"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 corpses. "Humans are nothing but pawns in this Wonderland War."
"Why kill kids who are overweight?"
"Are you afraid to say 'fat' kids?" She smirks. "Is that politically incorrect? Is the blunt truth always politically incorrect?"
"Wow. You do have a grudge against 'fat' kids." I don't like the sound of it on my tongue, but I need to speak his insane language so I can read between the lines.
"You will understand what I mean if you figure it out, Nancy Drew." She breathes into her paws. "You and your hookah-smoking Inspector Gadget." This seems to amuse him to death.
"If this is an old grudge between you and the Pillar—"
"It's not that," she cuts in.
"If it's about the grudge you hold against humanity, please remember that this happened so long ago." I don't even know what I am doing, conversing with the enemy.
"Nothing is long ago." She still scans my face, as if she wants to spot evidence of me being the Real Alice. I catch her/him staring at my neck as well. "Don't you watch the news? Humans are walky-talky apes, still stained with barbaric behaviors after so many centuries of evolution. They might dress better, talk mellower, and invent cool gadgets. They will say that they prefer love over war, but it's all nonsense. Humans are still monsters. Always will be." He stops and takes a breath, not finding what he was looking for in me. "But then, all my grudges aren't what the Wonderland War is about."
"What is it about, then?" If the Pillar refuses to tell, do I expect the Cheshire to?
"If you were the Alice, you would've known," he says. "Right now, I need to put you to continued tests, until you prove you're her."
"By killing children?" I can't digest his logic.
"Whatever it takes," he says. "Besides, you can still minimize the killings by solving the riddles." He cocks his head with another grin. "Think of it as a Catch-22. Either you don't solve the riddles, and I keep allowing the murders, or you solve the riddle, I know you're the Alice, and we start the Wonderland Wars." He rubs his claws together.
"What kind of sick lunatic are you?"
"The unkind type," the mortician sneers. "Let's not waste time, Alice." She starts smoothening her fingernails with one of the metallic instruments on the tables. "You were smart enough to get the muffin message and smarter to realize all the victims are fat kids." He cocks his head at me as I glimpse a mallet resting against the wall behind the tables. Why is there a mallet in a morgue? "I see that you and your Pillar haven't benefited wisely from the clues I left you." Although spoken in a woman's voice, it has this sinister undertone to it. Something I can't explain. Something only nightmares can produce. "So here is my final clue." He raises a hand in the air, his thumb and middle finger close enough it looks like he is about to snap them. "Are you ready for my major clue, Alice?"
"I am." I'd say yes to anything until I get close to that mallet. I need to have some weapon prepared.
The Cheshire snaps his fingers, and a few corpses on his left and right come to life. They abruptly sit straight up and grin at me. Four on his left. Four on his right.
I freeze in place.
I barely learned how to deal with lunatics—other than myself, some might argue. But I am not prepared to deal with the living dead. This is beyond absurd. Why are there eight corpses coming to life?
"You didn't know I can possess nine lives at the same time?" She laughs, picking up two fork-like instruments from the table. What is she going to do, cut them open? "I can even possess them when they are dead. How kewl is that?" The Cheshire seems to be catching up on the lingo. "Let's dance, Alice. Let's dance."
I really wish I was mad now. This can't be happening.