tablecloth and equally white cups, it was a picturesque scene. A teapot with flower designs sat in the middle, steam curling out of the slightly loose top. Laughter echoed through the hills, a small child's gleeful shriek with other voices – the squeak of a mouse, even. At the table, smaller hands, but still her own, lifted the china tea cup to her lips. The Dormouse lifted her own tiny cup and the Hatter smiled at her, lifting his own cup for a toast.
Alice blinked, desperately trying to banish the memory. But as soon as it disappeared, something else filled her vision and other senses.
The Queen of Hearts – or whatever had been controlling the Queen of Hearts – seemed to implode upon itself, and she slowly exited Queensland's inner sanctum, even as the area's darker colors seemed to retreat as she walked past, as if her very presence was banishing the evil and paranoia that had fueled the place's power. As she made it through the huge double doors, sunlight met her face, for the first time in a long while since she had arrived in Wonderland.
A gasp of pure delight passed her breath. The Cheshire Cat sat there with Hatter and the others. The Cat's grin was huge, stretching from ear to ear as usually, and its previous manginess had been filled out slightly. Full recovery would take time. The Hatter's mechanical body had been replaced by his own, flesh and blood running beneath his crazy suit. There was such comfort in the image that she almost wanted to stay, to spin through the grass in Wonderland, pick flowers, run through endless meadows.
But life – real life – awaited her outside the boundaries of her Wonderland. She approached the group of characters composed by her imagination. Alice wrapped her arms around the Cat, letting the Vorpal Blade land in the soft grass. "I'll miss you.. and I may not see you again," she whispered in its large ears, one of which twitched at her voice brushing it.
The Cat's smile seemed to go pass the boundaries of its face. "Let us hope, Alice," it murmured, "that if you do come back, it is for the right reasons." It seemed to disappear in a wisp of smoke, and the rest of Wonderland's inhabitants seemed to do the same. For a moment, she stood alone in front of Queensland, but then the landscape melted into pure kaleidoscopes of color.
"Alice?" Doctor Willis intruded again. She blinked furiously, letting the image fade away.
"Yes, Doctor Willis?" Her voice was small, dismally small, and lost. Her demeanor seemed to have shrunk since the time he had mentioned Wonderland to the current moment. Doctor Willis scribbled something on his pad.
"Are you alright?" he tried to place a hand on her shoulder. She shrunk away from his fingertips. Surprised, he tried to understand what had changed since he had mentioned her land of fantasies and pure insanity, but was lost for words. What had he done? Alice Liddell had already regressed somewhat, that anyone could tell, but had he just aided her spiral into incoherency and pure madness once again?
No. It was his job to help, not to harm.
"I-I think I need to be alone for a while," she mumbled, her fingers clenched into fists in her lap. Doctor Willis nodded, respecting her wishes.
"Of course, Alice." He stood up and left the room, leaving only a feeling of confusion behind. For a while the newly reinstated Rutledge Asylum patient sat there in her room, staring up at the white ceiling. It was only thirty minutes later when Doctor Willis returned, looking slightly frazzled. Her file was underneath his arm again, and he sat there on the edge of her bed. "Alice, do you mind if I try something?" His tone was agitated.
Sitting up, she nodded carefully. With her assent, the Doctor moved a chair from a desk in her room to the edge of the bed. "If you could sit up on your knees, Alice, I'm going to try and hypnotize you. It may not work." She showed no reaction, and instead simply sat on her knees, her large green eyes watching his actions. He pulled a watch, hanging on a chain, from his pocket.
Slowly he waved it in front of her. Her eyes followed its moving from left to right. "I'm going to count down from three to one. As I say one, you will tell me about Wonderland, and what your previous visit to it entailed." Alice did not react, and instead continued to follow the watch's swinging.
"Three." He made sure to maintain a soft, steady tone. "Two..." He paused slightly before the final number. "One." The young woman had her head bowed, and her eyes squeezed shut. "So, Alice, tell me about Wonderland."
Slowly she opened her mouth.
But instead of words from the woman's mouth, there came a terrifying scream.
In her mind, Alice was sitting on her new bed in Rutledge. The covers were made and it was a calm afternoon. The image of her in the looking glass stared back, mimicking her own sour demeanor. Maybe she shouldn't have had herself reinstated into the asylum. She got up and stood, glaring at her reflection for a while, unsure what to think of her newest imprisonment.
Before she could move, her reflection morphed. It twisted and her features ran down the glass like wet paint, only to be replaced by an image of the Queen of Hearts, tentacles and all. Horrified, Alice backed away from the looking glass, but before she could get far, the looking glass burst outwards, glass shards littering the ground. One of the tentacles lashed out, curling around her ankle.
"Help!" she screamed in absolute fear, batting at the tentacle with her bare hands, but to no avail. "Help, someone!" There was no response. She was just another patient, something to be ignored. The Queen pulled, and she was propelled towards the broken mirror, her fingers catching on the final ledge between Wonderland and reality. A glint of metal caught her eye. Her fingers grasped towards it, catching on to the handle of the Vorpal Blade.
The tentacle pulled harder and she lost grip on reality – both literally and figuratively. Instead she tumbled into an abyss. It was the rabbit hole, one could say, and for a moment she saw the White Rabbit below her, his eyes wild and fur mangy once again. His watch ticked the time. As she tumbled past his thin form, she could've swore he gasped, "You're going to be late!" But in a split second, he was gone as gravity pulled her downwards – or was it her mind? She couldn't be sure, not anymore. Her grip tightened on the knife as she fell, trying to grasp for something in the darkness.
"Alice," someone – or something whispered in the dark. Her head snapped up in the darkness as she tumbled further. The hole seemed to be endless. "What have you done?"
She screamed.