Alice & Dorothy (23 page)

“You’re a real bad ass,” Alice said. “Stone cold killah.”

Dorothy laughed, and her hand slid down Alice’s arm and onto her thigh. “Yeah, I’m a tough chick,” she said. “Okay, maybe I couldn’t kill anybody. But I bet you could. I thought you
did
kill that guy when you hit him with the toilet lid. Holy shit, man. I ain’t seen nothing like that.”

Kill her. Then kill yourself. Do it, before the Queen finds us and puts our fucking heads on poles
.

She stopped, closed her eyes, and shook her head gain. “I get migraines sometimes,” she said, tapping her temple with her finger. “I kind of feel one now. It feels like I have another person inside me. Banging around in my skull, behind my eyes. smashing pots and pans and blowing a coaches whistle. He’s so loud sometimes I can barely stand it.”

“
What?
” Dorothy said. “Who?”

“Oh,” Alice said, catching herself. “Nothing. I was just making an example. I meant
it
, not he.”

Dorothy touched her hand, and Alice immediately laced their fingers together. “Is that why you were in the hospital?” Dorothy said softly.

“No,” Alice said. “I overdosed on heroin, I told you that.”

“But there is someone in there with you,” Dorothy whispered.

Alice smirked. Then the Hater began screaming
FUCKING TELL HER NOW AND THEN CUT HER HEAD OFF!
YOU WORTHLESS CUNTY BITCH! CAN’T KEEP SECRETS! SHE’S READING YOUR FUCKING MIND AND ALL SHE HEARS IS ME! ALL SHE HEARS IS-
-

“—I just get distracted easily,” Alice said. She winced.
How can she not hear this?

Maybe she can and she’s pretending she can’t
.

The last thought disturbed her, and she immediately pulled away from it.

Dorothy squeezed her hand.”Sounds awful. Poor thing.” She leaned in and gently kissed Alice’s shoulder. Alice turned to her. Their lips touched. Dorothy moaned and breathed cheeseburger breath on her cheek.

Alice’s mind flashed on The Mad Hater. He was jumping on a pogo stick on her brain. At the bottom of the pogo stick were square razor blades. Every jump was accompanied by a great whooping shriek and a fountain of blood rising up from the wrinkles in her brain. He got off the pogo stick and began snorting the wrinkles in her brain with a rolled up trillion dollar bill. Rabbit’s face was where the Queen should be. He was leering at her and making a cock-sucking motion with her gun.

Christ...where was that gun?

Oopsie,
the Hater said
.

She stood up suddenly, almost knocking Dorothy over in the process. Their heads kissed with a thunk and a shard of pain.

“
What the hell!
” Dorothy, sat up, rubbing the spot where their heads connected.

“Sorry.
I
...I need to have a shower. My head is killing me. Maybe some hot water will loosen it up.”

“Don’t bother. I’ll be good. Just need some hot water and a couple cold beers.” Alice pressed the beers against her cheek and sighed. “Right, warm beer it is then.”

“Holler if you need anything,” Dorothy said.

“Will do,” Alice said. She retreated to the far side of the room, into a dirty beige bathroom. She shut the door behind her, and put the beers on the floor. She took a deep breath.

“Sure you don’t want some aspirin or something?” Dorothy called from the other side of the door.

“I’m fine!” Alice called back. Her hand slid down and clicked the lock on the door. She coughed into her hand to cover the noise. At least, she hoped she covered it.

She picked up a beer and cracked it, then drank half of it in one long pull. Then she walked over to the small dirty sink. It was lined with the usual motel refinery; little packets of sharp smelling soap, a couple ketchup packs filled with shampoo and conditioner. Hand towels the colour of the walls folded and sitting there under the soap, waiting to be used. She turned on the water. There was a mirror over the sink, and she looked up into her own face. It was filthy and haggard and tired looking. She barely recognized herself.

In the other room the television snapped on.

“
She’ll eat your mind
,” The girl in the mirror said. “She’ll find the blue car and the guy with his cock in your ass and his brains all over your clothes, she’ll pick them out like maggots on a dog in the hot sun and that will be it. You’ll get the fucking chair. You’re worthless. She’s going to fuck you up because you’re nothing to her. Kill her now, or kill yourself.”

“Shut the fuck up!” Alice hissed, staring hard at herself. Her mirror-self had taken on a cruel, alien slant, and its mouth twisted into a sideways smile. She watched as the Mirror Alice grew scrabbling, rubbery baby fingers out of her mouth in place of teeth. They scratched bright blood lines into her tongue.

“Yeah,” Mirror-Alice said. Her baby finger teeth turned her words to mud and silt. “That’s what I thought. You can’t do nothing right, can you? That’s why I’m taking over this joint. I’m gonna put up blue curtains ‘cuz I know it’ll remind you of that fucking car.”

“You aren’t in control of me,” Alice said. “You’re just a psycho that loves to fuck rabbits.”

“
SO ARE YOU!
” Mirror Alice screeched. “Reminds me of when we were little. We
looked
like a rabbit back then, didn’t we? All ears and fuckin’ teeth. Maybe that’s why Daddy and his friends used to come and tuck us in at night. Everyone loves to pet a bunny, right?”

“Shut up,” Alice said. “You look like me, but you aren’t me. That shit never happened. Those are just your lies.”

“I’m
not
you?” Mirror-Alice slammed her hands against the inside of the mirror. It shuddered on its hooks and drywall powder dusted the sink. “I am wearing you like a fucking Halloween costume.
You
look like
me
.”

“It’s not true.” Alice reached for her beer. Her hands were shaking so badly she almost dropped it.

“Oh it is,” Mirror-Alice said. “Watch this!” She opened her mouth. At the back of her throat was a solid ball of white flesh. It was engorged and lined with veins. Alice thought of a hard cock sliding into an ass. A crack appeared on the mass near the top of Mirror-Alice’s mouth.

Alice swallowed hard. She could feel that mass in her own throat, cutting off her air. It was like swallowing a long sausage. It was like (
COCK IT WAS LIKE COCK GOING DOWN YOUR THROAT OH YES
)

The crack in the flesh sprouted from the roof of Mirror-Alice’s mouth and continued as the mass pushed further down her throat toward her lungs. The crack widened. Split. Alice’s mouth filled with hot blood. Fly legs erupted from either side of the crack like broken sutures. They were barbed on the end; they reached around blindly before hooking into the soft flesh of Alice’s mouth. Then, as one, they pulled.

There was more blood. It was like watching a vagina being born. The barbed legs sank into her cheek, into her teeth. There was pressure back there. Alice gagged. The barbed insect legs pulled her tongue back toward the wound.

And suddenly the wound pulled apart, and sparklers were going off in the bathroom behind Alice.
Or in front of her
. She could no longer tell for sure what side of the mirror she was on. The gash in the back of her throat was filled with a sickly vanilla orb, like a hard boiled egg, slick and shiny and veined with the red bloom of arterial networks. The fly legs curled away from the egg. And then it rolled.

It was no egg, after all.

It was a single, angry red eye. The Hater’s eye.

The Hater’s Eye
.

It blinked.

Alice screamed.
GET IT OUT GET IT OUT GET OHHHHH GODDDDDD GET IT OUT
…

She slammed her mouth shut and clamped both hands over it. She clawed at her face. The open beer flew into the sink where it banged against the steel basin and foamed in the running water.

She had to get it out.

Without thinking she jammed two fingers into her mouth and pushed them as far into the back of her throat as they would go. Her teeth scraped the knuckles on her hand. Her fingernails pushed against something soft, like egg flesh.
It’s not an egg. It’s not an egg.

She pushed harder and the resistance against her nails gave way, and then the tips of her fingers were swimming in slime.

There were a series of rapidfire explosions of light and colour and smells behind her eyes, like fireworks mixed with birthday cake and crotch sweat and dogshit. Her ears were ringing, but the magnetic whine was forming words.
My eye…My eye…

The Mad Hater.

Alice leaned forward and vomited beer and cheeseburgers into the sink. The vomit was viscous and oily; it looked like there were raw eggs mixed in with her supper.
It’s eyeball guts
, she thought, staring down at the black and clear globules floating in the burger slime and beer. The scalding tap water was cooking the puke in the sink. The slime turned white.
I was wrong. It is an egg. It’s poaching.

There was a fly leg on Alice’s lip, and she spit it into the sink. There was blood in her mouth and her throat was raw where she’d scraped it with her fingernails. Her fingers were red and covered with puke, and her knuckles had been scraped raw from the force of her attack. Movement in the mirror caught her eye and she looked up.

The steam from the heat was fogging the glass, and Mirror-Alice smiled. Her teeth were shards of broken china. Alice recognized them from the tea party. Every tooth was a smiling image of Dorothy waving and holding that stupid fucking dog. Some of them had tornados in the background. Some of them had blue cars.

Alice waved and the steam from the sink suddenly filled the room. Then she staggered over to the toilet and puked bile, cheeseburger and foaming beer. The force of the act packed her nose with vomit, and for a moment she couldn’t breathe. She panicked, snorted partially digested hamburger back out of her sinuses and into her throat, setting off her gag reflex again. She vomited a bright stream of rainbow coloured froth into the toilet. The beer and grease smell seemed to be dripping from her pores like hot sweat. Bubbles popped in her ears, and sparkles were dancing on the edge of her vision. She gasped a long, jagged breath, bringing tears to her eyes, coughed more hamburger meat out of her nose, and tried to wipe the tears from her eyes. There was slime all over her hands. She’d had her hands in the toilet.

Now she reached out and grabbed the throttle on the back of the toilet. There was a
woosh
of cold air as the toilet washed away her filth, and Alice was on her knees, hands curled around the toilet seat like a life preserver, her face inches from the streaming ice water. She could smell toilet cleaner, but there was also a lingering, forbidden taint of human waste. She gagged again but caught hold of herself. She ran her tongue along her teeth, collected a puke slime coating and spit it into the toilet. Her face was rippling in the water and she felt a splash of ice on her cheek. Her reflection in the water was alien. As the water calmed Alice saw that it wasn’t her at all, it was the Hater. He looked like his face was turned inside out. He smiled up at her and maggots dripped from his teeth. His left eye was a bleeding mess. His eye was deflated, giving him a fiendish, squinting look.

I can have you any time I want
, he said quietly, inside her ear.
Just remember that girlie. I’m not in here with you. You’re in here with
me
.

“You don’t own me,” Alice whispered. “I’m nobody’s whore.”

You are. You are everyone’s whore. You belong to the world now
.

“No. I’m free.”

Really?
the Hater said.
His voice was crushed glass on her eardrums. Riddle me this, girlie. Where’s your gun? We’ll see how free you are when the cops match it to the hole in that guy’s head.

“He was...
he raped me
,” Alice said, and started to cry.

Shh, pretty plaything,
the Hater said. Alice felt him rubbing her head.
We both know you deserved it, didn’t you?

Slowly, Alice nodded. “
Yes
. Yes I did.”

It’s alright
, the Hater said.
I am always with you. Sleep now. Sleep.