“I don’t know what to do,” I said on an exhale, sagging against the wall. I felt a pinch and gasped pulling back to see the wallpaper flora moving—a flower with a cat mouth coated in blood.
“Win the game,” Mad Hatter said, almost singing the words.
“I’m not sure what winning means,” I said, giving her a confused look. Mad Hatter only stared at me without blinking. It looked like her thoughts were miles away, not in this dank hallway at all. I looked around, taking notice of mushrooms growing on the ceiling. They pulsed with a low light once I noticed them, as if aware I watched.
“Well, figure it out,” Mad Hatter finally said. “Until then, try to keep Cheshire from killing me like he did my friend. I fear my party is almost over.”
“Don’t be melodramatic,” I responded, trying and failing to offer some sort of well, I don’t know, comfort I suppose but I had no idea how to go about comforting Mad Hatter. “You’ll keep partying endlessly I’m sure,” I said, feeling a bit better about that attempt than the first.
Mad Hatter was looking directly at me—all the far-off gazes were gone. I fidgeted under her gaze.
“Do you think you could ever kill someone?” She asked all of a sudden.
“Of course not,” I said.
“Really? Not even for the greater good?”
“What are you on about?” I asked her.
“Would you kill your precious kitty?”
“Cheshire?” I gasped.
“What if it was you or him?”
“Are you suggesting Cheshire wants to kill me now? Both of us?” I asked in disbelief.
“I’m suggesting you kill Cheshire,” she snarled, her purple eyes sparkling, her straight white teeth peculiar in how perfect they were. As if crafted to look that way; as if she were actually some creature just attempting to look human.
She loomed in front of me, seeming to grow in height. I didn’t have a clue if it was just her presence or if she was really swelling before my eyes. Her voice filled the corridor loudly, burrowing in my ears.
“Kill them both, Alice. Save us from them.” Her eyes were angry and her face was cruel as she looked down at me. Everything about her filled the entire space until I felt there was no room left for me to exist in. I was overwhelmed and suddenly frightened.
“Us?” I asked, close to tears. She couldn’t really be suggesting this. That I kill Cheshire and Caterpillar? That this was some weight for me to bear. That by not doing it I’d be damning people.
“Alice,” she hissed, her words sounding unlike her own as if some beast had taken the form of the Mad Hatter I knew. Finally, I reached up and shoved her back because she had taken over all of my space. She stumbled back and I took a deep breath as she shrunk to a normal size, her voice less vicious.
“You don’t think he’ll kill you?” She asked.
“Murder isn’t what he wants from me,” I said and she sent me a sly look.
“Haven’t you ever watched a cat?” She asked and I recalled my old one, Dinah, that I had as a child. “They stalk their prey. It’s fun to watch their determination. Cute how obsessed and intrigued they become.” I looked at her as she talked, a growing fear blossoming inside me. She noticed the panic crawling across my face and flashed another smile.
“You’re a rabbit the cat has caught. He’s playing with you and he’ll keep playing with you until you are dead. You told me to protect you from him, Alice.”
“When did I ask you to do that?” I asked her but my mind was tumbling over the visual she’d left me with. I thought of the time Dinah had caught a mouse. We tried to get it away from her but she was too quick. She played with the poor thing for hours, much too roughly. She’d drop it from her mouth, watch it scamper a few inches, and then her clawed paw sunk into it, drawing it back in.
Dinah kept playing until it was dead. When she realised it was never moving again she lost interest, picking it up in her mouth and bringing it to me. A dead rat at the bottom of my bed. A gift.
An image flashed of Cheshire leaving my corpse in Shaheen’s room when he was finally done with me. I looked up and realised I was alone, that Mad Hatter had disappeared and I hadn’t even realised. For an alarming second, I wondered if she had ever been here at all.
“Stop it,” I hissed to myself, cradling my own face in my hands. “Stop it,” I repeated, closing my eyes and shaking my head. I didn’t like questioning reality. It made my memory feel gooey and loose—warbled.
Was I losing it? Had I already lost it? What had I forgotten?
A hazy memory floated in my mind.
“Alice!” My mother had called. I was a child in a pretty blue dress. A bow was tied in my hair but I’d been horsing around in the yard, looking for bugs so it was coming undone. The ribbon hung loose on my head, ready to unravel and drop at any moment.
