Behind Sanity

Chapter Twenty-Four

                                                                  Behind Sanity 

                                                            Chapter Twenty-Four

                                                                             1 

                Opening her eyes to the sounds of bustling feet in the outside hall, Alice moved her arm slightly.  She was still tied down to the bed with leather straps across her wrists and ankles.  She thought of it impassively, for it was not that she minded this treatment anymore.  She had become used to it from old times.  She heard the squeaky wheels of a cleaning cart drift past her door in the hallway.  The unpleasant smells of cleaning fluid and vomit drifted past her nose, but she didn’t flinch.  This was her fate, and she would ride it out alone. 

                 “You really do pity yourself, don’t you?” came a voice from the shadows.

                 Alice wouldn’t raise her head to this.  These voices, though they continued to haunt her, had no lasting effect on her mind.  She would ignore their calls, even though they could quite possibly bother her for the rest of her existence.  She hoped that would not be for too long.

                 “You think you can just ignore me?  Do you think you’ll get used to us coming to you over time?”

                  Alice strained her neck to look down between her tied feet to see a form coming into her vision.  He came slowly, first flashing his unforgettable grin that was like a crater-filled crescent moon.  The rest of him materialized fully afterwards – his large skeletal body, the spiraling stripes that grew like tattoos from his fur.  Alice stared at him with an empty expression.  This feline would not get to her, try as he might.  The cat’s form emerged in the darkness and crawled through her legs to perch himself on her stomach, peering down into her eyes and showing his mocking grin, his weight – despite being skin and bone – nearly crushing her.

                “It is your duty to come back to Wonderland,” he informed her in his low, drawling way.  “You’ve been ignoring us for weeks.”

               She continued to stare, looking to him with no acknowledgment as if peering through him in his invisible state.  He snickered lightly.

                “You think you can ignore us,” he presumed, laying down across her and resting his paws on her shoulders. “Well, you can’t.”

                 His ribs were uncomfortable against her skin.  She gave him no words, and he laid his head on her shoulder so that his voice was closer than it had ever been to her ear.

                “You know, Victor thought he could ignore us, too.  So did Richard, Leonard, and all the rest.  Though perhaps you are of a stronger mind than they, you can still not reject us.  You will find yourself in Wonderland nonetheless.”

                The gears inside Alice’s mind began to turn slowly against the rust that had caked there over the past weeks.  Though her face gave no indication that her mind had awoken, the Cheshire seemed to sense it, and because of it, he continued on.

                “It’s just like your niece.”  More thought began to flow through Alice’s mind.  “It was her destiny to go there – as it is yours – no matter how much you think you can resist,” hissed the cat, his yellow eyes burning into her.