Present: Inside the Jabberwocky, London
T he insides of the Jabberwocky had cooled down, not much but Jack and I can walk and hopefully tolerate the heat, as long as we evaded a few hotter spots.
“Where is it?” I ask Jack.
“We’ll find it,” he says. “You can’t miss it. It’s a black heart pumping. The size of a big dining table.”
“You’ve been inside your dad before?” I scoff jokingly.
“I just know,” he said. “And please don’t call him dad.”
The beast doesn’t make it easy for us to crawl inside him as he is moving with anger and wrath. I am not sure what he wants to achieve by screaming and shouting. He is probably mad he can’t spit fire anymore. And the fact that he is probably half-blind now.
But that isn’t going to kill the Jabberwocky. I have to stab him with my Vorpal sword in the heart.
Jack entertains himself by kicking the beast’s guts wherever we walk.
“It’s not going to hurt much but imagine a flea is biting your insides.” He said.
“Trust me, I know the feeling,” I said, pointing at my abdomen Malice was gutting earlier. “I know the feeling.”
Crawling on all fours in a strange position, I glimpse the black heart nearby. My own heart races. Was I finally going to make it happen and kill him?
I crawl through his gut full of maggots and tentacles and eels to reach his heart. I have to chop these insignificant little obstacles on the way, but it comes as easy and unusual because I have my eyes on the Jabberwocky's black heart.
Jack stands far behind, examining the beast’s tongue and throat. I wonder what’s on his mind.
“I found it,” I shout back to him. “It’s time.”
Jack stares back at me with eyes that are keeping something from me—or are the fumes inside alluding me?
“Once you stab it a few times and the Jabberwocky begins to unbalance, you will have to crawl back fast to me,” Jack demands. “You understand?”
“And then we’ll do what?”
“I pinch his tongue and throat forcing him to open up again and jump out. I think it’s not the craziest distance down to the ground. We’ll survive.”
“Okay,” I nod.
My Vorpal sword’s glitter is the color of lightning again. The purest I have ever seen, so much that I think I’m not only going to stab the beast but electrocute his heart. The same way I’ve suffered in the Mush Room. The irony doesn’t escape me.
This is what the March Hare meant when he said the Jabberwocky returned from the Looking Glass without a heart. It’s simply a black substance coating his real heart. Disgusting.
“Do it,” Jack demands. “Now!”
I raise my hands in the air, gripping the sword, and take a deep breath.
With all my might I stab his heart.
“This is for the mushroomers!”
Volcanoes of blood erupt inside and the Jabberwocky’s screams echo inside of his skeleton. I wonder how he sounds outside, but I grip on his guts with one hand, avoiding to fall into his disgusting guts.
“Hold tight,” Jack says, hardly keeping his balance.
“I think it’s not enough,” I tell him and balance myself to stab the Jabberwocky again.
“This is for the Children!”
The children’s voices gain power again when I stab him. Louder and louder.
“He is not dead yet!’ Jack shouts as rivers of blood flood the Jabberwocky’s inside. “Harder, Alice.”
I raise my sword again, and remember the past. Almost all of it. Including what happened to the Hatter and the Pillar. But another memory brings me anger--and strength.
The memory of my dead family killed by the Jabberwocky. The memory is about to give me a heart attack. I have never remembered it so vividly. The night Lewis began to stuttered upon seeing my family slaughtered.
“This is for my family, ugly fuck!”
I stab him.
Then again.
Again.
And again.
With each stab, the Jabberwocky goes bonkers and we barely keep our positions inside. His deafening roars will stay with me in my nightmares forever. The only antidote will be the enchanting, happy voices of the children. It’s as if they feel the victory.
“Enough!” Jack says.
But I can’t stop.
Again.
And Again,
“Enough, Alice,” Jack is worried. “You’re turning into Malice.”
His final words stops me. I turn and look at him, hardly seeing him clearly across rivers of blood. But his fear is unmistakable. I think I was turning to Malice and he stopped me.
“Don’t worry. It’s the line between good and evil,” Jack says. “Now crawl over or we’ll drown inside this river of blood.
I’m paralyzed with shock--and gratification to having avenged my family.
“Now!” Jack demands.
I crawl back.
Eels and tentacles try to wrap themselves around my legs but I cut through. I’m alive but in a haze. Winning and killing the Jabberwocky feels like a dream. Like everything we wait for so, so long. When it happens, we can’t believe it finally did.
Jack pulls my hand to help me up then pushes me past him.
“Go near the fangs,” he says. “I will pinch the roof of his tongue and he will open up.”
I run toward the big teeth and plan on jumping outside as they part open.
Then I stop.
Jack isn’t following me.
I turn around, quizzically.
Jack isn’t even looking at me. He is knotting the beast’s insides with his hands and pinching them to increase the pain.
“Jack!” I scream.
“Just go!”
“Not without you.”
“I have to do this.”
“You don’t,” I say. “I stabbed his heart. He is going to die soon.”
Jack turns and looks straight into my eyes. This is when I realize he lied to me. “It’s not how he dies,” he says. “I mean it is, but I have to keep him in pain from the inside to make sure, or he will wake up and mend his black heart.”
I’m without words. Without meaning. Without heart.
Now I remember Jack asking me not to hate him earlier. I’m worried this is what he is talking about.
“I’m not leaving you,” I say, attempting to crawl back.
“Stop!” He shouts. “Think about it. You’re Alice. You mean a lot to the children. You have to live. I’m his son, and evil is in me. I have to finish this. No one wins if you die as well.”
“Nonsense!” I say and stand up to him, the Jabberwocky’s mouth behind me.
Jack looks at me. It’s a confident look that worries me. As if he knows what will happen next, and I don’t.
“It’s been a pleasure, Alice of Wonderland,” he approached and touches my face and then runs his hand through my hair. “You’re the bravest I’ve met.”
“What are you talking about?” Saying that I’m puzzled is an understatement.
“What I’m about to do now,” he says. “You’ve done the same back in Wonderland. You did it to Malice.”
“What are you talking about?” I remember Malice hinting the same.
“My respect, Alice. I only learn from the best.”
I have no idea what he is talking about.
Then he slowly pulls his hand from under my hair and, like a magician, shows me a card.
I stare at it. It takes a moment to put two and two together.
The card is not a Jack of Diamonds like he usually does. It’s the last kind of card I’d ever expected to see.
A spade.
“I’m not Jack of Diamonds,” he says. “You killed Jack of Diamonds with your sword. Malice played you.”
“Holy shit…” I’m cupping my mouth with my hands.”
“Don’t worry,” he says. “My diamonds part isn’t mad at you.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Jack Spades,” he says. “The Jabberwocky’s favorite version. The darker side in all of us. The darker side evil loves in us.”
“You’re lying,” I hold back the tears. This isn’t happening. “If you’re Spades, then why are you helping me and sacrificing yourself for the children?”
“Because of what Jack told me about you, about how he loves you, about how strong you are and what you went through,” Spades says.
“I don’t believe a word,” I punch him in the chest. “Why are you doing this? You’re Jack Diamonds. You have to be,” I’m crying in his chest now. In the chest of Jack’s darker side. A gut feeling tells me he is telling the truth because Jack’s heart isn’t beating, like his father it must have a black coat to it. I just don’t want to believe it.
“Would Jack Diamonds know the secret of his father’s black heart?” Spades challenges me.
Then he pushes me violently to the back.
I might be the chosen one, and I have stabbed the Jabberwocky in the heart, but I’m a fragile girl when it comes to my heart. Thus I have no power pushing back.
At the edge of the Jabberwocky’s mouth, I feel like I want to tell him that I love him, but I see it in his eyes. It’s not him. I killed Jack Diamonds. This one is Spades, a dark soul who wants to do good, and is my only hope to kill the Jabberwocky once and for all.
“Thank you,” I say as he pushes me out. “For saving me.”
Then he says, “Don’t thank me. Thank you--or Jack. One day you will remember that you have done the same in the past.”