Behind Sanity

Chapter Forty-Eight

Behind Sanity

Chapter Forty-Eight

1

 The Cheshire ran his sandpaper tongue across his black feline claws, knowing that Alice would be back sooner than she had left.  But this time the cat wasn’t sure where she would be returning to because he didn’t have her broken, unanimated body beside him this time.  Yes, he’d seen her fall, but he’d be damned if the feline in him let him jump after her.  He’d end up as a furry pancake, not quite unlike the Hatter himself, who’d now also met his doom by Alice’s hand.  The old man couldn’t fly; that was now certain.  Climbing down into the darkness was out of the question for the cat, so all he could do now was sit and wait.

 The cat with the inexplicable grin was taking this quiet time to reminisce.  Not that he’d never been able to reminisce before, but not that he’d ever had the thought or desire to before.  He presently lived for the present, and he thought that, in the past, he had lived for the present as well.  Yet in the past he hadn’t planned for that which was presently present (you’d think like this if you were mad too) but he was suddenly hit with an idea that made him stop all else (but of course it didn’t take much to get him to stop).  But here he was, staring down at his paws, thinking of a word that may have once meant something to him: pen.

 It’d been so long since he’d thought of what his life had been before Wonderland; so long before he’d even wanted to think.  Thinking back now, he would divide his life into four sections: Real Life, Alice, After Alice, The Present.  That was all there was.  Most of it was empty space, and hardly ever did he regard any of it that was not in “The Present” section of existence.  What was done with was what he wanted to forget, just to allow himself to get lost here, acknowledging that he would never escape.  But now this word came back to him, and all of a sudden he had a memory, and he was almost sure it was a memory from that section of time he referred to as “Real Life”.

He began to wonder how long he’d really been in Wonderland, though he’d never counted the time.  He wasn’t like others who’d become obsessed with counting the days until time caught control over them and swallowed their sanity whole.  Cat was open to insanity, willing to accept it, have fun with it, and let it envelope him.  He supposed that, and only that, was what had kept it from taking him over.  He was mad, yes, but who wasn’t when you really thought about it?  He was in control, nearly, but he’d never tried to break through.  He’d been here for decades he was sure, and then maybe a few more years compounded onto that, but the only reason he measured it in decades was because he was sure there was no larger unit of time to explain it with.  He had existed here, and his soul would waste away here until it was nothing but a bony feline shape with large, rotten teeth and mangy gray fur. 

As much as he’d tried to forget his life and let himself be truly happy behind that fake smile that was plastered on his face, the word was coming at him, throbbing inside his brain and all he could think was: pen. Pen.

Then he saw her face.

 It was a quaint little face with a sweet smile and brown ringlets of hair surrounding it.  And he could recognize her as no one else but his sister.  He couldn’t say that he really remembered her, simply the thought of her.

 Pen. Her connection with the word was evident.  He could almost imagine her saying it, though he had no idea of what her voice might have sounded like.  He could hear her feminine voice saying the word and suddenly he realized that it was only Alice’s voice (hers was, after all, the only soothing female voice he’d heard in a while) but that wasn’t the point.  He remembered the context of the word now.