Sorry, guys, I got temporarily hijacked by The Hunger Games trilogy (You must read it if you haven't!) otherwise I would have gotten this out sooner. For another reading recommendation, the wonderful Alaina Downs has started a new AU Alice story called "Scarborough Fair" and it's already loaded with awesomeness in just two chapters. So go read it and tell her how awesome it is.
As always, much gratitude towards my readers and reviewers! Please make an effort to review this one because I'm kind of nervous about it :)
A quick FYI: This story takes place in late March of 2009. I am keeping true to the BtVS timeline where all the Potentials were activated in May of 2003. Alice was 15 at the time and she is 21 now. Her father would have disappeared in March of 1998 when Alice was ten years old, but I placed her birthday late in the year so that would have been the year she turned 11.
Righto, now onwards to a bit of spotlight on Carol!
Chapter XXXIV: A Merry, Mad World, Part 1
Rain pattered softly against the windows in a steady, rolling drumbeat. The streets and sidewalks, already damp from earlier showers in the evening, once more became drenched from another incoming breath of moisture off of Lake Erie. Street lights provided yellow-white pockets of illumination, lighting up the nighttime shower. Carol pulled aside the drapes from the living room window to peer out into the street in front of her home, her comely face set into a deep frown. Her daughter had been gone for almost an hour now after storming out of the house to track down her boyfriend (ex-boyfriend?) and return the ring he had foolishly given her. She had also left the house completely unprepared for any sort of wet weather. Her blue dress, pink-red tights, and purple boots were certainly not going to stave off a chill. It was late March and the warm spring weather had just started making its appearance, only to be temporarily set back by the past week's cold front.
It was not the rain Carol worried about, though. There were far worse dangers a person could run into on the streets of Cleveland at night. It was not widely vocalized, even among the press. If the reporters on the various news stations throughout the city actually ran stories on every horrific crime, sudden disappearance, or unexplained event, the sheer volume of those things would overwhelm the airwaves and there would be little else to talk about. But anyone who had lived in Cleveland as long as Carol had understood certain things about the city. One of those things was that it was generally very unsafe for people to walk around at night, especially alone. And the reasons exceeded those for the typical dangers one would encounter in a large urban area. But no one was able to voice the exact nature as to why or how those dangers differed. It was just an unspoken, but passively acknowledged, fact about living in Cleveland.
The dishes from the dinner with Jack had long since been washed, dried, and returned to their usual places in the cabinets. The table, counter tops, and stove had been wiped clean. Unfortunately, that activity had only used up half an hour. Carol wondered if Alice had been able to track down Jack before he had made it to his apartment. She then realized she had no idea where Jack's apartment was. There was no mention of how he had arrived to their home. Had he taken a cab or had he walked? He had already been gone for a full twenty minutes before they realized he had snuck the ring into Alice's pocket.
Carol was still quite puzzled over that move. Three months into the relationship was a tad early to be presenting a ring as a gift, no matter the innocent intentions behind it. If Alice had flatly refused the ring, then why would Jack secretly stash it in her pocket? What was that supposed to accomplish? What message did he intend to send through that deceptive measure?
While she was the first one to admit that Alice had a rather undeniable role in sabotaging her relationships with her fears of commitment and intimacy, Jack had certainly not helped his case by pulling that stunt with the ring. He had appeared to have more intelligence than that. More than likely, he had completely damned his chances of ever carrying on a relationship with her daughter. Not that his chances were incredibly great to begin with. Maybe her daughter's roller coaster love life had made her cynical, but all throughout the dinner, Carol had not been seeing any potential rising from Jack. Just as with all the other young men who had paraded through that foyer, hopes high and smiles bright, the woman had a feeling he was soon going to find himself single and heartbroken.
And then there was just something else about him, something that seemed kind of off to Carol. He had been the very definition of polite and charming, complimenting their home, the food, the decorations, and Carol herself in that wonderfully urbane English accent. His clothes were impeccable, not a single thing out of place. Each part of his outfit and his manner seemed meticulously planned and perfected. But there had been this nagging feeling tugging at the fringe of Carol's thoughts as she watched Jack Chase, especially as he conversed with her daughter. He seemed too perfect, too polite and charming, too well-dressed. Too good to be true…to be real.
Now that is really cynical, Carol, goodness, she admonished herself as she turned away from the front window. There was no tangible reason for harboring those strange thoughts towards Jack. But knowing it was somewhat absurd did not seem to allay the feelings whatsoever. In any case, Alice had no doubt returned the ring to him and had officially ended the relationship or was at least in the process of doing one of the two. So there was no need to be ruminating over the strange vibe she had been receiving from that young man. She would probably never see him again.
The rain slacked off into a light drizzle which sounded no louder than a gentle whisper against the windowpane. Carol glanced at the clock. Alice had been gone for a full hour now. She briefly considered calling her, but one quick check in her bedroom led to the discovery of her daughter's slim blue cell phone sitting on her desk right next to her computer monitor. That plan thoroughly out of the picture, she went to her own bedroom and decided to pull out that stack of essays she had been meaning to grade for the past few nights. Retiring for bed in this situation seemed like a pointless endeavor at any rate.
An hour was no reason to become rattled. It was not like going out into the night was an unusual occurrence with Alice. In spite of Cleveland's morbid reputation, her child seemed to flippantly maintain a semi-nocturnal lifestyle. Carol might have raised a complaint about this if Alice had not been so diligent about texting and calling her while she was out "with friends". There were times when she would be gone all weekend with her friends or for several days throughout the week. She did not begrudge her daughter the right to have a healthy, vibrant social life. And Alice was an adult. She voluntarily paid a portion of the rent and utilities for their little two bedroom townhouse without fail. She covered all of her own expenses such as her cell phone, credit card bill, college expenses, and even the internet. How she managed all that on what had to be a meager salary working as a part-time martial arts instructor was somewhat of a mystery. Carol just figured her daughter must have had a natural flair for finances and budgeting. She liked to think Alice inherited it from her, as she had had to do some serious budgeting when her husband disappeared eleven years ago, leaving her to support herself and her child alone.
But, still, there was no one in this neighborhood or in this city who was oblivious to the dangers lurking on the streets at night, or sometimes during the day. Carol's own husband, Robert, had disappeared without a trace in the space of an afternoon. Everywhere one turned, there was a person who had lost someone or who knew of others who had been lost. There were several public walls which had been completely plastered by hundreds of photographs of people who had simply vanished. Some had been up there for years, even longer than Robert had been missing. Carol did not want to have Alice's picture put up there. Her heart, battered and scarred from the loss of her husband, would not survive it. She had let go of his disappearance, accepted that he would never return for Alice's sake. There had been no other viable way to become the stable parent her daughter had needed. But just as much as Alice had needed her, Carol needed Alice. Alice was her world, her bright ray of sunshine.
Maybe it just really bothered her that Alice had left her cell phone behind. It was like there was a dark, foreboding cloud hanging over that device. Obviously it indicated the girl had not intended to be gone for very long. Certainly not more than an hour…which it now was.
Carol sighed, her frown deepening. She tapped her red ink pen against the stack of hand-written essays which had yet to be touched, suddenly bereft of the motivation to work on them. Call it Mother's Intuition or over-reacting, but something just did not sit well with her at all. She felt very tense and restless, as if she had just had a dozen shots of espresso.
This is crazy! It's only been an hour, calm down. She's probably having a huge argument with Jack. Or they're making up and are…Carol cut her track of thought off at that point, not wanting to contemplate any further along that avenue. There were just some things a mother ought to remain in the dark about. Besides, the odds were decidedly in the favor of the former scenario.
But then the door opened and Alice's voice, as sweet as an angel's bell, reverberated down the hallway. Carol did not suppress the sigh of relief which seemed to dispel all the tension and anxiety from her body. She threw the red pen down and hauled herself off the bed, ready to offer her daughter whatever comforts she required after a probable break-up.
The smile on her face dissipated and she screeched to a halt in the hallway when she got an eyeful of her daughter's appearance; more specifically, her daughter's face. There was a blood-tinted bruise on the right side of her jaw. Drawing her gaze upward, she found a small, oozing cut just above Alice's left eyebrow.
"Oh my god!" Carol shrieked, horrified. Her shocked mind instantly jumped to conclusions. "Did he hit you?" As little as she had known of Jack, she had certainly not gotten the impression that he was violent, especially towards women. If he had truly done this, Alice had better have saved enough of him for Carol to pummel herself.
Alice's expression screwed into confusion. "What?" She lifted her hand up to tentatively prod the bruise. "Oh! That…um…no I'm assuming you're talking about Jack. But, no, he didn't do this. It's no big deal, anyway." She dismissively fluttered her hand, appearing utterly unperturbed by the trauma her face had suffered.
"Oh, honey, let me get something to clean you up and you need to put ice on that," Carol pressed, coming forward to steer her daughter towards the kitchen.
"Mom," Alice said, a hint of urgency to her tone which was completely overlooked by Carol.
"Here, sit down, take off the coat, and tell me what happened," Carol continued. Had she not been so overwrought by the apparent attack on Alice, she would have recalled that she had not been wearing a coat when she had left the house an hour ago.
"Mom," Alice repeated, gently deflecting her mother's grip. "Time-out. I'm fine. This is nothing, believe me. There are more important things to talk about right now."
More important things than the fact that someone had attacked her daughter? Carol could hardly think of anything else more important at that moment, but she deferred to Alice and backed off. Almost off-handedly, she threw a sidelong glance towards the foyer and that was when she noticed the young stranger standing there, watching the proceedings with a glint of indulgent amusement in his dark brown eyes. She blinked almost uncomprehendingly before a flood of questions entered her mind. Who was this young man? What was he doing with Alice? Why was he wearing a brown straw hat? What was with that strange smile?
"Um, hello," Carol greeted uncertainly. She glanced at Alice, who was watching her intently, as if gauging her reaction. "May I ask who your friend is?" She used the word 'friend' in the loosest sense of the word.
"That's one of the more important things to talk about," Alice said awkwardly, twisting her hands together. It was then that Carol finally noticed her daughter was wearing a long, very elegantly crafted purple velvet jacket. Where had that come from? She shot another look at the young man, still standing in place in the foyer. Her guess was with him.
The young man was definitely a handsome one. Shorter than Jack, but with a charming spring of dark chestnut locks curling up around the brim of his hat and a coating of fine stubble on round, boyish cheeks. He had a very warm, inviting smile, which he directed towards both her and Alice. But Carol noticed most of his attention was on Alice, and there was a particular look in his eyes when he gazed upon her daughter that she recognized. What was even more perplexing was that particular look, that look of contented, adoring lovers, was reflected in Alice's eyes. What on earth had gone on in a mere hour to lead to this development? Perhaps that blow to the head had scrambled Alice's senses.
"Hello, Mrs. Hamilton," the young stranger greeted. He had an English accent as well, although his was of a different flavor than Jack's. "My name is Hatter. David Hatter, but I just go by Hatter." He took off his hat, placing it over his heart, and respectfully inclined his head.
Hatter? Is he serious? One look from Alice confirmed that he was, indeed, serious. Her daughter beckoned the young man over. When he came to Alice's side, she reached out and linked her hand with his, causing Carol's eyes to widen. She was speechless and utterly confounded.
"Mom, I have some...confessions to make," Alice prefaced, grimacing slightly. When Hatter nudged her she sighed and rolled her eyes. "Okay, a lot of confessions to make."
The muteness left her and Carol, feeling a strange sense of anxious frustration mounting, let loose the flood of questions. "Alice, what's going on? What happened with Jack? What happened to your face? And what are you doing holding hands and making eyes at this man as if he's your boyfriend?" She glanced at Hatter. "No offense, of course."
"None taken," he assured her.
"Mom, I know what this looks like…well, not really, other than that it must seem really bizarre. And I get that. It is kind of bizarre. But, if you're prepared to listen to my quite lengthy explanation, which will include my unfortunate face accessories, then it will all sort of make sense." She grimaced again, exchanging a brief look with Hatter. "I hope."
That did not sound reassuring at all, but Carol supposed she had little choice in the matter. So she nodded curtly and then offered in a comically light voice, "Tea or coffee?" Or more wine, she thought to herself. There was a full bottle of Merlot with her name written all over it in the wine cabinet.
The corners of Alice's lips tugged up into a smile which did not nearly match Hatter's beaming features. "Tea will do."
All three were seated at the kitchen table, clutching steaming cups of Darjeeling tea. Alice had removed her jacket. It was draped behind her on the back of her chair.
Carol waited patiently for her daughter to collect her thoughts before launching this so-called "lengthy explanation". If it as lengthy as Alice alluded, then she had a feeling she was going to be fighting off yawns while teaching class tomorrow all day.
"Well, basically, my story falls into three sections…or three big confessions, if you will. Two of which are actually kind of not my fault and I had just learned them myself," Alice began with hesitance, her eyes firmly locked upon her tea cup. She did not elaborate on the confession which apparently was her fault, whatever that was supposed to mean.
The girl looked up at her mother, her blue eyes troubled and concerned. "You may not believe it, not at first. But, I swear on my life and everything I hold dear that what I'm about to tell you is the truth…" There was a long pause before she laconically added, "And nothing but the truth."
A shiver ran through Carol. Whether it was excitement or dread, she could not tell. Probably a combination of both. Then Alice began to tell the story and it soon became clear Carol was going to need to break open that bottle of wine.
When Alice had left the house to search for Jack with the intent of returning his ring, she had found him being beaten and stuffed into the back of a white van. Before she could pursue the van, a mysterious, creepy man with long white hair intercepted her. They were after the ring, apparently; the ring that, incidentally, happened to be in Alice's possession. She had tricked this white-haired man by slipping the ring onto her finger and giving him the empty box instead. Then she chased him into an abandoned building where she witnessed him going through a mirror.
"Through a mirror?" Carol questioned, her eyebrow raised. To her mind, that meant busting through it to end up with several painful, deep lacerations. Evidently, that was not what Alice meant by a long shot.
He had apparently gone through the mirror as if the surface were like a liquid. Alice had not truly meant to follow, but when she had touched the mirror merely out of the curious intent of inspection, she was sucked into it. The mirror had been some kind of an inter-dimensional portal, transporting her to another world entirely.
Carol nearly spit out her tea at this ludicrous claim. "What? Honey, you seriously—"
Alice held her hand up. "Mom, please, let me finish and that have at me with your disbelief, by all means."
So, Carol pursed her lips, sucked in a deep breath, and kept her mouth shut.
She followed the white-haired man to a house in a city built a mile above the ground, a fact which made Alice and Hatter glance at each other and shudder. He reached across the table to grip her hand, an act which Carol found oddly touching in spite of the fact that she was still confounded by his presence.
It was at this house she had seen them drag an unconscious Jack up the stairs and inside. This house with a large white rabbit emblem painted on the doorway. Something sparked in Carol's mind. Some vague connection that was too tenuous and fleeting for her to grasp at the moment.
Alice's arm had caught in a beam of light from a hovercraft shaped like a beetle. The light had burned a green mark into her forearm.
"It's a Scarab, love," Hatter interjected.
"Whatever, an Egyptian beetle then," Alice grumbled. She brought her arm up to display the mark. There it was, clear as day. A curling, flared pattern of green nearly covering the entire underside of her forearm, gleaming starkly against her naturally pale skin. Well, that did add some credibility to her story. Carol knew next to nothing about tattoos, but she highly doubted one as large and intricate as that one could be completed in the space of an hour in any of their world's shops. This did not, of course, mean she was buying any of this story. She would reserve her judgment for afterwards.
"You could have had that removed, you know," Hatter pointed out. "All the others did."
"Well, that's 'cause they had them on their faces. But, honestly, I didn't even think about it…" She trailed off as she smiled ruefully at Hatter. There was a definite joke here that Carol was missing. She cleared her throat to alert her daughter to the fact that she was getting off track.
Alice did not find Jack in this house with the white rabbit emblem on the door. Instead, she ended up in a room with a bottle on the table that said "Drink Me". There was that other spark, and this one was more substantial. A strange pattern was forming; a literary pattern that was easily ferreted out by an English teacher.
No…it couldn't be…
The room had downsized into a box barely big enough for Alice to crouch in and the box started moving. But, with that uncanny, innate resourcefulness, she used one her hairpins to undo a latch and free herself from that prison, only to end up dropping herself in a lake from hundreds of feet in the air. Alice swam to shore to come face to face with a dirty, smell man in a slicker named Ratty, who agreed to help her only after hearing her name.
"Alice," Carol mouthed silently. Alice in…no…come on, that's absurd.
The bizarre story continued. Ratty ended up leading her to a place called the Tea House which was run by none other than Mr. David Hatter himself here, whom Ratty had called "The Man Who Knows."
One thought came to Carol over this revelation. My daughter is smitten with a man from another world? Well, she always had a weakness for foreigners, I suppose.
Hatter had agreed to help her find Jack, whose part in all this Alice had yet to reveal. Carol knew her daughter always liked to start at the beginning with things, leading them down to their logical conclusions. It was easier for her to grasp things in that manner, but Carol was itching to know what Jack's role was supposed to be. She still had yet to actually accept this story as truth, no matter her daughter's assertion from earlier. But she would listen as she promised.
"Mom, I don't suppose you've figured out where I was by now, have you?" Alice asked.
Well, in some form, yes, Carol had ascertained from all the clues hidden in the subtext the world her daughter was referring to. But she did not actually want to say it aloud. Even thinking it was preposterous. That was a children's book written well over a century ago! A much beloved children's book and always one of Carol's favorites (part of the reason she named her daughter Alice, in fact), but certainly not real in any sense of the world.
"Honey," Carol murmured, shaking her head. She eyed the wine cabinet. The bottle was calling to her now. Dull the senses, make it easier to swallow this nonsense. Drink me.
"I know, and I don't blame you for being skeptical. But I was in Wonderland. Hatter is from Wonderland," Alice insisted. "Just stay with me, okay."
Hatter had taken her to some fortress called the Great Library, which acted as the stronghold for the Resistance. It housed one the Resistance leaders: a large, extremely unpleasant man named Dodo.
"Extremely unpleasant? Now that's giving him too much credit, love," Hatter mumbled, twisting his tea cup around. "I'd say he was more disgustingly vile or insufferably egotistical."
"He was a dick," Alice summarized. "He wanted the ring because apparently it controlled the Looking Glass and if it controlled the Looking Glass, it controlled the access to our world. He wanted to load up all the oysters from our world" she gestured to herself and to Carol, "and send them back so the Queen of Hearts couldn't use them to control Wonderland's population anymore and basically cause her entire government to collapse."
Looking Glass. Oysters. Queen of Hearts. Dodo. Wonderland. Dear god, Carol's head was starting to spin and she did not even have any alcohol in her system.
"When Alice didn't give up the ring, he ordered her to be taken out," Hatter said, picking up the thread of the story.
"But Hatter shielded me. He protected me and tried to get Dodo to back down and ended up getting shot in the process," Alice finished gravely, her hand clenching around Hatter's. "Luckily, he was wearing body armor though I didn't know it at the time."
Hatter chuckled. "Good thing, too, otherwise I'd have been deprived of one brilliant sight."
There was another rueful, mysterious smile on her daughter's face, but that point was not elaborated upon.
They had left the Great Library with the intent to return to Hatter's shop, only to find it crawling with the queen's men: the Suits, Alice called them. Leading the Suits was an assassin with a ceramic rabbit's head, who had spotted them. His name had been Mad March. They had been forced to make a run for it, jumping into a boat to cross the lake to end up in the dreaded forest known as the Tulgey Wood. In there, they faced off against a jabberwock and ended up meeting a senile, but doughty old man named Charlie, the last surviving White Knight. The Queen of Hearts had apparently obliterated the White Knights and their society 150 years beforehand.
"We stayed the night at Charlie's camp in the ruins of the old kingdom before I made kind of a stupid decision," Alice recounted. "I decided to defect and basically go after Jack by myself since Hatter seemed to think it would be impossible to get into the casino where the queen lived and held all those oysters captive."
"For the record, I didn't think getting in was the hard part. Getting out alive was the hard part," Hatter added.
"I know, sweetie," Alice replied.
Was it sad that Carol found the prospect of her daughter using terms of endearment with this man more unsettling than the story she was telling?
"Well, since I didn't know the way I pretty much had to let myself be captured by Mad March and his posse. I had the ring, so I figured I could negotiate for Jack's release and my own, you see. Well, I didn't actually have the ring on me. I wasn't really going to give it to them because then I'd be sealing the death warrants of Hatter and the rest of the Resistance. The ring was their only shot at taking down the queen, so I…tried to bluff her."
Hatter was shaking his head and mumbling what Carol was certain were profanities under his breath.
"And now you'll see where Jack fits into all this," Alice told her. "He was actually her son. Jack Heart, the Prince of Hearts, and heir to the throne of Wonderland. And he didn't really need my rescuing at all. It quickly became me who needed the rescuing once they sent me to the Tweedle Twins' mental torture chamber."
Carol stiffened with horror. The haunted gleam in Alice's eye was far too genuine for her tastes. Like that green mark, it gave more eerie credibility to a story that just could not possibly be true in a sane world. But maybe this was not a sane world at all. As for that revelation about Jack, she found herself on board with the idea of Jack not being all he had appeared. But to be a prince from an alternate dimension based upon a 19th century children's story was not precisely what she had expected.
"Why was he here, then?" Carol queried, not scornfully, but with genuine curiosity.
Alice's blue eyes hardened, filled with unseen thoughts and memories. "He was undercover. Jack was working with the Resistance to overthrow his mother. He was in this world on a mission…and I was kind of the objective of that mission."
"You?" Carol was taken aback. "Why you?"
She briefly glanced at Hatter. "That's sort of part of one of the other big confessions, which I'm not sure if I want to save for last or not. Just let me finish. I'm going to basically summarize what happened after that." She took a deep breath. "Hatter and Charlie rescued me from the Tweedles. He then went into the city to make contact with Caterpillar, the leader of the Resistance while Charlie and I headed back to camp."
"The leader of the Resistance was named Caterpillar?" Carol asked dryly.
Hatter guffawed while Alice just shook her head. "I know. Stupid, right? And he was probably one of the most incompetent leaders I had seen, not to mention he was higher than a hippie at Woodstock when I first met him. Anyway, Hatter got them to agree to send an agent to the camp where we were staying and he ended up showing up the next morning. The agent was Jack and that was how we learned he was part of the Resistance. Jack and I went to this place called the Hospital of Dreams where they treated the people of Wonderland who had become hooked on oyster emotions."
"Oyster emotions?" Carol repeated uncomprehendingly.
"Yeah, that was what they were after. The queen used the emotions she siphoned from the oysters—us—to subdue her people. Keep them all doped up and happy so they'll never challenge her authority, create dissent, or bother her with insane requests like clean water and food."
Carol certainly had to hand it to her daughter. She could cram all these complex, multifaceted issues into an ironic, one-sentence nutshell.
"Anyway…stuff happened at the Hospital of Dreams and Mad March and his crew found us. They took me and Jack prisoner, then Hatter just had to come play hero again and nearly get himself killed," she recounted with mock annoyance, throwing an affectionate smile to Hatter.
But Hatter had gone curiously tight-lipped, his eyes closed shut. It was as if he was fighting some internal battle with memories he did not want to relive. Carol wondered what those memories contained, but feared asking. She had her fair share of painful ones.
"Complications arose, you could say, but in the end, Hatter and I were able to band together to wake up the oysters and, in the process, take out the entire casino building with some assisting by Charlie on the outside. The queen was deposed and Jack has been installed as king, and, no I'm not still with him. He has a very cool fiancé who would make a way better queen than me. The end."
Carol was silent for a long time as she processed this information and tried to wrap her head around the sheer magnitude of what her daughter had told her. Alice and Hatter watched her with a mixture of concern and hope, but did not say anything further. After an interminable amount of awkward silence, the woman did the only thing she could possibly do in reaction to such a story. She laughed.
"My goodness, honey, you have one vivid imagination. So, is this a story you've concocted to cover up the fact that you might have been seeing Hatter behind Jack's back?" Carol proposed, her frame shaking with unnatural giggles.
Alice groaned, pressing her hand to her forehead. Hatter winced as if he was in pain for some reason. He lightly shook Alice's other hand, which was gripping his very tightly.
"I mean, not that I exactly approve of such things, but you don't really have to spin some fairy tale for me. As long as you're happy, that's what matters to me," Carol continued as she rose to go to the wine cabinet. She pulled out that bottle of dark red wine and grabbed a large wine goblet. Once she set it on the table, she opened the bottle and proceeded to pour the crimson liquid into the glass. All the while, she just shook her head.
"Mom, I know it's hard...well, nearly impossible to believe. But I'm not making this up. I wish to god at some parts that I was making it up. But everything I told you is the truth," Alice insisted wearily.
"She's right, Mrs. Hamilton. I swear it on my hat that everything she told you actually happened," Hatter added.
Carol peered at him, trying to reconcile this handsome young man with the image of the Hatter from the book. He did not appear to have a streak of madness in him. Of course, she was not in any position to make that sort of assumption after not even knowing him for an hour. She took one large gulp of red wine, feeling the heavy liquid burn pleasantly on its way down her throat.
"We could prove it to her, Alice," Hatter suggested.
"How?"
"The Looking Glass," he said.
Alice vehemently shook her head. "I'd rather not take another trip through that thing, thanks."
"No, we could, you know, chuck something into it. A rock or something to show that the Looking Glass is not a normal mirror," he told her.
If this was all an act, those two certainly were playing it like a pair of seasoned thespians. But this was out of character for Alice. Spinning a wild, fantastic story of alternate dimensions, fictional stories come to life along with a more contemporary dash of political revolution was not something Carol would expect from her practical-minded, no-nonsense daughter. Worthy of noting was also the fact that, for better or worse, Alice and Hatter both appeared to truly believe their own tale. Carol stared at that bruise on her child's face. Could she have suffered some head trauma leading to one intricate, mass delusion? But, then, why would this young stranger, who seemed so familiar with Alice, vouch for the story?
"You were only gone an hour, sweetie!" Carol reminded her shrilly. Her grip on the half-emptied wine goblet trembled. She could not believe this. She would not believe this. It was too outrageous. It defied all logic.
"I know. But I spent about five days in Wonderland. The Looking Glass can be adjusted to send a person back to close to the original time he or she first entered it. I didn't want you to worry so I had it send me back to as close to the time I went through it first as possible," Alice explained.
"Five days?" Carol repeated, shooting Hatter a cagey glance. "And five days was all it took for you to fall for this man?" Now that was definitely unbelievable. Her daughter the heartbreaking commitment-phobe took several months to even work up the courage to bring a man home for dinner.
But Alice smiled at this, a whimsical smile of happiness unlike anything Carol had ever witnessed from her. "It took less time than that, actually."
My god, she's glowing, Carol thought to herself. There was no arguing the point that the girl who had left this house an hour ago was not the same girl who sat before her now, gazing lovingly at the man next to her. Carol was caught between denouncing it and embracing it. Was this not what she had always wanted for Alice all along? To just be happy? To find contentment and fulfillment? Well, the wish had been granted, but it was not in a way which she was certain she could believe or even like. And those two had known each other for such a short time, if at least part of Alice's story was to be believed. How could a relationship be sustained on such an insubstantial foundation?
"Mom, just how many mind-bending revelations do you think you can take in one night? Because the next two things I tell you will kind of blow that last one out of the water," Alice warned. She was nervously drumming the fingers of her free hand on the table top. Carol noticed the knuckles were inexplicably red.
She highly doubted there was anything that could top the tale her daughter had just told and Carol had not accepted it as a true revelation by any means. But she motioned for Alice to go ahead, knocking back a few more gulps of wine as she did so.
"Oh Jesus…" Alice muttered, bringing her hand up to wipe at her brow. "The thing is, Mom…I've been kind of hiding something from you for the past six years. And I really should have told you from the beginning."
Six years? Six years ago her daughter had been fifteen years old; a mere freshmen in high school. Her heart thudded ominously, matching the coiling knot of dread which formed in her stomach. There was something else that had occurred when Alice had been fifteen, something Carol desperately attempted to purge from her memory. That was when Alice had disappeared for several months, sending nothing but vaguely worded letters filled with empty reassurances. All those letters had been suspiciously free of a return address, of course. Carol had been nearly out of her mind with agony and worry. She had had to take an impromptu sabbatical from work, unable to put her mind to teaching other people's children when her own was missing.
"Mom, the truth is that we live on a mystical convergence of evil. That's why there are so many weird things going on. That's why there are all those deaths and disappearances that put New York's rates to shame. That's why it's not safe to go out at night. There are things out there much scarier and much more lethal than any human criminal." A chilly silence descended upon the kitchen. Carol was frozen, mind and body. Alice took a deep breath and then said, "And I've been spending the past six years hunting down those things and killing them for a living. I'm a Vampire Slayer, Mom."
The only sound after that was the sound of Carol's wine goblet slipping from her nerveless hand. It smashed against the linoleum, flinging shards of glass and droplets of red wine in every direction.
To be continued…hehehehe…