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Comatose Screams
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I've been visited today. The doctor, dear Dr. Wilson, came to see how I was. See if anything was the matter. I know what he's doing. He knows I heard Grantham. He wonders if I had something to do with the sudden attack of dementia. He doesn't know that Grantham was at the door, but he knows I heard his death cry.
White Rabbit told me what happened to him. White Rabbit followed Grantham to the Amputation Room. He'd been afraid to enter the room before, people would come out with half their arms off, or their feet wiggling with no toes. Then the doctors would follow with metal pans. They always walk by my door with those pans. It isn't my fault that they do. I looked in the pan once, from the window in the door.
It held a hand in it. A hand, no more then 4 inches long. The person it belonged to couldn't have been more then ten years old. It was severed a few inches from the elbow, and the bone was at an angle that looks like they were hasty to remove it. But it was twitching.
The person hadn't noticed me watching him go by. White Rabbit never saw it. Maybe I imagined the twitching. I can never be sure.
I fear that room. But I have no fear.
So White Rabbit went to see what Grantham was doing. After smashing the rooms jars, windows, and syringes, Grantham eventually began to dissect his own wrist.
Goodbye Grantham.
White Rabbit has been quiet and away since then. I wondered what he showed him. I put some of my memories in it but nothing that bad.
Alice, I know your upset and confused right now... White Rabbit awakes with those words.
Oh yes, I would love to know why the dear doctor died from my memories. How come I haven't?
I gave him more then just your memories, replies White Rabbit slowly.
I simply stare in shock. How much more? Would I be that desperate to leave Wonderland when I came across what he showed?
Show me.
Alice, it wouldn't be safe. You saw how angry you became with the harnesses ... White Rabbit is concerned. And for good reason.
Show me.
Two words. So little by themselves. So commanding when used together. My eyes do not leave White Rabbit's button ones. One has been plucked out accidentally. I don't remember how it happened.
He is very, very nervous.
All right, I'll show you.
~*~*~*~
Instead of going to the library like the White Bearded Man wished me to, I went to the stage again. The crazy children were there, and I tried to ignore them as I looked for what White Rabbit had told me about.
There it was. A star encased in a circle painted on the wall in bright red ink. It was seamless with the wood and scarlet wallpaper, but still indented when I pressed it.
The seemingly unimportant portraits on the wall cracked as they broke from the wall, sinking into opening floorboards that closed with a small snap!
This left the wall, in all its red wallpaper, bare and alone. It looked very desolate. I was wondering what came next.
It shuddered a little and gave a large groan.
Then it was still.
I pressed my finger to it and jumped back when my finger passed through it. It definitely was not wood and wallpaper anymore. My finger left a ripple. The ripple traveled up and echoed out into nothingness.
All was still.
"No!"
I fell back on my rear. I covered my ears and screamed with the sound. The word echoed through the air, pressed against my body, sent a shearing pain through my mind and created a headache. I looked up and my gaze turned into a stare.
The wall was sweating. Big, clouded red droplets were rolling down the wall. A face, writhing and mouth agape in pain, there was no doubt in my mind at what had caused the scream.
Wonderland doesn't want me to see this place.
Sitting on my rear, I stared up at the wall as it writhed some more. The face was silent, simply twisting as if in pain. There was an odd tug on my mind. Suddenly, pain seared through my head as the wall fell in a pool of murky blood.
What is it with this place and blood?
I stood up and rubbed my temples, soothing the pain away. I looked behind me to the children and was slightly unnerved by the fact that they were not disturbed by these outbursts. I turned back towards where the wall had once been.
There was a white room at the end of the hallway, black walls narrowing to the small doorway. What was held in the room, I could not tell. The contrast of the shadow-walls and the ethereal brightness at the end hurt my eyes. I began walking down it and jumped back as my foot hit the floor.
The floor had illuminated a small trench that was covered by an icy pane. It ran the whole way to the bright room at the end of the corridor. But that was not what frightened me back.
It was crawling with the amputated hands and feet.
There was the girls hand, and there! I saw that foot only a fortnight ago. Would the ice hold if I walked on it?
I had to take the risk. White Rabbit would be relieved if I came back and said I didn't see. I wasn't about to give him the satisfaction.
I took a cautious step forward. I slid a bit but found it supported my weight easily.
It was rather unnerving to see the amputated hands and fingers and feet try to jump at the icy glass. Right at me.
After a period of slipping, falling, pushing away in a mixture of feeling disgusted and disturbed, climbing back up again and sliding to the end of the hallway, I made it.
And turning to the white room, I stared in silent shock.
There were no walls, just endless windows of glass that locked children in. Children with harnesses but also with so much more horrible things. On the glass held images that would shift from each one, and I recognized each. The amputated people, the amputated hands. A dream I had shortly after the Fire; masked men were taking babies and dissecting them while they were awake; I'd peer inside the gaping wounds and see flaming clockwork, twisting and turning in a dizzying way, their hearts simply dark, clouded gems of evilness. The images changed to a memory of when Teacher would yell at the children and smack the back of our hands with his metal ruler. I still had those scars.
And these children had to relive them.
There were small pieces of metal clipped to their eyelids and mouth. They were pulled back to where the child could never blink, never frown, always smile. Smile, happy! Aren't we now?
But that was not all. In the middle of the room stood a small girl, brown hair, green eyes. She wore my dress. But she was so small. She couldn't be me. She smiled at the images around her while I tried to hold my stomach in.
"Amazing how easy they are to control when you have all these horrible memories to feed them."
She was serene. She was content. I was enraged.
Before I knew what happened, Malice-Alice awoke and overtook me.
She remains in pieces on the white floor. Her face still smiling, still staring at me with my green eyes, strangely alive in their death. They say one thing in their power.
You are not rid of me yet.