Malice in Wonderland Prequel (5 page)

“No! I just want to run here, in my own private purgatory. Perhaps, in this way, he still loves me.”

“You never seem to get anywhere. Why is that?”

“I don’t know.”

The Queen of Hearts scowled. “You shall tell me, or I shan’t leave.”

The Red Queen sighed. “Very well. Much as I hate to admit it to myself, the future frightens me, just as the past does, so I run just enough to stay in the same place. Oh, but I try to not even admit that to myself. Much better to fool myself into thinking I want to go somewhere.”

“I see,” said the Queen of Hearts, considering her, rubbing her chin as if the Red Queen were an intriguing specimen.

“Are you happy now?! Can I be left alone to run in peace?”

The Queen of Hearts held up her finger. “Well, I shall certainly leave you alone in this dungeon.”

She sighed in relief. “Thanks.”

“But there is just one last thing.”

“Yes?”

“It’s just that the guards have informed me that they have overheard you reciting a poem to yourself from time to time. Do you know of what I speak?”

The Red Queen swallowed. “Yes.”

“Could you recite it to me? Then I promise that I shall leave you to your…running.”

“Promise?”

“Yes. After all, I’ve grown quite bored with you actually. Just this one more thing…”

“Very well.

And the Red Queen recited her poem that she would normally only recite to herself, when she was alone:

Sometimes, you wish out loud to scream,

To awaken yourself from someone else’s dream,

Where the way that you are isn’t the way that you seem.

But then, the man who loved you might no longer care,

So you keep your past behind you, to keep him unaware,

And run and run away from it, while going
to
nowhere.

To let his dream of you go unharassed,

You mustn’t reach a future, and you cannot face the past,

For if right now’s forever, his love will always last.

After the Queen of Hearts heard the poem, her face turned pale. She nodded, then turned and exited the room.

The door slammed shut behind her.

CHAPTER FIVE

Black Rose

When Alice was 7

The encounter with the Black Butterfly had inspired Alice. She’d inquired discreetly about the Black Rose, then waited until the right opportunity presented itself. When it did, she marched in her magic goody two-shoes up to the Garden of Live Flowers.

It was a flower-bed of talking flowers who seemed to think that Alice herself was a flower. Alice had never corrected them of the notion, because she quite enjoyed the feeling of fitting in.

She always had to talk first. “Wake up, flowers!”

The Tiger-lily said, “Greetings flower Alice.”

Alice enjoyed their company, but only in small doses, since they had certain notions that would grate on her nerves. For one thing, they thought she wasn’t colorful enough, because she always wore a black dress (which they considered her petals). She cut right to the chase. “I’ve heard tell that there was once a black rose who inhabited your garden. Can you tell me any more about her?”

The Tiger-lily gasped. “The Black Rose?!”

And here all the other flowers gasped (though they did not breath like people did) then they grew silent, which was puzzling, because they’d always been a bunch of chatterboxes.

“That’s right,” Alice said. “What’s wrong?”

“Where did you hear of the Black Rose?!” the Tiger-lily demanded.

“I’ve been asking around. There was a butterfly who was said to feast upon its nectar in order to turn black…”

“Yes, there was a rose who let blackness overtake her, and she was banished from the garden.”

Alice felt sorrow rise up within her. She thought that a black rose might actually be quite pretty. Perhaps the Black Rose was simply a misunderstood outcast much like Alice herself. Maybe the Black Rose could use a friend to help her. “Where was she banished to?”

“Well, before we speak any further, you shall remove those wretched shoes. We despise them.”

“What do you mean?”

“The shoes…”

Alice tended to be most agreeable, so she removed her shoes. “Now please tell me more.”

“Figure it out yourself.”

Alice completely lost her temper. With an outraged shriek, she reached out and grasped the Tiger-lily’s stem. “Tell me, or I shall begin plucking your petals!”

The other flowers gasped. One yelled, “Let her go!” The Tiger-lily said, “You wouldn’t dare.” But Alice could feel that the flower was trembling ever-so-slightly, as much as a plant could reasonably be expected to, at least.

Alice reached out and pulled a petal off. “He loves me…”

The Tiger-lily shrieked in pain.

Alice dropped the petal then reached out, touched another one. “He loves me not…”

“Stop! I’ll tell you! For the love of god, stop!”

And that was how Alice learned where the Black Rose had been relocated to by a mysterious cloaked flower tender they had summoned. Alice felt bad about being so cruel to get her way. She was usually such a good girl, but sometimes she just snapped, and they
had
made her take off her goody two-shoes, after all. Awkwardly, she left the garden, not wanting to make a bad situation worse. She’d have to make it up to the flowers somehow later.

They’d told her there was a stone archway set in the side of a hill a short distance away. Soon she saw it, tucked away discreetly in the middle of a forest. They said to look for a button on the archway to press to open the door.

She looked upon the edges of the gray-stoned archway. It was lined with carved runes that she couldn’t read. Then she saw the button, but it seemed to be at the height of an adult. She was just a little girl, and she almost couldn’t reach it. She had to stand on her tippy-toes and stretch. “Errrgh.” Then she struggled to press the button in hard enough, but, then “Ahah!” she exclaimed as she pressed it in.

A blade of metal suddenly slid out above Alice. She could see that it was at just the right height to have decapitated any adult who pressed the button. She had been spared death on account of being short. She wondered if maybe she should turn back.

After a few seconds, the blade retracted, then the door slid upward.

She peered inside to see a square medium-sized room cut from gray stone.

In the middle of the room was a skeleton wearing a royal gown and crown sitting in a golden throne. Next to the throne was a pedestal atop of which rested a black rose within a flower pot. A glass dome rested over the flower and a note was attached to the inner surface of the dome, with hand written words upon it, but she couldn’t read the note from her distance.

Alice briefly considered turning back, because this might be a rather precarious situation. But then she thought maybe the Black Rose was extremely lonely, and her heart filled with such sorrow for the rose’s possible distress.

“Black Rose!” she called out. “Can you hear me?”

She thought she heard the flower give a muffled cry, but she couldn’t make out the words through the glass.

“Fear not!” she proclaimed, “For I am here to rescue you from your predicament!” She stepped through the door then rolled on the ground into a crouch where she listened intently and peered around for any threat.

The door slammed shut behind her and she gasped and looked around. She was trapped.

“Oh bother,” she muttered to herself.

Then she heard a kind of gurgling sound. Clear liquid began trickling from the edges of the room from little round holes. With dread, Alice assumed it was acid, because of course it would be!

The only way to avoid the acid was to stand atop the throne, so she performed three expert cartwheels toward it, then hopped atop the arms of the throne, balancing precariously. She didn’t want to touch the icky skeleton.

The clear liquid reached the bottom of the throne and the fabric of the gown. A hissing bubbling sound issued forth as the acid began to dissolve cloth and bone and a pungent smoke rose up.

“Oh, this will not do!” Alice proclaimed, feeling sorry for herself. The acid level was slowly rising.

“Oh, what should I do, Black Rose?”

Again, the Black Rose seemed to speak, but again, she couldn’t make out the words.

Alice hugged herself in terror, as the liquid of burning death approached. She looked around. There was nowhere else to stand. The ceiling was lined with rows of round holes and a larger hole above the Black Rose, but the ceiling was twenty feet above her, so she couldn’t reach them.

While trembling with fear, she watched the level of acid rise, burning the skeleton and its dress, leaving the throne untouched, perhaps because it was made of gold, she thought.

“Help! Won’t someone please help?!”

But there was no response. And then her tears began to flow. She flicked them from her face in frustration. The acid continued to rise, but now, the sizzling and smoke seemed to lessen.

My tears! A few of them dropped in the acid! Perhaps their magic negates it.

So she leaned forward and allowed as many of her tears to drip down into the acid as she could. Soon the sizzling and dissolving stopped and Alice laughed out loud in relief. The level of the liquid continued to rise though, and soon it rose over the throne and Alice could no longer avoid being immersed.

Soon she was drenched in it and had to tread water to stay afloat in the former acid. She suspected the liquid had been transformed into tears.

It continued rising.

I shall drown in my own tears,
she thought morosely.

But then thankfully, the liquid began to drain from the room. While it was doing so, and Alice was busy treading in place, she took the time to read the note on the inside of the (apparently waterproof) glass dome over the flower. It read: “Smell me.”

“Black Rose, can you hear me? I need you to just hold on for me, okay? We’re gonna get you out.”

The Black Rose shook a little. It seemed kind of like a nod, Alice thought.

The liquid had all drained. “Well, then. Now that that’s done with, let’s smell what all the fuss is about, shall we?”

That’s when she heard a loud clamor of clanks from the ceiling. She looked up to see rows of steel spikes burst from the holes in the ceiling, then a creaking sound issued forth as the ceiling began lowering!

Panic came over Alice. Frantically, her mind searched for a way out of this predicament.

The mushroom!

She carried a piece of the Caterpillar’s mushroom, so that she would be able to shrink down to his size whenever she needed to visit him. She reached into one of the inner pockets of her sopping dress, and pulled out the piece of mushroom. It was regrettably soggy, but now was not the time to be finicky, was it?

She nibbled and began shrinking, with the descending spikes following closely behind. She hoped she would be able to shrink fast enough. The ceiling was crushing the throne, the black rose’s dome safely slipped into a hole in the ceiling, and Alice kept shrinking.

She reassured herself that there were no holes in the ground that would allow the spikes to slide in, so there would be space next to the spikes…

That was her only hope—to stand in one of the spaces between the spikes to avoid being skewered.

She looked up to the ceiling. The spikes had completely crushed the throne and the tips had almost reached the ground. She took a step to the side as the spikes clanked into the ground all around her.

She breathed a sigh of relief.

Then a dreadful, long moment passed.

Then a clanking sound as of chains being retracted, and creaking noises as the ceiling rose back up to its original position. The spikes retracted.

“Crikey, but that was close!” she yelled. She nibbled some mushroom to grow again.

She walked up to the pedestal. It was a bit tall for her, so she nibbled a little extra mushroom.

“Finally! Now I know from fairy tales that these things go in threes. Since I survived the three challenges, there shan’t be any more.” And with that proclamation, she lifted the glass dome off the Black Rose. “Black Rose, can you speak?”

Not all flowers could speak, and not all flowers that could speak spoke alike, and the words came from the flower as a whispery hiss. “Smelll meeeee.”

Alice shrugged. “As you wish. You are a most beautiful flower. I’m sure your scent is just as much so.”

She leaned over and inhaled.

And was transported—into a world unknown to her. Darkness and naughtiness and adult secrets swirled about. She experienced the delicious desert of revenge served unexpected, and the malicious candy of destroying what others cherished. She felt and smelled the allure of seduction employed solely to betray. The corruption of innocence was this flower’s scent. These were the shadows of unadmitted desires and sensations. She shuddered with the delicious chill.