Malice in Wonderland Prequel (10 page)

Oh, she had started out
wanting
to kill him, to get her revenge, but she knew she would never be able to bring herself to go through with it.

She would have to settle for a cruel prank. That’s why she’d liked the idea of the blinding dust. It wouldn’t be permanent, so her conscience would hopefully be clear? Maybe? She felt such guilt for what she was about to do. And yet, she knew he deserved it.

And now he was whimpering while rocking and muttering. “Oh my Alice, someday, maybe someday. Someday…”

She was struck by a panic that he knew she was there. But as she listened, it seemed he was just talking to a hypothetical Alice. She was confused, but she decided she wouldn’t waste anymore time trying to understand.

She waited for a good opportunity. Soon his mutterings dissolved and she saw that he was covering his eyes with his hands, completely lost in his misery.

Now was the time. She crept around the wall as Humpty said to himself, “But
why?
Why would I even want love when it brings so much pain?!”

She didn’t stop to ponder the words.

She was up against the wall, right beneath him, so close, but he couldn’t see her with his hands over his eyes. She lowered part of her mask, then brought a handful of the dust into the palm of her hand. She rose up with a handful of the powder and blew—whoof!—a cloud of dust into his face, then backed away a few feet.

She’d brought the megaphone in preparation for this moment and would have to remember to use it every time she spoke. As the cloud drifted over him, she uttered the words she had planned—her voice came out raw, guttural, and unrecognizable. “Someone you wronged sends their regards.”

Humpty Dumpty yelped in surprise and drew back, but always the skilled wall-balancer, of course he didn’t topple over. She had expected that.

He’d lowered his hands and the cloud had done its work. “I can’t see!” he shouted out, obviously, because that was the whole point. He rubbed at his eyes, as she went about the second part of her plan.

As she brought out the small bag, she called up to him in her raspy megaphone voice, “And you never shall again.” It was a lie, because the blinding dust would wear off within ten minutes.

“Who are you?” he called out, in anguish as he rubbed his eyes. “What do you want?”

As she sprinkled the chocolate-tinged quick-rising cupcake mix around the base of the wall, she couldn’t help herself. Playing with her false voice augmented by the megaphone, she became ever-so-dramatic. “I am justice, here to right what you have wronged. I will break you!”

“What? How have I wronged you?!”

“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.” She said it in her scariest voice. In combination with the megaphone’s effects, she sounded outright demonic.

“No, please!” he shouted. “Look, why don’t we talk about this? I can give you something maybe? Maybe we can work something out.”

Alice cackled. “There is nothing to work out. What goes up must come down. Cupcake arise!” The cupcake mix rose up instantly, forming a large cupcake surrounding the egghead’s wall. The cupcake was topped with icing and was a couple of feet shorter than the wall, which stuck out from the middle.

“What is this under my feet?”

She ignored the question. “Why do you sit on that narrow lame wall anyway?”

Despite his obvious terror, he sneered. “None of your business!”

“Tell me or die!” she shouted in her voice that sounded outright demonic.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“Are you afraid to fall?”

“What? Of course! Love is scary!”

“No, not fall in love.” She huffed in frustration. Yet, her curiousity got the best of her. “What can you offer me to not push you off your wall?”

“Do you like Alice? I can give you a lock of blond hair I just this morning tore off her head.”

And that’s when Alice lost control, screaming like a banshee. “Awooo! I’ll tell you, since you are as blind as a bat…I am about to push you off your lame pathetic wall! You won’t survive, I fear. Oh well.”

“What?”

“This is for Alice,” she said.

She jumped and with both hands pushed him off the wall. He tumbled over while screaming in terror, and plopped into the sticky icing covering the plumpy cupcake.

She could hear him flailing and screaming for several seconds, but couldn’t see him behind his wall.

“What?” he said. “Am I still alive?”

“Yes. You’ll be okay if you just lie still. I just wanted to scare you. You’re on a bed made of moist pastry.”

“I can smell it,” he said. “Chocolate.”

“That’s right. Be grateful I didn’t kill you.”

“And my blindness?” he said.

“Oh, that shall be permanent,” she lied. “That’s your punishment for being such a meanie head!”

“No!”

“Goodbye,” she said, and with that she took off walking back to her hut.

“No! Come back! You mustn’t leave me like this!”

She didn’t respond.

“At least tell someone I’m stuck here!”

She stopped walking. She didn’t feel as good inside as she thought she would. In fact, she felt quite yucky. She turned around and walked back to him. Unfortunately, she still had to use the megaphone, so her voice sounded soothingly demonic. “I’m sorry Humpty. You won’t actually be blind forever. The powder will wear off in a few minutes.”

Then she walked off, paying no heed to his calls asking who she was or his orders to inform others to help him.

She had stowed her usual black dress outside her hut and changed into it. She peeked into her hut to see that the guard card was still there in his chair snoozing away, and it was a simple matter to sneak back to her desk and fasten the chain back to her wrist using the lockpick she’d made from a hairpin.

It was just in time too, because just then the guard card woke up and stretched his arms.

Alice didn’t wish to appear suspicious, so she rolled her eyes at him.

“Have a nice nap?” she said.

CHAPTER TEN

Tweedle Twins

When Alice was 11

The Queen of Hearts was in the middle of a
perfectly
winning game of croquet, using that fool, obnoxious blowhard of a pink flamingo named Morley as her mallet, when in burst an interrupting guard card to break her concentration just as she was lining up her shot!

“My Queen! I have urgent news!” He prostrated himself face down upon the ground before her.

“Well now my shot is ruined!” she said, trying not to lose her temper. Nobody seemed to respect just how good a job she was doing of keeping it together, lately. She hadn’t had anyone beheaded in three days.

“My apologies, Your Highness,” the pathetic card whimpered into the ground.

“Well, now that you’ve interrupted my shot, tell me what the big emergency is then!”

“Yes, My Queen. It’s just that the Tweedle twins—they’re at each others’ throats. They are going through a disagreement and are seeking a divorce of sorts, a divorce of brothers, you see.”

“And so? What has that got to do with me?”

“It’s just that they say you promised to be their judge if such a thing happened.”

“Argh! So I did!” She set the pink flamingo Morley upon his feet. He all of a sudden,
now
chose to begin trembling. Shaking like a leaf, he was. “You’re pathetic,” she sneered to him, “just like your so-called ‘poetry’.”

Morley merely ducked his long neck and wobblingly exited the game field.

“Well, where are they then?” demanded the Queen.

The guard card said, “They await you in your throne room, along with the Cheshire Cat.”

“Oh, that cat! Tell him I shall have him beheaded if he doesn’t leave!”

She made her way to the throne room. There stood the chubby Tweedle twins, staring each other down while shaking their fist at each other.

“I’m so sick of you!” said one of the brothers. “Likewise!” shouted the other brother.

The Cheshire Cat’s head was swirling around them in the air. The Cat had a habit of only materializing his head without his body, a tendency which severely irritated the Queen.

The twins were so engrossed in their argument that they failed to notice her entrance, which she found quite disrespectful. She considered having them executed on the spot.

Instead she shouted, “Your Highness is here, you nitwits!”

The Tweedle twins bowed. The Cheshire Cat sneered then went on displaying that creepily large grin of his. He was a most exceedingly rude feline. She would have to figure out a way to have him beheaded.

One of the twins said, “There’s the Queen. Now you shall get yours.” “Contrariwise!
You
shall get
yours!
”

The Cheshire Cat giggled. “Are you gonna let him talk to you like that?”

The Queen couldn’t tell which twin he was speaking to.

She groaned. She desperately wanted to get back to her croquet. “You wish for Your Highness to preside over the proceedings?”

The Tweedle twins looked at her with a puzzled expression. The Queen felt that the boys just weren’t all that smart.

The Cat said sarcastically, “Well that was some alliteration.” The opposite of the twins, the Cat was
too
much of a smart ass.

The Queen groaned. “Why am I always surrounded by imbeciles? Tell me quick. What do you want me to decide? You want me as a judge?”

“Yes,” said a Tweedle, “because I wish to get a divorce from
him.”
He pointed at his brother. “No, pay him no nevermind,” said the other. “It is
I
who wish to be divorced from
him.
”

The Queen huffed. “A divorce? You’re not married. But I think I know what you mean. But why now? You’ve always had your little tiffs before, but it’s never come to this.”

Tweedledee said, “The Cat informed me I shouldn’t put up with this.” Tweedledum said, “Nor
I
with
that.”

The Queen sneered at the Cat.

In his bored-sounding voice, the Cat said, “Yes, I helped them see the hopelessness of their arrangement.”

The Queen said, “Perhaps you shouldn’t pay heed to the meddling of that horrid pussy cat. But okay, as I’ve got to get back to my game…your divorce is granted. Off with both your heads. Is that all?”

The twins’ eyes went wide with alarm.

The Cat giggled and said, “Oh that sounds delightfully bloody!”

Tweedledum said, “No no, this is not a matter that involves execution.” Quoth Tweedledee: “What he said.”

“Oh fine then! You are both pardoned. Now I shall go back to my game.” She began to walk away.

Behind her, one of the twins said, “Wait. We want you to divide our property.” “Yes,” said the other, “give part to one, part to the other.”

The Queen was by this time fuming. She had a short temper, and these two bumbling fools were trying her patience, not to mention that obnoxious cat rubbing his non-executed status in her face with his floating head.

“What property? You have no property.”

They pointed to the ground where rested their child’s rattle. It was the very same rattle the Queen had given them a year earlier for bringing the Red Queen in.

She said, “Fine then! What is the grounds of your divorce? Your Highness must determine who is at greater fault.”

Tweedledee explained, “We had an agreement that
I
should lick the tears from Alice’s right eye and he from the left.”

“’Tweren’t neither! Her left is oftimes not
my
left!”

“Are you to tell me,” she said, her cheeks turning red, “that this is all over you two not being able to tell which way is left and which way right?”

The Cat was chuckling.

Tweedledee said, “Sometimes
my
right is not
your
right.” Tweedledum said, “And sometimes her left is not
my
left.”

The Cat said, “So who gets the rattle?” with an obnoxious arch of his brow.

The Queen said to him, “I don’t like how smug you are. I hereby sentence you to death. Off with your head!”

“Good luck since I have no body, therefore I can’t be beheaded.”

“Argh! I am quite tired of all of you! Now I have the solution. Here is my judgment…”

The twins leaned forward, listening.

The Queen said, “The rattle shall be divided in half. You each shall get a piece. There, your divorce settlement is resolved.”

The boys burst into tears. “But we love our rattle!” “I love it more than him!”

The Cat helped, “Why not divide the
twins
in half instead.”