S ometimes the truth is a slow burn of continuous pain. The longer it takes to reveal, the more it cuts through. A sword’s stroke is always merciful; a thousand small cuts are the real torture.
“Are you saying I’m…”
“Yes, you are, Alice,” Mr. Jay says. “Once the Lullaby’s effect leaves you, you will remember you’re one of us.”
All the tears in the world can’t baptize me now.
“We’ve been planning the bus accident for years. It was our best plan. And, of course, only you could do it, but let’s not get into why only you could do it now,” Mr. Jay says. “The Real Alice whom everyone in Wonderland feared. The one and only.”
“Feared?”
“Oh, girl. The heads you chopped off. The blood you shed.” Mr. Jay is overly impressed. He may be my boss, but he is fascinated by me. “Carroll had a point, making everyone forget your face. This, or every Wonderlander, would have spent the rest of their lives crapping in their pants, remembering you.”
I’m darkness wrapped in black blood, dipped into the abyss of the deepest ocean. “So, the whole search for the Real Alice wasn’t to find the girl who will save the world?”
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about. No one’s really searching now, but they surely will in the future,” Mr. Jay says. “The Inklings will gather someday. Some kind of prophecy. But they’ll be too late.”
“So the Inklings fear me, too?”
“Some of them do,” he says. “Some of them foolishly think you can be converted. But I know you will never do that. You’re Black Chess’s most precious warrior.”
“Why do you doubt that?”
“Let’s face it, Alice. You’ve done things that can’t be forgiven. Remember messing with Carroll’s mind, splitting his self in two, and creating the Carolus part in him? It was genius.”
“I did that?”
“You fed him a heavy dose of Lullaby pills, mixed with the Executioner’s drugs until the man collapsed. He collapsed so hard he made a deal with his split image to kill himself through you.”
The curtains fall. I have nothing to say. The play is over. And when the curtains are draped, there will be no audience left to applaud. Because I may have killed them all.
“Let’s not think about this now,” he says. “I’m really curious why you wanted to take the Lullaby pills after all you’ve done.”
This, I don’t remember. If I was this dark beast of Wonderland, why’d I ask to forget what I had done later? Maybe some part of me, a small one, though, realized the gruesomeness of what I had done. A part that couldn’t go on being the Real Evil Alice anymore. A part of me that longed for redemption. A part that wanted to forget through a Lullaby pill. A part of me that preferred I’d spend the rest of my life in an asylum. Better mad than being the Real Alice.
I really hope this tiny part is still inside me somewhere.