Madness (Madness #1)

Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

I bolt from the cafeteria back to my room, but it makes it no better. The walls close in on me, and what should be my sanctuary in this place becomes a prison inside of a prison.

The delusions that plague me are stronger today, and just once, I wish I could control them, wanting nothing more than to experience normal .

Maybe the arrival of the twins is to blame?

Mad… I’m utterly mad.

I repeat the mantra, the words tumbling from my lips like a prayer, curling into a ball on top of my duvet, and pray that I get even the slightest reprieve from this insanity.

I’ve heard what the other say, the cruel whispers, but I’m no more insane than the others who reside here.

“You can tell yourself that, but you will never be thee Alice. She escaped while you are trapped here forever.”

“Trapped, trapped, trapped,” Queenie chirps, the voices in my head now seeming to work together to drive me to the brink of insanity.

Unless I’m already there.

I must fall asleep, my mind finally quieting enough for me to slip into unconsciousness.

When I wake, I lay on the bed, basking in the silence, and breathe in a deep lungful of air.

“Al?” Red’s tentative voice echoes through the wooden door, followed by a soft knock.

“Come in,” I sigh and sit up, leaning back against the headboard.

“Are you alright? You ran off pretty quick at breakfast.” She moves further into my room, sitting on the edge of my bed, and my breath hitches from having her in my space.

The room feels smaller with her presence but somehow warmer, too.

I run a hand through my hair, trying to shake off the last remnants of sleep .

I’ve been here for two days now, and just being close to her is enough for my heart to beat against my chest like a drum.

Her hand covers mine, and I stare at where we are connected, my cock straining in my joggers.

If there wasn’t enough evidence that I was a raging virgin, getting a boner from a simple hand hold is enough.

“I’m okay, Red. I’m still getting used to people.” I tell her, hoping to ease some of the worry in her eyes.

“Can I lay down with you?” she asks, surprising the shit out of me.

I nod, my mouth too dry to speak, and shuffle against the wall so she can lie on the outside.

I feel the bed dip from her moving next to me, and her hand interlinks with mine.

The touch is comforting and grounding.

“Sometimes…” she starts, then pauses, her breath hitching, “Sometimes when I first got here, I would ask one of the flowers to lay down with me, and I would feel a little less lonely in such a scary place.”

I nod, not sure if she’s even looking at me, “Why did you end up in here?” I ask, “You don’t have to tell me.” I rush to reassure her, but her soft giggle makes me relax back into the mattress.

“I have a sister who hates me. She convinced my family I was suicidal and that Wonderland was the best place for me. I wasn’t, by the way, suicidal, I mean. A little sad, maybe, but I didn’t want to die,” she rushes out, and I squeeze her hand.

“Are you now?” I ask, having taken note of the scars that litter her arms over the last two days.

She doesn't cover them, but I assumed you didn’t really have to in a place like this.

Every one of us has probably contemplated suicide at some point to escape our realities, however, real they may be. I have no judgment towards the woman who lays next to me if she has.

“Sometimes. Though, I don’t think it will be my hand that kills me…”

“Wh-”

“Come on, we have group therapy, and you can’t be late on your first day. Abe will have a fit,” she chirps, jumping from the bed and pulling me up with her.

I follow, taking a mental note to ask her about what she meant later.

The moment I step into the hallway, my delusions appear again, warping and twisting the halls. The beady eyes in the corners follow me as I walk and blink.

“Al?” Red stops and turns.

“It’s all twisty,” I murmur.

“Lost, lost, lost down the rabbit hole you go, go, go,” Queenie starts, and I grimace from how loud she is inside of my head.

“Come on. I got you,” Red retakes my hand, leading me down the halls .

The delusions retreat but not far, only just enough that I can walk hand in hand with Red without feeling like I’m going to fall down a never-ending tunnel and get lost there forever.

We reach a blue door, and the strong smell of incense leaks from the crevices. The scent is thick and cloying, a blend of sandalwood and myrrh that is somehow comforting and overwhelming at the same time.

I cover my nose with my hand, but Red stops me, “Don’t. Abe doesn’t like it when we do that.”

“I’m going to get a headache from how strong it is,” I say.

“We all do, but Abe is the one who decides what Ward we stay on – you don’t want to end up in the rabbit hole or worse, solitary.”

A cold sweat breaks out over the back of my neck at that last word.

I have experienced enough of my own company to know that I would not return from it whole.

I take one last deep breath, where the air is only slightly polluted by the smell of incense burning, and walk into the room with Red.

The dim light of the room casts shadows that seem to dance with the flickering candles—rabbits, foxes, and horses seem to form shapes on the cold wall.

The others are already here, and it seems like we are the last to arrive .

We have set groups for therapy, and I want to sigh in relief when I see that my group consists of Red, Desmond, Dusty, Harry, and apparently, his pet mouse, Doris.

The room is filled with a cloud of smoke, candles burning on nearly every surface, and incense sticks dotted on various surfaces. The sandalwood scent mixes with jasmine and lavender, creating a dizzying scent.

“Come in and take a seat,” the older man says, gesturing to the two vacant seats in front of him. His eyes follow us, and wrinkle lines form around them as he smiles.

The chair creaks as I sit in it, and I fear for a moment that it’s going to give out under me. When nothing happens, I take stock of everyone who is in the room with us and then pause on the psychologist known as Abe.

He has slicked-back white hair, a white beard covering the entire bottom half of his face, and eyes that are almost black in the low light of the room. His blue suit is perfectly pressed and clings to him like a glove. I try to figure out how old he is. He is definitely not in his sixties but not quite in his fifties, either.

There’s an air of wisdom around him, and working in Wonderland tells me he’s seen and understood more than most.

He procures a pipe and sparks a lighter, the smell of tobacco wafting around the room, mixing with the other various smells .

Is he even allowed to smoke during our sessions?

I open my mouth to ask, but a sharp jab of Red’s elbow into my gut causes my mouth to slam shut.

“And you areee?” Abe drawls, blowing smoke from his pipe.

“Al.”

“There is no Al in Wonderland, are you perhaps Alice?”

I can feel my frustration growing the more people in this place insist on calling me Alice. I did not ask to be named after her, nor did I ever want to be anything like her.

Now, here I am, in the same place with the same name and no clue how to navigate Wonderland with the rest of the curious people who stay here.

“For the sake of any register, my name is Alice, but I do not like being called Alice. I want to be called Al.”

“Very well, Al,” Abe says, his black ballpoint pen scribbling against the notepad in his hands. He blows another cloud of smoke into the air, covering his face almost entirely, and I stare as it dissipates, revealing a blue-faced caterpillar.

“Did you get some tea, Al?” Abe asks, nodding his now round face towards the table to the side of the room laden with teapots and biscuits .

“I got it,” Red says, jumping from her seat and returning with two saucers, balancing cups, and some biscuits.

I take it, whispering a thank you to her, and balance the delicate plate on my lap.

Harry eyes us both in the way she sits close to me, and I swear his eyes flare with jealousy when she shuffles her seat closer to mine, and I huff out a laugh.

He has nothing to be jealous of – I see the way she stares at him, the longing in her eyes for his attention. Someone like me, who has barely seen the sunlight in years, who can barely hold himself together to have a decent conversation, is not someone she would be interested in.

Red is a vision and one of the first people never to be targeted by the delusions in my head; she is a comfort I never knew I needed, so I latch onto her, desperate to keep some of the light she gives me instead of the spiralling madness inside of me.

Her arm brushes against mine, and I see her follow my line of sight, laughing when she sees Harry’s flare of jealousy, but she shakes her head at him.

“Shall we get started?” Abe says, gesturing around the room.

The others all settle, similar saucers held in their hands, and I smirk when I see that Desmond’s plate is piled with biscuits and has no cup filled with tea .

“Have you tried the biscuits here?” he asks when he sees me looking at him, “They don’t buy the shit ones. These are proper biscuits, the good shit. Nice to see our parent’s bribes work in our favour sometimes, y’know?” he laughs, but the sound is hollow, tinged with sadness.

His parents bribed the institute to put him here. His brother, too?

What sort of horrible people…

“It’s a common theme in Wonderland, Al. Not everyone was born mad; some of us were conditioned into madness,” Red says sadly, plucking a custard cream from her saucer and biting into it.

“I want you all to think about this question, really think about it, then we’ll discuss your answers,” Abe starts. He takes a long draw from his pipe, the tobacco casting a warm orange glow over his blue caterpillar face, “Who are you?”

“Huh?” Harry questions, then turns to the mouse on his shoulder, “No, I heard him, Doris, but what sort of question is that?”

“Think about it. Who are you? Who do you think you are, and who are you actually?”

I think about it for a moment, silence falling over the room as we all ponder his question.

Who am I?

I’m Al, but is that all I am?

I was a son.

“But you are not anymore, are you not Alice? ”

“Her head is off, off, off!”

“Shh!” I hiss to the voices, nearly dropping my plate in the process, when Red jumps in fright next to me, “Sorry.”

“Have you come up with something?” she asks, her forehead wrinkling in thought, and I have to resist the urge to reach up and smooth it out.

The others listen in, and we form a small circle.

Abe smirks around his pipe, and I see the calculating gleam in his eyes.

The same one Alice would get before she would tell me about another adventure she made up for me.

I wonder if he knew her.

“So… who are we?” Dusty starts, his eyes glancing at the clock that’s ticking away on the wall behind me.

“We’re us,” Desmond says.

“Are you?” I start, “Or are you who people have told you to be? Who they moulded you into?”

Silence – no one says a word, and I sigh.

“When were you all put in here?” I ask.

“All of us have been here since we were around thirteen,” Red says, her nails picking at a scab on her wrist, “We’ve been here for ten years now.”

Ten years in Wonderland – no wonder none of them know who they are.

Then again, neither do I .

Alice controlled every aspect of my life, locking me away when I would try to go outside, claiming it was too dangerous and the evil queen was after us.

Her delusions would get so dangerous that sometimes I would go days without food or water, convincing herself that they were poisoned.

‘The food will make you so large that you’ll tear apart the house from the inside out, and the drink will make you so little that I’ll step on you.’

So, I would starve, the pains in my stomach becoming a dull ache after a few days, and I would manage to sneak a few sips of water from the bathroom tap when I knew she was asleep.

“So, what is your answer?” Abe asks, his long, fuzzy body sliding across the floor over to where we all sit.

I know none of them can see these delusions, but just once, I wish someone could see the crazy my mind conjures up.

“We do not have any,” Desmond says, popping another biscuit into his mouth.

“What about you, Al? Do you know who you are?”

“I am everyone, and I am no one,” I tell him, “I was a son, and I am now a patient in Wonderland, a friend to the people sitting around me. I am myself, and I am not myself. Every person I meet meets a different version of myself, even the one who I meet in the mirror.”

Abe nods his head in approval, “Very good. But who are you now?”

“I do not know.”