CHAPTER ONE: MARY ALICE BRANDON.
It was normal at Biloxi, Mississippi. It was a rather typical place really.
The needs of the people were simple. In the days of 1901, the people were rather content with what they had. Sure, some indulged in their guilty pleasures and threw frivolous affairs every now and then, but they were rather simple. The war had just ended and people seemed happy with what they had. Life was at its best, especially for Arthur and Cecilia Brandon. Life was good to them.
The Brandons were fairly middle-class people. They fit in to the crowd quite well, along with everyone else. They attended parties and the like, talked with people whose names were in lights, they had a good life. The young couple had everything they ever wanted, and more. They were very content people. The small family was soon blessed again, when the Brandons had a daughter. Their little angel from heaven made the young couple ecstatic; their daughter was surely something they could use to build a name for themselves in the small town. Little Mary Alice Brandon, their beautiful, normal little girl was brought into their healthy, normal little family.
Arthur and Cecilia lavished little Alice with everything that she ever needed and wanted, though somehow never spoiling her. From the time she was a few months old until she was young girl; her father always got her the loveliest little dresses and outfits, her mother attended to her every whim yet taught her moral values and the like. Alice grew up with a normal childhood; with normal, loving parents in a normal society. If only Mary Alice Brandon was a normal little girl.
Alice had always had 'good instincts', as her father always said. She always knew if the weather was going to be sunny or cloudy or rainy or otherwise, if a surprise visitor was going to come unexpectedly into their home, or something of the like. Her parents merely thought of it as really good instincts. They were too busy to notice the momentary lapses that Alice has, the concentrated look on her eyes as she gazed into nothingness, the hints that she was showing that she was anything but a normal little girl, despite her normal upbringing.
When Alice was 13 years of age, her mother became pregnant once more. They needn't bother to tell Alice, they never talked about it in front of her. As a matter of fact, only Cecilia knew of her pregnancy. Actually, she merely hunched that she was pregnant. She wasn't entirely sure but she was showing the symptoms. She was faithful to her husband of course, but she felt no need to tell him just yet of something that she wasn't exactly sure of. That was the signaling point of young Alice Brandon's life.
One fateful night, during a regular dinner, the family were sitting together and eating. It was unusually quiet at the dinner table. Cecilia was smiling and eating quite happily, Arthur was merely reading the evening paper as he ate; Alice felt that the room was too eerie and silent. If it was one thing that Alice couldn't stand, it was silence. She was an active little girl, always happy and always bubbling with hyperactive energy. As she ate, she had another one of her distant gazes into nothingness, again no one had noticed. Her parents were far too unobservant, too content with their lives to notice anything that might disrupt from their perfect, middle-class, little world. She snapped out of it rather quickly and turned to her mother.
"Mother," she said excitedly, with her quaint little soprano voice.
"Yes, love?" her mother asked.
"When is my little sister going to be here?" Alice asked trying to be indifferent in her tone although the excitement of her tone was still evident.
Arthur's head immediately jerked to face his wife, shock marked his face. Cecilia looked at Alice, stunned.
"What, dear?" she asked Alice, her voice breaking.
"My little sister…will she be long, mother? Will father name her, mother? I'm terribly excited." she said enthusiastically, still eating. She could have been talking about how good the weather was with the casualness of her tone.
"Cecilia?" Arthur asked; the anger and curiosity was evident in every syllable of just one word and name.
"Arthur, I'll explain later. Alice, dear, go to your room." Cecilia pleaded.
Alice nodded politely and went to her room, humming nonchalantly.
She was waiting for her mother to arrive, playing with her many dolls as she waited patiently, when loud shouting was heard from the dining table. A heated argument was being held and Alice could swear that she heard some of the words that she was told never to use by a proper lady, voiced out by her mother. Her father's words were indistinct and most of them she didn't understand. Alice has a deep feeling in her gut that the fight was her fault. Oh dear, oh dear.
Little Alice couldn't sleep, guilt and regret eating her insides. She hated the fact that she caused trouble in her family. She wished that she could take it all back. She tried to fight back her tears and in that battle she won't. But the feeling still ate her up inside as she forced her eyes to close and willed herself to sleep. Alice couldn't sleep that night for she had another instinct that her mother would come. Like everything else that she predicted, it would come true.
Within a few minutes, light footsteps were heard approaching her room. Another premonition entered her mind and she saw that both her parents were coming. That was bad, very bad indeed. She curled herself in her sheets and feigned sleep. The door creaked open and she closed her eyes, breathing slowly. She was a fairly good actress but her body was far too tense to be asleep, an observant person would have known that she was awake at first glance. Luckily, her parents weren't exactly observant people.
"What are we going to do Arthur? I swear there's no possible way that Alice could have known. Even I didn't know myself." said Cecilia, her tone worrisome.
"Maybe it's just her instincts again. Maybe she's wrong. We'll see the doctor tomorrow and confirm it. But she must be wrong… she has to be." whispered Arthur, Alice could feel his gaze on her.
"This isn't normal Arthur, this isn't just a phase! Something is wrong with Alice, very wrong. What if the neighbors find out?" said Cecilia, fixing Alice's sheets and brushing through her long dark hair, as if cooing her.
"We'll just wait and see. Alice is perfectly normal, you'll see." said Arthur, although his voice was not strong, his tone uneasy.
"Let's leave her to sleep. We'll discuss this in the morning." she said sleepily, yawning as she spoke.
Alice didn't go to sleep that night, too terrified of what she had just heard. "Is there something wrong with me?" she thought to herself. She was bothered the entire night, the same question burning in the insides of her head. On the outside, she was a perfectly decent young girl; she was well raised and everything… but on the inside, she was screaming. She was screaming her soul out but it seemed as though no one even bothered to turn around.
Night after sleepless night passed by afterwards, her premonitions flooding in her mind like wildfire and, being the little girl that she was, was unable to control herself from speaking her premonitions aloud. The fear that was brewing inside her parents had eventually stretched out. Cecilia was so stressed that the doctor was assuming that the baby wouldn't come out well if Cecilia kept up her state.
Alice hated the fact that she was causing her parents pain, the last thing she wanted to be was become a burden to them, to anyone, and so she tried to quiet down, trying her hardest to be normal. The one problem was that Alice was never one to be who she wasn't. Her true self always revealed itself, no matter how much Alice didn't want it to happen.
After a few months of silence inside the Brandon household, Cecilia gave birth to another little girl. Cynthia Anne Brandon was born a normal little girl, despite the trauma that the family had gone through. Mr. and Mrs. Brandon were, of course, ecstatic that they had gotten another child to show to modern society and a lovely new child who didn't show any abnormalities unlike the first, yet. Hopefully a daughter who wouldn't show any abnormalities at all. It was then that little Alice became neglected in the household.
She was often in her room, playing with her old dolls and only coming down for home schooling, dinner and baths. Her premonitions were still taking into effect and her parents hid her for a while. It was well until little Alice couldn't take it anymore and her parents were forced to take her into an asylum due to her 'erratic' behavior, including crying by herself quite loudly and banging her head against the wall with force, trying to make the visions go away so she could be with her family again; so she could be loved again. She was 18 years old when her parents took her to the asylum and Alice never saw them ever again.
The doctors in the asylum could do nothing to help her, as best that they tried. The direct order from the Brandons was to keep her in the dark and isolated from society and light until her visions came to an absolute halt. Only when her abnormalities ceased was when Cecilia and Arthur would accept her back into the house again. She was stowed in a lightless room, a small window for the food tray to go through and few air passage way. The walls were padded with soft cloth and little Alice was wrapped in a tight strait jacket.
For the first few days, she struggled to escape her prison and animal-like treatment. She screamed at the top of her lungs until she lost her voice. She kept banging her head, her whole little body on the soft walls, for some means of escape. When all hope was lost, when she knew that there was no way out, she curled into a small ball in the corner and spent her days crying in the absolute darkness of her prison. She was trapped and she could see no way out of it.
The doctors tried every possible method, feeling pity towards her, to cure her of her "disease". From hypnosis to food deprivation, they tried everything until they, too, lost all hope and just adapted to her parents' hypothesis that if she was kept in the dark with absolutely no light, her visions would stop and she could come home and be normal.
Alice's body was battered, despite the soft padding on the walls and the strait jacket, due to repetition of her self torture. Her long, raven hair was wild and it scattered around her child like face. Her eyes were always swollen and red, due to crying and after the few weeks of incessant screaming, she lost her voice.
The treatment was supposed to make Alice's premonitions stop, but despite checking in on her every few weeks… her parents never came. As it turns out, Cynthia was a gifted child who excelled in academics and was undoubtedly beautiful, making her parents go up in social ranks. Within the first few months, Alice's premonitions still continued from the smallest things like what her lunch would be or what time the surprise inspection was. If anything else, her premonitions grew stronger as time passed by.
But the darkness and continuous self-abuse did have its side effects. The longer she stayed in her lone room; she began to lose her memory. In the first few weeks, she forgot why she was inside the asylum in the first place. Within a few months, she forgot where she was. In time, she forgot everything but her name and the sole fact that she could feel and sometimes see glimpses of the future.
Alice had a very persistent doctor. Doctor Paul Evans. Dr. Evans was always patient with Alice, although the asylum needed to pursue the direct order of her parents, had meetings with her in her room. She couldn't see him much but he was the only person she talked to in the asylum. She felt alone and hopeless in the place and she treated her doctor like he was her only friend.
Time kept passing by. More and more of Alice's memories were dropping and her premonitions only seemed to be getting stronger. The treatment wasn't working. To Doctor Evans' surprise, not once in all of the years that Alice has been in the asylum, has anyone in her family come to visit her. He was the only doctor who was working on her case and some of them didn't even know who she was. She was just another patient and some of the nurses thought that the room she stayed in was empty.
Alice spent most of her time in her room crying silently and she cried herself to sleep basically every night.
But there was one day in her entire life that changed her existence forever.
Since none of the Brandons seemed to care for her and since Doctor Evans grew quite attached to Alice, he took her out one day. She had forgotten how old she was but the year was 1920 and she was 19 years old that day. He snuck her out of the asylum and took her out into the streets. She hadn't seen the sun in so long and she was looking forward to seeing the sun but she knew that it was going to be unusually cloudy in Mississippi. He took her out to see boutiques filled with clothes, hats, shoes and so many other things. Alice was overwhelmed. When the day had finished, she was sad that it was over. It was the best day that she could remember which wasn't really saying much because she couldn't remember a thing. But she felt positive that she had never felt this… accepted before. But all good things must come to an end.
When she and the doctor were just about to head back to the asylum as it was getting pretty late outside, Alice felt him stiffen next to her. He froze a little and she was baffled.
"Why did we stop, sir?" she asked, her voice high and weak.
"Stay very still, Alice. I'm so very sorry, my dear. I shouldn't have brought you out." He said coldly and smoothly, leaving her more confused than she had ever been but she did as he asked.
Then, through the ragged hair that still covered her face, due to the fact that it was near impossible to fix, she still saw them. In the moonlight, she saw the pale white faces of two creatures. One of them had blond hair that was tied into a small ponytail and his attire was purely male and so she hedged a guess that it was a man and the other person had long, uncontrolled yet beautiful bright red hair. A man and a woman; but it wasn't their sudden appearance that startled her. It was their impossibly beautiful faces that made her really notice and it took her a few moments to realize that they could have been related to Doctor Evans. She looked up to face the Doctor, to ask why they had stopped, but he was already cradled and in arms and she could feel the intense speed beneath her.
She was being carried and Doctor Evans was running. The speed was so fast that it startled her, making her cower into his shoulder. She had no idea on what was going on. Her eyes were closed as she whimpered in fear. It was a few seconds before he put her down with frightening speed and pulled her into a small abandoned cabin in a forest. She was so confused. Doctor Evans never let go of her hand, even as he knelt down in front of her so that she could see him clearly.
"Alice, listen to me. I'm so very sorry for this. Take care, alright?" he told her, holding up a finger. His breath was heavy and uneven; Alice felt even more scared than before. "Whatever happens, never forget who you are. You are special. You are Alice and you will always be my little girl. I'm sorry." He added, stroking her small face as he spoke and kissed her forehead. Alice was speechless; she didn't know what else to say. She was confused, petrified, and overwhelmed all at the same time. The next thing she knew was the Doctor Evans had come nearer to her and she felt his cold breath on her shoulder as he held her by the arms with his hands. The next thing she knew was pain.
Unbelievable and unbearable pain.
Her eyes widened in fear and terror, as she felt herself drop to the floor. She felt fire; there was fire on the veins of her neck. The pain was too much and she cried. She screamed but her eyes never closed. She couldn't see anything though; everything was too dark to see. But she could hear and smell through her bloodcurdling screams the fracas that was going on while she shook in pain. There was the sound of breaking wood and glass and the sound of someone screaming her name, the scent of burning wood and flesh in the air. Then everything stopped. She could feel nothing; she could hear nothing but the birds in the air that flew about and the soft breezes that fluttered about the forest. Everything became peaceful after that, everything except for the screams that she did. After a few hours, she didn't know what was happening. After a day, she didn't know what pain was. After the transformation, she only knew two things. Her name was Alice and she could see the future.
A/N: I wrote this around two years ago on a different account. I then got seriously annoyed with the twilight series but I've always loved Alice and Jasper regardless. So I've edited my story and now I'm reposting it. Enjoy.
Disclaimer: I do not own the Twilight series. Ew. I don't even like the series. I just adore Jasper and Alice. I don't own them either.