“Oh Shaheen, don’t be silly. Depositing eggs means something quite serious,” Cheshire purred. He padded over and then hopped up on Shaheen’s lap. Shaheen curled his lip and looked away while Cheshire laughed.
“So I’ll tell you how this is going to go. Alice is going to be my newest employee,” Cheshire said. I gawped at him.
“Excuse me?” I asked in shock. This was not what I saw coming. Which made it perfectly in line with Cheshire. Money is what I thought, favours perhaps—not being his sex slave for hire.
“You’ll stay here of course. Room and board are provided. I’m not a monster. I’m just a businessman.”
“This is ridiculous,” I said, blowing out a breath of air and crossing my arms.
“Don’t agree and you’ll never see each other again. Plus, I’ll make sure everyone knows the places you go, Alice. Even in jolly ol’ England,” he delivered the last line with a soft laugh and eyes boring into me as if waiting to see my reaction.
“You’ve gone too far this time,” Shaheen said, his mouth a tight line of anger. But something was building in me, something like excitement and fear. It was bubbling up my throat.
“I’ll do it,” I said, the breath seeming to rush out of me at the same time. “I’ll do it,” I said again, more for myself than Cheshire because I could barely believe what I was saying.
There was a rush under my skin and my heart was beating fast. My throat seemed to be closing up but there were parts of me, buried beneath the proper lady, that whispered things. That told me this was exciting and fun. That asked if I really wanted to go back to my world tonight, wake up in the morning in prim clothes, and be told over and over to get my head out of the clouds. To do what I must and stop playing around.
Be an adult, Alice. Be reasonable. Stop looking at the clouds and reading all day. Be proper, be RIGHT, kill the spark inside and conform.
I was being presented with a deal from the devil, so to speak. I was suddenly imagining a world where I wasn’t Alice but something else, something more. Someone living in a fantastical dream—a world of magic and strangeness. Anything could happen there.
“Oh Alice,” Cheshire purred, the pupils in his eyes enlarging to round saucers. The effect was spine-tingling, making the hairs rise on my arms. “I am so happy to have you here.”
A contract appeared in front of me, floating in green and blue smoke, an inked pen waving around for me to snatch up.
“Alice,” Shaheen said. I looked at him. He was so handsome, so beautiful, so strange, alluring, and unique like no one else. Cheshire wanted to take him away. Right now Shaheen looked confused with what he himself wanted, half-looking like he might tell me not to sign but swallowing the words instead.
“I don’t have all night,” Cheshire said. “Tik, tok, tik, tok…” I could almost hear the chime of clocks in the room. Was it some magic trick he possessed or just my mind being funny? Whatever the case, the sound of a clock induced a strange panic in me. I felt like I was running out of time as I snatched up the pen, grabbed the paper, and stomped to the table. I pressed the paper next to the hookah and signed my name with the overwhelming scent of rose-scented shisha and ash choking the air near my face.
Everyone was silent for a moment as if each one of us was in shock by what just happened. I looked up at the other two to make sure they were still in the room. Shaheen looked at the contract in confusion but Cheshire…I’d never seen his smile quite that wide.
My stomach sank, my fingers shook, and regret swelled inside me. I looked down at the contract on the table, the ink still wet, and had the mad idea of trying to erase it—wipe at the ink until it was a muddy smudge.
As if knowing what I wanted to do, the contract puffed from existence in a blue cloud leaving me with just the pen clutched in my hand.
What had I done? I just… Oh, God.
“You…you—” I started at Cheshire. He what? He hadn’t been confusing or pushy. He delivered a bargain and I signed it in some flash of insanity, the taste of something new drawing me in. Part of it was Shaheen. He was something I craved beyond belief and could still feel inside me.
However, what I craved the most was to belong somewhere. To be who I was and have others around me who both understood and accepted me.
And that need had just driven me beyond the brink of insanity because I'd apparently just agreed to be Cheshire’s whore. That said, I felt no regret, only an excited yet oddly tranquil buzz.
I looked up at the cat as he leapt down from Shaheen’s lap and disappeared—invisible.
“Come,” I heard him say in delight from the hall. I looked at Shaheen. He sighed as if tired and turned his head, lifting his chin haughtily.
“I suppose, I shall be seeing you sooner than anticipated,” he said and I swallowed. Of course, he would. Right? I nodded and shuffled from the room, following the whispered encouragement of Cheshire deeper into his den. I felt as if I were in the roots of a great plant, twisting and burrowing in the earth of Wonderland. I could even smell the dirt, almost hear the earthworms moving behind the green, floral wallpaper.
The dark halls were lit with dim candles whose tiny flames flickered frantically as if a fish floundering in death. It made the plants on the wallpaper appear to shift—growing and twisting. My eyes dragged over them and in the tiny centre of pale roses were vicious little mouths. I leaned closer in curiosity. Each vicious carnivorous flower had the noses and fangs of a cat. The flames flickered and the flowers seemed to grow closer as if they could breach the wallpaper and bite.
I sucked in a breath and pulled away, moving quickly to catch up to an invisible cat who was calling me closer. We turned another corner and there were no more doors except the one at the end. A mint-coloured glow came from the entrance. I stumbled in the dark towards the green light at the end, excitement and fear braiding into an anxious sensation.
“Straight to the back,” Cheshire purred near my ear, still an invisible presence. I could feel the weight of his attention on me, watching me take each step deep into his domain. This part of his place felt detached and distant. I wondered for a moment just how far away it was. If I screamed, would anyone hear?
When I stepped into the room and looked around I knew immediately this was Cheshire’s lair. His personality was everywhere. The large desk that only the owner would have. The strange cat-sized doors around the base and ceiling of the walls that were likely secret tunnels for him to travel down.
The door slammed shut behind me, closing me in with a loud smack that made me jump. My head swivelled around as I tried to place where Cheshire was. I could feel his eyes on me still, on every single part of me like a million bugs diving in to feast on my flesh.
