Alice listened carefully to the panicked Irish woman, looking only at the corner of her little holding cell.
She'd woken only an hour after the sedative had been applied, scaring the institution staff. Why shouldn't they be? The sedative is supposed to last forty eight hours, not one. She idly wondered if one of their causes for concern was that they'd been overdosing her by five already just to get that hour...
Most likely.
Alice hopped off her bed for the third time, taking another long walk around her eight by ten foot room, large enough for the bed and monitor inside, as well as enough so that two nurses or doctors could fit comfortably inside. Her first walk about six hours ago had lasted ten minutes, her body not responding well to twelve years of being strapped to a bed. She'd then taken one an hour later, lasting fifteen minutes. Now here she was, hours later, taking another long, monotonous walk that was going to last longer than an hour and a half, as the last one had lasted.
She listened through the walls as the doctor and nurse argued.
Their efforts were in vain, as she would be leaving tonight. Daddy had come to see her when he was told she'd woken and refused the sedatives, and he'd promised to have her home, by morning if not the night.
So she waited and walked and listened and watched, strengthening her aching unused muscles with walking and waving her arms, raising them up and keeping them there for hours, flexing and curling her fingers and toes so they wouldn't be left alone.
Fingers which were also trained by working through the tight knot on the back of her head that used to be her long, crimped blonde hair. It had once been beautiful and shiny, smooth as satin or maybe even silk.
None of the staff had looked after her well, as it was very plain to see.
She worked her hair as she walked, her muscles not aching in the least even as she had passed the hour and forty five minute mark twenty minutes before. She'd gotten it as straight as it would get without a brush when she finally sat back down after the two hour mark, though, remarkably, she was not yet tired.
Just then the door opened and a man, at least, she figured it was a man, came in in some sort of padded suit. He had handcuffs and ankle shackels.
He told me father was here to pick me up and was waiting for me, and that the institution just wasn't going to take a chance.
Alice agreed and held out her hands and feet, surprising the man in the padded suit. She was braced and walked slowly down the contrastingly dimly lit, grey halls.
Alice would do anything at this moment, just to see her father.
She looked up through her blonde tresses and smiled at her father once they'd reached the room he was waiting in, her wide blue eyes happy, with the undertone of madness the institution had bestowed upon her.
"Are we going home, Daddy?" She asked, her voice clear as a bell as if she hadn't left it unused the last thirteen years. "Am I finally going home?"
The man smiled at her... but he wasn't happy. The smile was instead a grimace. Alice didn't like that, but the smile would not leave her. She realized something then.
"Daddy, how is mother?"
"Mother!" Alice cried joyously, hugging the familiar woman around the waist. It seemed she was just as glad to see Alice, as she hugged right back.
"Alice, oh Alice, my little girl!" The woman cooed, grabbing her shoulders to look at her from arms length. "Oh, how you've grown!"
Alice kept smiling, unable to show the anger she really felt, having forgotten how. She kept her eyes closed, so as not to give herself away so soon. She turned when a loud meow reached her ears.
"Dinah!" She cried again, rushing to her kitten, now cat, who sat on the steps. She picked her up, just as she used to, and cuddled the feline to her chest. "Oh, my dear Dinah, how I've wondered!"
Before she was put in the institution, Dinah didn't like to be held by her. She'd squirm and mewl and scratch, and even hiss, though kitten hisses sound cute instead of threatening. But Dinah only purred, and nuzzled Alice's cheek as Alice nuzzled her.
"Oh, dearest!" Alice's mother cooed, taking her husband's arm. "See, I told you Dinah wasn't vicious! She just missed her Alice, that's all! And you wanted to send her away!"
Alice grit her teeth, still smiling. No, mother, Dinah isn't acting this way because I'm back. Dinah is happy because I've gone mad.
She bid her parents good night, as it had become quite late as they'd traveled home, and locked her door once she'd reached it. She placed Dinah the white bed with the pink canopy, choosing not to lay down as she wasn't tired. She spotted the old rocking chair in the corner her nursemaid, now long gone, fired, had used to put her to sleep when she was just a little thing. She dragged it silently across the light blue carpet and turned it to the window. She removed the fower print cusion and hand croched multi-pastel colored afghan from the back, and chucked them in her closet, which was filled with blue, white, and pink clothes from her childhood; in front of her only window now sat a plain, dark-finished wood rocking chair, something one would imagine to be in a pair, with two old biddies sat upon it.
She smiled and sat down, looking out over the dark empty street in front of her large house. She didn't turn to look at her, but she knew just from the sound that Dinah was grooming herself, probably sat upon her too-soft pillows which were laid at the head of her too-soft bed.
"So, father wanted to send you away, did he?" Alice whispered as quietly as she possibly could, knowing Dinah, and only Dinah, could here her. "Well, we'll be having none of that. From now on, you shall live here, in this room. I shall bring food and water up here every day, and your litter box will have to be snuck up tonight... yes, you will officially be my cat, my Dinah. On a lighter note," She said louder, rocking softly in the chair, watching the street lamps be lit. "I know you've noticed already, but in my time at the institution I've become pleasently mad. I for one find it wonderful, wouldn't you agree?"
Alice heard Dinah mewl from her bed, louder than the soft creaking the chair made. She turned her head to look at her cat, to evaluate how well her Dinah was. She was pleased to find that Dinah looked happy and healthy, as her kitten should. She returned to gazing out the window.
"Dinah, do you know if I will be visiting my Aunt soon?" She asked, rocking again. She slowly increased her pace as she watched a small racoon walk into the middle of the road. "I do so hope I will; I have to go back you know, to that place."
She rocked back and forth, back and forth, her speed growing, the creaking of the chair getting louder. She heard a dog barking outside, but the racoon didn't seem to.
"Yes... I didn't much like my time in the institution; they didn't let me think or anything, and you remember how much I love to ponder." Her voice escilated as well as the chair's creaks as she rocked as fast as she could go; she was almost yelling.
A small white rabbit, wearing a waistcoat, hopped quickly into the road, heading right toward the skinny racoon.
She knocked the chair over and threw open the window, cracking the glass.
"RUN MR. RABBIT!" She yelled, her grin as far spread as it could go, teeth showing and the madness in her eyes glinting off the yellow light of the lamps, which tinged them green for a long moment.
A Cheshire grin.
The rabbit was dead, waistcoat shredded, pocketwatch laying on the ground broken. It took her a moment to realise it was not a rabbit, that it was really a small poodle, that the pocket watch was actually its collar.
That the racoon was staring up at her with green eyes and bloody grin that mirrored her own. She heard pounding at her door and waved goodbye to the Cheshire Cat, who then faded into nothing; but not before it had pulled down the corners of its mouth.
Alice nodded to the empty street and copied the creature; this is what it feels like to frown, then? She wondered, rushing to unlock her door; she caught herself in the vanity, and realized that with her wide, mad blue eyes, she looked panicked instead of unhappy. Undoubtedly what the Cheshire Cat had wanted. She threw open the door into the worried faces of her mother and father.
"Mother, it was awefull, simply dreadfull! Daddy quick, call the pound, I just saw a poodle be killed by a large ugly dog!"
