Finally! I sigh. This took forever.
The smell of baking on her breath makes me hungry. I should have had a big meal back in the asylum. What's with all the mentioning of food today?
I don't care. I just want to get out of here.
Instead of being rolled outside, the woman's hand reaches for the bag's zipper. Maybe she wants to check out my face. I wonder if I will look dead enough to her.
Hold that breath, Alice.
The zipper slowly reveals my face to her, and the reeking of baking strengthens in my nostrils. There is a long silence, followed by the end of the nut song. The silence doubles up uncomfortably. I do my best not to open my eyes. But I don't know if I can hold my breath any longer.
"Very paradoxical, I must say," the woman says with a satirical tinge to her voice. "If you hold your breath long enough, you're dead. If you give up and start breathing, you're mad. Isn't that so, Alice from Wonderland?"
My eyes snap open.
I inhale all the air it can. I am in utter shock. A silent shiver pinches through all of my limbs, and madness almost blinds my vision.
What did she just say?
Although the mortician looks exactly like I imagined her, the smell of baking on her mouth says otherwise.
It's the smell of a Meow Muffin.
Chapter 17
I am paralyzed with horror. All my wishes to rid the world of the Cheshire evaporate in his presence. His grin, plastered on the poor mortician's face, is unmistakable. Damned are those who lay eyes upon that grin too many times, for it's unforgettable and will guarantee a lifetime of nightmares.
"What do you want from me?" I scatter the syllables on my tongue. I wish there was a way to camouflage my fear—maybe some hookah smoke like the Pillar's that I'd hide my real fears behind.
There is none.
"Love you, too." The Cheshire flashes a chubby grin and then takes a long drag from his cigarette. His view from down here makes me feel like an ant. His posture is like a towering building of nightmares.
Instinctually, I slide myself out of the bag and jump off the other side of the table.
The Cheshire doesn't move. He watches as I wound my left knee and almost twist my ankle. I run toward the faraway bulb, the one I hadn't come near before. It turns out it leads to a metallic double door leading outside. I limp a few times, fall, and pick myself up again. Part of my escape is me hopping on all fours like a rabbit.
The Cheshire still stands still. I know because of the muffin smell. He is behind me, dragging on the mortician's cigarette, enjoying the show.
I am such a coward, running away like that. I reach for the door's heavy handles. I don't think I am ready for the Cheshire yet.
"If you don't know where you're going, any road'll take you there," the Cheshire mocks behind me.
I stop in my tracks. I don't know why. A flash of a Lewis Carroll in Victorian England flashes before my eyes. It's like an electric shock. Painful but effective. It wakes me up and unwraps me from my spider webs of fear.
I give up on the handle and turn around to face the Cheshire. This is what I should do. I shouldn't run. I am here to catch him, not escape from him.
I don't know what Carroll's dream was about, but I know I don't want to end up regretful like him. I don't want to say, I couldn't save them, a week from now.
"Oh." The Cheshire licks his paws. Cat's habits. He stands between two rows of corpses on his sides. It's totally funny, in a very sinister way, to see the mortician gleaming with evil intentions. "So, you might be the Real Alice after all."
I stand with my back to the door, grimace, and shake my head, wondering why he says that.
"A Real Alice wouldn't run away from me," he elaborates. "The door is locked, however. But you didn't know that, did you?" He jingles a keychain in his hands. "Someone could still open it from outside, but no one knows you're here, Alice."
"How do you know that?" Frankly, I am shocked the door is locked. I don't know if he is lying to me. Maybe he is tricking me to see if I'll go back and try to open it. I stand my ground, fists clenched.
"Nobody cares for you, Alice." He grins. "You know that."
I can't argue with that. Only Jack seems to care. Where is he when I need him?
"You've always been like that," he continues. "Even in the books, you were a lonely, possibly mad, girl wandering Wonderland—which was probably all in her head." He laughs and smirks and grins and confuses the hell out of me when he says that. "You never made a real friend in that book, remember?"
"My sister was waiting for me when I woke up," I mumble, my head slightly lowered. The Cheshire hit a sensitive tumor in my soul. I am not only mad. I am lonely. I get it. It's time to get over it!
"Your sisters hate you, Alice. They hate you so much none of them bothered telling you the details of how you killed your friends. And your mother is too weak to protect you." He is enjoying this. "And your friends?" He kills the cigarette under his heavy foot and rubs his chin. "Oh, you killed them."
"You're lonely too!" I take a step forward. It actually unsettles him. He didn't expect that. "You've always been lonely, Cheshire. Humans killed your parents. You swore revenge on the world. Such a lonely lunatic who has no one to love him." The mortician woman's face knots. I press harder: "Even in Wonderland, no one cared for you. You and your silly grin, neglected in the Duchess' kitchen, then hiding on trees in the forest, appearing and disappearing, and commenting on the world only to take away attention from your miserable existence."
"Interesting." He steps forward, squinting at my face. "Tell me more. Is that really you, Alice?"
I shrug then lift my head up. "Why is it so important if I am the Real Alice?"
"Oh, it's important. You have no idea." He still glares, taking another careful step forward. "What puzzles me is that you don't remember any of it. I wonder why. What is it that the Pillar knows about you that I don't? Who are you, Alice?"
The Cheshire steps forward, the collective sum of the hate in the world glimmering in her eyes.
Chapter 18
"I don't care about either of you." I take another step forward, not knowing how this will end. Will I fist-fight a cat eventually?
"What do you care about, then?" His tone is investigative.
"To stop you from killing children and stuffing their heads in watermelons all over Britain."
He laughs. "Neatly executed crime; very artistic, you must admit."
I feel disgusted. I don't know how I look when disgusted but my face is in pain.
"Do you know how hard it is to stuff a head in a watermelon?" He is creepily sincere. Human lives don't mean anything to him. "No one appreciates art anymore." He rolls his eyes. "Is it because I am a cat?" The mortician's fingers turn into hairy claws, like Wolverine. "Do I have to change my name to Da Vinci or Picasso for you to appreciate my work?"
"You don't want anyone to appreciate you. The more you're hated, the more you love it," I say. "But since you asked, how about you just die? The world loves dead artists."
"Then I shall never be loved." The mortician slightly raises her meaty arm and waves her hands sideways. "Because I can't die." He smiles thinly at my attempt to humiliate him. "And the killing of fat kids won't stop. The real killings didn't even begin yet." She points at the dead corpses. "Humans are nothing but pawns in this Wonderland War."