Behind Sanity
Chapter Fifty-Eight
1
Alice came into the throne room, a place she’d never been before, even in her first visit here, and saw that it too had succumb to the same disease as the room beyond it. This room was alive, and she wondered if the entire Keep was now a living creature, struggling to exist and fighting against inevitable arrest.
The floor was soft and fleshy beneath her boots, but sections of the marble remained as if they were embedded in the tissue. Tall columns touched the high ceiling, and they pumped with blood, entangled with veins like ivy. They fed a large heart above that hung as the centerpiece of the room.
How had this happened? It didn’t matter, for at the end of that room, sat the one Alice had come all this way to see. Sitting on a large throne a long stretch away, was the Queen. From a distance, she looked almost human, but Alice knew she was not. She could see her for what she was.
She was shaped like a woman, but this tyrant was a monster.
Her regal dress was not a dress at all, only part of a plump, red body that split below the waist into nearly one hundred flowing tentacles. Her upper body was armored in a metal plate, shaped like a heart, painted red. There was no hair on her head, but a huge, twisted crown held several of the same sort of tentacles that made her dress. The lower part of her face was hidden by a mask, but her eyes were there, watching the girl with great interest and repugnance. They were a glowing yellow.
Alice gave a short and mocking curtsy. To the rhythm of the steadily pumping heart above, she approached.
“I hope you’ll forgive my terrible manners toward your feline,” the Queen said, resting her head on her hand, “but I couldn’t let him ruin it.”
The voice was pleasant and the words were precisely spoken. Still, Alice misunderstood. She kept walking.
“What?”
"It was mine to tell!” the Queen screamed, her thundering voice echoing all over the dripping chamber and shooting back at Alice like thunder.
Alice didn’t flinch. The Queen had a terrible temper, like a spoiled child, and the girl had heard it all before. She was the only one who could counter it.
The Queen relaxed a bit, leaning back in her chair that sat alone on a raised platform. She seemed much calmer now.
“Come closer, child.”
Alice didn’t need an invitation. She was already moving.
When she got nearly five feet from the steps, she stopped. The Queen didn’t appear to be shaken by her closeness. Alice thought they both must have felt the same way.
“You have something to share with me?” the girl asked. “Well, I want to know something.”
“Yes, my child?” the Queen bade as if this was still her world and she had the authority.
“Is it that you are simply mad, or were you just born without a heart?” Alice glanced around, looked at the huge vessel that plumped at the ceiling. “Perhaps all these years you’ve been compensating?”
The Red Queen seemed shocked by the question. She was the Queen of Hearts, was she not? And the foolish child had the audacity to ask such a question? Even so, she contemplated it silently for a moment.
“May we speak informally, my dear? Step out of character?”
“If it will get me my answers faster,” the young woman replied.
The Queen seemed to slouch a bit then, as if she was no longer a hierarch and was reduced to someone just like Alice.
“What is madness, truly?” the Queen asked, her hidden lips moving, her forced accent receded. “Is it wrong to have dreams? Is it wrong to have so much imagination that it cannot be contained? So much desire for a certain thing that it can be that way or no other?”
“It is, if you force it upon people who do not want to know. None of these ever wanted to know.”
“Of course they did,” the Queen insisted with a sneer Alice could not see. “Why else are they here? You wanted to know. Your doctor, his father, all the ones before that. Your niece wanted to know. They were all curious. They all wanted to know.”
“You trapped them and stole them from their lives,” the girl pointed out, her emerald eyes wild.
“Of their own admission!” the Queen yelled, clenching the arms of her chair.
Alice shook her head. “No. Of yours.”
The Red Queen sat back, sighed. She tried to keep down her irritation. “It’s quite strange, Alice. Of all people, I thought you’d agree with me.”
“Well, I don’t,” she said. “You should know that by now. After everything I’ve done to this world. After all the minions I’ve killed, you should be able to see that I do not agree with your ways!”
The Queen rose up from her chair and began to slither around the breathing room, lost in thought. Alice kept a close eye on her every movement, but did not move about herself.
“I don’t want to kill you, Alice,” the Red Queen said thoughtfully. Alice didn’t believe her. “But what other option have you given me?”
“You said you wanted to tell me something before I destroy you,” Alice reminded her.
“Oh yes,” the Queen said, recalling. She lifted a wilting rose that was in a vase near the wall. The flower was bleeding. “I wanted to say that you shouldn’t hate me.”
“And why, pray tell, is that?”
“Because,” the Queen said, turning. “I am you.”
For a moment, Alice stared. Could it be? All this time she’d made this? Like Elliot had told her? If she’d been sane at that moment, and if she’d been appalled by the dripping, stinking room she was standing in, she might have believed. But no. If everything else she’d been told was true, this didn’t fit.
“That’s impossible,” she protested finally.
“Close enough,” was the Queen’s reply. “We are the same breed, you and I.”
The creature with the tentacles and a tyrant’s crown approached. “We should not be fighting,” she said. “We should be working together. We could make a grand world, you and I. Your throne beside mine. I don’t mind changing my role. I can…be what you want.”
The Queen’s voice had changed, deepened, and in the place of the creature, Alice saw Victor Purric emerge. He smiled at her, took a few steps closer.
“Or, if you change your mind,” the puppet with Victor’s voice said, “I can be something else.”
Now here was John standing there. Alice’s mind understood the words, but the images did not move her.
“Alice, you should really clean up,” the false John said with a look of concern. “You have brain in your hair.”
He reached out his head to touch her face. She jerked away from it. She looked back, blinked, and the one standing before her was neither Victor, nor John. It was the monster.
The Red Queen was very close now, and Alice suddenly got the image of being gripped by those tentacles and being sucked into the depths of the monster’s belly.
Alice felt something materialize in her hand, and she jerked up toward the Queen’s face to defend herself. She’d expected the knife. What she held was a revolver.
She glanced at it quizzically, wondering where it had come from, but then her stern focus was back on her enemy. The Queen had stopped advancing, looking at the gun with deep uncertainty. Alice had never touched one of these, but she’d seen her father use one long ago. She thumbed back the hammer and it latched, keeping the barrel aimed steadily at the Queen’s face.
“Where is my sister?” she demanded.
The yellow eyes set in darkness turned upward, suddenly full of confidence. The Queen released a short ‘hmph’.
“It’s not loaded,” the Queen affirmed triumphantly. The gun suddenly felt lighter.
Alice pulled the trigger and there was a dry click. The creature before her wore a pleased and knowing expression. It was as if the Queen’s simple declaration had rid the gun of its powder. Alice tossed the gun away.
Her enemy advanced further. Alice backed away.
“Why resist?” the creature hissed. “We could have everything. You could see your friends again. You could make more friends! Anything you dream up can be real!”
Alice seemed uncertain now. It was the eyes of the beast; they were changing color.
“Surrender to me, Alice.”
Victor was there again, his eyes yellow-green and slit with sharp pupils like his feline counterpart. He gripped her arms and pulled her in close.
“You met me like this once before: in a long, dark room full of beds but with nowhere to rest. You couldn’t tell the difference. You had no idea that it was only me.”
Alice mouth fell open, her eyes widening further. She’d dreamed of Victor, thinking he’d somehow escaped and come into her dream, but it was only one of the Queen’s tricks? How could she have been so deceived?
“It’s perfectly fine, pet,” the false Victor said, moving his lips close to her ear. “Reality is only what you make it.”
Something smooth and slick slid around the edge of her ear, teasing the lobe before Alice managed to free herself from his arms and his tongue. His taunting laughter reached her ears as she stumbled back, regaining her footing as another voice reached her ears.
“What’s wrong with you, Alice?”
Freeing herself, Alice lifted her eyes to see that the Queen was wearing an altogether different face. Alice gasped, staring into the face of her own sister.
“Why have you done this to me?” Wendy asked her, tears running down her cheeks. “I believed in you! I gave so much to try and help you and you have repaid me by this? Maybe it was a mistake – taking you out of the asylum.”
“No,” Alice began to protest before she could stop herself. “This isn’t my fault…”
“I could never forgive you,” Wendy went on. “Not unless you agree that we should be together forever.”
“I…” Alice was faltering, but she was not aware of it. It was always her family that would break her.
“We’re family,” the Queen said past Wendy’s lips. “All we’ve got left.”
Wendy offered a hand that was flesh, beckoning to Alice with a warm smile. The girl was finally confused. She wanted her sister’s acceptance. Wanted to be close with her, always had. She was, in fact, the only family she had left.
Alice raised her hand, reached out…
But then she knew this was not her sister. Like it had not been John or Victor. It was only a trick. A trap. Alice would not fall for it.
“Blasphemer!” Alice screamed, and suddenly she understood everything. She knew why the walls were red and alive. She knew how again and again, her weapons had appeared back in her hand. She understood how things around her had changed with a simple thought, for better or worse.
The Queen had spoken the truth. They were of the same. Alice had just as much control over this realm as the Queen herself did. That was why the Red Queen hated her so much. The girl was a threat to her throne.
Alice smiled. She laughed. Now she knew it; she could not be beaten. She was the Champion, and she would prevail!
“I will never bow down to you,” she said firmly, her eyes sharp and cutting. The creature before her began to scowl, and then Wendy’s face vanished, only the yellow eyes cutting through.
“Very well,” the Queen said then, back in full character. Wendy’s face melting away and the head becoming faceless. “Off with your head.”
The monster tyrant twisted its tentacles, lashed out at Alice again and again from every direction. Several of them struck her while she tried to dodge, breaking her skin. She defended with the claw, slashing and cutting off several of the tentacles’ ends while the Queen hissed in pain.
There were too many. Just too many! A grip around her wrist jerked her off the floor. Tentacles entwined her, even though she continued to fight them off. They wrapped around her arms and legs. Around her waist. They pulled and twisted. The Queen was pleased. Alice winced. She was going to be ripped apart!
“And here I was thinking that you were going to be difficult to kill,” the Queen said, laughing.
Alice needed to do something, but she didn’t know what. The pain was slow and it was nearly too much. Her brain could focus on nothing else. Hurt, it thought distantly. Hurt her. Make her release me. Then, almost on its own, something happened.
Her apron pockets ripped, and onto the floor spilled all her toys, the weapons she’d collected throughout her journey. The Vorpal Blade, the Croquet Mallet, the Eyestaff, Ice Wand, Jackbomb,Razor Cards, Jacks and Demon Dice – all there. They were out of her reach, but Alice felt connected to them all. Even without being in her hands, she was certain that they would obey her.
Attack her! She bade them silently. Get her off of me!
One by one, the toys began to attack on their own, cutting and hitting the creature that held their mistress. The monster cried out. In a fit of her discomfort, the Queen slung Alice away, and the girl slammed against a wall. The flesh wall was surprisingly hard, and Alice rose up on weak arms only to vomit up black bile.
She heard the Queen’s voice as she continued to battle the animated weapons.
“I rule Wonderland alone,” she bellowed. “You’re interference will not be tolerated any longer! This realm is for grown-ups; raw, well-ordered, ruthless, careening on the jagged edge of reality!”
The pleasant and educated voice had begun to decline, becoming the deep, thundering growl of a monster. Her true voice.
“Self-pitying dreamers are not wanted here!” she continued as the cards sliced her faceless head. “They cannot survive here!”
Though weak and sore, Alice raised herself up. She stood on legs that felt like pudding, but she held herself steady because she knew she had to. Something had come alive inside her, an arrogance and pride that shone through her eyes.
“How dare you say that to me, you evil bitch?” Alice roared. “I am the ruler of this realm! The true queen! Queen Alice! And you will pay for your insolence!”
At the sound of this, the monster hesitated. In that moment, Alice remembered something.
She saw it, laying on the ground just beside her foot as if it had been specifically placed there when it had fallen from her pocket.
“What…?” the monster tried to protest, but Alice was already flipping open the latches of the box given to her by Father William. Words echoed through her mind as she did so.
“Don’t open it here! You must wait. I only hope that you will know how to use it when it is opened.”
With the Queen too distracted to interfere, she flipped the lid of the long box, and when her eyes fell on what was inside, she smiled a wide, wicked smile that showed all of her small, white teeth. Her eyes lifted toward her enemy wearing a sinister gleam.
Though the Queen had no face, Alice knew she understood what was inside that box. There was a whisper of a word on the air, and it was impossible to know who had said it.
“Blunderbuss…” Aside from the Jabberwock, it was the most powerful weapon that Wonderland had ever yielded.
Alice took up the long gun that appeared as any other rifle, only the barrel was wide on the end like a very large funnel. The girl did not waste time. She didn’t fully know what this weapon could do, but she aimed it straight upward – right at the heart in the center of the ceiling.
“No!” the Queen screamed, rushing forward to stop this from happening.
Alice held out her hand as her claw steadied the Blunderbuss, and in it appeared the Ice Wand. Glittering ice shot forth from it, and the Queen’s tentacle legs were frozen to the floor. There would be no stopping this. It had to be done.
The Blunderbuss – the legendary weapon that Alice had been meant to wield for all this time – seemed as if it was made for her to use. It fit perfectly along the curve of her waist, and once again, she pointed it upward.
The heart was pumping faster now, panicking, shaking the walls, but Alice hardly noticed. She knew what she had to do. She pulled the trigger–
And a burst of energy shot out of the barrel so roughly that it shoved Alice to the ground, nearly crushing her legs. But the bullet that was the size of her head did its job well, and plunged deep into the heart, bursting a ragged hole into it. It stopped throbbing as all that was inside it leaked out.
A rain of blood fell on the room, and Alice lifted her hands to it as if it was water. Then something began to happen.
First, the young woman’s skin became red, blending with the blood. Her muscles swelled; her bones shifted. There was pain, but somehow it was not unpleasant. Her flesh hand grew until her fingers became a long claw. Horns twisted out from her head, growing from her skull. Smoke rolled off her as if her skin was burning.
The demon within had awoken – the thing that had been unleashed inside her the day her parents had burned alive. It turned its eyes to the creature that was struggling to free itself from the ice.
“Now,” Alice said, red eyes lighting with rage. “Die!”