~*~*~*~
Comatose Screams
~*~*~*~
Days pass. The doctor stares at me from the door window. I'm silent and still.
I have no real desire to move. I'm tired ... so tired in my mind. They attack, they scream, they hurt me in my mind. Their taunts and their insults ... their accusations.
My breathing becomes labored as I fight them off. Jabberwockies, stay away! Don't scream anymore! You nasty card guards, I'll lob off your head with my knife! They laugh at me, I slowly stab their veins. They die in their happy gloom, grinning maliciously.
All I hear are their dying yowls: White Rabbit is dead.
No, he's not dead, he's here, in my arms at the institute. See the doctor? He is writing things in his notebook. I almost screamed, but I'm a good girl. I don't show him pain. The world shows me pain.
I break down in my mind. White Rabbit isn't dead though, he's here, here in my arms. Leading my instincts, showing me his pocket watch, forming solutions in easy time.
I sob uncontrollably in Wonderland. Dead Jabberwockies stare expressionlessly at me, but still, I feel the malice in their cooling eyes.
Suddenly, they howl in pain as they burst into flame.
I jump back, feeling the flames lick over me again ... I don't feel any pain. The cursed creatures slowly quiet as they crumple into a pile of ash.
I slowly pushed myself up, hearing the White Rabbits words in my head. Please, don't dawdle Alice, we're very late indeed!
I don't try and understand their combustion. I won't pretend to care. I walk through the world, fighting their insults, laughing at their deaths.
And I'm still in my room with the bleak gray walls, the doctor staring for any sign of life, with a tarnished and burnt white rabbit.
~*~*~*~
Wonderland is so broken and strange. Well, it was always strange, but not with skies of scarlet clouds that rained blood. Buildings were always of odd structure, but these are not stable. They crumple so easily.
Dear doctor, what are you doing? Why are you tying me down? I'm a good girl, I never do anything wrong. The glass wasn't my fault! Doctor, doctor, can't you hear me? What ... what is that? What are you doing? Don't touch me, please, doctor, can't you see the burns? They still hurt, they howl and yowl and send pain all up my body. Is that a knife? Oh, how I'd love to play with it.
Doctor! What are you doing? That hurts! Stop it! Why, why can't I move? I want to hurt you, slap you, take your knife and slash your throat. I've done it before, don't think I can't. But my body won't move, it won't even struggle in the bonds! Why ... oh... soft lighting, warm table. I'm so sleepy. What are you doing, doctor, that makes me so sleepy?
Blood ... I feel it now. It's dripping off my hand, to make a small vibration as it patters against a metal platter on the floor. I hear it.
Is it real? I don't know. Wonderland is raining blood again. It soaks my dress and stains my white aprons purity. But it already had blood on it from the card guards and howling Jabberwockies. I've hidden in a fortress now. Nothing really harms me. I've walked into a maze of stone walls and metal grates.
I've killed three card guards now. More come. Oh, what to do ... what is that?
I've come across an orb of red power. It is encased in metal, and hovers in the air in front of me, tempting me. I want to study it, I want to touch it, it calls me to do so, but they're coming ... they're ...
Blood.
Thirst.
My skin darkens to a blood red. Pencil thin claws grow from my fingertips. I arch my back and a roar of power and pain echoes from me. I stand and horns curl from my head.
Anger. Hate. Murder.
Power.
I throw the knife; it stabs a card guard through the throat. Two others rush me. I grab one and slash across his chest with my claws. His body is ripped apart and his body it thrown to the ground in two different pieces. I grab the other by the neck and his ears begin to bleed as I squeeze it. It cracks under my grasp and his head hangs limp. I throw him against a wall.
Slowly, power wanes and I fall dormant.
Staring at their broken bodies, I found what the Orb of Red Power does. I stare at my hands, the claws sinking into my flesh, and I feel my forehead. The horns are nearly gone.
It turned me into a monster.
My skin is pale again, if not more so, from my realizing panic.
A monster hides inside you, ever waiting and patient, Alice
Remember, dear, to control the beast that encourages malice.
~*~*~*~
White Rabbit told me there were more doctors in my room while I was pursuing him. They changed my bandages of the burns that are nearly healed. They would be painful, had I not been in Wonderland. White Rabbit knows the best times to call me there. He knows when they come. He beckons me to safety. If you want to call morbid Wonderland safety.
I've looked at my feet this whole murky afternoon. Didn't they change the bandages on my feet? They feel like they're there, but I look at my feet, and they aren't.
My mind is playing with me again.
As the sky outside darkens in my window slowly, I wonder. Will these echoes of my past always be there? I hate the memories, I hate the pain, I hate that the Fire happened. I want the pain to have died along with my parents.
Maybe I'm just insane.
Of course you are, Alice, you think you're in an asylum for burning your parents, yell the Jabberwockies.
I am in an asylum! Wonderland doesn't know of Reality?
You murdered your parents, you murdered that man, you murder us every day, and you want to murder the Red Lady who's in charge of this land! they shriek.
Death to Alice, death to Alice!
"Off with her head!"
I jump. Looking around my gray room, I see no one. I whimper and curl up at the headboard of my bed. White Rabbit is no comfort, he is away again. I'm so cold ... so cold. Heat rolls through the air in waves in Wonderland, I feel it's pressure, but I'm so cold in the asylum. The mixture freezes me.
"Off with her head!"
I jump again. I'm not frightened. Just startled. Why are the shadows speaking to me from the Queen of Hearts tongue? Why is she influencing them to shriek at me to die? I didn't kill my parents! I didn't do anything! I tried to help them, I tried ... I tried!
I do not notice the howls that escape me. I thought they were the Jabberwockies off in a distance, being decimated by White Rabbit. I never make such infernal racket.
The door opens. I'm distracted by the candle that seems to hang in the air by a nearly invisible hand.
"Alice?"
I'm completely still and stare at the nurse with blank eyes. I don't know why she's here, I wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary. Only crazy people do things like that.
I do not notice that the shadows have retracted and I do not see any Red Queen hiding in the shadows. It must have been my imagination. Things like that happen often here.
The nurse slowly backs out the door, eyes suspicious to me as if I was going to jump up and attack her with White Rabbit. I could, you know. She'd never suspect. I'd suffocate her with him, then I'd burn the curtains and throw them on her, and she's fall, fall like a Jabberwockies death, into a pile of crumpling ash.
As soon as I've processed all this, she's locked the door. The candle is gone.
I continue whimpering softly to the cries, "Off with her head!"