CHAPTER SIX
Malice
She rushes to look. She sees no yolk or egg white, though she sees many bits of broken egg shells on the ground, and here and there are different parts of Humpty’s facial features. And she sees a young girl, partially covered in egg shell bits. The girl’s in an odd position—she’s upside down balancing on the back of her neck, her body bent with her legs flung over and bent so that her feet rest on the ground.
Alice gasps. “Oh, dear! Are you okay?”
“I don’t know. It’s kind of hard to tell in this odd position. Are you gonna just stand there?” She wiggles her hand a little bit.
“Oh, I’m sorry! Where are my manners?” Alice helps the girl right herself.
The girl sits on the ground amongst the debris, patting eggshells off herself. The girl looks just like Alice!
Alice shouts, “Why you look just like me!”
“Do I?”
“Why yes, with the very same clothing! And…” Here she points at the clean straight slash upon the girl’s left cheek, which had left a small streak of blood. “You have a cut on your cheek, just like me! Only yours is on your left cheek!”
The girl lifts her hand up to her cheek and gasps when she sees the blood on her fingers.
Alice notices that the girl uses her right hand, so she asks, “Are you right handed? I’m left.”
The girl says, “Well, I suppose I am, right handed that is.”
“Why it’s like you’re the mirror image of me! I’m Alice. What’s your name?”
“I am…” She ponders for a moment, her eyes moving to gaze upward. Her mouth switches between rising on one side then the other. Alice recognizes it as something she does herself. The girl says, “I don’t know!”
“Where did you come from? Do you remember being inside the egg?”
“I don’t know, and no!”
Alice asks, “Remember being cut with a razorblade?”
“No, I remember nothing! All I know is the past few moments.”
“Oh, dear. Well you’re the only person I know who was born from out an egg! But, first thing first, you need a name I should think, so we can be told apart!”
“Okay,” says the girl. “I want your name.”
Alice tries to take on a patient tone, as if she were lecturing someone. “Oh no, I had it first. But…I have an idea. You came from an egg-shaped man who claimed not to be an egg. But that’s beside the point. He recited a poem to me before he fell. His poem spoke of a twin ‘brought to birth by malice’. I’m not quite sure if you have much malice, but it rhymes with Alice in any case and seems a fine name to me! What do you say? Do you like it?”
“Yes,” says the girl with a smile that Alice finds both alluring and creepy at the same time, “that suits me just fine.”
Alice helps Malice to stand.
During the next moments, they talk and Alice gathers the tape, razorblade and rattle up and puts the items in her pockets. Alice does her best to explain things to Malice in a brief manner. Alice is sure she must have forgotten to mention at least one important detail, but she wants to continue with her mission to regain her heart. She has no intention whatsoever of trying to put Humpty Dumpty together again, because the guy was a sadist and she’s glad he’s broken, even though the old Alice with a heart might have felt much guilt.
When the subject turns to hearts, it’s soon found that Malice is heartless as well, for none beats in her chest.
“Oh dear,” says Alice. “Why, whenever we do regain my heart, there will be only one of them between us! Perhaps if we shared?”
But Malice waves that off. “Let’s not worry about that right now. Besides, from what you told me, having a heart seems like such a burden. I would think it might be better to go without one!”
Alice doesn’t have a good answer to that, because she feels the same, but the fact of the matter is that some of her property has been stolen from her, and she can not abide the insult. She will do whatever is necessary to recover her rightful property. And who knows, maybe afterwards, she’ll realize how great having a heart can be.
“Come,” Alice says, “Let us now go back to the Tweedles. I’m hoping by now, one has killed the other. If they’re still alive, though, don’t give them too much information. And for that matter, don’t let anyone know that we’re heartless, for we can use their ignorance to our advantage. I realize that now.”
A few minutes later, they stop walking as they see, appearing above the ground in front of them, a feline grin.
Alice says, “It’s the Cheshire Cat. Watch, and soon his head will appear.”
Moments later, the cat’s eyes appear, then the rest of his head. To Alice, he says, “Not only are you not dead, but you’ve doubled since before.”
Alice says, “I’m so sorry. It’s just that I haven’t had time to kill myself. It’s just that I have odds and ends to take care of, you see.”
“Well, I can be patient, but I can’t wait all my last life!” He chuckles, now he shifts attention to Malice. “Greetings. Who might you be?”
“Malice.” She looks confused for a moment before curtseying with her black dress.
The cat says, “Well you two are like mirror images of each other.” He speaks even as he grins that huge grin of his. “Twice the fun. Imagine. A double suicide! Wonderland’s first!”
Malice opens her mouth to speak, but Alice cuts her off, saying, “Yes, Malice wants to kill herself too. In fact we’ve signed a suicide pact. It’ll be very soon and you can watch!”
The cat says, “Yessss…I want to watch. Will you cry first? Yummy yummy.” He licks his lips. Everyone thinks Alice’s tears are magical and delicious, but she wonders if that’s still true now that she’s heartless.
Alice uses a cooing, purring. “Yes, we’ll cry our delicious tears. We’ll even let you lick them, because you’re going to help us both escape this horrible world.”
“Yessss.” The cat purrs. “Lick your sweet innocent faces, taste the tears of your sweet sorrow mmmm.”
Alice cocks her head to the side flirtatiously. “Yes, there’s only one problem, though. The gun you gave me only has one shot. It’s a dueling pistol. We need another one if we’re going to both blow our brains out.”
“Yesss, yesss. I see. And you both promise to kill yourselves and let me watch? Soon?” His voice sounds whiny, pouty.
Everyone in Wonderland knows that Alice would rather die than break a promise. That was the old Alice with a heart, though. But so long as he didn’t know that she and Malice were heartless, she’d use the deception to her advantage.
Alice says, “I pwomise.” Ending with a cutesy pout. She looks over at Malice.
“And I pwomise too, Mister Cat!” She places her finger to the edge of her mouth then shifts her eyes to look upward and to the side.
The cat says, “Okay, just so long as you don’t go shooting yourselves without me. But the most I can manage is the other dueling pistol in the set. These things don’t grow on trees you know. So don’t become triplets. Hold on while I fetch it, and I must insist that afterward you refrain from speaking, as I have a lunch date I must attend to. Hold on…” and the cat begins to disappear, in this order: outside, then eyes, then mouth, then reappears in the opposite order, but this time, his grinning mouth holds an ivory handled pistol. When his head again fully appears, (He, as usual, neglects his body.) He gives the pistol to Malice
“Sorry,” he says, “no time to waste. Remember, no shooting without me, my doppletwinners! But I must go capture lunch!” He begins to disappear.
Alice sees this as a wonderful opportunity to shoot the cat a question by surprise before he has time to think. She must hurry, because if she shouts after his ears disappear he won’t hear her. She shouts, “Just curious. If one of us became heartless, how would our tears taste?”
The outer edge of the cat’s head vanishes, but his mouth says, “Why they’d taste like burning because they’d be acid! Why do you—” But now he’s d
isappeared.
What Alice had suspected is true, it seems.
Malice is testing the heft of the pistol. “Instead of killing ourselves, why don’t we kill that stupid cat? Pow! Right between the eyes! I wonder if he’ll stop grinning before he dies.”
Alice smiles at the thought but then shakes her head. “He’d probably just disappear before we could shoot him. The Queen of Hearts keeps trying to kill him. She’s succeeded several times already. But that’s why, now, he only shows his head, because if he has no body, he can’t be beheaded.”
Malice says, “Well that’s a shame. So what are we to do with this pistol?”
“You haven’t met the Tweedles yet. I have an idea. Just follow my lead, okay?”
“You got it, twin!”