“I met him?” A vague memory floated to the surface.Rings of smoke shooting around, turning into letters. An annoyed voice.
That was peculiar. All this time I thought I’d never seen him when I first got here. That somehow I’d seen everyone but him. It must had been very brief, perhaps I never even got a look at him.
I remembered that now. He had been sitting up high on a mushroom. I couldn’t see over it and he hadn’t seemed concerned at all with seeing me.
“That’s interesting,” I said. I looked up at Cheshire.
“Oh Alice,” he said, shooting me a pitying smile.
“Stop it,” Shaheen said. No, he begged. “Please, Cheshire. Stop talking. Leave it there. I’m sorry,” he blurted out. It honestly was growing hard to watch him behave like this—nothing like himself. It frightened me because it meant there was something bad I didn’t know. Guess that’s the issue about starting to remember, your brain only feeds you one little morsel at a time, slowly letting you find the crumbs to the terrible end as reality slowly comes into focus.
My eyes briefly went to March Hare. Opal eyes blinked at me. Then I turned to the Tweedle Twins with their blank expressions.
“I don’t think she’ll like knowing this,” they said in unison before smiling. I didn’t think I liked them much.
“I’m sorry,” Shaheen repeated, coming forward, and placing his hands on Cheshire’s face. “Don’t do this to me, Cheshire.”
Cheshire looked into his eyes, his smile never changing.
“The mushrooms, Alice,” Cheshire continued. I looked between them in confusion. Shaheen pulled his hands away from Cheshire and closed his eyes as if in pain, giving in to whatever fate Cheshire was talking us into.
My eyes moved up to the mushrooms growing in the room. They webbed the ceiling. There was an uncomfortable feeling under my skin, something working its way in deeper, searching out my organs. I placed my hand on my belly and grimaced.
“I don’t feel well,” I said.
“None of us do, Alice,” Cheshire said.
“You’re causing her pain,” Shaheen hissed, dropping down beside me. Two of his hands clutched my arms and two held my face.
“Let’s go,” he said swiftly. “Leave the Den. We could live anywhere you want in Wonderland.”
“Shaheen,” I said in confusion. But our conversation didn’t deter Cheshire.
“Once you eat the mushrooms they’re inside you. That’s when Wonderland works its magic,” Cheshire continued.
“I’m sorry,” Shaheen whispered to me and the depth of the words was scalding. His eyes were glassy then tears fell from them. And I felt that squirming deep inside me.
“I really don’t feel good,” I said, gritting my teeth. Something was inside me and I wanted it out.
“Why oh why would a little girl eat glowing mushrooms?” Cheshire asked, his voice suddenly in my ear, fingers threading in my hair.
“She would have succumbed anyway,” Shaheen snapped. Cheshire laughed and I felt the brush of his cheek on mine, his chin resting on my shoulder.
“Would she?”
“Stop this,” Shaheen hissed. He turned to look at me. “Alice, forgive me. I didn’t think at all.”
“Now, there’s some truth at last,” Cheshire purred. “He didn’t care at all what his words would do. He knew too.”
“Knew what?” I asked but I heard it in my head. The echo of an old memory of me flapping on about being unhappy. Caterpillar had given a long sigh followed by:“Eat the mushroom. It’ll cure your boredom and complaints.”Then I heard the bubble of a hookah and the rings of smoke floating up toward the sky.
And I did. I had reached up to the rim of his mushroom and sunk my fingers into the blue-green flesh. I had asked him if what he really said was true.
“Of course,” he had said lazily.
It felt like my windpipe was closing. Like maybe the first bite of that mushroom all those years ago was still working its way down my throat, choking me.
And I remembered, oh god I remembered it all. It wasn’t pretty what came after. It wasn’t right away, it was long and tortuous. Slowly eating me from the inside until Alice was no more and the White Rabbit was the only thing left. Wonderland slowly took over, destroying my body and building a new one.
