Author's Note: As always, enjoy, and thank you for reading! Happy New Year!
3
Whoever loved, that loved not at first sight?
- Christopher Marlowe
The day I overheard the argument was the day I met him.
After I pulled the lever outside that ever so familiar chamber, I waited. It was not long before the door opened to reveal an older man with a tall skeletal frame, graying hair, and hawkish nose from which a pair of spectacles perched. His cold eyes assessed me as if I were some foul beast that both intrigued him and revolted him. I shifted beneath the unnerving weight of his scrutiny as I waited for him to step aside and permit my entrance into the chamber.
If I had ever seen this particular doctor before, I could not recall. Aberdeen's Gate was the home of countless doctors – or scientists – that it became rather overwhelmingly difficult to distinguish one from the other, especially as none of them had names. They were all addressed only as "Doctor." And as I had never held a genuine conversation with any of them, the only feature of real importance in my observation was the customary white lab coat that the doctors of Aberdeen's Gate wore without fail. That pristine white coat was both a brand of station and power within the prison, as a king might wear a crown.
Without warning then, the skeleton's fingers grasped my chin in a cruel grip as he forced my head first one way and then the other. "Pretty thing," he muttered as he glared down the pointed beak of his nose. Both his touch and his gaze chilled me, though I could not explain why. "I don't think I've seen you before."
I winced as the pressure of his fingers increased. Thankfully, he released me then and stepped aside, gesturing for me to enter the room. I slipped past him but felt his lecherous gaze linger before he left, closing the door firmly behind him. Strangely, my hands trembled, and my palms felt clammy from the encounter. And though the skeleton had departed, I hesitated still, feeling uncharacteristically uncomfortable as if I could not guess what I might find within this room I knew so well.
Finally, I drew in a reassuring breath and forced my legs to move. Cautiously, I walked toward the back of the room, passing shelves and tables of mysterious things for which I had no name. The doctors knew, of course, and I knew it was not my business to know the names of the foreign objects. At last, I reached the white screen behind which there was a black chair – my chair, as I'd come to view it over the years and innumerable visits. Yet when I rounded the screen, he was sitting in my chair rather than the stool upon which the doctors typically perched. He did not acknowledge my presence as he flipped through a clipboard of papers. Without really thinking, I announced, "That is my chair. You're supposed to sit on the stool." Routine, after all, was important … or so I'd always been told.
He glanced up from his papers, raising one eyebrow as he looked at me. He was very young, as I had assumed from hearing his voice during the argument he'd had with the skeletal man. His dark hair was rumpled, flipped oddly upward at the ends and at his bangs especially, yet the effect was strangely endearing. The vague shadow of a beard and mustache was all that kept him from looking even younger than he actually was.
When he did not initially reply, I said, "You're very young to be a doctor. You must be very smart."
"A genius, actually," he replied, clearly without modesty. He glanced again at the clipboard he held in his hand. "Red, Resistance, aged ten and eight today by prison records," he said.
"I was born here," I said. "My parents were Resistance."
"I know," he murmured. He did not look up from the papers. "You've my pity."
"Pity," I repeated, confused. All things considered, my life was certainly not terrible.
He set aside the clipboard and rose from the chair. He closed the minimal distance between us, standing closer than necessary. "By the standards of Aberdeen's Gate, you are no longer a child. Do you know why your existence in this hell has so far been tolerable?"
I shook my head, unsure what the man was on about.
"It's been tolerable," he began, "because, by age, you've been classified as a child. That aside, you've been liberally dosed on a daily basis with a serum that subdues complicated thought processes and complex emotions. Your thoughts and feelings are only shallow replicas of the real things." He paused. "Do you know what happens today?"
Again, I shook my head.
"Today, we stop the treatment, and I observe how it affects you."
I frowned. "Why?"
He shrugged. "Because it is documented as knowledge," he replied. "Whether or not it is useful knowledge makes no difference. The purpose of this prison is to experiment and record everything. It's never-ending, and, sometimes, from what I gather, it amounts to nothing. Some knowledge is simply documented and filed away forever, never to be looked at again. The purpose is merely that it exists … for the Queen and those most loyal to her, anyway."
I considered that for a moment, though, in all honesty, I had not followed the man's speech. Instead, I asked, "Will it hurt?"
The man shook his head. "I don't know."
"Should I be scared?"
"Considering the amount of serum you've been dosed with for nearly eighteen years?" He paused. "Yes. You should be terrified."
I was troubled, of course, but I assumed I was incapable of true fear courtesy of the serum of which he spoke. "Are you scared?" I finally asked.
"Only of what I'm bound to become here," he said, though I did not understand.
So, I questioned, "What is that?"
"A doctor," he spat the word as if it were a disease, leaving me truly puzzled.
"It is a position of power," I pointed out. "If you wear that coat, it's who you are."
"The position here makes a mockery of that term," he returned. "And it is not who I am. It might be what I am, but it's not who I am."
Out of curiosity, I said, "Who are you then?"
He searched my eyes for a moment, and, at first, I wasn't certain he would reply. But, finally, he said, "I'm Devlyn Hatta (1)."
His name meant something to him, obviously, but nothing to me, of course … except for the fact that he trusted me with his name and identified himself by that name rather than calling himself Doctor.
Alice drove; she still didn't necessarily trust Hatter's driving. If the vehicle were a flying flamingo then she'd gladly turn the steering over to him. But since her SUV was decidedly not an airborne pink flamingo, she preferred the driver's seat.
She and Hatter rode in silence while Alice considered everything that had occurred since Hatter's first headache. At first, she didn't make the connection. Hampered by her concern for Hatter and the lack of substantial evidence, it took a few months before Alice even realized there was a connection. Perhaps there were still gaping holes yet to fill, but some of the pieces of the puzzle were creating a visible picture – one that Alice had a difficult time accepting. Yet she found it was impossible to ignore. The chessboard, the white pawn, the lion, and the unicorn, among other indications … each element was ripped right from the pages of Through the Looking-Glass, and Alice knew for a fact that Hatter had never ventured to even pick up her well worn copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or its sequel, let alone actually read either one. Of course, Hatter was familiar with the Alice of Legend, so, perhaps he was, in his own way, familiar with the stories as Lewis Carroll told them, therefore somehow creating his breaks from reality during which he quoted lines from the children's classic.
"What're you thinkin'?" Hatter asked, breaking the silence between them.
"Nothing," Alice replied.
"Come on, Alice," Hatter said. "You always get that funny look when you're thinkin' too hard about somethin'."
Alice raised an eyebrow, though she didn't take her eyes off the road before her. "Funny look?" she asked.
"I can tell you're thinkin' is all," Hatter replied.
Alice shook her head. "It's stupid. It doesn't even make sense."
"You remember I'm from Wonderland, right? A lot of things don't usually make sense, at least not accordin' to Oysters, anyway."
"It's just …" Alice trailed off with a sigh. "Well, most of what you've been saying – or writing – is straight out of Through the Looking-Glass, one of our books about your Alice of Legend. It seems like that should mean something – the Red Queen, the White Queen, the chess game."
For a moment, Hatter remained quiet as Alice parked the SUV in a parking garage roughly a block from the abandoned warehouse and the infamous Looking Glass. When they fell in step beside each other on the sidewalk outside the parking garage, Hatter finally said, "So … what, then? You're suggestin' a prophecy of sorts?"
Alice didn't believe in prophecies … at least, she hadn't believed in such nonsense a year ago. But since her trip to Wonderland, Alice had been forced to rethink a lot of things she thought she believed. "Maybe," Alice replied. "Maybe it has something to do with what we'll find in Wonderland. Or … maybe it has something to do with figuring out why this is happening to you."
She glanced at Hatter, who appeared to consider that. Then, he said, "No mystic or dreamer has made a prophecy since the Old Times. And I doubt I'm next in line for the part." Hatter waited until they crossed the street and slipped inside the dark, damp interior of the abandoned warehouse before he continued, "It's not a prophecy no matter what that Oyster wrote about the Alice of Legend. It's somethin' else, somethin' … well, I'd say it's like a map. At least, what I remember seems like a map."
A map, Alice thought somewhat incredulously. Considering Hatter did forget more than half of what he both said and did during those bizarre trances that now seized him all too frequently, Alice wasn't certain how far she'd be willing to trust this "map."
"Look," Hatter began as he seemed to sense Alice's skepticism, "the chessboard's like a maze instead of a game. And I'm always tryin' to figure how to get the white pawn from one end to the other. Make sense?"
"No," Alice replied.
"Good, then," Hatter said. "It doesn't make a bloody bit of sense to me either, but it is what it is, Alice."
As she and Hatter rounded another corner, Alice stopped short then, staring in shock at the corridor leading to the Looking Glass. The floor was covered in a thick blanket of snow that seemed to be blowing out through the Looking Glass in a mad swirl of white and coating the corridor. Closer toward the doorway to Wonderland, icicles hung from the ceiling.
Alice looked over at Hatter, who also appeared stunned as he attempted to process what he saw. Clearly, Wonderland was not how she and Hatter had left it, much as they had, of course, suspected. Likewise, this wintry mix of snow and ice was not an element from Hatter's trances. Instead, it was a vision stolen straight from his reoccurring nightmare … the very same nightmare that had, only recently, begun to haunt her dreams as well.
Author's Notes:
(1) – Hatta: The depiction of the Mad Hatter in Through the Looking-Glass, though Alice does not recognize Hatta as the Mad Hatter. Hatta is also seen with Haigha in the book. For now, I will leave you to interpret my intention for naming the young doctor of Aberdeen's Gate Devlyn Hatta ...
Once more, I'd like to extend my deepest gratitude to all of you who reviewed the previous chapter. It is, as always, much appreciated. THANK YOU!