Past: Yellow Bus, London
“I ’m not going to kill you, Jack.” Alice gritted her teeth.
Jack’s grip was as hard. “All you have to do is run the bus into a wall or off the bridge, then jump or something.”
Alice’s eyes moistened. “No way.”
“I know you don’t love me,” Jack said. “I know you thought I forgot and made me your boyfriend to get to my father.”
“That’s not true.”
“I know, Alice.”
“Okay, only in the beginning, but then I realized that I…”
“Don’t say it,” Jack insisted. “Don’t lie to yourself.”
“But I do…”
“Think of it. When were you there for me? I’m always there for you. You never come to save me. I’m not blaming you. I’m saying you have a duty toward the children and yourself. I’m not on the list. Hardly.”
“Jack, it’s not the time for melodrama. You have to know that I love you.”
“Stop it,” his grip hurt her now. “If you kill me, my father will go crazy. He will show up and you will kill him. It’s your only chance. None of the others can. Fabiola, Lewis, and the Pillar, they are barely dealing with their troubles. I can help.”
Alice finally pulled her hand away, her eyes as moist as before, but focused on Jack’s eyes. She admired his strength. His no bullshit stare. There was no tinge of hesitation in it, and he wasn’t suicidal. He wanted to help. He wanted to play his part in saving the world.
He wanted to be remembered as Jack Diamonds who saved someone, not as Jack Jabberwocky who had changed his name to Diamonds for the love of cards, and to escape the shame of being the son of evil itself.
“I won’t kill you, Jack,” Alice said firmly.
“You will,” he said and pulled out a mirror.
In an instant, he pulled her again and forced her to stare into the mirror.
The other students said nothing.
Why?
After the Pillar, Fabiola, and Lewis left, only followers of Black Chess were on the bus. Disguised as students. Some of them were human but with loyalty to Black Chess.
They watched Jack force Alice to stare in the mirror, unaware of his plan.
They thought Jack had awakened the darkness in himself, after resisting for years, and began torturing Alice by making her darker self, Malice, resurface.
Everyone knew Alice feared mirrors because of Malice.
It was time to bring her back.
Alice had been taken by the noose and had little time to comprehend. It only took one look in the mirror to see the white rabbit which resembled Malice in her face.
“Missed me?” Malice snickered.
Alice would have fought the change, hadn’t she been totally shocked by Jack’s doing.
Little did she know of his plan.
Once Malice snickered in the mirror, Jack removed the mirror and tucked it back into his backpack.
This prevented Malice from appearing but left Alice in a state of fear with a tinge of evil and with little reason in her system.
He stared into her eyes and said, “Get in the driver’s seat and drive the bus over the bridge.”
Hesitant, hypnotized, she surrendered to the evil inside her, aware of Jack’s theory. Sometimes one had to use evil to fight evil.
She found herself running to the driver and kicking him off his seat.
That was when the members of Black Chess on the bus realized the devilish plan of Jack’s. They were too late.
When they went to stop Alice from driving the bus over the bridge and killing Jack to provoke his father and force him into a final battle, Jack stood in their way.
Jack began slicing at them with his edgy playing cards.
He could only sustain the fight for so long before the members of Black Chess themselves attacked him, and in an ironic twist of fate, killed him.
Alice hadn’t known Jack was killed by them when she drove the bus over the bridge and jumped out before it hit the ground.
She lived the rest of her life thinking she had killed Jack like he asked her. A guilt so strong she could not handle reality anymore and subconsciously gave in to her mind preferring to reside in madness and not face the pain of real life.
Madness had this strange quality to it, one that people rarely consider; it made you forget the pain.