The Mad Teaparty
Chapter One
"Elizabeth," the girl, who was hastily trying to make her escape winced and paused. She bit her lip and turned slowly, to meet her maker.
"Honey, where are you going?" Liza's mother stood at the doorway of their little suburban home with her hands clasped together in worry. Ever since that day all those years ago, the thought of her daughter being somewhere without her knowing brought a panic in her.
"...To school," the teenager yelled back and turned around, her generic shoes squeaking on the cracked concrete. She could hear her mother laugh nervously to herself--she could almost feel that woman wringing her hands.
She continued down the rows of perfectly painted houses, and well trimmed lawns--getting only three houses away before she heard her mother yell the sentence that had come to make her life a living hell:
"Call me when you get there...and make good choices, dear!"
Liza pretended to ignore it, and continued down the street--near the end she made out the silhouette of her only friend at Oak Park High.
It was in the early part of the year, only midway through October, but she doubted anyone else would befriend her. Almost all the kids there she had grown up with--they knew her story and she knew theirs. Bea Glaskey was the only one who didn't care that she was friends with Elizabeth Mansell: Oak Park's resident nut case.
"You made a good choice in stopping by this morning," came the first of many quick-witted remarks to come from Bea. The blonde haired girl handed Liza a banana, "don't choke this time."
The fruit was greedily snatched and held above her head like a treasure before the starving girl undressed it. "God, Bea--you are a Queen."
"Make the 'queen bee' joke one more time and I swear to god..." the sentence hung. She couldn't find any way to threaten her friend.
"What you'll give me another banana?"
"Exactly." They both laughed and continued down the main road without even realizing where they were. Both girls were on auto-pilot, they had walked this route for four years, and they'd be walking it for another two.
"...How do you think this year's going to be for us, Bea," Liza suddenly remarked out of nowhere.
Her friend sighed, not wanting to get into this subject again. She knew Liza has always felt guilty for Bea's lack of social encounters--both of them knew it was because of their friendship, but she honestly didn't mind. "Liz..."
"You can't honestly tell me that if we weren't friends that you wouldn't be hanging out with the popular kids: Andrew Benson, or Kailie Marsh. You're beautiful, Bea--everyone at Oak Park knows it, and every day people see you hanging out with me and wonder why you're hanging out with the Freak Queen, because you have everything it takes to be one of them."
"You're not a freak." Liza shook her head.
"Tell that to them."
An uncomfortable silence hung in the air as they both paused at the crosswalk right across from the school's main entrance. Even as they walked onto campus, and the first downcast glance was thrown Liza's way, they still said nothing.
Finally, Liza stopped:
"I've got to go to the office."
"Why?" Liza rolled her eyes and over dramatically sighed.
"She wants me to call."
So off she went walking through the crowded and unfriendly halls of her prison, toward the front office, where everyday she asked to use the phone to call her mother. Every single time, the thought of just ignoring her request came to mind, but then she remembered what happened the last time she did that. She'd rather not get called down to the office to find her mother and a police officer waiting for her.
I hate her...I absolutely hate her…
"Good morning, Miss Mansell, your mother asked you to call?" The receptionist, Mrs. Laurence smiled with her over lipsticked-lips and handed her the phone. "Dial nine first, dear."
"Yeah, yeah," Liza muttered and did as instructed before punching in her number--halfway through the first ring her mom answered. The woman waited by the phone.
"Oh my god--Elizabeth? I thought you were kidnapped or something!" The teenager groaned.
"Mom, I was talking with Bea alright, just calm down, I'm not going to get kidnapped."
The receptionist who always took mild interest in the calls the students made, paused in her typing and listened intently. She also knew of Liza's past. The poor girl's mother had made sure of that by making every staff member go to a meeting headed by the neurotic woman. She wanted Liza to be treated with the up-most care, and sympathy for her past.
"--I'm going to first period, Jesus...no, I am going to take your stupid lord's name in vain. Yes...yes I am a Satanist. That's right, as soon as I get to school I pull on my leather mini-skirt and pentagram necklace. Goodbye."
Liza slammed the phone down and growled before realizing she had a small but attentive audience.
Five...four...three...two...
The phone rang. Mrs. Laurence picked it up and was dismayed to hear Liza's mother on the other line. After a few pleading statements, and a threat to come down there and take her child to a place that would help her uphold her Catholic duties, Mrs. Laurence promised to send Liza to the school councilor. The older woman looked to the girl and smiled apologetically--it was out of her hands.
Not even five minutes later, Liza was walking down the clean shiny floors of the seemingly empty high school. Typical school for a typical town, in a typical state, in a huge fucking country...why the fuck did my parents move here?
Groaning in a way that could be described as disgruntled she turned left and knocked at the heavy wooden door that appeared in front of her. In her school, the lobby to the councilors offices had a door. She was let in by a rather round woman, a substitute she guessed, not the normal counseling receptionist.
"I'm here to see Mr. Greenberg," she said quietly. The woman just nodded and waddled over to the office door where Liza's generic shrink sat and waited to feed her bullshit excuses; it opened quickly, too quickly for the teenager's liking.
"Elizabeth--hello again," Mr. Greenberg had an overcautious voice that he used with everyone he spoke with. Almost as if a normal tone would break everything in the room. He motioned into the room and stepped out of the way as she wordlessly stepped in and sat down in the uncomfortably padded chairs. "Having parent troubles again?"
"Again? ...to use that word it would to have stopped...It hasn't stopped since I was five." She set her bag on the floor and leaned back folding her legs and arms once more. Assuming the position she rolled her eyes, receiving a quirked brow from the old man.
"Really?"
"No, I like lying to councilors--gives me quite a joy-gasim."
"Sarcasm isn't appreciated here, Elizabeth."
"It's all I've got left..." The man shut the door and turned, sitting in his desk chair and went to work on methodically stroking his beard.
"Why do you say that?"
Liza sighed and shifted a bit before tilting her head, cracking her neck causing Mr. Greenberg to wince. "Everything else...my pride, any self-worth...friends, understanding, being treated like I'm competent, it's all gone." She sighed, "I haven't been talked to like I was intelligent since I was a child. She still thinks I'm five, and he's afraid to look at me."
"Do you think that was because of your assault?" The girl bristled, her arms unfolding to grip the arm rests.
"I was not assaulted, god dammit. I was not molested, or raped, or asked to talk dirty to some forty-year-old business man from Manhattan."
"...It is okay to talk about it, Elizabeth."
"Nothing happened," she shouted, her knuckles were a pasty white from gripping the chair so hard, and her face had gained a bit of color. "Why does everyone think I was molested?"
The councilor, who was always a rather passive man, winced once more at the tone, and shrank back a bit, from her. It was true, all of the psychiatrists, councilors, and her parents believed that she was molested. "That story you told your mother about...Having tea with the Mad Hatter I think I was? It sounds an awful lot like something a child would use to concentrate on anything but the, uh, attack."
"I wasn't molested."
"Admitting it is the first step to recovery...you can get through this."
"I think I would know what happened to me..."
"I think you're trying to forget."
"I think you're regurgitating a bunch of shit that the real shrinks fed you. You wouldn't be talking any of this shit if you didn't have that fat fucking folder glued to the top of your desk. No one else was there, no one in the park saw anything happen, no one saw me leave with him. Why does everyone think I'm nuts?"
"Everyone thinks you're nuts?"
"Didn't I just say that?"
He, by now, just wanted her gone. Mr. Greenberg was very professional, having his intentions, and integrity questioned was one of the worst insults imaginable to him. So he uttered the one phrase that set her off the wall:
"...And how does that make you feel?"
After a lengthy and harsh tongue-lashing via her parents, Liza walked down the clean carpeted hall to her room, slamming her door as loud as she could. And so began her three day suspension.
Just because I threw his mug at the fucking wall, she grumbled as she sat on the downy black comforter that covered her bed. This is bullshit. She looked around her room and smiled. It was perfect for her:
The white carpeting that was in the hall, spilled into her room, making the deep purple walls almost pop, she had all black furniture, a table by her black metal bed, and a large black desk on the other side of the room, which neighbored her bookcase, and stereo. Her walk-in closet, which was almost like a second room, had a black velvet couch, and candles on one side of it, and all her clothes on the other.
Semi-normal clothes too. She wasn't Goth like most of the so-called freaks at her school were, but that wasn't all by choice. Her mother wanted her to dress sensibly, a nice Catholic girl can't dress in dark colors more than a couple times a week or then she's a Satanist...or so her mom believed.
I want a normal life, with normal parents, and a sibling to take all the shit that rolls off me after it hits the fan. The teenager sighed and brushed her deep brown hair off her shoulders and looked at her bedside table.
Even though they didn't believe her, and they thought she was crazy, her parents didn't have the heart to take the flowers and the doll that she'd shown up with at home that night...that and when they tried she screamed, kicked and bit until they left her room. The flowers were dried now, but they were still beautiful to her, and the doll, which she secretly brought into bed to sleep with at night, was faded and worn, barely avoided holes at the seams.
Everything she knew told her that she was crazy, told her that whatever she thought happened that day wasn't true. They told her teaparty was a story she used to take her mind off the 'attack'. They told her lots of things...but she never believed them.
The day after she was on the news her mother had called the police, the TV stations, she was even on 60 Minutes. She was in therapy and counseling for the next eight years, and every session they'd try to bring out some wild confession of what really happened. They never got it.
So, she became Oak Park City's resident freak.
Liza waited in her room for hours for food to come, and at around seven bread and water were brought in for her by her father. He didn't look at her, instead he just grunted for her to eat because he'd be back in thirty minutes to get the glass and plate.
Thirty minutes later, he walked back in with the food untouched, and still he didn't look to her, he just took the items and left her once again.
Sleep evaded her that night, like it did most nights, the doll was clutched to her chest, and her covers were kicked to the bottom of the bed. The thought that she was waiting for someone, but there was no one that cared to see her.
Soon she became aware of another presence in her room...
Belial stood there in the shadows of the girl's room, silent as stone, and just as still. It's arms folded, pulling it's black frock coat tight across it's back, the bright white ruffled sleeves of it's shirt poked out from beneath. It, though it would never admit it aloud, had nearly missed the girl. It had always known it would return to check up on the girl called Liza, but it never had decided when until earlier in the evening.
The hunt for it's Master's nine hundred and ninety ninth bride had been successful, and for a while longer Sheol and the other layers of hell were in relative safety once more.
"Hello again, child."
Liza looked over at the figure that had haunted her dreams since she was six, alarm being the last thing on her mind--it still looked the same. Blood red hair, and a face that rivaled the purity of snow, that was only tainted by a mask of black about the eyes. It...why did she think that?
Maybe because I don't know what 'it' is...
"Mad Hatter...?"
The clown locked it's icy blue eyes to her azure ones showing it had given her it's full attention. Belial could tell what was coming, but it had no intention of answering until the girl asked. It was only fair to her.
"...What...are you? I mean, are you a man or a woman."
"One is neither." It watched as the confusion spread itself over Liza's delicate features. Cute it thought before shaking the notion from it's mind only to smirk back at the girl.
"How?"
"It is a rather extensive story, that One does not wish to go into."
"Give me the short version...be blunt." Belial's smirk widened. This girl was playing right into it's hands--humans were so ironic in that way. It paused a moment before answering:
"One is one of the Seven Satans."
End: Chapter OneA.N. Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit—I am so sorry for the way past late update guys, Summer is winding down, and I'm getting busy with Color Guard, and boys and oh lord, I apologize. But surprise I haven't forgotten about this story, and as promised (sort of) I have updated for you all.
This chapter though as hard to pound out as it was has turned out to be a favorite of mine. Why so? This is where the plot finally begins! The prologue(s) were the set up, and now finally, I can move things along. And hopefully have it done sometime before next year.
No worries, I will not abandon this fic. (It's the first fic I've written that people are reviewing like crazy for…I've always wanted a story where reviewers would like cheer for a character or yell at me for doing something because they like it so much…such a silly dream of mine.) The Hatter has seen some mighty awful fics in the past, and I'm trying to do it justice and some damn originality…dammit. offers more cookies
The List of Thanks:
Voodoo Priestess, TheStarrsOfTheSecertGalaxy, Violet, Fetal Mind, sesshys desire, Silent Sage, Riko-chan, Sarah126, and Shiro Ryuu.