Actually wrote this some time ago (quite some time ago) but thanks to...a fellow admirer (of Alice, duh, not me, as narcissistic that would sound) I've finally gotten the inspiration to post this...sequel, should I say. and I hope y'all enjoy Alice as much as I have. :D
Disclaimer: You know what? This writer is a little lazy. Be a dear and refer to the previous story?
Chapter One: Penitence
The Reverend lingered about the reception area. Hardly what you'd call a reception area, though. Damp, mouldy walls painted a horrid shade of pink, ostensibly to cheer up the patients—or inmates, as people referred to them. Years of non-restoration, though, had left sections of cracks, paint peeling to reveal bare, uninviting grey stone or even worse, a thin film of disgusting moss. The effect was enough to send sane men screaming, thought Charles Dodgson as he ran fingers though his thinning brown hair.
"She'll be here any moment, Reverend," remarked the prim maiden seated at the desk taking up half the space of the otherwise empty waiting room. Dodgson nodded at her gratefully, noting the colour of her eyes as she lifted her head from the typewriter to look at him. Jade green. So much like Alice, and even around the same age too, if not for the fact that one had had to witness the traumatic deaths of her father, mother…
"Reverend?"
"Nu-nu-nurse—"
"D. Right this way, please."
Dodgson moved down the corridor following the asylum's longest serving staff. He fingered his robes nervously, feeling slightly humiliated, as usual, of his stutter. But Nurse D. showed no sign of mocking, or any feeling whatsoever. Thin lips pressed in a perfectly horizontal line, the only changes were the addition of a few severe furrows across the forehead and strands of white hair peeking from underneath her cap.
Otherwise still recognizable as the indifferent lady he'd met when, distraught and completely helpless, he'd brought the grieving Alice to this morbid institute.
Nurse D. turned a corner, and Dodgson noticed for the umpteenth time the hardness in those pupils, the lack of any emotion whatsoever. A creepy woman to be around outside this asylum, but in this world of insanity and nightmares, it was probably for the best. Unlike the chirpy teen they'd just left behind, who'd probably retire in a few months if she had the sense (more often than not, staff were eventually fired…only to be brought in as patients), the strongest emotional barriers were the only protection one had against the madness.
"I'm not even sure why you bother to drop by every month. As I told you a few years ago, she's hopeless. No chance of recovery. Alternates between grief-induced fits of rage and elective mutism. Often needs restraints to keep her from harming the orderlies—or herself."
"I..I'm not sure…is it sa-sa-safe to see her to-to-today?"
Dr. Wilson blinked twice, sharing a glance with Nurse D. "I'd say so, but not much point, really. Recently she went catatonic, soon after the four-hundred-and-thirty-seventh time she assaulted me in anger. Doesn't respond to anything or anyone. Somehow she's survived a week without food and water, and the only signs that she's still…alive are her steady pulse and breathing."
"Thank you. Ma-ma-may I see her?"
Dr. Wilson considered the smiling Reverend, wrung his hands nervously, then pushed a cast iron key into the tumbler lock.
Serene.
A word here which meant "staring glassily, unsmiling and unmoving, at the ceiling instead of wailing and blubbering for her parents".
Dodgson sighed, shutting the eyelids over the twin green orbs which would have been alluring for a girl her age. Any girl who had not been subject to the torture and suffering that Alice had had to endure for more than half the years she'd been on Earth. His lips trembled as he traced the bandaged wrists, scraped knuckles, caressed her tear-stained cheeks, and he murmured a prayer for Alice to recover from her madness. Still, however unresponsive she was now, it was miles better than when he'd first brought her in…
He'd rushed over as fast as he could when he heard the cries of the townspeople.
Pushed his way through the faceless crowd, a task eased by the respected position he held.
Saw a small figure stumbling about, rooting in the remains and ashes of the razed mansion and strode over hurriedly.
Heard her sobbing inconsolably as she searched, crying for her parents and the names of her sisters aloud.
"Dad? Mom? Edith! Lorina!"
Dodgson laid a hand on Alice's shoulder and turned her to face him, gripping the mere slip of a girl firmly. Stared at the eyes set in ash-blackened face and looked for a trace of recognition, but there was none. Those orbs screamed pain, rage and denial, and the two erstwhile soul mates gazed unblinkingly at each other for a while.
Then Alice grabbed one of his broad hands with both of hers.
"Where are my Mom and Dad, Reverend? They've disappeared and I'm not sure where to start looking." Stated surprisingly clearly, but the pleading was evident in her voice and tremble.
This tone, of loss and suffering, coming from the cute voice of a young girl not even in her teens, broke his heart.
Dodgson resented being the Messenger, but he saw no other recourse. It'd probably be better if she knew the truth from one she loved and trusted, rather than find out herself later on. Better to save the poor child that hurt. Still, no eight-year old deserved to be told of the death of everyone she held dear.
He opened his mouth, stuttering for a reply, when unexpectedly a couple of firemen emerged from the wreckage, tugging a quartet of bodies burnt so badly they were hardly recognizable.
Except, unfortunately, to Alice.
Pushing Dodgson away with astonishing strength, she'd staggered to the corpses of her family and bawled uncontrollably, wailing miserable apologies for not being able to save them. Only when he and the firemen dragged her kicking and screaming away could she be separated from her dead kin.
Dodgson took in the girl whom he used to picnic with, intending to show her the affection he would to the daughter he'd never had. But to say that it was an uphill task was too much of an understatement.
Every night he'd be awaken by her screaming, and he'd had to wrestle her till she stopped clawing and reaching for her imaginary family. Every time he did so she'd snap awake from her nightmare and glare at him hatefully, as if blaming the Reverend for the non-existence of her parents. In the day she'd sulk in her room, muttering darkly in a corner of the room and refusing to eat, or screaming her lungs out while beating herself up with anything she could get her hands on.
His tranquil life was turned upside down. He'd tried reading to her, telling her jokes during her calmer moments, hoping to hear that child-like bubble of laughter that cheered him so whenever he took her and her sisters along for rides down the river a year ago. Each attempt, however, was a wasted effort.
Once, Dodgson retrieved the manuscript of Alice in Wonderland, the labour of love he'd devoted his time for Alice herself. Even before he'd gotten past the first few poems she shivered slightly, balling her little fists as if holding in inexplicable rage. Then her green eyes looked up at him, hollow, hard and holding millennia of agony within their pits.
"Go away," she rasped. "I never want to hear that ridiculous fairytale from you ever again."
Each word was a searing knife-wound in his soul. Hurt and helpless, he knew that redeeming this pitiable child from her dark mental world of death and self-blame were beyond him.
"NO! Please, don't send me there, Reverend. I won't misbehave again, just please don't—"
"I'm so-so-sorry, my child, bu-bu-but that's the only way."
He would never forget—nay, forgive, even—the day he made that heart-rending decision. Those beseeching eyes, the desperate grip in one rare moment of lucidity. But he knew that the moment his resolve wavered she would revert to her crazed state again. He simply did not know what to do with her.
Dodgson had stood outside the asylum gates, his heart fighting with his head, as the burly orderlies dragged Alice away, while Nurse D. assured him that Rutledge would give her the best cure possible.
Yet now, as well as every time he came to visit, he regretted his moment of cruelty. He reminded himself that he'd done the right thing, but as he stared at Alice's motionless body, the tears streamed down.