AN#8: This author's note is number eight, and I'm late, for a very important date!

Tuesday:
Intensive Treatment Ward
October 2, 9:00 am
Patient H AKA: Jervis Tetch

Harleen sits down in the white, clean room of the Intensive Treatment Ward, and waits. Her fingers twitch nervously, for as she had walked calmly through the central door, she heard the the screaming of a man. It's high, and pleading, and there is the sound of someone being dragged. Alarmed, she quickly pulls out her audio recorder. She placed it into the center of the table and pressed the red button.

Click.

Jervis: No, no, no, nonononnonon, no! You—you, (Scuffle of feet. Resistance of two other bodies.) You can't let me go in there, you brutes! Alice! Alice! She'll see me—and I've been so very bad. She's blonde, you see! I've seen! I know! She's blonde! You can't!

(A Doctor's muffled voice): Jervis, please. Relax. I believe you and your new doctor have much to discuss. You've been dreaming again, haven't you? You need this—

Jervis: But I've heard her! In my dreams—It's Alice! She's here! Everyone's whispering. Everyone knows. Even He knows! He knows! I know! And I haven't gotten my hat back yet—Oh. (A thudding sound, followed by a low moan. They're nearly at the door. Harleen locks her legs together as the moan rises up shrilly.) Ooohh, why are you doing this to me? I've been so bad. Now we're late. We're so very late—

(A bang. The door is forced opened, and a guard and white-coated doctor practically drag a ragged looking man inside. The flesh of his heels are digging desperately into the tiles. He's about 5'6, and has red hair that reminds Harleen of Pamela Isley, but it is much dirtier and dull looking as it hangs wirily about his neck.)

Doctor: He's in a bit of a tizzy, today, Miss Quinzel, but I promise he has much to tell you.

Harleen: That's fine, thank you. Jervis, would you like sit down?

Jervis: (Quietly.) You're so very polite to me, although I act so ungentlemanly. With your yellow hair, and your (A gasp.)— But wait. Alice! Alice doesn't have breasts! Someone's made a terrible mistake with you! Don't worry! Not to worry! I know how to fix you! In my second hat—the nine and fourteenth quarters one—there's a knife, and we can cut those out—

(The sound crackles, the shifting of a chair and locks about wooden legs. Jervis is restrained to his seat across from Harleen. There is a brief silence, before the second rustling of cloth informs Harleen that the guard has taken Jervis by the chin, roughly clasped between his fingers, crushing in his jaw and lower half of his cheeks.)

Guard: This is not Alice, freak. This is not Alice, and so you will talk to this adult, lovely grown woman. Not Alice. If I hear you open that twisted mouth of yours in one more threat towards the doctor, I'm burning that book.

(A low whine hiccups from Patient H, and Harleen glances at him. The rustling of papers. He leans down and covers his face with his dirty hands. Patient seems…very emotional. Interesting. Every patient hence forth has seemed to lack emotion… The guard and doctor leave.Jarvis remains hunched in his chair, sniffling.)

(Harleen clears her throat; her voice is clearly affected by his tears.)

Harleen: Why hello, Jervis. Please, please don't upset. It is all right. You don't have to speak if you do not wish to. My name is Doctor Quinzel, and I shall be your new psychiatrist. Your…tea drinking partner, if you will.

(Jervis slowly looks up at her, a single eye peeking out from between his fingers. His shoulders shake silently. She cannot tell if he is laughing or crying through the childish act.)

Your doctor says you been dreaming a lot lately. Would you like to talk about that? I won't make you, of course.

Jervis: I'm always dreaming, doctor. Sometimes I dream so much that I don't know when I've woken up. I don't know what's real, and what's not. And sometimes I don't think that even really matters. But only sometimes. It's like I'm constantly falling down a rabbit's hole…except they're trying to bite me, those soft, evil bunnies. My dreams hurt—the colours, hurt! Everything is so bright! So vivid. And I fall through dream after dream after dream…I think I scream. But no one ever comes to wake me. Alice never comes… (A soft listless sigh.) …I miss Alice.

(The scratch of a pen. Patient is not mistaken under the identity of schizophrenia. Patients diagnosed with the mental disorder often speak of myriad dreams in bright colours.)

Harleen: Alice? You…mean from Alice in Wonderland? By Lewis Carroll? …Would you care to talk to me more about—

Jervis: —Alice?!

Harleen: Later, Jervis, later. I was going to say Lewis Carroll.

Jervis: Ah. Well. Don't you see it? Have you read him? Lewis Carroll. He is so very brilliant. Brilliant man. It's an anagram. He's speaking to me, you see. 100 and something years later, and he is still talking. Sometimes in my dreams, I see Alice, and she talks to me. She's such a sweet girl. I always do wonder why her head falls off when I touch her. I just want to touch her.

Harleen: ….We'll come back to Alice, Jervis. (Harleen's voice soothes, and she writes patient keeps kneeding through his hair and wincing. He is diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and obsessive compulsion. I can only imagine the torment from not having his objective satisfaction, much like Dent. )What do you mean by Carroll being 'brilliant'? Have you found something, Jervis?

Jervis: (A giggle.) It's all in the book, my darling, beautiful, blonde. The book. Lewis Carroll. The letters often dance for me, in my brain, but he's spelled it all out. I'll trade you my secrets for a piece of paper. I'd use my own paper, but I can't possibly damage a gift from the Queen.

(Of Hearts? Harleen thinks to herself, her brows coming together. The ripping of a paper from Harleen's pad. It is slid over. Jervis quickly writes out in big, squiggly letters:)

LEWIS CARROLL

(He then rewrites new words with arrows raining from the letters in the author's name several times.)

IS WILL REAL OR ARE WE LIES ?

Jervis: …Every letter of his name spells out my work, my life's dream, you see. It came to me as a boy, and I was sitting with my gram-gram drinking tea. Will power. The fraction and refraction of the brain. Mind control—with HATS. The 'MAD' Hatter? Oh how fancy free, how subtle to be! I realized that I had to test Carroll's theory. That I had to do so by becoming the Mad Hatter. Oh how much fun that was! Gram-gram was so sweet. She always indulged in me. Believed in me. She was the first one to give me my first copy of 'Alice', you see. She made me hats to wear. Sure, other boys made fun of me, but I knew their dirty little minds, thinking horrible thoughts about my gram-gram. About Alice. But she was mine, you see. They both were mine. So I made hats for those boys and they were never seen again. But I could hear them whispering in class—and they'd—!

(He paused, his wide, gray eyes becoming glassy. He took in a startlingly choking breath. Almost like a sob.) They put their nasty fingers all over my books. Books my Gram gave me, don't you see, my dear bobblin' brat? She gave them to me. They were mine! All mine.And it was their lack of will power that killed them. (Giggle.) If such a thing really existed. I don't like it when people touch my things.

Harleen: Jarvis, how old was your grandmother?

Jervis: Oh old. So very, very old. And soft. It was like I could poke her and she'd fall apart. It was so…hard, sometimes. I found myself…staring at her, and she could just disintegrate before my eyes! And I couldn't put her back together—no, no, and then birthdays went by, and un-birthdays went by further still, and she wasn't adding up anymore. She was all wrong. So I had to fix her. But then I realized that in Wonderland could very much be like Never Land, and children never grow old. And then I realized something else that made me understand that my childhood was on the brink of something.

…Gram-gram was lying. And when I went to fix her body, she kept whispering something—everyone, those voices, whispering something:

(A pause, and Jervis's mouth stretches awkwardly over the next phrase, like he's tasting something awful. Each word is spit out slow and painfully. His left brow twitches with the strain.)

…'I'm... not...Alice.'

So I stopped. I dropped my books, and my hats and touching her soft skin and I stopped counting the seconds to tea time. And then one day…she stopped.

(A blink. His mouth falls open, and his head tilts, his eyes defocused.)

Harleen: Go on…Jervis?

Jervis: Oh yes. We were having tea, one day, and she just…stopped moving. I...I didn't know what was wrong. I traded hats, I traded seats, I read to her. But she just…wasn't there. Someone…Someone had stolen her. But then mummy told me that she hadn't been stolen. She was dead…..I don't remember much after that. Just that, mummy suddenly wanted to join us all for tea, and it was lovely. I added sugar and spices and there was this terrible smell, but that was alright, because we were so happy.But then, people came and took them away, and into the ground. And suddenly, tea time was so very lonely. I had never felt lonesome before.

(He stopped, his eyes on the tape recorder. Suddenly, his tone brightened.) And so I took tea time to them! I set up the entire thing, right next to their graves, and I was happy again! Reading to them. Sharing biscuits. (A giggle.) I should go back there and celebrate with them again.

Harleen: Jervis. About your mother…I understand that she died soon after your grandmother?

Jervis: Yes!... And no. That's still quite confuddling to me, I suppose. That night, she tucked me in and closed the door. And it was dark. And I was scared. But I saw something standing at the end of my bed. Do you know what it was, lovely? A jabberwocky! Can you believe my luck? And I saw it burst out of my room, down the hall and…I found mummy dead. There certainly is a lot of blood in people. Enough to fill elven tea pots, actually. Believe me, I know!

Harleen: Seeing your mother dead must have been earth-shattering. Do you think that's when your childhood ended, Jervis? A twisted 'coming of age', if you will?

(Air whipping: Jervis shook his head so roughly that spittle flew in droplets against the table.)

Jervis: My childhood isn't over, my dear! That can't be! It just can't be! Childhood isn't a lie. CHILDHOOD IS THE KINGDOM WHERE NOBODY DIES! (Jarvish quickly tried to stand from his chair, still pulling at the chains he recited with an actor's pleasure. The chair squeaks, chains rattled and his high voice swallows out :)

So you find a bigger box, and bury her in the yard, and weep.

But you do not wake up a month from then, two months,

A year from then, two years, in the middle of the night

And weep, with your knuckles in your mouth, and say: Oh, God!

Oh, God!

Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies that matters,

—mothers and fathers don't die.

(Jervis's nervously quiet voice suddenly escalated several decibels as he yelled the poem. He took another breath, his hands tugging at his head. He blinked at Harleen, as if realizing she was just now there. A giggle slips through his lips.)

But…Carroll was telling me something different. That Jabberwocky he sent me was guiding me. Showing me the truth. That I was the true Mad Hatter! And that Alice is only a child. A lost, scared little blonde bitch that I had to find! And those adults with her name just wouldn't do. So I decided to help in my own way. I'd find Alice by weeding out all the other girls that couldn't possibly be her. Or I'd try to fix them—you know! Like you!

(A shuddering of chains and cloth as the patient made extravagant motions towards Harleen's chest.)

Harleen: I…I understand, Jervis, that you were mistreated for your delusions and that suffering from such extreme schizophrenia as a child must have been hard, but surely you must know that you killed your mother. Not Lewis Carroll. Not mind control from a book. Not an imaginary Jabberwocky. You. Your files have documentation of this. There are photographs.

Jervis: Oh I know I killed mummy, you yellow haired angel. But I just had to kill her, don't you see, my naïve little girl? She was the first. (A pause, a deep breath, as if he was savoring the words in his mouth. He then spoke the next four words slowly, with a gentle, ecstatic smile.)

…Her name was Alice.

(A giggle.)

Click.

And is not that a mother's gentle hand that withdraws your curtains
And a mother's sweet voice that summons you to rise?
The ugly dreams that frightened you so when all was dark-

Lewis Carroll

'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'

EAN# 10: Thank everyone SO much again for enjoying! Yes, I do understand that real anagrams are used with just single uses of a single letter from another word. But he's crazy—you want logic in that? Sorry for the delay! I took my previous writing time between school and work to read "THE PSYCHOPATH TEST". It was very good. And now I can insert a deeper understanding of the criminals' illnesses now. I hope I did Hatter okay. He was great sport. Faster update guaranteed Saturday. Does it feel…cold in here to anyone? *Thank you to Seven-of-Storms for the correction of his name. How embarrassing of me. ""*