Chapter Two: Rabbit
Alice floated.
She didn't feel much anymore. It hurt too much to feel. When she returned to her bed, to her room, she remembered, and the pain was too much. Her family, gone. Her home, gone. Her life, over. Remembering drove a hook of pure pain and rage into her soul, and it was unbearable. Now, she floated.
She was dimly aware of someone sat beside her. Alice never paid attention anymore. Various hands poked and prodded at her every day, leaving her no dignity at all. She floated to get away from them. At first, she would wake up and ask, 'Mother?' Whoever was attending to her at the time would have to remind her that Mother was dead. Mother was dead, Father was dead, Lizzie was dead. In the end, Alice stopped coming back.
Whoever it was was poking something under her arm. She ignored it. She didn't care what they were doing to her. With luck, maybe it would kill her. She hoped and hoped they would kill her. She hoped they would grow weary of keeping her alive, and kill her. Perhaps they would just leave her to die. No one would notice if they locked the door and left her there. No family were going to come breaking the door down. She could quietly slip away, back to her family.
No such luck. The door closed, leaving her alone again. The thing sat, lumpy, beneath her arm. Her arm drew instinctively around it. Without thinking, Alice began to rub part of it between her fingers. She recognised the feel of it.
Rabbit?
She felt it carefully, as if it would blow away without a moment's notice, nothing more than a puff of smoke. She felt an ear, a button eye, the issing fur on the rabbit's belly.
Rabbit!
Alice, slowly, came back to herself. Her eyes focused on the damp, patchy ceiling. She blinked, as though she were coming into the light. She turned her head right, on a neck that felt as stiff as a rod. She fancied she could hear the muscles beneath her skin creaking.
There he was. Rabbit, lying right there in his arms, just as he had all those years ago. He smelled rather musty, but otherwise he was exactly the same.
For the first time in ten years, a smile began to form on Alice's lips.
She had him back. After all this time, she had him back! She thought she'd lost every possession in that fire, but she had Rabbit back! She couldn't remember the last time she had owned anything. She'd never seen a toy after she'd jumped from the window. She hadn't even owned her own nightclothes, as the ones she had been wearing had been burned away.
Just as she was thinking these thoughts, the rabbit turned in her arms. Her breath froze in her lungs. It fixed her with it's button eyed stare. Alice held her breath, her muscles turned to stone.
The rabbit's face ripped open in a wide grin below it's nose. A mouth, it's making itself a mouth, Alice thought. Dusty stuffing spilled from the new aperture. It opened and closed a few times, as if getting used to it's new appendage. Then, it spoke.
Aliiiiiice, it groaned.
And then, Alice fell.