Chapter 2: "The Two Queens"
"So how did the two Queens come back?" I asked Cheshire as we trudged along toward the village of Pandemonium where he said some gnomes were hiding out in the abandoned Yur Mine.
"Do you remember that the Queen of Hearts you fought was only a sock puppet controlled by the Red Queen?"
"Yes, I remember."
"The Queen of Hearts was supposed to be you. You were supposed to be the public face of the Red Queen's tyranny, but you were most uncooperative. Always the unruly child you were."
"I was supposed to be the Queen of Hearts?"
"Yup, you don't even remember what happened, do you?"
"Nope."
"I was there when it all happened. The Red Queen was about to ram a tentacle with all sorts of nasty-looking black threads up your back. The black threads were to fuse with your spine and go all the way to the brain. You took one look at those black threads and jumped off into the black void. You had no weapons of any kind. I remember what you said to the Red Queen."
"I don't. What was it?"
"You said 'I'd rather die.' You didn't die. Instead you came hurtling down the rabbit hole, screaming all the way. I'm sure you remember that I was there to greet you. I already knew that you would fight. You were never one to accept being bullied passively."
"So where did this new Queen of Hearts come from?"
"You never saw the actual Queen of Hearts the last time through. She was a card, remember? The Red Queen had all of the card royalty locked up in her dungeon. This new Queen of Hearts is the card. She commands all of the Heart Guards. The other three card suit royalty command Card Guards of their respective suits. They all pretty much defer to the Queen of Hearts and let her do what she wants. The King of Hearts is henpecked and is considered a possible future turncoat. A possible future ally. He is long known for pardoning all of the Queen of Hearts' arrests."
"Now for the Red Queen."
Cheshire rolled his eyes. "You're not going to like this."
"I'm sure I won't. Out with it."
"The White Chess Pieces were asleep on the job. They let a Red Pawn sneak past them."
"A Red Pawn queened?"
"That's it."
"Oh fer fuck's sake!"
"Calm down, Alice. Let's not go charging off to Pale Realm to slaughter White Chess pieces. They're your allies, remember?"
We arrived in Pandemonium. Cheshire led me into the abandoned Yur Mine and gave me an easy way to remember how we had come through the maze of abandoned tunnels.
"You always turn left to find the Gnomes."
Getting out was easy. Ignore the side routes and always go straight ahead. Cheshire had also drawn pictures of his grinning visage all along the exit route to assure me that I was going the correct way. I later discovered that he had left such hints of the correct way to go all throughout Wonderland. All I had to do was look for Cheshire graffiti and that was the way to go.
In a large room with a high ceiling, we found the Gnomes gathered at wooden tables. The males all had a metal lock box on their genitals. They could urinate, but sex was out of the question. The Gnome women all had metal fabric chastity belts latched onto them. They complained that the chastity belts hadn't been changed since they had been put on. Everybody, both sexes, stank and had rashes because of the metal lockboxes and chastity belts.
"Chastity and happiness do not dwell in the same house," said one especially miserable-looking gnome male.
I began to fantasize about ripping the two queens' clits off and nailing them to the entrance of Yur Mine.
"You know where the key is, Cheshire?"
"In the Card Guards' compound in Wonderland Woods. They've moved."
"This isn't going to be easy, is it?"
"There's at least two dozen Card Guards of all suits in the compound."
"Let's go back to Gnome Village and scrounge for weapons," I said. "The first priority is finding the Vorpal Blade. I feel naked without it."
End of Chapter 2
This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. EA (Electronic Arts) owns the copyrights.