A/N: Here you go! I really like this chapter; I think it really opens up alot about Alice as well as the next one or two will. Once again, not ESSENTIAL to 112 Masen Lane, but still, an interseting conversation between Bella and Alice.

Musical Inspiration: Go Ask Alice - Jefferson Airplane

Chapter 13 – Go Ask Alice

APOV

"If you really want to know, let me start at the beginning… I was born in Biloxi, Mississippi to Allison and Walter Brandon in the year 1901." I began.

It had been years, no, decades that I had spoken of any of the events that happened in my human life. Even my adoring husband Jasper didn't know all of them; many were too painful to recount out loud, and many I was too ashamed to let him hear.

Of course he felt shame emanating from me, but he left it alone. He never asked anything beyond what I offered to tell. For that I am grateful.

But here, now, I would recount the full story, from my beginnings as a human child, until the day I lost my humanity. Why now? I was not completely sure, but something inside me, something longed to tell this to the right person. I had wanted Rosalie to be that, but though my sister and I were close, something inside kept that from her.

Rosie had been through a lot in her human life as well, but for some reason I didn't think she would be able to fully understand.

I had seen that Bella and I would be very close. Closer than I had ever been to any female, human or vampire.

And so, Bella, with her willing ear, would be the first to hear my story.

"I had a good childhood; my family was not fabulously rich like Edward's, but we were comfortable. I had always had imaginary friends as a child and my parents didn't question that. Well, at least not until my little sister was old enough to be my playmate, but even then, being an imaginative child, they didn't put too much stock in my fantasies."

Bella nodded, so I continued.

"About the time I hit puberty, which in those days was a very mysterious time for a young lady as it was, I began to dream things and most of the time, what I dreamt actually happened. Most premonitions would come true within the week, a few took longer, and a few never did. Almost all of them centered on my immediate family and a few close friends. At first, I told no one, but then, little by little I began to tell my little sister, Cynthia.

At first, she was enthralled by them. You see, back then, all of them came in the form of dreams, and every morning after I had one, I would tell Cindy on the way to school.

She would pester me every morning for information. She told me once that she thought I must be a prophet from God, like Daniel or Samuel. But as she got older, she asked less and less, and began to shy away more and more from my revelations.

One day she told me she didn't want to hear them anymore, that she was afraid and that I must have some unholy power from Satan.

Of course I tried to explain that I could not prevent them because they came while I was asleep. She urged me to go to mass and confess to Father Dowling, our parish priest. She begged me to pray that God remove this witchcraft from my being, and often at night I heard her whisper in her prayers that very same utterance.

I, too, prayed… I did as she asked and confessed to the priests in our church, but it didn't leave me. I had never thought them evil until she began to fear me. Then I hated the visions. I hated them and there were times as I got older that I would stay awake for days in order to avoid them.

Cindy went to confession weekly… sometimes more. She asked the priests to continue to pray for me. But after she had done this regularly for over a year, they felt the need to bring the matter before my parents.

I remember the day that the younger priest in our parish, Father Whitehall, knocked on our door.

It was May seventh, nineteen eighteen. In other parts of the country, the Spanish flu was beginning to die down, but thankfully, it never made it to our little community.

I was upstairs in the room I shared with Cindy, when we heard my mother invite him in. He said that he had come on behalf of Cindy, who had not asked him to do so, but he felt that it was his obligation to involve my parents.

I sat out of sight at the top of the stairs, my mother and father in the parlor with our priest. I heard every word.

At first my mother denied everything, she was certain that if I had something as serious as this, surely I would have come to them. She suggested that, perhaps I was pulling a prank on Cindy, to scare her or even that I was getting back at her for a wrong she had done me.

Father Whitehall was insistent that I, too, had on occasion confessed this very sin, both to him and to Father Dowling.

My mother began to cry, my father comforted her. Father Whitehall set up some appointments to have me exercised.

For the next nine months, I was submitted to exorcism once every two weeks, or as often as I had the visions.

I hated those days, though I never benefited from the appointments. I have since seen so many movies on that subject, but to watch mine, it would be quite disappointing.

It was disappointing to the priests who performed it, for certain. They never got the responses they expected; I just sat there, tied to the chair, for my own safety of course, and waited while they read Bible passages and flicked Holy Water on me. They would press the image of the cross to my head, expecting it to sizzle I suppose, but nothing ever happened.

One day, both priests came to our home. It was not out of the ordinary by now; at times they came in twos and threes hoping that so much holiness and sanctity would drive the demons far from me.

But that day was different. They were coming to announce that the church had done all they could do. They suggested that my parents had only one option left; to put me away where the demons could harm no one but me. My mother cried for the most part of the next week.

During the nine months that the exorcisms were being done, I had been placed under house arrest. Not by the authorities, but as a request from the church; they didn't want me influencing other children at school or innocent passersby on the street.

I begged and pleaded with my parents not to send me, but they promised that it was only temporary. They would not tell the family or neighbors that I had gone to a sanitarium; they would say only that I had been very ill and that I was at a good, out-of-state hospital.

That only made me feel marginally better, of course, but it was all I had; until the day that they came.

There were four of them; a doctor, the medical administrator, a nurse and a lady's maid. They all assured me that this was a very upscale, modern facility. The administrator told my parents and me that it was more like a health spa than a hospital.

After they had left, my parents discussed it over the next month... the benefits, the disadvantages, the expense. Everything had to be considered. They promised me that if they chose to send me that they would visit me several times per year.

The asylum was in Tennessee, just outside of Nashville, five hundred miles from my home.

At the first mention of sending me to such a place, my sister immediately began to reconnect with me. I suppose she thought that since I was going to be getting the help I needed that I would one day return to her as her normal, everyday sister; as if I had just gone on a long vacation.

It was then, about a week before I was scheduled to make my journey to my temporary seclusion that I began to dream about the pale, blond-haired man. I would see him as a blur of color in the shape of a human male. At that time, while still human, I never saw him clearly.

But I would soon forget about this mysterious creature from my dreams.

As the long black car pulled into our circle driveway, the tears I had held back for so long began to fall.

At that point I was not afraid, just nervous, I was sorrowful at having to leave my family and hometown for an undetermined period of time. I was uncertain that I would like the doctors and nurses that would be attending me or that they would like me.

I remember what I was wearing that day. I was eighteen years old, and I had a passion for the latest in fashions. I was always more avant-garde than my mother would have liked.

I wore my butter yellow, sleeveless, drop waist dress. It was my favorite; so bright and cheerful. Although short bobs were coming into style, my mother absolutely insisted that my hair be kept long. It was past my waist, slightly, when let down, but I usually tied it back in a sort of loose knot at the back of my head. I fashioned it just so that from the front, you would think my hair was short.

I dried my tears and said goodbye to my family. I stepped lightly into the car, pulling my suitcase in beside me.

When the driver shut the door, the tears began again and I believe I cried all the way to the state line. My parents and sister stayed inside the house that day… no one came outside to wave to me until I was no longer visible. It's like they just wanted to forget.

That was the last time I saw them, any of them." I paused.

It was now well after midnight.

Bella sat still as a statue, her gaze never wavered, she barely even blinked as I had spoken.

"Bella, I promised Edward to observe your human needs and that includes sleep." I said gently.

"Oh, Alice, I'd much rather hear the rest of your story…" she said.

I smiled, she was genuinely interested in my life… other than Jasper, no one had really given my past more than a passing thought.

"Tomorrow, I promise I will finish it if you still want to hear." I said pulling her up off the couch and pushing her toward the bed.

"Alright, since you promise." She conceded and went to sleep.

It took her no longer than twenty minutes to fall into a steady pattern of breathing. How fragile humans were.

I sat on the couch in her room listening to her soft breaths, steady heartbeat and thought, for the first time in a long time, about the road that had brought me here today.

A/N: Okay, people; I want complete honesty here... what did you think?

Should I cut out the next few chapters (interrupt them, really) and post them later as out-takes or do you want me to go ahead and use a chapter or two more and finish Alice's story?