Malice in Wonderland Prequel Read online

  She always had to talk first. “Wake up, flowers!”

  The Tiger-lily said, “Greetings flower Alice.”

  Alice enjoyed their company, but only in small doses, since they had certain notions that would grate on her nerves. For one thing, they thought she wasn’t colorful enough, because she always wore a black dress (which they considered her petals). She cut right to the chase. “I’ve heard tell that there was once a black rose who inhabited your garden. Can you tell me any more about her?”

  The Tiger-lily gasped. “The Black Rose?!”

  And here all the other flowers gasped (though they did not breath like people did) then they grew silent, which was puzzling, because they’d always been a bunch of chatterboxes.

  “That’s right,” Alice said. “What’s wrong?”

  “Where did you hear of the Black Rose?!” the Tiger-lily demanded.

  “I’ve been asking around. There was a butterfly who was said to feast upon its nectar in order to turn black…”

  “Yes, there was a rose who let blackness overtake her, and she was banished from the garden.”

  Alice felt sorrow rise up within her. She thought that a black rose might actually be quite pretty. Perhaps the Black Rose was simply a misunderstood outcast much like Alice herself. Maybe the Black Rose could use a friend to help her. “Where was she banished to?”

  “Well, before we speak any further, you shall remove those wretched shoes. We despise them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The shoes…”

  Alice tended to be most agreeable, so she removed her shoes. “Now please tell me more.”

  “Figure it out yourself.”

  Alice completely lost her temper. With an outraged shriek, she reached out and grasped the Tiger-lily’s stem. “Tell me, or I shall begin plucking your petals!”

  The other flowers gasped. One yelled, “Let her go!” The Tiger-lily said, “You wouldn’t dare.” But Alice could feel that the flower was trembling ever-so-slightly, as much as a plant could reasonably be expected to, at least.

  Alice reached out and pulled a petal off. “He loves me…”

  The Tiger-lily shrieked in pain.

  Alice dropped the petal then reached out, touched another one. “He loves me not…”

  “Stop! I’ll tell you! For the love of god, stop!”

  And that was how Alice learned where the Black Rose had been relocated to by a mysterious cloaked flower tender they had summoned. Alice felt bad about being so cruel to get her way. She was usually such a good girl, but sometimes she just snapped, and they had made her take off her goody two-shoes, after all. Awkwardly, she left the garden, not wanting to make a bad situation worse. She’d have to make it up to the flowers somehow later.

  They’d told her there was a stone archway set in the side of a hill a short distance away. Soon she saw it, tucked away discreetly in the middle of a forest. They said to look for a button on the archway to press to open the door.

  She looked upon the edges of the gray-stoned archway. It was lined with carved runes that she couldn’t read. Then she saw the button, but it seemed to be at the height of an adult. She was just a little girl, and she almost couldn’t reach it. She had to stand on her tippy-toes and stretch. “Errrgh.” Then she struggled to press the button in hard enough, but, then “Ahah!” she exclaimed as she pressed it in.

  A blade of metal suddenly slid out above Alice. She could see that it was at just the right height to have decapitated any adult who pressed the button. She had been spared death on account of being short. She wondered if maybe she should turn back.

  After a few seconds, the blade retracted, then the door slid upward.

  She peered inside to see a square medium-sized room cut from gray stone.

  In the middle of the room was a skeleton wearing a royal gown and crown sitting in a golden throne. Next to the throne was a pedestal atop of which rested a black rose within a flower pot. A glass dome rested over the flower and a note was attached to the inner surface of the dome, with hand written words upon it, but she couldn’t read the note from her distance.

  Alice briefly considered turning back, because this might be a rather precarious situation. But then she thought maybe the Black Rose was extremely lonely, and her heart filled with such sorrow for the rose’s possible distress.

  “Black Rose!” she called out. “Can you hear me?”

  She thought she heard the flower give a muffled cry, but she couldn’t make out the words through the glass.

  “Fear not!” she proclaimed, “For I am here to rescue you from your predicament!” She stepped through the door then rolled on the ground into a crouch where she listened intently and peered around for any threat.

  The door slammed shut behind her and she gasped and looked around. She was trapped.

  “Oh bother,” she muttered to herself.

  Then she heard a kind of gurgling sound. Clear liquid began trickling from the edges of the room from little round holes. With dread, Alice assumed it was acid, because of course it would be!

  The only way to avoid the acid was to stand atop the throne, so she performed three expert cartwheels toward it, then hopped atop the arms of the throne, balancing precariously. She didn’t want to touch the icky skeleton.

  The clear liquid reached the bottom of the throne and the fabric of the gown. A hissing bubbling sound issued forth as the acid began to dissolve cloth and bone and a pungent smoke rose up.

  “Oh, this will not do!” Alice proclaimed, feeling sorry for herself. The acid level was slowly rising.

  “Oh, what should I do, Black Rose?”

  Again, the Black Rose seemed to speak, but again, she couldn’t make out the words.

  Alice hugged herself in terror, as the liquid of burning death approached. She looked around. There was nowhere else to stand. The ceiling was lined with rows of round holes and a larger hole above the Black Rose, but the ceiling was twenty feet above her, so she couldn’t reach them.

  While trembling with fear, she watched the level of acid rise, burning the skeleton and its dress, leaving the throne untouched, perhaps because it was made of gold, she thought.

  “Help! Won’t someone please help?!”

  But there was no response. And then her tears began to flow. She flicked them from her face in frustration. The acid continued to rise, but now, the sizzling and smoke seemed to lessen.

  My tears! A few of them dropped in the acid! Perhaps their magic negates it.

  So she leaned forward and allowed as many of her tears to drip down into the acid as she could. Soon the sizzling and dissolving stopped and Alice laughed out loud in relief. The level of the liquid continued to rise though, and soon it rose over the throne and Alice could no longer avoid being immersed.

  Soon she was drenched in it and had to tread water to stay afloat in the former acid. She suspected the liquid had been transformed into tears.

  It continued rising.

  I shall drown in my own tears, she thought morosely.

  But then thankfully, the liquid began to drain from the room. While it was doing so, and Alice was busy treading in place, she took the time to read the note on the inside of the (apparently waterproof) glass dome over the flower. It read: “Smell me.”

  “Black Rose, can you hear me? I need you to just hold on for me, okay? We’re gonna get you out.”

  The Black Rose shook a little. It seemed kind of like a nod, Alice thought.

  The liquid had all drained. “Well, then. Now that that’s done with, let’s smell what all the fuss is about, shall we?”

  That’s when she heard a loud clamor of clanks from the ceiling. She looked up to see rows of steel spikes burst from the holes in the ceiling, then a creaking sound issued forth as the ceiling began lowering!

  Panic came over Alice. Frantically, her mind searched for a way out of this predicament.

  The mushroom!

  She carried a piece of the Caterpillar’s mushroom, so that s
he would be able to shrink down to his size whenever she needed to visit him. She reached into one of the inner pockets of her sopping dress, and pulled out the piece of mushroom. It was regrettably soggy, but now was not the time to be finicky, was it?

  She nibbled and began shrinking, with the descending spikes following closely behind. She hoped she would be able to shrink fast enough. The ceiling was crushing the throne, the black rose’s dome safely slipped into a hole in the ceiling, and Alice kept shrinking.

  She reassured herself that there were no holes in the ground that would allow the spikes to slide in, so there would be space next to the spikes…

  That was her only hope—to stand in one of the spaces between the spikes to avoid being skewered.

  She looked up to the ceiling. The spikes had completely crushed the throne and the tips had almost reached the ground. She took a step to the side as the spikes clanked into the ground all around her.

  She breathed a sigh of relief.

  Then a dreadful, long moment passed.

  Then a clanking sound as of chains being retracted, and creaking noises as the ceiling rose back up to its original position. The spikes retracted.

  “Crikey, but that was close!” she yelled. She nibbled some mushroom to grow again.

  She walked up to the pedestal. It was a bit tall for her, so she nibbled a little extra mushroom.

  “Finally! Now I know from fairy tales that these things go in threes. Since I survived the three challenges, there shan’t be any more.” And with that proclamation, she lifted the glass dome off the Black Rose. “Black Rose, can you speak?”

  Not all flowers could speak, and not all flowers that could speak spoke alike, and the words came from the flower as a whispery hiss. “Smelll meeeee.”

  Alice shrugged. “As you wish. You are a most beautiful flower. I’m sure your scent is just as much so.”

  She leaned over and inhaled.

  And was transported—into a world unknown to her. Darkness and naughtiness and adult secrets swirled about. She experienced the delicious desert of revenge served unexpected, and the malicious candy of destroying what others cherished. She felt and smelled the allure of seduction employed solely to betray. The corruption of innocence was this flower’s scent. These were the shadows of unadmitted desires and sensations. She shuddered with the delicious chill.

  She could feel the power of her goody two-shoes negating the corrupting influence, and debated whether to take them off.

  But then she swooned and fell to the floor, lost in an unblinking daze. She was conscious, but unable to move.

  She was unaware of how much time passed—it could have been seconds, it could have been centuries, when she felt someone or something grab a hold of her arms and drag her out of the room to the forest outside.

  She was unable to blink and her eyes stung as they stared into the clouds above.

  She saw a cloaked arm pass over, holding a glass tube, then something was held beneath her nose. She smelled the aroma of a pungent chemical. She instantly jolted and was able to move again.

  She shifted her eyes to see a mysterious hooded cloaked figure holding the Black Rose in its pot.

  Alice said, “Who are you? What happened?”

  Alice could only see the glowing twinkle of two red eyes beneath the hood. “Shhh.” The mysterious being lifted a bony gray finger to its mouth. “Your kind is not yet ready for the beauty of the Black Rose.”

  “You mean humans?”

  “No, I mean little girls.”

  “I’m not so little. I’m almost 8.”

  “Yes…little girl. You went too far from home, young one.”

  Alice got the sense that it was speaking figuratively. “I just wanted to help. I’m sorry.”

  “One day perhaps, you will be ready. But this is not the day. Go back to your former life now. I am putting the Black Rose in a different place, to await those who are ready. As for this place…” It pointed to the stone doorway. “It will explode in ten seconds. I suggest you run.”

  When Alice shifted her eyes from the doorway back to the figure, it was suddenly gone and she couldn’t be entirely sure it had even ever been there in the first place. Then her eyes went wide in alarm as she hurried to stand and run as fast as she could away from the doomed place.

  The sound of a huge explosion erupted behind her then heat licked at her back and threw her ten feet through the air. Her head landed just a few inches from the trunk of a tree. Debris and ash rained down upon her from the sky.

  She realized her blond hair was on fire and shrieked and rolled about to put out the flame—she hoped her hair hadn’t been blackened.

  Then she dusted herself off and returned to her hut. She snuck back into her chains. The guard card was still taking a nap.

  When he awoke, he seemed puzzled by Alice’s singed hair and the burn holes in her dress, but the guard card wasn’t very bright, so the matter was quickly forgotten by him.

  As she sat there, her thoughts were quite different than usual. She ruminated upon the delectable pleasures of torture. She wondered at the allure of licking the tears of others’ pain and humiliation. And she thought, uncharacteristically for her, of how delicious revenge must be.

  How great it must be to thoroughly vanquish and humiliate one’s enemies? To plant death’s kiss upon their cheeks, while raining your unrelenting revenge upon them? And upon their graves, to place…a single black rose…

  CHAPTER SIX

  Birthday Party

  When Alice was 8

  Calloo Callay! What a frabjuous day!

  It was an splendid day, indeed, for today was Alice’s 8th birthday!

  In the short time she’d been here, the citizens of Wonderland had grown so fond of using the girl for the sake of their own pleasure, and today was their chance to celebrate that!

  Everybody who was anybody was gathered in the Queen of Heart’s ballroom, which was filled with the dancing revelers and an assortment of cakes, snacks and foods. There was even a table of tarts that only the Queen was allowed to eat (heavily guarded of course, to prevent any further thefts).

  “Welcome!” the Queen called out to the crowd of assembled revelers, as she held a glass of sparkling apple juice. “I’m so glad you all could attend.” She gazed out at the crowd, searching. She saw the Tweedles, Humpty Dumpty, the Mad Hatter, March Hare, Dormouse, even the Jabberwock was there, looking awkward and shy. And there even was the grinning floating head of the Cheshire Cat, whom she hadn’t even invited. “Now, we just have to wait for the birthday girl herself to get here!”

  That brought up a round of polite laughter from the crowd.

  The Queen said, “But I’m sure she’ll be along shortly. So, eat, be merry and dance, and when she gets here, the party shall truly begin and we shall unleash all our planned festivities!”

  That brought a cheer, and the Queen left the crowd to it and began mingling.

  Meanwhile, Alice sat at her desk she was chained to, inside her humble, sparse hut. Today was her 8th birthday, but since she was stuck in this horrendous, stifling world, she didn’t expect anyone to throw her a party, and just as she’d expected, no one had invited her to one. She sighed and pouted miserably. She supposed there was always the possibility that they would throw her a surprise party, just like they surprised her with unhappy unbirthday parties every day. And the day wasn’t over, so she still held out hope.

  So Alice was now spending her birthday at her desk, drawing upon a sheet of paper. She was drawing a picture of a girl who was chained to a desk. There was a huge cake in front of the drawn girl and she was holding her hand out toward it, but the chain wasn’t long enough to reach. There was a big frown upon the girl’s face. Alice felt like she wanted to draw tears, but that might be a difficult thing to draw.

  The guard card who watched over her was no good company at all. He was seated in his chair, dozing.

  She heard the sound of the door opening and grinned. Here comes my surprise bir
thday party! Oh, this just has to be it!

  But when the door swung open, there before her eyes, was a girl she couldn’t recall ever having seen before.

  The girl was wearing a white lace veil over her face. She looked to be a teenager, wearing a long, fluffy black dress much like Alice’s own. There were splotches of what looked like dried blood splattering her dress. The girl’s right hand donned a black metal gauntlet like from a suit of armor, adorned with ornamental engravings and an odd, repeating symbol. She held a box with a handle atop it in her other hand.

  Alice gasped and called out to the guard.

  “Eh?” the guard said as he lazily opened his eyes. He saw the older girl and began to stand, as the girl calmly walked up to him and punched him so hard he knocked back into the chair and toppled backward into it with a crash. He lay unconscious upon the ground.

  “Oh no!” Alice cried.

  The girl was kneeling. She took the gauntlet off, then began rummaging through the metal box. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t harm you. I’m here to warn you.”

  At the Queen of Heart’s ballroom, Humpty Dumpty was throwing a hissy fit. “Where is Alice!? I have a bucket of paint I had prepared especially to pour over her head!”

  “Yes,” said Tweedledum. “It’s quite rude for her to show up late for her own birthday party!” “Yes, quite!” said Tweedledee. They crossed their arms.

  “Yes,” added the March Hare. “Doesn’t she know how to tell time? She knows what time the party starts correct?” He was peering at the large oversized clock he wore around his neck.

  The Queen of Hearts tried to control her irritation. “Yes, of course she does. It was right on her invitation, just like with all of yours.”

  “Well, then it’s quite inconsiderate of her,” said the March Hare.

  The Queen of Hearts said, “Well, she’s still not too late. Perhaps she’ll be along shortly. But in the meantime, let’s have some of her cake, shall we?”

  “Warn me of what?” asked Alice. She watched as the veiled girl brought out two handcuffs from her metal box and put them on the card’s wrists.

  “I am from the future,” said the girl. She began putting the other pair of cuffs around the guard card’s ankles. She stood, kicked the card’s spear away, then looked at Alice, said, “I am here to warn you not to let your heart grow black.”