Alice & Dorothy (5 page)

“Much like this one, I imagine,” the Dormouse said.

Alice said nothing. She was watching The Hater intently. He palmed a silver bread and butter knife, slid it up the cuff of his shirt. Looked up at Alice and smiled. Teapots reflected off their sheen.

“Ever since that day,” he said quietly. “Time has forgotten us. It’s been 6 o’clock since that day in March. Tea time.”

The March Hare sighed, picked up his teacup and swished the contents sourly.

“I could use a beer, frankly,” he said. “Always tea though. Always tea
time
.”

“So,” Alice said, looking at the teapots around the table. Sets of three, every one. The teapots were arranged in essentially the same setup that the three were sitting in now. “You guys just sit here and drink tea all day? Is
that
why this table is full of teapots?”

“Because,” the Hater said, lightning flashing across his face. “
It’s 6 o’clock!
Why can’t your deranged little girl-brain get a handle on this? We don’t drink tea
because
it’s 6 o’clock, we do it because at 6 o’clock we
must have tea
.”

“Then the Dormouse shall!” the Mad Hater screamed, bringing his hand down in an arc. The silver butter knife he’d palmed up his sleeve earlier reappeared in his hand, flashing in the yellow sunshine.

The knife went into the Dormouse’s forearm, causing the creature to shriek demonically. Black tar spurted from the wound, splashing The Hater’s face. The Hater laughed until his eyes bulged, face going from ivory to red to purple.

“I told you about that,” the Dormouse hissed, cradling his wounded arm. “Now I’m going to pull your spine out and crack each bone with my teeth.”

“I should love to see it,” the Hater shrieked, his harsh, coughing laugh setting lose strands of drool from his mouth. “I should
loooooove
it.”

The Dormouse wrenched the knife from his arm and held up to the Hater’s face, pushed the blade against the skin at the corner of his eye. Ebon blood marred the Hater’s perfect ceramic skin, which puckered around the spot where the Dormouse was holding the knife to his face.

“
Ahh yes
,” The Hater said, his mouth open in an unnatural grin. He ran his tongue across the bottom of his teeth. His breath escaped like the hissing of a punctured tire.

The Dormouse moved as though he was going to punch the Hater in the face with his other hand, then, at the last moment turned and flicked his wrist. There was a flash of blood and something flew from the Hater’s face into an empty teacup.

The Hater burst into his hysterical, shrieking donkey laugh again. He clutched at his face and sucked big gutfuls of air as tar ran down his cheek. The Dormouse smiled, winked at Alice, and threw a ceramic shard from the Hater’s broken teacup onto the table. The jagged edge had a bright smear of blood, across the bottom half of it. He reached into his teacup with the same hand, and came up with one of the Hater’s perfect teeth. There was blood and meat clinging to the bottom of it, between the roots. He flicked it back into his teacup, where it plunked and rattled around before coming to rest at the bottom.

“Oh,
haha!
You’re going to pay…
haha!
For that one,” said the Mad Hater, choking on spit. “Oh my little rodent companion, I’ll not soon forget this.”

“Please,” said The March Hare. He held up his teacup and sighed. There was blood like spilled ink on the side of it. “Can we shift down a seat please? I should like a clean cup.”

“Yes, let’s,” said The Hater. He grabbed a napkin, stuffed it in his mouth, then pulled a silk handkerchief and dabbed the blood from his face.

The three of them stood up and moved down one seat, closer to Alice. Now The March Hare was sitting at a fresh spread, while the Dormouse was sitting at The March Hare’s old spot, and The Hater had taken the spot previously occupied by the Dormouse. The March Hare helped himself to tea and bread and jam. The Dormouse folded his arms, pushed the dishes aside, and laid his head down on them. The Hater picked up his teacup and smiled.

“Ah ha!” he said. He pulled the bloodied napkin from his mouth, revealing a black hole in his perfect white wall of teeth. “I was wondering where you got off to.”

He held his missing tooth up in the light. A spot of tea ran down the white silk of his gloves, staining them brown and red.

“It was there the whole time,” mumbled the Dormouse.

“So it was,” said The Hater. He noisily jammed the tooth back in place. Then bit at the air a few times as though testing it out. Smiling, he turned to the Dormouse. “You were about to tell us a story, friend.”

“Very well,” the Dormouse muttered. “Once upon a time there were three sisters. Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie. They ate treacle and lived at the bottom of a well—”

“What?” Alice balked. The confusion and chaos of her hosts was starting to wear on her. She was having problems keeping everything straight in her own head, as though their madness was rubbing off on her.

“Confused?” said The March Hair. “Don’t be. It’s just the garbage floating around us.”

“What’s a treacle?” Alice said.

“Molasses,” said The March Hair. “You know;
black tar
.”

“Yes, but this was
Treacle of Andromachus
,” said the Dormouse. “Very tasty.”

“You can’t live off molasses,” Alice said. “It’ll make you sick.”

“And so they were,” replied the Dormouse sweetly. “They were
very
sick.”

“So, it made them sick but they kept eating it anyway,” said Alice. “Doesn’t make sense. None of this makes any sense at all.”

“You’re right,” said the Hater. “Doing something that makes you sick is a silly thing.
Regardless of how good you feel when you do it
.”

“I haven’t had any,” she said. “I can’t take
more
.”

“You mean you can’t take
less
,” said The Hater. “It’s easy to have
more
than nothing.”

“What?” Alice said. She felt like she was drugged. The whole situation was overwhelming. “Nobody asked you.”

“Ha!” cried The Hater. His smile was a crooked gash across the bottom of his face, but beneath that gash laid pearls. “Who is making personal comments now?”

Alice shook her head.

“The story—,” she said. “Why did they live at the bottom of the well?”

“Yes,” the Dormouse said. “They lived there because it was a treacle well. And because someone had tossed them to the bottom. Nobody loves bad girls, you see. They have to take care of themselves.”

“Oh, she knows,” said the March Hare. “All too well, don’t you, blond girl?”

Alice answered with a confused look.

“Simply put,” said The Hater, “They live at the bottom of the well because they
must
live at the bottom of the well, because if they didn’t, then the story ceases to exist and all of this,
every bit of it
, has been for naught. Now please, shut your mouth so my friend can continue his story.”

“They were learning to draw,” said the Dormouse. “They drew all sorts of things. Anything beginning with the letter M. Mouse traps. Bleeding
Muffs
. Moustache rides.
Muchness
. Ever seen a drawing of a muchness, pretty plaything?”

Alice shook her head, no.

“I don’t think—,” she said.

“
THEN DON’T FUCKIN’ SPEAK!
” The Hater screamed, jumping to his feet and slamming his fist on the table. “
IF YOU CAN’T FORM A SINGLE FUCKING THOUGHT IN THAT BOUNCY RETARD HEAD OF YOURS YOU KEEP YOUR CUNTING MOUTH FUCKING SHUT!
”

“You know
what
?” Alice said, standing quickly. She knocked the chair back behind her. Grabbed a rather nasty looking lobster fork in one hand. “I’ve had it with you crazy assholes.”

“
Murderess
.” The Dormouse said through his teeth.

“
FUCK YOU!
” she screamed, smashing the fork into the table. The wood was soft, like flesh, and she buried it up to her hand. The March Hare pulled his teacup away from the table, as though shocked by her sudden outburst. The Hater simply watched her, not moving or saying anything. The Dormouse rolled his nose on the table, yawned, and tucked his face back into the crook of his arm.

“Fuck this shit,” Alice said. She swept her dishes off the table with a crash, and then grabbed a butter knife. “Anyone who follows me gets their balls cut off.”

She walked backward away from the table, eyes on the three lunatics. Then she turned and stalked off toward the side of the large rabbit house. When she got to the corner she turned and spared one last look back at the table.

The Mad Hater was busy stabbing the Dormouse in the top of his head. Behind him, The Mad Hater had pushed the Dormouse’s coat halfway up his back, and was mounting him from the rear. She could have sworn the Dormouse was sleeping.

Further into the woods there was a tree with a door on it. Having no direction in mind, no place to go, Alice opened the door. It was warm inside, brightly lit, and Alice stepped into a hallway. She slammed the door behind her, but at the last moment it stopped and drifted open again. Alice turned and looked.

It was the Hater, his clothes stained with blood and jam, one tooth knocked crooked in his perfect smile, fingering his watch and staring her down with bright, cheery eyes.

“Hello Honey,” he said. “I’m home.”

He dropped his watch. In that instant he was moving at Alice, moving impossibly fast, so fast he seemed to stretch out and elongate, as though she were seeing him in two places at once, still standing in the doorway and intolerably close to her face at the same time, his black claws tearing through his satin gloves and raking at her flesh, cupping her head in his hands like a Faberge egg.

“Shhhh...” he whispered, his face so close to hers she could see the writhing bands of muscle and jagged scar tissue under a layer of facepaint and stage makeup. The serene calm his face projected was only a facade. It was a parlour trick. The Mad Hater wasn’t a creature prone to occasional bouts of fury, like her father was. The Hater was chaos incarnate wrapped in a pretty picture; like opening the most beautiful present under the Christmas tree and triggering the bomb that had been hiding inside it.

“It will all be over so quickly,” he whispered, and a line of drool dropped from his mouth to Alice’s teeth. It burned where it touched. The Hater rolled her like a doll in his arms, grabbing the side of her face and putting his mouth close to her ear. “It might sting a little, Pretty Plaything.”

And then he was stretching again. Alice felt like she was falling into a swimming pool of The Mad Hater; he poured over her body like molasses (
treacle, she corrected
) and seeped into her pores. He flooded her nose and ears, forced his way past her lips and around her teeth. She felt him wiggle past the tears in her asshole, in to her cunt and under her fingernails. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream, and when he poured into her eyes and flooded her tear ducts with his madness she couldn’t see either. Her lungs were for screaming for air, but they were full of The Mad Hater and she could feel him swirling into her blood like a flushing toilet, sucking and snorting like a pig rooting in shit. And then it was over and she was lying on the ground sobbing and scratching at her ears and face.

I am always with you
, The Hater’s voice said from deep inside her mind.
I am always with you.

Alice stood up.

Oh, you’re going to be just perfect for what I have in mind. Let’s walk a bit shall we?

Alice started walking. She had no idea where The Mad Hater was taking her, but something told her it was going to be terrible, no matter where it was.