"She's here," the Duchess croons, her voice licking the room like a burning flame. It drenches the chamber, dripping thick from the vaulted ceiling in a heavy and armored tone. She looks over to a young servant boy quaking with fear, attempting to be invisible. "Boy, go unlock the door. Open it. Welcome our guests." The boy gives a quizzical look toward the Duchess, but follows her orders anyway. Fear for his scalp has made him a very obedient servant. He fumbles at the heavy block of wood that barricades the cumbrous, gilt doors. Nervously he swings open the doors and looks to the Duchess for further orders. When none come, he scampers away, mouthing one of the few prayers he knows of.

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There is a sinking in Alice's heart. She sees the doors to the palace have been opened, blithely welcoming her through the gateway to hell. The trio, (Alice, Cheshire, and the Knave) walk slowly into the hall. Alice leads her troupe like a balanced formation of birds, infecting the group with her anger via her strong and deliberate gait.

When they arrive at the center of the colossal vestibule, they stop. Behind them, the doors suddenly slam, deafening the room for but an instant with their solidity. A few overhanging chandeliers light the room, and it takes some time for their eyes to get used to the dusky light. As Alice's eyes begin to focus, a thrown of immense proportions seems to take shape. It is red velvet and gold, ornately decorated with the Duchess's emblem (a sword piercing a heart). Sitting on the thrown is the enveloping shadow of the Duchess.

"You killed the Rabbit," Alice says with an incising anger.

"Yes," the Duchess says simply, a hint of malignant humor itching in her voice and lingering there.

"You tried to kill me," Alice says.

"Yes."

"And you killed the Queen. You killed my mother."

The Duchess laughs at this. Her abysmal cackling seers at Alice's eardrums, rising and falling at pinpoints. "Dead," she chortles. "There won't be a funeral, though. The bitch doesn't deserve it."

Alice's eyes don't change. There is an emptiness there. It is a cold and resolute gaze that meticulously studies the Duchess. "Hello, father."

A sneer crosses the Duchess's face callously. Time suddenly slows for Alice. The world grows dim and blurry. Images seem to flounder and flail, and time begins to move frame by frame, inching so that Alice can see every second with the studious care of an accomplished artist. The Duchess raises her hands until they are covering her face. She digs her fingernails deep into her scalp with an insane rabidity, and blood immediately courses from the scalp wounds, plunging down her face in tepid rivulets. She begins to slowly pull on the fistfuls of flesh that she has uprooted. The skin peels down her face with a sickening sound of tearing flesh. Veins and blood and muscle is torn away with a careless abandon that is almost gleeful. And under it all, under the gore and carnage, Alice sees a face she thought vanquished from her life for eternity.

How could she ever forget that fleshy face, so doughy and pallid? The sallow, beady eyes, staring at her from behind a veil of true insanity. How many times had she wished her father dead? How many times, after the countless batterings, had she wished him maimed and tortured and so far from her small and defenseless self?

"Hello, my daughter." It is no longer the Duchess's voice that was speaking, but her father's.

"You son of a bitch," Alice says. Her breath catches in her throat for a flash. She screams a war cry, a cry of pain and rage, and hurtles at the man before her. Her cleaver glints subtly with the shifting candlelight. Already prepared, the man pummels her with a flying fist, but not before catching the edge of the violently slashing blade with a grunt. Alice is thrashed to the floor, and slowly begins to pick herself up. The man rushes at her, giving a swift kick into her abdomen. Alice chokes and sputters but quickly regains her composure. She flicks the cleaver in her wrist and stabs it into the man's shin, which is already coming in for another hit. The man bellows again, and instead clobbers her head with an ironclad fist. The world echoes upon itself and turns into a dimension of confusion. She hears the cry of Cheshire in her head, but somehow peripherally knows that he can't come to her aid, at the restraint of the Knave.

All a dirty trick, she thinks. All a dirty trick. He wanted me here. He's going to kill me…

"He won't kill you, my darling," a sepulchral voice says, reverberating through her mind and soul. "You are strong. This is your land, my sweet. This is your destiny…"

Her senses begin to clear, and she shakes her head to induce full consciousness. The wrath and fury has returned to her now. How dare this stupid fucker assume her to be the weak one! In one quick movement, she flies to her feet, securing the cleaver in her hands once again. The man snakes back his arm for another blow. Before he can, Alice stabs him in his gut, watching the blood spurt out of him like a punctured barrel. The man doesn't stop his maniacal quest, though. He sees the blood and is thrown into another frenzy and claws blindly at Alice. Alice is unperturbed. The man lays a long, angled claw mark that draws a thin line of scarlet spanning her cheek. With her cleaver, she thrusts up and grounds the cleaver into his armpit. She feels the delicate pop, as the tip punctures an organ, most likely a lung. She doesn't hesitate now; She tears the cleaver from his armpit and plants it deep into the man's chest. She wriggles it around, feeling the man's innards, not even hearing his roars of desperation. She feels the head of the blade pierce her father's heart, and finally releases her deathgrip.

She steps back from the butchery with a muffled outcry. Alice watches as her father falls to his knees and then makes his final bow to the earth, as his body crumples under the weight of death and sin. She turns around to see Cheshire, watching open-mouthed over the dead body of the Knave. Alice bursts into tears as a cornucopia of various pains tears at her insides. Cheshire's open mouth turns to a comforting grin.

"What did I do, Cat? What did I do?" Alice asks the Cat. "I killed my own father. I was his flesh and blood…"

"Oh, my precious. He tortured you. He tormented you. What little you had, he pillaged from you with greed and wrath. He was not your father, my Alice, He was your demons."

"But…I loved him. Even though he killed me inside, I loved him. It made me hate myself and want to die. How could I love a man who afflicted me so much? I wanted him dead…but he was my father." Alice looks at the dead man with a pity she doesn't understand. She hovers there for a minute, feeling her temples throbbing. "Goodbye, father," she breaths. "Goodbye…"

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Alice stands over her mother's dead body. The Queen of Hearts. Alice kneels down to the woman, looking at her, running her hand over the woman's stiff and decomposing hand.

"I absolve you of your sins, mother," Alice says as she brushes her lips across the forehead of the rotting corpse. "This is your funeral, my mother. You do deserve it." A single tear beads at her eye before she sets the torch to the dead woman's body. Alice and Cheshire watch the woman burn until there is nothing left but a mass of ashes.

"They're all gone, Cat," Alice says to Cheshire. "I'm all alone."

"No, you're not, my sweet," Cheshire admonishes with a grin. "You have me…"

"Oh, Cat," Alice says with a sigh. "How much I wish you were not a cat…"

"Nothing's over 'til the Fat Cat sings, my darling," chuckles the cat with a mischievous and toothy smile.