The Radcliffe Asylum
“I can’t believe you confessed to it,” I say to the Pillar.
“You said there is a lot that you need to know from me,” the Pillar’s says, as if telling a joke. “Prepare for a few shocking surprises.”
“Then it’s true.” I stand up to him, noticing the change in his demeanor. Something isn’t right. I can’t feel that invisible sense of caring about me anymore. Or is it my mind playing tricks on me? “You’re Him. You’re the one who I joined to find his weakness and kill. You’re the reason why I joined Black Chess. Not the Circus. You manipulated me and hurt me and others somehow, and then came to finish some sick game of yours, pretending to care for me. You’re nothing but a Wonderland Monster like every other one I’ve chased and killed.”
The Pillar says nothing. He gives me that blank stare, like an invisible curtain that prevents me from reaching through. I can’t interpret that look in his eyes.
“Just tell me it’s true.” I am almost pleading for answer.
“If I do, what will you do to me, Alice?” The Pillar’s voice is still flat and emotionless.
It occurs to me that his question is more of a test. He wants to know if I am mad enough at him to fight back, to call him an enemy. But I’m not there yet. He might still hold answers about my family. I want to ask him if he is my father, but my tongue betrays me and glues to the roof of my mouth as I swallow hard.
“See? You’re asking for answers you can’t handle.” The Pillar gently pushes me out of the way. He picks up his cane and rolls it in the air, twice. “Let’s start with the question all of you really need to be asking me.”
“There are no questions,” Truckle says. “I say we kill you.”
“I doubt he’d die easily,” the March says. “What about his fourteen lives?”
So many questions roam in my head. None of them of which I’m sure I can handle the answer to now. The one sentence I can utter is, “Who are you, really?”
The smug smile on the Pillar’s face is ten miles wide. “I’m the one person who knows how to get you out of here.” He points at the ticking deadline on the BBC News channel on TV. A new banner scrolls across the bottom announcing the queen’s order to enter immediately. It seems like the police changed their mind. They’re preparing to break in within a few minutes. Death is literally knocking on the asylum’s door.