"I don't want to disappear…"
"And you won't, my little friend."
"But I don't want to be little! I want to be big! To be a big dream…to be dreamed by all…"
"Then why not let those who dream….come to you…"
"Clair!" the short, thin, pale teenage girl yelled as her sister, a tall teenage girl with tan skin and rather long legs, ran ahead of her. Clair didn't answer; she just kept running in the direction of the woods. The sisters knew better than to run into the woods during the day, but only the loss of their cat would make the sisters put aside their fears and run into the woods in the black of night with no light to see by. "Clair!" the girl yelled again, louder, as her sister ran into the woods and disappeared in darkness.
The girl walked into the woods slowly, unsure of her surroundings. Finally, after a few minutes propped against a tree, she slid down the ground and breathed deeply. Her sister was much faster than herself, so she had to take a long time to catch her breath.
The sound of crunching leaves from behind her got her attention, and she whipped around to see….no one. She turned around, and suddenly she wasn't there anymore. She wasn't here, she wasn't home, she wasn't….anywhere. Trees all around her everywhere. She looked up to see daylight. Leaves crunched behind her again. Before she could turn around, something flew by her head and got stuck in the tree. Slowly and carefully, she reached a shaking hand out to touch the object.
A sword. A sword had flown right by her head and embedded itself into the tree behind her. She pulled out the sword. It was light, could be easily swung, and engraved with the words 'The First Alice'. Running her fingers over the blade, she reached the hilt of the sword. On it was a single spade carved from ruby. An engraved short sword. She looked back at the tree, and saw a playing card; the ace of spades. She picked it up, and as she did, a red spade faded into view on the back of her hand. Turning back to the card in confusion, she flipped it over and saw that the back of the card was mirrored.
She couldn't believe what she saw. A shadow shaped like a girl, with an evil grin shown by a white crescent. She almost dropped the card, but she couldn't, her hand wouldn't move. She stared, captivated by the shadowy child and its white crescent, malevolent smile.
She heard more crunching leaves beside her, and without thinking, she immediately shot out her right hand, which held the sword. She felt the blade slow down as she sliced through whatever had been at shoulder height. Realizing she had probably injured something, she turned her head, and lowered the tip of her sword. A boy with a red shirt lay on the ground. No, it wasn't red, it was stained with blood. She gasped and backed up against the tree. Looking down, she saw the small trail of blood her sword had made.
"No…" she whispered in shock, unbelieving that she would do something like that, even if she wasn't thinking. She couldn't do that again, she wouldn't, she would put the sword down now. But her hand didn't let go. She held the card in her left hand, the bloodied sword in the right. She told herself 'I can't do that again. Why did I even do that? Why don't I put the sword down now?' But she didn't. She tried to convince herself she couldn't, but from that moment on, she gave up, and she knew. She had to do that again.
Her sword went through the flesh of humans as though it were butter. She wore a fancy red dress, but not too long, ending at about her knee, with a white apron, and red ballerina slippers, just without the ribbons. Her hair was brown and short, and her skin was now a marble of red and pink. Her eyes were red, and, just like the rest of her, stained with blood. She constantly wore a large crescent smile. She had made a name for herself, the only thing that her victims could say before she killed them: Alice. She roamed the woods, her new wonderland, no longer afraid, and no longer willing to leave, not even if her cat had run out of the woods, but she needn't worry, her pet was nowhere near her territory.
She looked down at her apron and wiped the fresh blood from her hand. Her sword was never stained with blood. A stainless steel blade was hard to get blood to dry on and stay. Alice looked behind her to see the small child that had followed her ever since that first day.
"You're getting quite big, aren't you?" Alice asked, her sword pointed downward. She didn't have a sheath, her sword was always drawn, and almost always swinging. The trees around her had also been stained with blood, but that never seemed to bother the two, facing each other in a small glade, always. Why? Because Alice wanted it that way. This was her wonderland, the child with chalk white skin and black eyes said so.
"Alice." It said, for once not wearing its crescent smile. "Don't you think you're killing too many?" It asked in a slow, quiet voice. Alice threw her sword at it, but like always, the child just moved slightly and grabbed the handle, holding it below the bright red spade, and pointing the blade at Alice. Her hands were mostly stained with her victim's blood, but when the child would point the sword at her, she had nothing to grab but the blade, which she did, and grasped the hilt. The blade hardly bothered her anymore. Like her heart, her hands had grown hard from the deaths of those who had died by the instrument of death she constantly held in her hands.
"This is my wonderland," Alice said, looking down at the blade as she pointed it downward again. Her left hand no longer held the card, she had lost it a few minutes after she met the child. She suspected it had the card that had shown her the future of herself, but she never said so out loud. "You said so. If this is my wonderland, shouldn't I be able to do as I please?" Alice asked, her tone uncertain and her voice quiet, hardly audible.
"Every day," the child started, picking a rose from the ground, not caring about the thorns that threatened to break the skin at every glance. "The trees multiply. The forest grows denser. For every life you take," it said, slowly spinning the rose in its fingers. The rose started to wilt and turn gray. "Another tree grows. This forest will soon become your prison." It said, as it had many times before. Alice swung her sword, and the bloom of the rose fell, severed from its stem. It turned a dark, depressing shade of grayish-red, its petals shrinking and drying up, becoming brittle and fragile.
"You say that every time I meet you." Alice said, her voice no longer quiet, but very sharp, and purposely spoken to sound as if she was boldly stating a fact.
"And with good reason." The child said, picking up a new rose, but the rose broke as it held a single petal. "I don't want to disappear." Tears started to form at the end of its eyes. "I DON'T WANT TO DISAPPEAR!" it yelled, causing the leaves on the trees to tremble. Alice looked around franticly. "You are no longer welcome in this dream." The child said as boldly as Alice had a minute ago. "You sinful being." It stated, its voice flat.
Alice opened her mouth to say something, but the words wouldn't come to her. She looked around, the air tense and echoing with the white child's words. Alice thought her eyes were tricking her as she saw hands come out of the trees. Pitch black hands made from tree bark and thorn, with sharp fingers. The first hand grabbed onto Alice's left wrist, and she slashed at it with her sword, but two hands reached out and caught her arm before her sword could reach.
A flurry of hands reached out at her, grabbing for her clothes and her limbs. They covered her mouth when she started screaming, and sank their daggers for fingers into her skin, blood welling up beneath them as they buried themselves into the flesh of her face, pulling her back and down in a diagonal line. A few moments later and Alice was completely covered in thorns except her right hand and her sword, and her face. She was screaming behind the hand that held her mouth shut.
The child stepped forward, holding the ace of spades in its hand, holding it out near Alice's face. Alice leaned forward and tried to break free of the hands to grab the card with her left hand, for fear the sword would cut it. The hands quickly pulled Alice back, and Alice, out of strength and willpower, let them hold her back, leaning on their thorns for support. "You didn't deserve to be in wonderland." The child said, its hands on the top of the card as if about to rip it. More thorns and hands reached out and squared an area off behind Alice, the area where all the trees of the dead had been, where Alice had lived, and where Alice had first come into the wonderland, now twisted with her hatred and disregard for human lives. Alice's eyes widened, she dropped the sword and reached for the card with her now free right hand.
Alice's screams grew louder, her eyes becoming desperate, and she grabbed the bottom of the card, trying to pull it away from the child who had followed her. Alice was no longer held by the hands, but by a wall of hands merely separating her from the child, except for her right hand and face, though a hand was still covering her mouth. The child pulled it's hands sharply to the left, ripping the card in half, Alice holding the bottom in shocked confusion. Alice, who had now quieted, didn't notice as the hand that covered her mouth pulled away. She screamed, the sounds of her screams echoing off the sky and traveling through the forest of death. The child paid no thought to Alice's high pitched screams and walked away.
When the sky was dark, Alice had stopped screaming. The hands were slowly returning to their trees, but many still made a wall she didn't bother to try and get past, she knew the hands would come back to restrain her.
She had spent a few weeks in her prison. She had picked her sword back up, and now looked at it like something foreign. She couldn't remember why she had killed all those people, she couldn't remember her old home, and she couldn't remember a time when she was outside of this prison of a forest, cut off from any outside. The spade on her right hand was gone, though occasionally, when she would swing her sword at something, even if it was a tree, the red spade that had once given her the madness needed to kill all those she had would come back. The sword that had once given her the name Alice now was stained with blood, its coating faded and its blade rough, littered with impurities that allowed blood to set and dry. She could no longer read the engravings on the blade she once owned. A few times she would grasp the hilt and the madness would come flooding back. She tried to get through the wall of hands that stopped her, but she was held back, the rest of the hands rushing to help their companions. Occasionally she dropped her sword through one of the gaps in the wall, and had to strain against the resisting hands to grab it back and retreat to her prison cell.
Alice stared, captivated, by the back of the card. The child was still there, but the back was no longer mirrored. The child's grin was turned, and it was forever stuck in a depressing and empty frown. It still had no eyes, though sometimes a gray light flickered where an eye should be. 'It must've found another victim…' Alice thought, not sure why she was thinking it. 'I hope they don't end up like me.'