This story belongs to me.
Anything not used by A) Lewis Carroll B) American McGee C) Whatever company made the game, belongs to ME. And Jakathi, sorry if this story seems like I'm copying off you. I'll do my best to avoid any similarities, and I'm not planning on sticking with the fame's story a lot anyway.
***
The Poem
Down the spiral of the deeper sun
Came the monster
That is not human
Burning of Eden hath begun.
Clouds glow green with slain light
Bleeds the earth
And bleeds the sky
Time and space no longer Right.
Brain that dreams pure terror
Master came to mend the crack
Unto the world of unleashed madness
Under the rule of the Queen.
Find the One that brings misery
Hidden deep beneath memory
Of guilt and shame and dreadful sorrow
Losing may not be.
Do not make friends too closely
When you go to insane war
For those who aid you always
Bleed and burn and fall.
And when you meet the maddening monster
Let it speak it's lies
Then cry HAVOC!
And let the blood fly.
Ignore all pain and slay the monster
Make it scream and make it die
Else shall Eden have no springtime
Else shall Wonderland be no more.
***
Tick, tock.
Tick, tock.
The clock went tick tock, resting on the shelf on the warm fireplace.
Tick, tock.
Tick, tock.
On the table a discarded deck of cards, randomly placed letters. Pictures of a happy family, a strong and graceful father, a kind and gentle mother, both loving the child that was in the middle.
The child was Alice.
Her father loves –loved- her.
Her mother loves –loved- her.
And she loves –loved- them.
The cat is sleeping, bathing in the warmth from the fireplace. A discarded petroleum light on the floor, and in the bed Alice lay, closed eyes and dreaming.
Let's have a tea party!
Is her arms she holds a bunny, holding it tightly to her chest as she wanders the great lands and unravels mysteries beyond all that a real world could offer.
I've got one! How is a raven like a writing desk?
The cat woke up. It rose to it's feet, and stretched it's muscles.
It's leg hit the petroleum lamp.
The lamp fell.
None heard the silent sound of glass shattering. None received a warning.
The clear liquid crawled across the carpet and reached the burning fire, locked away in the fireplace.
Freed, it sought what it had so long been denied. Everything.
The flames burned, and the more they destroyed and the more they consumed, the more they burned and consumed even more. An ever repeating circle, that can only end when all is ash and none stands, and only then the fire dies, it's own victim.
The house was a burning hell, filled with choking smoke and scolding heat. Alice awoke to the screams of her parents and the cracking of wood.
BURN
She rose in her bed, fear already holding her heart. Around her, flames licked her home,
The flames, like demonic tongues from a place where no human being should ever go, danced and sung their song of sweet destruction.
Alice got out of her bed, and looked down the hall.
"Mom? Dad?"
She walked down the corridor of burning walls and furniture, like through a tunnel through hell. From the room that was her parent's bedroom, she could hear shouting.
No, It was screaming.
She heard tortured screams of tortured people, shrieking in pure and seemingly endless agony as fire consumed flesh and they burned alive.
"ALICE!"
She ran to the door, her bare feet pounding the carpet. Her arm stretched forward-
"SAVE YOURSELF ALICE!"
Running, running, running…
"GET OUT OF THE HOUSE!"
She reached the door. Alice grabbed the doorknob, and in her maddening panic never noticed how scolding hot it was, how it burned her. Hardly even aware of the death and destruction all around her, she knew-
"AAAAHHHHLIIICEE!"
She knew she had to open the door, because Mother and Father were trapped inside.
With an inhuman strength found only in the desperate and the panicking, she thrust the door open.
What she saw was not meant for human eyes, let alone for those of a child. She saw her loved ones, her beloved mother and adored father beneath a pile of burning wood, and she saw how they had tried to escape, but couldn't, and the fire had killed them slowly.
Mother was naked beneath a coat of ember and fire, her skin, once beautifully white as snow, was now red and black, and coated with blisters and charred places where the flesh had fallen off to reveal now blackened bone. Her face was frozen in that eternal scream of pain and torture, and Alice felt her sanity slip away as she stared into the pits that had once held her mother's eyes, and the way the eyeballs seemed to boil. When combined with the flaming hair and destroyed skin around the mouth, revealing the lower jaw and leaving the tongue to hang outside and bake, the terror and primal fear was incredible.
"…Alice…run…save…must…I…mother…"
To the left was her father, also as charred and barren as the woman he had loved, except he was still alive. It was a horrible sight to watch as he fought for seconds of his life, merely to prolong his pain in order to save a loved one already lost.
"…Save…us…"
And then he died, right there and then, and Alice couldn't help him.
She had lost all she had loved. She had lost the house of merry dreams and happy hours, she had lost the two people she had ever loved.
And there was fire, and there were flames.
Flames.
Burning.
FLAMES.
BURING.
FLAMES BURNING.
FLAMES ARE BURNING FLAMES ARE BURNING
***
Alice slept in her bed again.
It was not her bed, nor was it her house, nor were the people who took care of her family, nor did she have her books-
Her adventures
-and her toys.
Her eyes stared at nothing, her mind forever playing the same visions like a broken gramophone.
Flames burning are burning save yourself alice
Let's have a tea party get out of the house
Flames are burning
AAAAAAAAAAALLLLIIIICEEEEE
What is it like to have your world shatter?
To watch helpless as your family burned, unable to help, and to survive?
To know you weren't meant to stay alive.
You should have died Alice
So she ignored the voices, the pain as her fragile little mind rocked and tore at itself. She covered herself with a mental blanket, as a child that fears the night would hide under a bed, thinking he would be safe.
Only a part of her knew that it wouldn't work.
That she couldn't hide forever, because madness will find you. You have-
Nowhere to run nowhere to hide
-no chance of winning when you fight yourself. Because your opponent knows your every move, and sees it before you make it.
You can't-
Play chess that way
-fight that way.
A figure entered young Alice's room. It was The Nurse, Alice knew. She had never seen The Nurse, because she had never been able to control her body long enough to do so.
She knew The Nurse was kind, because The Nurse cared for Alice, and worried about her. Alice was sad she couldn't make The Nurse happy, couldn't awake from her nightmares. She was-
Dead but dreaming
-hopelessly locked away in a cage she had made to protect herself from Everything Else.
The Nurse had brought her something.
"Poor girl…after all these years…"
The Nurse had Mr Bunny.
She bent over and placed it in Alice's arms.
She smiled. It was the most beautiful thing Alice had seen in years.
"Maybe that old rabbit will bring her around."
She stepped outside, and gently closed the door behind her.
For the first time in years, Alice moved other parts of her body than her chest.
She hugged that ragged old doll, and felt it for what it was.
A piece of the Good Times.
It was something that had survived the burning, a bit of her happy days come to rescue her from this hiding place and prison.
Hope.
Hope that all would be well.
Hope that the dreams of hazy terror and misty horrors would pass.
Hope that-
Eden shall again have springtime
Wonderland shall be forever more
-the sun did still shine for her.
And then her hopes shattered, like tainted glass destroyed by crude and cruel hammers. They shattered when Mr Bunny raised his head, and her eyes met his. They burned with despair, as is every single horrible moment was forever fused within them.
The bunny screamed, and the scream that came out of it's mouth was a mixture of agonising pain and torture-
Like being burned alive, eh, Alice?
-of a being doomed to the most horrible terrors-
you should have died Alice
-And there was a deeper, darker hue in it, a manic laughter riddled with malice and sadistic pleasure that somehow towered over the agonised screams of it's victims.
SAVE US ALICE!
And Alice tumbled down the rabbit hole-
down the spiral of the deeper sun
-deeper and deeper into the darkness, the bottomless abyss.
Slowly, pawns and royals rolled and fell.
32 cards, no more, no less.
Down the rabbit hole fell Alice, and pawns and the Pale Royals, and cards of number 32, and
A clock.
Tick, tock.
Tick, tock.
Tick, tock went the clock, falling down the rabbit hole.
Tick, tock.
Tick, tock.
"Brain that dreams pure terror
Master came to mend the crack
Unto the world of unleashed madness
Under the rule of the Queen."