Madness (Madness #1)

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

“Off! Off! Off!” the voice I’ve deemed as Queenie echoes in my mind, shrill and demanding, as the guard cloaked in a crimson red uniform roughly drags me out of the transport van.

The vehicle creaks and groans, shifting from our weight, and the chains rattle as I shuffle my feet and walk down the narrow aisle between the leather seats. My feet stumble, and my wrists chafe against the cold metal of my chains.

I can feel the eyes of the other guards on me from outside of the van, and Queenie’s voice grows more persistent and urgent, “Off, off, off!”

“Come on! We don’t have all day!” another guard calls from outside. The guard by my side's grip tightens, propelling me forward.

Outside…

Something I’ve not seen much of.

The weight of that night lingers like a shadow, and I wish it never happened.

But our shared madness was bound to clash at some point, and I couldn’t cope with the darkness anymore.

Queenie laughs manically inside of my head, “We chopped off her head! Off! Off! Off!” and I grimace.

I want to shake my head, to bash my skull into the corner of the metal rust bucket we are in, but I refrain.

They already think I’m bonkers.

I jump down from the vehicle, stumbling slightly, unable to balance myself, and the guard’s hand tightens painfully around my thin arm.

The rough gravel beneath my feet adds to my instability, and I can feel the chains tighten when my legs spread in an attempt to balance myself.

A sea of red instantly surrounds me .

Guards are at my every side, and I don’t even get a moment to enjoy the rare moment of sunshine in England.

“Is this him?” a woman with ice-blonde hair and piercing blue eyes steps closer. A nurse in a snugly fitting outfit, a folder clutched tightly in her hands, scans me from head to toe with curiosity.

“Tsk. You don’t look like much. Perhaps we got the wrong Alice,” she mutters, more to the guards than me.

My lips part, intent on telling her that I am Alice, but my vision turns hazy, and when it clears, her head has swelled to three times the size as before.

Her eyes, now impossibly large, bore into mine with an intensity that sends a shiver down my spine.

I try not to panic, knowing it’s just the madness playing tricks on me, but her head is ginormous, and her facial features seem to swell along with it.

“Not a talkative one, I see. That’s fine; we can always change that. We have ways of making even the craziest of patients talk,” she sighs, my lack of response clearly bothering her. “Well then, I’m Nurse White. Let’s introduce you to the Warden, shall we?” she chirps, but her voice is loud and harsh, making me cringe .

Her enormous head nods, and I worry for a moment that she will topple over.

“What an enormous head,” Queenie mocks my thoughts, “Can we chop it off, off, off?”

I shake my head.

I learned long ago not to reply to the two voices that live inside my head—that’s how people end up believing you’re mad, after all.

The air feels heavy, almost suffocating, as we stand before the imposing metal doors. The grey building towers above us, casting a shadow that swallows any traces of sunlight.

I imagine stepping back just a few steps to feel the warmth of the sun on my skin, but then they would think I’m trying to flee, escape, and run, run, run away.

Looking skyward, I see dark rolling clouds that form into shapes of all different kinds.

This was my favourite game as a child because I didn’t feel mad.

Alice and I would point out all sorts, and for a moment, we were normal as our arms stretched above us and our fingers pointed to bears, sharks, and birds—lots of birds.

A dark cloud passes over us, resembling a giant wyvern gliding over us gracefully.

“I wish to fly. Maybe we can ask the wyvern to save us and fly us far, far, far away from here,” the male voice says .

He has no name yet, but Queenie is loud inside my head, while he is not.

He lurks in the shadows of my mind, much like I did as a child, careful to avoid being seen by Alice and only emerging when necessary.

Alice once told me about the Cheshire Cat from Wonderland, who would materialise and vanish at will as if dissolving into thin air.

Maybe that’s what the voice is.

Three clicks in rapid succession draw my attention away from the sky and my thoughts of flying back to reality.

The doors open, revealing a large, opposing man standing there. His arms are crossed over his chest, bulging his muscly arms, and he watches me with narrowed eyes. His onyx hair is a stark contrast to his brown eyes that seem to pierce through me, assessing every inch.

The silence between us lingers for a moment, feeling heavy and suffocating.

“Alice?” he asks, his voice deep and gravelly, as I suspected.

I nod.

“Do you not speak? Perhaps you do not know how to speak,” he wonders, and I open my mouth again.

“I do,” my voice a mere whisper, “I’m Al.”

“Not Alice?”

“Not Alice. ”

Nurse White snaps her fingers at the guards, and I snap my mouth closed once again.

There is no use for me to speak anymore.

Nurse White points to my chains, ordering the guards to release them. "There's no need for such things here. Alice is going to be just fine, and we’ll have your madness cured in no time.”

A younger guard moves to me, holding the keys to my chains in his hands. The cold metal still bites into my skin, and it will be a relief to have them off. As the guard fumbles with the lock, a strange sense of hope—something I haven’t felt in years—churns in my gut.

Could Nurse White be right?

Could this place really help my fractured mind be ordinary? To not have the madness that clings to every crevice of my mind not take over.

The chains fall away, and I rub at my sore wrists, staring at the red marks left behind.

The guard steps back a few paces more than necessary, and Nurse White sends me a smile that looks twisted and filled with deadly promise.

I feel the familiar sensation creeping in again, threatening to consume me and send me spiralling into mania once more as the feeling of being trapped here forever ticks away in the back of my mind.

“Tick. Tick. Tick. Alice warned you of Wonderland. No one escapes… never, ever, ever, ever,” Queenie squawks in my head .

Nurse White’s words echo alongside hers, and I know it was all a fantastical allure to pull me into Wonderland willingly.

“You are far too mad for the ordinary world, Alice. Wonderland is where you belong, just as Alice did.”

“Shall we go to the infirmary? I want to ensure you don’t need any immediate medical help, and we can try you with some medicine that may help,” the warden says, and for a moment, I feel as if he’s sincere.

He steps closer, his shoe sounding like a shotgun in the empty, echoey foyer, and the grey silhouette that stalks him turns from man to monster. The dim lights above us flicker, his shadow dances against the cold tiled wall, and the shadow jumps between human and monster.

“A Jabberwocky!” the male voice in my head whispers in terrified awe, “You are trapped, trapped, trapped.”

Alice had told me all about the Jabberwocky that held her prisoner here years and years ago.

He was the warden, but he was older and scarier – or so her stories went.

However, Alice had the ability to weave tales that danced on the edge of reality and fantasy, leaving me unsure of what I could believe .

The line between her truth and fiction was as blurred as the madness that shifts my reality to delusion.

The Jabberwocky stands as the guardian of Wonderland, she said, and he will never let you leave, she also said.

But she did escape.

She defied the odds and managed to weave her way through the maze that is Wonderland, escaping into the normal world, and she was still mad.

Maybe.

Maybe if I stay, the madness that gnaws at my mind will go away.

Queenie laughs cruelly, “We will never, ever, ever, ever go away. We are in your head, head, head forever.”

“Welcome to Eden Institute, Alice,” Nurse White says with a broad, manic grin.

“Wonderland is a wonderful place to be.” The Warden mutters after her, and my head swings to look at him.

His brown eyes are cold and calculating, and they march along with me through the institute's corridors, which seem to stretch out before me. They are sterile and foreboding, lined with doors that hide patients just as mad as me behind them.

I feel a shiver run down my spine as a patient slams his body against the door, the small clear window showing his face that is laced with fury .

He presses his face to the glass, and my mind twists his face into that of the Cheshire cat.

“Welcome to Wonderland, Alice.”