Chapter 7: A Mad Tea-Party
Rubbing her eyes with her dirty hands, Mary tried to remember how the sun warmed her skin in the summer. She ran her clammy fingers down her arms in hopes of recreating the feeling. She imagined herself on a grassy knoll, barefoot, with her toes digging into the cold, living green grass. Her thoughts were interrupted with the sound of heaving and vomit sloshing in the hay, as her mind was dragged back into reality. Catherine was sitting in the cage to her right, slowly beginning to lightly laugh at the insect crawling over her fingers. Mary thought to ask if she had any more of the mushrooms she had watched her eat ever-so-gingerly.
Her stomach rumbled at the thought, but just as Mary had opened her mouth to ask, the creaky door at the top of the staircase bounced off the wall, as if opened by the winds of a hurricane. It was the Rabbit. He playfully hopped down the stairs to entertain his guests with his whimsy. His eerie grin made Mary's blood run cold and although the grin was not returned to him, he didn't seem to care. Today was a celebration and he was celebrating, with or without them.
"Oh meeee, oh myyyyy," he sang in an opera-like performance, "Alice my dear, I have a surprise..." His merry gait caught up with him and he waltzed around the room with an invisible partner. Clasping his hands together as he approached her cage, he whispered, "...for you."
The Rabbit took three steps backward in the filthy hay and felt blindly above his head, finally finding the chain for the light overhead. With a flick of the wrist, the dankness of the room was revealed as it was bathed in light.
The breath caught in her throat as she backed up in her cage. Catherine had begun digging through the mucky hay in her cage, looking for the animal that had just hopped in and disappeared.
"Tsk tsk dear Alice. Looks like the cards are not in your favor today..." he said, getting irritated, "SHUT UP!" he screamed in the direction of Catherine's cage. Her squeals ceased as she grasped tightly to a guest only she could see and stared at him furiously.
"I will return in a moment. I expect you all to have your smiles on. If not, I will make smiles. Permanent smiles. On your faces. Won't that be lovely? Be right back!" He said with a quickness and he was gone into the shadows once more. Mary's ears followed his excited leaps up the stairs and realized she did not hear the door creak shut. Maybe this was her chance to escape, she thought, as she pulled herself to her knees and got close to the front of the cage.
"It's there!" Catherine shouted at Mary, pointing directly at her.
"What's there?" she crawled closer to Catherine's cage to inspect.
"The caterpillar is! Kill him!" she yelled victorious as her hand met Mary's face as hard as Catherine could muster through the cage bars. Mary backed away from Catherine, holding her red-stained cheek as the Rabbit creaked slowly down the stairs, carrying what seemed to be a silver platter like the one her mother used to serve tea to special house guests.
The dishes clinked together with each step the Rabbit took toward them. On each plate lie two crumpets, one stacked atop the other, and neatly fit onto each plate lie a small tea cup filled with tea. He individually handed them out, first to the postman, then to Mary, then finally Catherine. Mary looked down at her plate and sat the cup of tea on the ground. Mary watched the others eat their meals with a starving passion and felt like something might be wrong. Mary looked up at him, her stomach told her to eat and drink, but her intuition stated otherwise. Something was strange. Any other time he brought food down to them before, he wasn't this adamant about them eating, let alone cared to stay and make sure they did as they were told. Eventually she caved in and forced a bite of the crumpet down, soaking it in the bitter tea. Her stomach grumbled in approval and she could feel the knots tying themselves into her middle as she picked the limp crumpet off the plate and took another tiny bite. Her mouth watered and she found herself finishing everything on her plate with the exception of her tea, which she sipped lightly, until finished.
"Good, eat it all, Alice." The Rabbit stated, observing her from a distance, running his hands through his hair nervously. After some time had passed, she realized she felt dizzy, her head was swimming as the colors of the room started blending together. She reached out to touch the bars of the cage and she heard the old skeleton key unlock her cage.
It's...party time!" The Rabbit whispered happily, unlocking her cage gracefully.
"Party?" She asked, covering her eyes with her dirty hands.
The Rabbit took her arms together at the elbows and guided her in the direction of the staircase. Reaching up with his free hand; Rabbit pulled the light chain, covering the room in darkness once more. Pulling his Alice closely to him, to sniff her lovely blonde locks he realized it would soon be time for a bath.
"What.. did you do to me?" She mumbled, barely able to keep her feet turned toward the ground.
"I am throwing you a tea party my sweet Alice." He announced, swinging his arm out in presentation.
Catherine crawled in a hurried manner to the front of her cage, stopping only to press her face against the cold rusty bars. "This is the best tea party ever!" she said, squealing at the end of the sentence.
Catherine filled her stomach quickly and gulped the bitter tea. The high she was on seemed to escalate to something new and amazing. She danced around her cage with a laughter and exclaimed things that neither one of them could quite make out.
"That's more like it!" The Rabbit exclaimed with laughter. His tea party was going to be excellent.
The Rabbit pinned Alice against the wall and traced his fingers down her face, clenching his own jaw where his fingers landed on her own. He could feel her perspiration beading on her forehead as he kissed her ever-so-gently. Alice's muscles tensed up and twitched. He could feel the heat of the rage that was about to present itself and immediately threw her back toward the cage. He forgot about the frenzy. She hit the open cage door head on and immediately fell to the floor shaking. Soon after, the Postman and Catherine were doing the same.
"Ah, Wonderland." The Rabbit sighed happily and smiled as he pulled a small brown bag labeled "Fly Agaric" from his pocket and took out a small red cap mushroom, kissed it for a brief second, and returned the brown baggie to its place. He kneeled down in front of the Postman's cage, unlocked the door with the old key and pummeled the old man in the face with his fists just as the twitching was about to subside. He checked his pocket watch, slid it back into place and pried the old man's mouth open wide enough to get his hands in. With one knee on the Postman's chest, the other resting in the hay above his head, the Rabbit forced the man's mouth apart with all his might until he heard the familiar crack of a jawbone being broken. He kept pulling until he could hear the tendons and ligaments stretch and pop. With one final crack, he had successfully disconnected the mandible.
"TRY and bite me, serpent!" He shouted with rage as he smashed the mushroom into the back of the man's throat. "EAT IT, GODDAMN YOU and SHUT UP!" The man began to gag and choke around the Rabbit's fist as the mushroom was deposited into the man's esophagus with relative ease.
Leaving the Postman to choke on his mushroom, he slammed the cage door shut and paced the room. As soon as they had all fallen out of their frenzy and into a wonderland dream state, the Rabbit opened their cages one by one, and carried them up the creaky stairs. The party hadn't even begun and he was already having so much fun.
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Mary sat at the table as the colors poured in from the windows, curling by the floor as if the wind had caught them up before they could sit down and join the party. The lace curtains broke the colors of the sunlight down into dots on the table. Mary leaned forward and blew the dots across the table, watching them scatter across the table like marbles and drop to the floor. The Rabbit sat at the end of the table, speaking gibberish, sounding like a Chinaman. The Postman was fading in and out of consciousness. His jaw broken, swollen bruised and aching; felt like a small child had crawled into his mouth and was taking refuge there, for the time being. He tried to spit the child out of his mouth but to any onlooker he appeared to be darting his tongue around in the now gaping hole that once was his mouth.
"Alice, how are you enjoying the party?" The Rabbit asked through his teeth with a squee. Alice looked up to his face and realized it was much larger than it had been in times previous. His tall white top hat made him look like a giant. She could feel herself shrinking in his presence until she was about a foot tall, sitting at the edge of her chair.
Alice looked over to the Postman and saw the red streams running from the canyons where his cheeks used to be and saw them pour more quickly than they had previously. The bloody current swept up the light coming into the window and started to gain momentum around the dining room table.
"Alice!" The Rabbit yelled in his guttural, more serious tone, now demanding through his teeth "I asked you a question."
Alice looked to her right as Catherine clawed at her own chest.
"It wants to go now." Catherine almost inaudibly stated calmly as her nails tore into the tender flesh of her chest above her heart. She could feel her heart, if only she could hold it. If she could hold it and hug it in her own hands before she had to say goodbye. The Rabbit stood from the table and violently smashed his place setting, knocking a tea cup off into the now rushing whirlpool of blood around the table, losing it forever in a liquid crimson death. The blood splashed up around them causing Mary to scream as loudly as she could over the rush of the spinning currents.
Catherine raked her nails against the bones of her ribcage and her blood also began to flow freely down the front of her body and into the eddies that were damning them all.
The Rabbit took off his top hat, laying it where is place had been set and the bloody pool began to calm. He stepped onto the table, crushing what fine china lay in his path on his way to Alice.
"Take my hand, Alice. I can save you." He said, revealing a perfectly white gloved hand. All the blood in the world couldn't tarnish the Rabbit. She looked up into his face with her watery blue eyes and she saw a gentle rabbit, clothed immaculately, grinning at her, offering her protection.
Catherine slipped out of her chair, seizing from the shock. The mushrooms, the tea, it was all coming to an apex and she could no longer handle it. Her bloodied hands turned into claws as she lie writhing on the floor, choking on her own vomit.
Alice stood on the edge of her chair, teetering and reaching out for the only protection she had.
The Rabbit lifted her by the hand and Alice joined him on the table just as a distant record player began playing a familiar song again. He held her close as she buried her face in his chest. As she breathed out, she turned her head and gazed down at the Postman, dead in the chair.
"Do you feel safe in Wonderland, my dear Alice?" The Rabbit asked, nudging his nose into her messy hair. Running his hands down the back of her shoulders, tracing her muscles until he found her fingertips and laced them with his own, he tightened them gently and positioned them as if he were about to dance.
Alice looked lovingly into the face of the Rabbit and swayed side to side, dancing carelessly on the smashed china beneath her feet.
"Yes, Rabbit. You're the only one I trust. I see it now. The truth."
And they danced.