Madness (Madness #1)

Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

I’m called into the warden’s office.

The hallways twist and turn as usual, but the knowledge that I’m about to face the Jabberwocky for the first time since my first day here has my nerves shooting adrenaline through my body.

I knock on his door, and the sound is loud and echoey in the large hallway leading to his office and the infirmary.

“Come in!” he calls out.

I enter, and the large space is intimidating, but I square my shoulders and smooth down the blue T-shirt I’m wearing.

The Jabberwocky shadow looms over us, cast over the wall, and I watch it from the side of my eye, waiting for the delusions to twist it and have it strike.

“Take a seat, Al,” he says, gesturing to the chair on the opposite side of his desk.

There’s a chess board on his desk, and the game looks half-finished.

The red and black pieces are enchanting, and they look as if they were hand-carved, as does the board on which they sit.

I tear my eyes from the chessboard and glance at the warden, who stares at me with pity.

My brow furrows, “Um… is there a reason I was called here?” I ask, trying not to sound rude.

He clears his throat, “Yes, sorry. I was just informed that your mother – Alice, has been cremated. They wanted to know if she had specific wishes for her ashes.”

I shoot out of my chair, stumbling from the force, and the leather chair clatters to the ground.

My lungs squeeze, and I struggle to breathe in a lungful of air as I spiral and fall back into the same person I was moulded to be by Alice herself.

She was mad .

I am mad… so fucking utterly mad that I’m convinced she’s going to come for me even in death.

“But her head is off, off, off!” Queenie shouts.

“Shut up! I didn’t mean for it to happen!” I shout back, my fist pounding against my skull, desperate to dislodge the voices for even a moment.

“Didn’t you, Alice? You always wished to cause her harm as the night crept in on you. You wanted her dead. Just admit it.”

“I didn’t!” I cry out, my vision turns hazy from the tears, and I sink to the floor, “I didn’t. I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

“Dead, dead, dead.” Queenie mocks.

“Al?” the warden says. I crack open my eyes, not even realising I had closed them, and he is crouched in front of me. “Are you okay?”

“I- “

“I know, silly question. But this place is all a little silly, isn’t it? Come on, sit, and I’ll make you some tea. We can talk if you want?”

He holds his hand out for me to take, and I oblige, letting him pull me from the floor and coaxing me back to the chair, which is now upright.

His shadow flickers, and I shake my head, clenching my eyes closed.

“How do you take your tea?” he asks me, the cup steaming in front of him.

“Just milk,” I answer .

“The correct way,” he chuckles, “Now, what just happened?”

“She was really cremated?”

He nods, stirring the tea, and then hands me the steaming cup.

“Alice would overshare details with me, and from as far back as I can remember, she always told me she wanted to be buried.”

“And that hasn’t happened,” he nods in understanding, “but why the freakout?”

“Because you are both utterly mad!”

“Mad, mad, mad!”

“She was sick. Her mind was sick, and she was cruel. She would tell me that if she weren’t buried, then her soul would be trapped, and if she were trapped, then she would make sure I was too,” I tell him.

I can hear how crazy my words sound the moment they leave my lips, but the warden just nods in understanding, “She threatened to haunt you?”

“The dead cannot speak,” I recite what she would say to me when she was lost to her madness.

Understanding lights up the warden's eyes, and he sips his tea, “The dead are also dead, Al. Her heart no longer beats. She cannot hurt you.”

“But she lost her head because of you, Alice. You should suffer.”

Queenie giggles manically inside of my head, “She is dead, dead, dead! ”

Ignoring the two voices in my head, I focus my attention on the warden as I desperately try to ignore how they both scream into my mind.

“You’re right. I guess I felt like I shouldn’t be allowed to grieve for her because of what I have done.”

“Grief is funny, Al. There is no correct way to cope with it.”

“But I killed her…” I say for the first time out loud, shocking myself.

The warden nods again, his onyx hair falling over his face, “You did, but I’ve read the files. I know…”

He doesn’t say anything more, but he doesn’t have to.

I forcefully place the cup down on his desk and stand. “Thank you for telling me, but I have therapy,” I excuse myself, making a hasty retreat from the room and having to physically restrain myself from running from his office.

I’m too focused on my escape that I narrowly avoid bumping into an excited Hare who rushes past me into the warden’s office.

“Wocky!” he shouts, slamming the door behind him.

“Al?” Red appears before me, and I startle. I'm too lost in my mind as it tumbles and spirals into the madness that got me sent here, “Come on,” she coaxes, her warm hand wrapping around my much colder one, leading me down the hallways back to her room .

Harry leaves his room as we arrive, and he takes in my ashen parlour, “Wits happened?”

“I do not know,” Red explains how she found me, and Harry follows us into Red’s space, not waiting for an invitation.

“Sit,” Red gestures to her bed with her head, and I hesitate.

It is an intimate thing to sit where she lays at night.

“Just sit doon,” Harry sighs, his hand gripping my shoulder and pulling me down to sit with him on the plush mattress.

It’s silent for a moment, neither of them knowing what to say, and I take comfort in the fact that they are both here with me, even if only for a moment.

They didn’t need to comfort me. Everyone in Wonderland has issues, and they are normally best left to deal with alone.

Some became violent when I tried to approach them to see if they were okay, and I learned that Wonderland is nothing like I thought it would be.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Red asks me.

Her eyes are sincere as she sits on the floor, her back resting against the bloody mural on her wall.

She says nothing else, and neither does Harry, who is waiting for me to talk.

“Go on, tell them what you did, Alice. Tell them that you killed thee, Alice. Tell them how you took her life, and you watched her eyelids blink once, then twice until her muchness left her.”

“Shut up,” I hiss, “I did not mean to kill her.”

“Kill who?” Harry asks. He leans forward, his beanie falling over his eyes briefly. He corrects it, resting his elbows on his knees, and stares at me expectantly, “Are yi a killer, not Alice? Will yi kill us?”

“Harry!” Red gasps.

“No…”

“Naw?” Harry says, “Naw, wit? Naw, yi areni a killer? Naw, yi willnae kill us? What naw are yi referring to?”

“Harry, stop!” Red shouts, growing angry, “We promised never to judge in here. Wonderland is so fucking messed up that we sometimes do not know the true reality we are in.”

Harry sighs, and the tiny field mouse he named Doris crawls out from his pocket to his shoulder.

She squeaks, standing on her hind legs, and he scowls down at her, “Killing fir food isnae the same as killing for nae reason, Doris,” he admonishes the tiny mouse.

“It was not for no reason. I had many reasons, but I do not wish to talk about them,” I finally say, feeling too raw to talk about what got me committed to Wonderland.

Red’s lips curl into a soft, gentle smile that seems to soften up her face. It isn’t a broad, toothy grin but rather a subtle, delicate one that shines with warmth and understanding.

I can feel my shoulders relaxing, and I feel like I can talk to her about the madness inside of my head.

Maybe she’ll understand why I had to kill Alice.

“They will not understand Alice. You areee a murderer, and they will hate you just as your mother did.”

“But we made her head fall off, off, off!”

“Al? What’s happened?” Red asks softly.

“They cremated her,” I say, trying to keep the croak out of my voice.

I don’t deserve to break.

After all, I’m the reason she’s gone.

“Is that a bad thing?” Harry asks, looking at me like I’ve honestly lost the plot.

“Was it something she wanted?” Red asks. Standing from where she was sitting, her dress rustles, the only sound in the room except my harsh breaths as I try to hold back the overwhelming panic that threatens to consume me.

How do I explain to them that Alice threatened to haunt me from the afterlife?

To make me suffer just as she had with her madness.

She gestures to Harry to move over, and the mattress dips from her weight as she sits between us both. Her arm rests against mine, and there is barely a brush of her skin against my forearm, but I can feel myself relaxing from her presence.

“She wanted to be buried in a field, I believe. She wanted to be free…” I trail off.

The reminder of what she promised should she be trapped in a small container after feels like a taunt, even from my own mind.

I never wanted this to happen.

I never meant for it to happen.

I just wanted to protect myself, to stop her madness from hurting me.

“Freedom is relative, is it not?”

“Aye, like when we are outside, do we no have only a wee bit of freedom?” Harry says.

“So, if you could get someone to scatter her ashes somewhere, would she then not be free?” Red suggests, and I think about it for a moment.

She could be right; as long as Alice’s ashes were scattered somewhere where her soul could be free, then I would not have the guilt that she did not get what she wished for because of my decisions.

“I do not know who,” I say, thinking out loud. “We had no family. No one other than us, and Alice did not let anyone close enough to be an option.”

“Wit about the Warden?” Harry tilts his head to the side in thought. His red hair is extra frazzled today, sticking out in wild tufts from beneath his beanie hat .

He’s dishevelled, and I want to ask him if he’s okay, but the lingering question about what to do with Alice plays in my head on repeat.

Do I leave it?

Let her ashes stay in the small container they place them in, or do I brave asking the jabberwocky if he will scatter Alice somewhere peaceful, far away from here?

“You could kill yourself, and then you would not need to worry about such meaningless things.”

“I could ask,” Red offers, but I’m already shaking my head before she finishes, “Why not?”

“I do not want you to have to talk to the warden.”

Harry scoffs, “She’s probably the best person tae talk tae him.”

“What do you mean?”

Red huffs, her head hits the wall behind us as she flops back, “He means that Jameson and I are a thing.”

“Oh.”

I try to ignore the pang of hurt that spears me in the chest, even when I have no right to feel like this.

She was with him long before I ever came along, and I’m too messed up in the head for a girl like her. I’ll settle for my dreams of her, where she lies in my arms for hours, comforting me through the things that happened in my childhood.

It’s the only way to keep her safe .

“She’s no just wi the warden,” Harry says with a knowing smirk, but I don’t miss the longing in his eyes that reflects my own.

“I didn’t realise that my love life was such an important topic, hatter ,” she snarks, playfully slapping his arm.

“Hatter?”

Now it’s Harry’s turn to sigh, “Aye. Ma Mum and Dad own a hat shop doon the toon in Scotland.”

“That’s… cool?”

“It’s fucking lame, that’s wit it is,” Harry grumbles, “Anyway, aye, yir dating life is interesting, Red, since yi are wi the warden and the most feared patient in this place.”

“Do they both know?” I slap my hand over my mouth, the question blurting out before I can stop myself.

My cheeks flame, and I duck my head.

“They both know, and they are both ok with it. Especially because they both know I love them equally and anyone else I would want to be with…” she laughs softly, almost only a quick intake of breath, “but Jameson is fiercely protective, so I need to keep him updated before I let someone else into my heart, y’know?”

“I’m gonnae go. Doris needs feeding,” he says, standing from the bed and running his hands down his trousers. Harry turns his head sharply to look at the mouse on his shoulder. “Aye, Doris, ya need food, so wheesht.”

Harry strides from the room, the door closing behind him with a loud bang.

“Are you okay?” Red’s hand hovers over mine for a moment as if she’s hesitating to touch me before the warmth from her skin seeps into mine.

I turn my hand over hers, interlinking our fingers with bravery I didn’t know I had, and feel like I can breathe again for a moment, “Not really. I feel numb, I guess. Like she’s gone, and I’m never going to see her again. She was horrible to me most of the time, but she was my Alice, y’know, and she wasn’t all bad.”

“But she wasn’t the best either, right?”

“Right.”

“Then numb is ok for now. I’ll ask Jameson if he can arrange something for Alice,” Red squeezes my hand in hers, and I nod my head in agreement.