PAST: Wonderland
T he White Queen lived happily ever after. Well, for a few months.
The mushroom’s effect was perfect. Never had she doubted her love for the Pillar. Not one day. The world moved on. Wonderland came to accept the fact that the beauty had just married the beast.
She spent her days living in the forest, lazy, smoking and joking. The Pillar was a funny man. Unchained of all society’s boundaries. His days were a mixture of sleep, and leaning back and reflecting upon the stars atop of a purple mushroom. He never worried, and was never angry. It was like he had figured out the secret of life, and it kept him smiling.
Of course, it wasn’t the secret of life. It was the mushrooms and the hookah smoke. He’d managed to sedate her anxieties and worries about tomorrow into purple haze and midnight dances. Life was beautiful with the Pillar. She’d married a catch.
Sometimes, when she asked him about the way he made a living, he said he’d inherited the garden from his parents. The garden was lush with fruits, vegetables, and animals that he sold and didn’t need to work another day.
“But why is it full of mushrooms?” she asked.
“They’re like fungus,” he said. “They just grow here. But you know what? They’re delicious.”
She ate one and giggled happily.
“And you know what else?” he said. “They can make you taller.”
“Really?”
“And shorter.”
“You don’t say.”
Fabiola spent a few days with that game of growing taller and smaller. Sometimes she veered a bit far to the edges of the forest, and locals would call to her from behind the trees, asking her why she liked the Pillar, saying that he would eventually hurt her. She opposed their predictions and ordered them to leave.
“Why do people not like you, Pillar?” she asked him later.
“Because I am coo-hooo-hooo-lll,” he coughed the smoked out of his mouth. His beady eyes excited her. He did not care for this world, whatsoever.
She grabbed the hookah and smiled back.
Until the day another person called her from behind the bushes and vines. A taller, younger man with a hat. A tall hat. He wore funny rings, and teacups dangled from his sleeves. They clinked.
“Who are you?” she asked, not out of sheer curiosity, but an unusual tickling in her tummy. Butterflies? But she never knew this man.
“Remember me?” he asked her.
“Should I?” her eyes widened.
“I’m the Hatter.”
“Ah,” she said. “Of course, that explains why I recognized you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“You’ve heard?” he was offended.
“Yeah. You’re hosting those crazy tea parties where you break teacups and drink yourself to sleep.”
“You don’t remember, do you?” the hatter stepped up. She took a step back behind the bush. “What did the Pillar give you?”
“He gave me happiness and a great life no girl can dream of.”
“I mean, what does he…” he thought for a while, trying to utter the right words. “I mean what do you eat every day, or drink?”
“Such a rude question, why do you ask?”
“I don’t mean to be rude,” he played along. “I see you are so beautiful and wonder if the food you eat makes you look stronger and more attractive.”
Fabiola blushed and fiddled with her hair.
“Mushrooms, mostly,” she said. “They’re delicious. Want some?”
That day, the Hatter left and didn’t return for a while. From there on, she began dreaming about him. Blurred dreams with no particular clearance or conclusion. All she knew was that she had to have met him before.
A month later, Lewis Carroll himself came to visit. He was one of few people who were allowed into the garden without permission — the Cheshire too, but he creeped her out.
“Looking lovely, White Queen,” he said, looking tired. He’d been looking tired for some time now. People said he was dying. That he’d been possessed by a demon called Carolus and it sucked his life away.
But she had always loved him dearly. “Thank you, Lewis.”
“I brought you a few photographs,” he reached out and gave her his latest work.
“How lovely,” she said, flipping through. “You’re a great artist, Lewis. Why all girls? Why all young?”
“There is a secret behind it, but I will tell you later. For now, could I ask you to look into their eyes? I mean the eyes are considered a true photographer's best work. I wonder if you can see something special in their eyes.”
“Of course,” she stared at each picture, looking into the girl's eyes. Slowly she began feeling something. Those butterflies in her stomach. “There is something about these pictures,” she said. “I can’t explain it.”
Lewis nodded, “Don’t worry. Keep them. Look at them. I think you will love them.”
“What’s going on?” interrupted the Pillar, appearing from nowhere. “Ah, Lewis” he smirked. “What brings you here?”
“Was just passing by,” he said.
“Oh, really?” the Pillar eyed his wife as well, a devious look twinkling in his eyes. “Did you know Lewis once tasted one of my lovely mushrooms, White Queen?”
“Oh, you did,” she naively turned to face Lewis, clapping her hands together. “Delicious aren’t they?”
Lewis said nothing. He was starting to fall down the rabbit hole then. Carolus had been surfacing more and more, and his madness was prevailing.
Pillar patted him, pretending empathy, “You know what, darling. We should let Lewis go now. His mushroom was a special one. It helped forget something he didn’t want to remember.”
“Is that true?” she asked Lewis who resided to silence again. It wasn’t much silence as it was weakness and confusion.
“But wait,” she said. “If you took a mushroom to help you forget, how do you remember that you took a mushroom to forget?” She rolled her eyes and giggled.
The Pillar gazed back at Lewis and patted his shoulders. He leaned forward and whispered in his ear, “What do you make of that, Lewis?”
“I-I-,” Lewis began. Years before he’d began stuttering after the events of Mr. Jay killing Alice’s family, but since taking the mushroom it had intensified. “Don’t know.”
“Don’t bother,” Pillar continued whispering. “The mushroom has side effects. It messes with your mind. Makes you remember and not remember. Be there and not be there. You are you, and then you are someone else.”
Lewis fisted a hand, but the horror in Pillar’s wife’s eyes stopped him. He didn’t want to traumatize the poor girl. “I will come back later,” he said. “Please, look at the photos White Queen.”
“Your pathetic photos, Loui,” Pillar waved him goodbye. “You know noh wha ah think yah should dooo?” he mocked him. “You shh-haul m-maybe w-w-write ah book.”
Lewis left defeated, and the Pillar embarked his mushroom throne to smoke again.
As for the White Queen, this moment began to wake her up. The Pillar’s cruelty to Lewis shook her from the inside out. She flipped through the photos and suddenly dropped them all on the floor.
Could that be?
Did she see what she thought she’d seen or was it the effect of the mushrooms the Pillar fed her? Lewis’ incident ignited her curiosity and shook her out of her naivety.
She knelt down. Picked up the photos and saw the girl in the photo was talking to her. In a picture?
“He is not who you think he is,” the girl in the picture told her. “He gave you a mushroom, just like he gave Lewis one.”
The White Queen’s heart trembled with betrayal. She wasn’t sure, but this was an eye-opening experience. She read the girl in the picture’s name at the bottom:
Constance Westmacott.