The White Queen Read online

  I just wanted to go home. That’s what I thought each time droplets of blood splattered my face.

  All I wanted was home.

  Chapter 8

  Stomach sour from another supper of rabbit stew, I lay on my back, eyes to the ceiling, and waited.

  Maybe I was crazy. It no longer mattered. I had to get out of Rothfield asylum. It had to end.

  I knew she would come after the clock’s booming ticks shook my bones. I don’t know why I knew, but I knew.

  The Red Queen slithered out of her corner.

  Turning my head to the side, arms still bound in the straightjacket and my ankles cuffed to the floor, I watched bloodied feet stain the pillowed ground with each slinking step the Red Queen took.

  I offered her one word, the first I may have ever spoken to her. “Hello.”

  Crackling noises, her squished, bubbling breaths, they would be my dirge. Tonight I was going to close my eyes and I was going to let her have me. Maybe she would peel off my skin and wear it as a hat. Then this would be over and I would be free.

  There was no fight left in me.

  She sensed it too, for her beady eyes shone bright behind the dripping tangles of her dark hair.

  It’s funny that I had borne all the years of sleepless nights, all the treatments and examinations—hilarious even to think I’d ever thought I might find a way to do more than just delay the inevitable. Being made to inflict pain on a defenseless creature, having to hear a bunny squeal when the first strike of the hammer had not been enough to end it, had been my ultimate undoing.

  I could see clearly now. Had I not fought to hinder Calvin’s initial swing, the animal might have died without pain.

  All this time, I was standing in my own way; fighting back was pointless. I was the bunny on the table. Resisting the inevitable hammer was the reason the pains I’d known had never struck hard enough to kill, they only left me there twitching and unable to hop away.

  The Red Queen looked me dead in the eye, she’d even stopped her pacing. Standing hunched, rubbing her hands together, she clicked her teeth in excited chatter.

  She had been the first. She would be the last.

  After a lifetime of vigilance, I lowered my lashes and looked away.

  I was laughing louder than the Madman of Cheshire as her feet pattered straight in my direction.

  “Sweet Alice.”

  My laughter turned to weeping at the first dulcet sing-song of the Hatter’s hello. Face turned into the floor, eyes screwed shut to block out the intrusive, never ending electric light, I sobbed, “Make it stop.”

  The smile in his voice, the gentle teasing, it was cruel. “And why should I? This was all your doing.”

  “I know.”

  A light chuckle decorated his voice. “Ungrateful child... all I’d wanted was a single kiss. Was it worth it, these long years without my company?”

  The padding under me shifted, and I imagined that he crouched, knees up like a cricket, right beside my buried head.

  I was right. His breath ran over my ear. “Will you not look at me, Alice?”

  No, I would not. How could I? “Please go away... bring the Red Queen back.” My voice broke and the sobs came all the harder. “I want to die.”

  My hair had not been washed or properly combed in weeks, it was clumped and frizzy, a perfect shield over my face. The Hatter caught it up, tucking bits behind my ear. “Oh no, the dregs sent here don’t die. They will keep you alive well past old age. The only thing that will die will be your mind, piece by piece, until you are a shell for them to claim they’ve cured. They will carve my sweet Alice up for her own good. I’ve always appreciated the evils of a good nut house.”

  A ring of truth ruined the softness in which the Hatter spoke. Whether he was mocking me or cautioning me, it mattered little. I got the point: I was to receive no mercy. Turning my wet nose from the floor, breath shaking, I let the Hatter see what I had become.

  The familiar sharp lines of his face, the bizarre yellow glow of his eyes, his manic smile inches from my tear streaked cheeks, he giggled. Crouched over me like a spider on its prey, my body wrapped in the straightjacket and pinned to the floor, I may as well have been spun in his silk—a snack saved for later in a web of padded white.

  The brightness of the room’s bare bulb haloed around the Hatter’s head, casting an angelic glow. Had I the capacity to laugh, I would have. “Maybe none of it is real. Perhaps I am still a little girl, tucked into bed, having one long, bad dream.”

  Dusty knuckles smoothed over my cheek. “Your suffering is as real as anything.”

  “Was I not a good girl?”

  The Hatter looked at me as if he loved me. “Mommy and Daddy, do you still think they will come for you? His greed, her vanity... acquiring their souls was child’s play. What they offered for loveliness, success in business, what they are willing to give without even knowing what I take, a beauty in itself. But you, you would not take my pennies for your tooth. At your essence you would never esteem riches. Exquisiteness was bestowed on you in spades, yet it’s only value in your eyes is how it might please your parents. Still you love them, though they sent you here and will leave you to rot. Who has ever cared for you but I?”

  I had nothing and no one. “You promised to torment me.”

  “And I have. The Devil owes me a great debt, and I chose to collect upon it in acquiring you. But he cannot bestow upon me what isn’t his to give. You are pure as much as you are insane. As fun as it has been teasing and tricking you into giving me what I desire, I’ve grown impatient. Games, tea, drying your tears on my sleeve, what did I get for it? To hold your hand and kiss your cheek? You deserve all they do to you for thinking to deny me.” With that he bent lower, laying his cold lips on the corner of my mouth, a whisper following. “The Devil will have his due and so will I. It can all end, sweet Alice, if you would just give yourself to me of your own free will. Have you had enough? Let me take you home.”

  I longed to go home to my nursery with the broken furniture and tattered wallpaper. I longed to see my parents, even if all my presence earned from them was frowns. “You would get me out of here?”

  His mouth lingered over mine, the Hatter’s breath filling my nostrils as he hissed, “Oh, yessssssss.”

  Heart racing at the thought of freedom, there was no question on my part. Stretching my neck, I gave him the kiss I’d denied him all those years ago, and felt him chuckle at the innocent press of my lips to his.

  I counted to three before drawing back, and his laughter came all the louder.

  The Hatter was positively cackling. “You would think that was a kiss, wouldn’t you?”

  He fell upon me before I might try again, his mouth sucking the air from my lungs. His tongue drove in, his lips slid over mine, and I felt the kiss a man might give a woman. It was a shocking thing, and all I could fathom in that instance was a single repetitive question: why would a man put his tongue in my mouth?

  Is this why he had pulsed his fingers in and out of my lips when feeling my loose teeth? All these years had he been angling to lick at my tongue?

  Why?

  He was still laughing, his body seizing and shaking in mirth. No, that wasn’t laughter, it was another noise. It was an extended groan, racking moans, and I could feel them vibrate in my chest—just as that machine had vibrated between my thighs.

  There was a twinge, a reason I felt a dire need to press my legs closed. Head driven back upon the padded floor, I angled my jaw away. Sucking in a breath, I felt the Hatter’s tongue lick at my lips while he allowed me a brief offering of air.

  Though his fingers were spread, hands braced on either side of my head, though his body hovered over mine, at no place did we touch. He still could not, and I knew to mock him for it, for the way he scuttled to angle for my mouth, that I would be abandoned for another set of years to decay in this hell.

  Warning and threats black as sin, burned hot in his unforgiving eyes.

  If
I were left in this padded cell for even one more day, I truly would go mad. “You’ll save me from the examinations, from pinching fingers? They strap me down and I cannot get away... They spin me around until I vomit. All the water is ice.” Sickness was twisting in my gut, there was buzzing, my muscles tensing to the point I tremored. “I long for tea. Please, make it stop!”

  The Hatter’s head cocked and he seemed for a moment transfixed. “Say the words, Alice. Give yourself to me.”

  Nodding, frantic to be out of the confines of the straightjacket, out of the blaring light of that room, out of the asylum, I swore to him, “I’m yours.”

  With a smile blooming from the deepest parts of his evil heart, the Hatter sealed our deal. “My pleasure.”

  His hands were on my shoulders, my relief palpable when he helped me to sit up. But he was not angling for the straps at my back. With force, I was twisted, my belly slamming into the ground. Yanked back until my knees parted, my legs crooked like a frog, he lay full upon my prone figure. The skirt of my hospital gown no longer brushed my thighs, and I was as bare as I had been on the table day in and day out.

  Something hotter than a brand notched against the lower lips where day in and day out I’d tolerated pelvic massage. I heard a cackle of glee, felt the Hatter lunge behind me.

  And then I was on fire.

  Every last one of my screams was lost in the pillowed floor, the Hatter’s long-fingered grip encasing my skull, pressing my face down.

  There was no way to breathe, the world of pain fading away from my grasp as my body was split in half. Parts of him were inside of me, his jerking on my back frantic.

  His grunts crept inside my ears. “I’ll cut the orderly’s fingers off, Alice. I’ll let you watch me devour his soul. The doctor can be made into your newest toy. Do what you will with him. Inflict the pain he deserves.”

  The Hatter was blocking my airway, crushing me into nonexistence. Lungs screaming for air, I forgot the pain between my legs, how my thighs cramped from the force of his hips on my joints.

  His body strained, bucked, and he threw back his head, shouting in tongues.

  I lay beneath him, empty, even while crammed completely full.

  “You were delicious,” he sighed, tasting the shell of my ear when my body gave out and vision blurred into nothingness. “What games we will play. What degradations you will adore me for.”

  ***

  Come morning, I was found sprawled on my back, my legs spread wide, tied parted to the rings in the floor. Blood and fluids matted my pubic hair. Pupils pinpoint, I was oblivious to all that went on around, but I grasped flashes of Sir Rothfield, and I saw alarm when he was summoned to look upon me.

  He barked at the orderly who’d opened my cell. “Who has done this?”

  “One of the inmates escaped the men’s ward. He bashed Calvin’s fingers with the gate until they split from his hand. The bastard stole his keys.”

  “She could be with child. Do you have an idea who her parents are?” Sir Rothfield’s anger was not for my state, but for his potential complications. “We would be ruined should her belly grow.”

  I felt nothing. There was no shame that the world might see me splayed and oozing. No ice bath was called for to calm hysteria. There was no hysteria. And when I was deemed full awake, there was no talk of a white rabbit, or forced pelvic massage... Nothing was said at all.

  In fact, in their fever to rid themselves of a potentially catastrophic problem, I think they forgot about me.

  Empty, hollow, just as the Hatter had promised. I was free. When he came to me each night, I smiled to see him and let him do to me what he will. The more he played with me, the more I found I enjoyed it.

  In a matter of days, my parents sat in the twin chairs before Sir Rothfield’s desk—the same desk where I had been forced to spread the evening of my arrival. I was led before them, unblemished of scratches, fattened up on rabbit stew, with not a single mark anywhere on my body.

  Beyond the tender place between my legs, the true mark was on my soul.

  I smiled at them as if all were well, and took a seat to the side when Sir Rothfield broke the great news. “Your daughter has been cured and the root of her malady discovered.”

  Taken with the glow of health in my cheeks, with the sheen of my crimped hair, my mother practically gawked. Meanwhile, my father was too busy eyeballing my physician to do more than sneer. “Considering the cost, she should have been cured months ago.”

  The charmer who’d once sat in my parents’ dayroom came forth, no trace of the clinical physician in the smoothness of the old man’s countenance. “Alice’s troubles lie in her need for a husband’s attention. She is of age and should be married immediately... with a daughter of such rare beauty, I’m sure there is some young man you’ve had in mind.”

  My mother was the first to speak up, setting her gloved fingertips on my father’s sleeve. “Look at her, Charles. Should the Franklin’s boy get one eye of this face, his papa will have no choice but to invest in our interests. I’d wager I could arrange their marriage by the end of the month.”

  “The sooner the better.” Sir Rothfield added, smile tight.

  My parents could not be so stupid, but I was made to marvel at how easily Rothfield had sold them on such a slapdash scheme.

  It was settled, I would marry, and I was to leave the asylum at once. Just as abruptly as I had been thrust into Rothfield’s power, I was taken from it.

  On the ride home, I did not look out the window. There was nothing out there for me.

  ***

  What is in a wedding day? There was cake. There were flowers. I was halted by a tight corset and laced into a gown so white even Queen Victoria would approve. Conversation was not a thing anyone in attendance found necessary of the bride. Not a soul asked me about my time spent in Italy.

  I was to stand smiling beside my new husband, a man whose father had great wealth.

  When the small party had ended, a lady’s maid chosen specifically to serve me removed my gown, brushed out my hair, and left me waiting in a bed of clean linen.

  My new boudoir was finer than any room in my parents’ brownstone.

  Pliant and submissive I lay beneath my husband when he arrived to claim his right. I think I must have pleased him, for he smiled a great deal.

  When he flopped over to catch his breath, I waited for the clock to strike. Booming louder than ever before, the walls shook, my lips curved, and silence crashed through the house.

  The Hatter stole in, the slippery place between my thighs tight and twitchy.

  Happy to sit up and let him watch the lace peignoir slip from my shoulder, I said hello.

  His grin, the absolute mirth in his yellow eyes, made my heart sing. “What is this I see? What have you done, Alice?”

  What had I done?

  Why was my pretty gown spattered and stained red?

  My bridal bed’s linens were wet with warmth, blood pooling... blood everywhere.

  At my side, eyes flat and unblinking, the man who was my husband lay, dozens of slices open and oozing... as if he’d been carved by a knife.

  It had been a knife, for I found it cradled in my palm. The same frosting crusted knife we had used to cut the wedding cake

  Confusion drew me to say, “The Red Queen must have been here.”

  “Oh, my love.” Already the Hatter was crawling over my body, a creeping long-limbed spider ready to devour its meal. “What trouble you are.”

  The feel of a kiss, of a foul tongue and of wicked hands tearing lace from my breasts, drew a sigh from my lips. He had a way of touching me everywhere at once, his fingers dancing in the remnants of my late husband’s moment of bliss.

  Knees bent, thighs parting of their own accord, I took a deep breath of the grave. “I could use a cup of tea.”

  All bones and hard knots under his hideous clothes, I explored the body of the one who owned me. Where a thick stalk of flesh jutted from his groin, I let my fingers li
nger, working up and down that veined shaft, eager to drive the Hatter mad.

  Desire is a strange kind of demon. It knows how to gnaw a soul into shapes for its pleasure, but it also must be fed.

  He was mine as much as I was his. I knew it when he tore my fist from his cock. I relished it when my knees were forced to my ears. And I screamed for him when he began to fuck me so hard the headboard banged a tick-tock against the wall.

  Unlike when the corpse at my side had let loose its lust upon me, I rocked my hips and found breathing unnecessary to raw pleasure.

  These things my Hatter had taught me. These things I gave him so that the white padded walls might never surround me again.

  When he told me to ride him, I bounced on his lap. When he hissed his desire to hump me like a dog takes a bitch, I braced on hands and knees. When the fire came, when I begged for him to end the torment, I knew why hell was so much more glorious than the deceit of heaven and its deaf god.

  Gouging the back of my lover deeper than the twins had ever clawed me, I came apart splendidly.

  Epilogue

  “Poor, sweet, baby.” The child trembling in his bed raised huge brown eyes to take in the sweet-voiced lady sitting prim across the nursery. “Did that dust-laden Hatter scare you?”

  Wedding gown pure and glimmering, veil draped atop golden hair artfully arranged on her head, sat a girl on the cusp of womanhood. Blue eyes forlorn and equally resolved, a teacup and saucer resting atop her unblemished skirt, she said, “You don’t need to be afraid of him. He cannot touch you unless you touch him first or give him permission. Trust me when I tell you, never speak to him. Do not heed a single word he says.”

  Blinking, sleep crusting the child’s eyes, the little one asked, “Why?”

  “Madder than a march hare, that one. The Hatter, he’s a pure devil. A true psychopath. Do you know that word, dear child?”

  A stunted shake of the head came before a babe hardly out of the cradle began to wail. “Why won’t they leave me alone?”

  The apparition spoke on. “The twins might seem the scariest in the lot, but they grow bored easily. Don’t give them cause to find their entertainment in you. The Red Queen is a tiring nuisance; keep an eye always glued to her. The laughing man of Cheshire, a kitten compared to the one who moves the pieces across the board. The Hatter will call me his White Queen, but I’ll tell you a secret. My true name is Alice, and I’m not as mad as they say. Now, calm yourself. Come here and share my tea.” The bride lifted a cup from her lap, steam rising from the chipped china. “I can keep the rest away for tonight. I will not let them in.”