The Dark Forest: A Collection Of Erotic Fairytales(167)

They had to fight to get me on the stretcher, to strap me down and prep for my treatment. The lights flickered as they charged their machine, Sir Rothfield calling for an increased dosage. And then there was the smell of burnt feathers and more light than a single soul might tolerate.

Behind the gag I screamed. By the third shock I was incapable of screaming any more.





Chapter Eight





Stomach sour from another supper of rabbit stew, I lay on my back, eyes to the ceiling, and waited.

Maybe I was crazy. It no longer mattered. I had to get out of Rothfield asylum. It had to end.

I knew she would come after the clock’s booming ticks shook my bones. I don’t know why I knew, but I knew.

The Red Queen slithered out of her corner.

Turning my head to the side, arms still bound in the straightjacket and my ankles cuffed to the floor, I watched bloodied feet stain the pillowed ground with each slinking step the Red Queen took.

I offered her one word, the first I may have ever spoken to her. “Hello.”

Crackling noises, her squished, bubbling breaths, they would be my dirge. Tonight I was going to close my eyes and I was going to let her have me. Maybe she would peel off my skin and wear it as a hat. Then this would be over and I would be free.

There was no fight left in me.

She sensed it too, for her beady eyes shone bright behind the dripping tangles of her dark hair.

It’s funny that I had borne all the years of sleepless nights, all the treatments and examinations—hilarious even to think I’d ever thought I might find a way to do more than just delay the inevitable.

I could see clearly now.

All this time, I was standing in my own way; fighting back was pointless. There was no rabbit.

The Red Queen looked me dead in the eye. She’d even stopped her pacing. Standing hunched, rubbing her hands together, she clicked her teeth in excited chatter.

She had been the first. She would be the last.

After a lifetime of vigilance, I lowered my lashes and looked away.

I was laughing louder than the Madman of Cheshire as her feet pattered straight in my direction.

“Sweet Alice.”

My laughter turned to weeping at the first dulcet sing-song of the Hatter’s hello. Face turned into the floor, eyes screwed shut to block out the intrusive, never ending electric light, I sobbed, “Make it stop.”

The smile in his voice, the gentle teasing, it was cruel. “And why should I? This was all your doing.”

“I know.”

A light chuckle decorated his voice. “Ungrateful child... all I’d wanted was a single kiss. Was it worth it, this past year without my company?”

The padding under me shifted, and I imagined that he crouched, knees up like a cricket, right beside my buried head.

I was right. His breath ran over my ear. “Will you not look at me, Alice?”

No, I would not. How could I? “Please go away... bring the Red Queen back.” My voice broke and the sobs came all the harder. “I want to die.”

My hair had not been washed or properly combed in weeks, it was clumped and frizzy, a perfect shield over my face. The Hatter caught it up, tucking bits behind my ear. “Oh no, the dregs sent here don’t die. They will keep you alive well past old age. The only thing that will die will be your mind, piece by piece, until you are a shell for them to claim they’ve cured. They will carve my sweet Alice up for her own good. I’ve always appreciated the evils of a good nut house.”

A ring of truth ruined the softness in which the Hatter spoke. Whether he was mocking me or cautioning me, it mattered little. I got the point: I was to receive no mercy. Turning my wet nose from the floor, breath shaking, I let the Hatter see what I had become.

The familiar sharp lines of his face, the bizarre yellow glow of his eyes, his manic smile inches from my tear streaked cheeks, he giggled. Crouched over me like a spider on its prey, my body wrapped in the straightjacket and pinned to the floor, I may as well have been spun in his silk—a snack saved for later in a web of padded white.

The brightness of the room’s bare bulb haloed around the Hatter’s head, casting an angelic glow. Had I the capacity to laugh, I would have. “Maybe none of it is real. Perhaps I am still a little girl, tucked into bed, having one long, bad dream.”

Dusty knuckles smoothed over my cheek. “Your suffering is as real as anything.”

“Was I not a good girl?”

The Hatter looked at me as if he loved me. “Mommy and Daddy, do you still think they will come for you? His greed, her vanity... acquiring their souls was child’s play. What they offered for loveliness, success in business, what they are willing to give without even knowing what I take, a beauty in itself. But you, you would not take my pennies for your tooth. At your essence you would never esteem riches. Exquisiteness was bestowed on you in spades, yet it’s only value in your eyes is how it might please your parents. Still you love them, though they sent you here and will leave you to rot. Who has ever cared for you but I?”

I had nothing and no one. “You promised to torment me.”

“And I have. The Devil owes me a great debt, and I chose to collect upon it in acquiring you. But he cannot bestow upon me what isn’t his to give. You are pure as much as you are insane. As fun as it has been teasing and tricking you into giving me what I desire, I’ve grown impatient. Games, tea, drying your tears on my sleeve, what did I get for it? To hold your hand and kiss your cheek? You deserve all they do to you for thinking to deny me.” With that he bent lower, laying his cold lips on the corner of my mouth, a whisper following. “The Devil will have his due and so will I. It can all end, sweet Alice, if you would just give yourself to me of your own free will. Have you had enough? Let me take you home.”