People have said a lot of things about me. Called me a hero, for exacting cruel vigilante justice. Called me inhuman for the unspeakable torture. But those people have never heard me called daughter, sister, friend. I never wanted to be any of that though. Hero, criminal, sibling, child I don't care to be called any off those things. I am not a good person, I won't deny any thing because all of it is true. I don't regret what I've done. Alice does, you see I never wanted to be anything except the Hatter. Selfish little me, I wanted Alice all to myself. And what the people did not realize was that by putting me away they too crushed dreams. Alice may be a voice in my head now like I once was in hers, but once she had ambitions. Major in literature at Oxford, become a writer, marry a nice English gentleman and settle down well away from Gotham, with two darling little children. Those were Alice's hopes and dreams while she thought she could have them, of course if I let her do that I couldn't have what I wanted. Don't you dare think for a minute that even what I've done makes me worse than her. Were our positions switched Alice would do exactly the same as I have. But remember she has not, and you can't punish me for these crimes without also punishing her.
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Days left:
1263
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She has never wanted any thing so much in her life. Or if she has she cannot remember. By her count, kept through frequent glances at a clock on the bedside table in the dingy motel room, she has been laying here six hours alternately sleeping and pretending to. Six hours since the world stopped spinning and people were people not macabre characters of wonderland. The most terrifying night of her life, and she could taste it again. Blotter paper the kind used in printers, just a hint of ink from the picture of the Cheshire cat, and something bitter. A something with such a distinct taste, and absolutely irresistible. How could something so good, be so terrible? She pretends to sleep now savoring the slight aftertaste, of a sort of poison she knows, still lingering in her mouth. And for all of the longing she hates it, despises, fears even. So much that she thinks it could put her off it forever. So why is she still laying there trying to imagine the particular flavor of it?
"You'll have to get up eventually, you know. I mean you can't just lay there all day." Hatter finally looks over at a girl with bright pink hair lounging in a cheap armchair somehow talking through a cigarette clenched between her teeth, "Hell, for a first trip that wasn't half as bad as it could have been, least you didn't do anything to make a fool of yourself. The first time I had a blotter, long time ago let me think….. I ended up trying to get Mathew into bed. Never gonna live that down."
Hatter sat up, " You are fucking insane. What would possess any one to-"
She laughed, a laugh that turned into a hacking cough. The cigarette dropped to the floor and Tiffany crushed it out with the heel of a latex boot before taking another one out of a box on the coffee table in front of her. She lit it breathing deeply, a girl unknowingly committing suicide as slow as she knew how. For fear of her destination at the same time as she was running hard and fast from where ever she began. Doing her best to make the journey between the two last forever, " Don't ask me why, I don't know why. I don't care, I just care that it makes money. I am so not the person to ask. You could ask your kid brother when he comes back, maybe we'll both learn something."
"I don't want to see him," Hatter said quickly, no she wouldn't see any of them until it was on her ground and her terms, certainly not like this.
"Well you're in luck, Mathew took him to the hospital. Short little thing like you beat 'em all up pretty damn good. Mathew's got bite marks, and you got really big teeth too no offense of course, but he's gonna need like stitches. Your brother… I dunno his nose was bleeding though. Wish I coulda seen it." Tiffany smiled, lost in imagining the scene for a moment.
"I'm leaving"
Tiffany shrugged indifferently, then got up suddenly as though having just remembered something. She started taking apart the room in search of something as Hatter stood to leave. Tiffany apparently found what she was looking for and came running back as fast as she dared, her heels much to high to be considered practical for walking let alone running.
"Wait! Wait! Dammit would you stop?" Tiffany shouted irritably as she caught up to Hatter just out the door shoving a bag of little orange pills at her, "Take it. It's orange sunshine, an apology sorta, when you run out I'll be at the Looking Glass Lounge again just bring a shit load of money and we'll talk prices then. If you don't like acid, you know I got everything, I like to dabble. I have very diverse tastes, but yeah! I'll see ya, right!"
Then Hatter is alone in the hallway of the motel she is sure is otherwise empty. She walks out onto the street, broad daylight but in the daily rush of people she is lost. She knows she could drop the bag and it would be trampled and carried away so that she would never find it again. The idea makes Hatter cling all the more tightly to the bag, for fear that she would drop it accidentally. And then what would she do? Would the longing, the absolute need, wait until she could form a plan to rob a bank or some such place? Maybe Hatter would have been able to let it go, throw it down a storm drain and never go back through the doors of the Looking Glass. If she had been able to understand that as she walked down the street at that moment for perhaps the very first time she wasn't the one in control of her life.
