Alice & Dorothy (36 page)

The Queen of Hearts drew herself up to her full height. She threw her arms out to the side in a mockery of the crucifixion. Then she looked down the aisle toward the girls and smiled; at least, it was the best this creature could to pass for a smile. A sort of half-grimace filled with blood and sharp teeth. The room thrummed with the sound of meat being run through a hand grinder, greasy and wet. As Alice watched, the animals returned to the Queen’s side, bowing and taking a knee before her in an act of fealty.

“
MEAT IS MURDER!
” They chanted. They were melting, like jujubes of flesh and bone, and as they lost their shape they ran together as amorphous blobs of flesh bursting and reforming, growing insect legs and tentacles from a dozen places all at once; growing boils with thick pubic hair and blisters with dark, writhing forms beneath the ballooning skin thrashing and swimming in vital fluids.

The blisters burst forth and chanting fetuses sprang forth like raw, skinned pigs. They squawked on the ground in puddles of gore and amber fluid before heavily-tendoned umbilical cords pulled them back into the evolving mass.

Alice had never imagined a writhing, bloody scene of chaos like the one erupting before her; she found it impossible to get her head around what was happening. She was boggled by it.
I’m slipping. I can feel it. I’m losing myself to this…insanity…

“MEAT IS MURDER!” they screamed, and from the back of the tumor grew long wooden poles with heads on them, melting heads of Dr Weller and Alice’s mother, and of Rabbit and the black men whose names she’d never known. The air was filled with the smell of burning plastic and semen, and it collected like slime at the back of Alice’s throat. Glitter and ticker tape fell from the ceiling. It clung to everything. Alice could feel it sticking to her face.

“Shoot her, Alice!” The Hater shouted. He danced a jig behind the girls and finished his routine by giving them each a hearty slap on the back.

Alice and Dorothy looked at him, then at each other. They both seemed to be growing and shrinking, throbbing in time, like a heartbeat: systolic and diastolic in perfect opposition. At that moment a large bubble burst on the writhing mutation that had become the Queen and her subjects, sending an angry, chanting fetus out bouncing down the aisle toward them. It slid off the liquid tiles of the floor with wet smacks, leaving bloody jelly and reams of pus in its wake. As it closed on them Alice pushed Dorothy backward and then stepped away from the incoming missile herself. It bounced between them and latched onto The Hater’s outstretched arm.

“
Meat is Murder,
” The fetus whispered.

“
How SweeEEEEET!
” The Hater shouted, his voice growing in resonance until it, too, cackled like thunder. Outside lightning crashed again and the world outside the store was lit in Day-Glo whites and blues. The fetus rolled over in his hands. It seemed to take on the shape of the sleepy Dormouse. Its face elongated and its ears shifted until they sat above tiny black marble eyes. Whiskers and fur erupted from his pink flesh, coarse and tangled.

“I told you I’d get you,” The Dormouse said. He opened his mouth and latched on to The Hater’s arm.

The Mad Hater shrieked and flailed about like he was drowning. The cord on the Dormouse tightened, and whatever was controlling him began to reel in its catch.

The Hater grabbed Alice with his free hand. For the first time, she saw real fear on his face.

“
Alice,
” he whispered. “
Help me!
” The cord tightened, and The Hater was jerked off his feet. He landed on his knees in front of Alice.”Help?” he said again.

She stared down at him impassively.
This is the man who has been making you crazy. But he’s not scary now. He’s helpless. And he’s nothing compared to this.

The Hater’s arm was flensed of skin where the Dormouse had chewed into it. It burrowed long, drillbit-like claws into the meat of The Hater’s arm, down through flesh and deep into bone. The umbilical cord retreated, back toward its host, and The Hater was pulled along with it. He kept his eyes on Alice as he was dragged away from her. He screamed for help and reached out to them with his free hand. Neither girl moved. The sky lit up with a continuous peal of thunder and strobe lights that alternated from red to blue to green.

The Dormouse pulled him to the base of the Queen’s mass and then further still, back into the dark of the womb it had been born from. The Hater followed, screeching and crying. The mutating ball of flesh gulped him, and the pitch of The Hater’s screams changed. They became higher and more panicked, until at last they were muffled by wet meat as the globular Queen finally took him, top hat and all, into herself.

“God,” Alice said. She licked her lips and they were salty. She could hear Dorothy giggling hysterically beside her, but she didn’t dare look. Her bowels were gurgling. She was on the verge of shitting herself with fear. Her face was hot and sticky and caked with glitter and ticker tape. It felt like
she
was wearing the mask now.
That’s more true than you know,
Dr Weller whispered in her head.

The top of the creature burst open and another long pole grew out. This one contained the head of The Hater, dripping birth fluid and melting flesh like hot wax on a candle. His eyelids liquified, revealing two luminescent red eyes. The one that Alice gored was staring off toward the window, useless and blind. “Kill me!” he squealed. “
Oh please, it huuurrrrrts! It hurrrrrrtssssss!
”

It was too much for Alice. The amount of pain blubbering out from The Hater’s mouth was beyond measure.
I need to make it stop or I’m going to fucking lose it right here. Right now.
Dorothy was no help. She was a stupid, useless little girl.
It’s gotta be me.

“
I don’t know what to do!
” Dorothy shouted. She was chewing on her lips; her mouth was raw and red. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.

“Like you don’t know,” Alice said, and fired her gun Then she fired again and again, hitting the writhing mass of the Queen of Hearts and opening squealing, liquid holes at the point of each impact. She fired and fired until one of the bullets hit The Hater in the skull. It burst him open like a rotten melon. The screaming stopped, but it was replaced by something much worse.

The bullets actually seemed to shatter the room itself. Cracks appeared in the walls and the floor, and the sound of breaking glass roared through the room. The girls clung to each other and buried their heads in the other’s hair. The wind kicked up and rain pelted them and after what seemed like forever the crashing stopped and there was silence, beautiful silence, save for a single,
high pitched whine…

Alice looked at Dorothy. She was covered head to foot in congealing blood. But it wasn’t blood, not really. The heavy, sweet smell of strawberry tarts filled Alice’s nose. That’s what it was. Strawberry jam. Dorothy smiled a jelly smile, and her teeth were replaced with glazed strawberry slices.

“What did you do?” Alice said. She stuck tip of the gun into the strawberry tart filling. She pushed the barrel into Dorothy’s breast and was surprised to find custard underneath instead of flesh. She pulled the gun out at the barrel dripped pink custard and strawberries.
I was too late. I’m completely out of my mind now.

“What did
you
do?” Dorothy said, looking down at the hole. “This is your thing. I’m just along for the ride.”

The woman and children began shrieking in the same awful, ear-splitting tone. It was plain to see where they got their pipes from. “Nobody is who they say they are,” Dorothy said. “You’re not and I’m not. The Hater wasn’t. That woman and her screechy family aren’t.”

Alice looked at Dorothy. Dorothy smiled back and rubbed her soft strawberry hands on Alice’s cheek. It came away sticky and wet.

“You poor thing,” Dorothy whispered.

Alice looked back down toward the counter and saw that the scene had changed. There was no Queen. There were no amorphous balls of mutating flesh, or poles with chanting heads on them. There was still blood though, lots of blood, but the scene of complete and utter chaos was gone. It had been a lunatic hallucination. Real for Alice, but fragile like a soap bubble. And that bubble had burst the moment she began firing. The scene was gone.

What replaced it was reality, and it was
oh so much worse
.

There were bodies piled in a heap around the front of the counter. Most of the customers from the store were either dead or dying. The teller was sprawled across the counter facedown in a pool of blood. There was a lazy crimson waterfall running off the countertop and down onto the bodies below. The husband was dead too, but the mother barely noticed. Instead, her attention was on a bloody mound of flesh she’d dragged into her lap. Now she sat on the floor hugging it and gasping for air.

It was one of her sons. The taller one. He was mute now. The top of his head had disappeared in a puff of red haze. The mother clawed at the discarded flesh that had once been her boy. She didn’t cry, though. It looked like there was too much emotion was trying to get out of her at once and she was choking on it. She pulled him into her bosom. His empty head stared stupidly off in two different directions with waxy, dead eyes. The other, live one was sitting on the ground shrieking like he’d been set on fire, but the mother didn’t bother to acknowledge him. She was muttering something softly as she hugged her dead boy and gagged on her grief. One of his eyes was now turned up toward the ceiling tiles. The other one stared just to the left of Alice, toward the entryway of the building.

I guess you were wrong
, Dr Weller said in her ear.
It was just a boy, after all. There are no monster in here
.
Except maybe you, Alice
.

“Dorothy,” she turned, but the girl was gone. Dorothy had retreated outside, into the storm, or maybe out into the car. Alice hadn’t seen her go, but Dorothy’s bloodied footprints were moving away, toward the door. Alice was alone again.

Ahh yes
, Dr Weller said.
And where is your precious Dorothy now?

Dorothy was outside, of course, running to the car, terrified of the scene she’d just witnessed. Perhaps she was terrified of Alice, too.
And who could blame her? Maybe I
am
a monster, and Dorothy is just an innocent; a sweet girl that has my heart and carries the remnants of my soul like a tattered old blanket.
Dorothy used it as a cape; she used it as a shield to protect herself from the big bad world.

But who was protecting Alice?

Nobody
, that’s who. Alice protected herself. Only sometimes the world was a confusing, horrible place, and even playing cards could be monsters. But from the dead, sleepy look on that boy’s face and the way his brains were plunking on the linoleum like a dripping faucet in a bathtub, Alice could be pretty horrific herself.

Dorothy was yelling for her to come out. Something else, too, but she didn’t understand it.

Alice turned and stumbled through the automatic door. She saw Dorothy sitting against a gas pump, knees pulled up to her chest. A look of fear was stitched across her face.

On the far side of the lot, Rabbit’s silver car was parked sideways. The driver’s side door was wide open. Alice could see Rabbit and the black guy who had survived the motel shootout crouched behind it. Rabbit raised his head and reached his gun across the hood of the car. There was a firecracker
pop!
Alice heard the drone of the bullet as it whizzed past. She had no idea how close it was, but she was pretty sure any bullet that you could hear was probably way too close. The wind and rain were hammering down on them now, and it made firing a gun with any accuracy more than a bit sketchy.

“Holy shit,” Alice said. She crouched down to make a smaller target. Rabbit fired off two more rounds as she moved but his aim was terrible; the puffy black flesh swelling around his eyes probably had something to do with that.

“
He’s shooting at the gas pumps!
” Dorothy cried.

“He’s retarded.” Alice laughed. “He always was.” Crouched down beside Dorothy now she put her hand on the girl’s knee for support, but Dorothy pulled away.

“Don’t touch me!” Dorothy’s face was tight with panic. She was the colour of a raw chicken, milky with blotches of purple just beneath the skin.

“What’s your problem?” Alice asked. She poked her head around the side of the pump and was rewarded with another buzzing slug flying by her ears.

“
YOU’RE A MONSTER!
” Dorothy threw her hands over her ears as she screamed and balled her hands into fists..

“We’re all monsters,” Alice said. She took aim at Rabbit’s car and fired. The bullet hit the passenger side door. “You’re a monster too.”

“You killed that little boy,” Dorothy said, her voice weepy “You killed all those people!”

“You need to get to the car,” Alice said. She and Rabbit traded shots. His banged off the side of the gas pump with a metallic thud. It suddenly occurred to Alice that she might not have many rounds left in her gun. She had no idea how many it held.
How many have I used? Six or seven? Now this?