Malice in Wonderland #1: Alice the Assassin (7 page)

“Ditto to your ditto.” Tweedledee addresses Alice now. “So since there are two of you, we take it you cracked open Humpty? Excellent. We always hated that blowhard.”

“Yes,” Alice says. “We had a bit of a break up.”

Tweedledee says, “Excellent! But we have a bit of a confession. Humpty didn’t have your heart.”

“I know that now.”

Tweedledum says, “Yes, we thought it would be grand fun to have you go after Humpty. But the truth is that after he took your heart at the party, in exchange for a future favor, he handed it off to the Mad Hatter, who snuck it out under his hat.”

Tweedledee says, “Yes, we played a bit of a practical joke on you. And now there are two of you! And we shall have twice as much fun making you cry!”

Alice knows that she and Malice are not in a good position to stop them, but she has an idea. “But before that, I have an idea! A way for you to settle your differences and decide who shall have the rattle!”

“I have the rattle!” Tweedledee proclaims, and to prove it, he gives it a little shake.

Alice says, “Well I have a nice idea, regardless. It’ll be a fun game. Since you two are always feuding and dueling…”

“Yes?” the brothers both say at the same time. They are leaning forward on tippy toes, in anticipation.

Alice says, “Why not have a duel? A pretend duel? Why it will be fun. And then you can both pretend to die. Isn’t it such grand fun to pretend to be shot?”

The Tweedles are nodding eagerly with big grins on their faces as they say, “Ditto!”

One of them even gives a preview of his performance, clutching his chest, and sticking his tongue out the side of his mouth.

But, “Not yet!” Malice scolds.

Alice looks over at Malice who is grinning huge before she nods, now letting Alice do all the talking.

Alice says, “Malice and I can judge who dies the best, and the winner, hrmmm…” She pretends to think. “What shall the prize be?”

Now the brothers put their hands to their chins, repeating, “Prize prize prize.” And they seem to be thinking hard.

Alice knows that anything they come up with will only lead to another round of arguing. So Alice jumps in, saying, “First one to lick our tears?”

The brothers consider that a moment, then nod. “Ditto!” they proclaim.

Each of the brothers grabs a pistol and soon they are standing back to back.

Tweedledum says, “Can we get on with this, please?”

“Yes, of course,” Alice says. “Now, no pussyfooting you two. You have to actually aim and everything. You must convince us of your performance! And no cheating. You don’t fire until I say. Now, as I count you shall take your steps until 20, then turn when I say fire.”

One of them says “Nohow” while the other says “Contrariwise,” then the both of them: “Too far!”

“Fine then, 19 steps.”

“18!” Tweedledee shouts, while the other shouts, “2!”

Alice says, “10.”

“17!” Tweedledee shouts, while the other shouts, “5!”

Alice says, “At this rate, we’ll never agree! I say 3, and that’s final! Now…” She begins to count to three—like mirror images of each other, the twins take their steps, then Alice shouts, “Fire!”

They turn at the same time, lift their pistols at the same rate and fire simultaneously. Blooms of red sprout in identical areas of their chests and they each raise a hand to their chests, drop their pistols at the same time.

Malice shouts, “Yay!” She claps a little with her bound hands.

The Tweedles’ hands clutched to their chests are growing red with blood, the red on their shirts growing wider.

Tweedledum shouts, “Real bullets, I daresay!” He groans in pain.

Tweedledee says, “Ditto! Shot through our hearts we are!” in a sorrowful tone.

They stagger at the same time.

Like looking at mirror images,
Alice thinks.

Malice is mocking them, “Ahah! A couple of buffoons. I rename you DumDum and DumDummerer!”

Their faces flash anger before returning to their pained expressions.

Tweedledee glances at the razorblade he had set down. “Revenge I daresay, is warranted brother. Let’s cut their throats!”

“Contrariwise! Let’s shoot them with the guns.”

“Splendid thinking brother! Ditto!”

The brothers take their bloodied hands from off their chests to stoop and pick up the guns.

Malice’s expression takes on a look of fear.

Alice doesn’t know much about guns, but could it be possible that the Cheshire Cat had lied about them being single shot?

The Tweedle twins begin staggering toward their targets. Every once in a while they must stop and shout in pain, and their hands tremble, but they make their way.

Malice shouts, “No! Back off! Go away!”

Alice sneers, says to Tweedledee. “I’m surprised. I guess you have hearts after all.”

He answers, “Yes, but they’re black.”

Alice says nothing. Merely locks eyes with Tweedledee as he approaches—she doesn’t move her eyes from his, holds a cold unblinking stare. He had been responsible for so much torment and she had taken it, but now, she’s determined to stare into his eyes as the life leaves him. She wants to see the very moment he dies.

Closer he comes.

Tweedledee stands before Alice. Tweedledum is in front of Malice. As one, the twins lift the pistols, never breaking eye contact with the girl in front of them. They point the pistols at the girls’ forehead and pull the triggers.

And the pistols go
click.

“
No boom boom,” Alice says with a glare, looking into his eyes, and then, as she’d hoped, she sees the life leave him, as his eyeballs roll up into his head, and he topples over on top of her, causing her to be pushed over and having her cheek pressed into the dirt.

She hears Malice screaming, “Ahhh! Get this fat whale off of me!”

It takes a few moments for Alice to wiggle out from under the corpse. Malice is already free. The boys seemed to have died at the same time, like twins to the very end.

As Alice struggles to free herself, she watches as Malice goes over to the razorblade and awkwardly uses it to cut at her tape bonds. Alice offers to help, but for some reason, Malice absolutely refuses. Malice’s efforts are awkward but seem to be working. Meanwhile, Alice gets out from under the dead body.

Alice feels a sharp pain in her wrist and yells out. Malice yells out at the same time.

Malice shouts, “I cut myself!”

Alice’s hands are behind her, so she doesn’t know what the cause of
her
pain was.

Her hands growing bloody from her wound, Malice continues to saw away. She pulls her hands apart, the tape finally cut away.

Malice approaches Alice with a wicked grin on her face. “And now, to take care of you.”

Alice says, “Thank you so much. I need to get some circulation back.” She chuckles, glad to have her helper and teammate on her side, to help her get her heart back.

Malice crouches down behind her. “What is this? You have a slice on your wrist too? How did that happen?”

“I don’t know, it was at the same time as you cut yourself.” Alice feels her hair pulled violently back and held there, feels the razorblade pressed to her neck.

From behind, Malice whispers in her ear, “Don’t move and this will go quickly. Don’t speak. I remember what you told me. The problem is, there is only one heart between the two of us. One of us must go.”

“If you cut me, you cut yourself!”

“What?” The pressure of the blade lessens slightly.

“My wrist! Your cheek! We’re mirror images. If I die, you die!”

There is a long pause, then the blade leaves Alice’s neck.

Quietly, Malice says, “Damn.” She raises her voice to address Alice, but remains behind her, out of sight. “Well that certainly complicates things. So I suppose you are my rival. Good luck to you. But remember, finders keepers.”

“It doesn’t have to be like that. Maybe we can share somehow. This is Wonderland after all. We can still work together. Getting back my…I mean
our
heart is the most important thing. Then we can compromise.” She waits for a response. “Just release me, okay?”

No response. Malice is gone.

Alice is able to stand, and looks around. Malice has taken the razorblade and chains and one pistol. The other pistol remains, but it’s useless and heavy. Her dress pockets may be able to hold a lot, but holding too much would get clunky and heavy. The tape remains, which Alice awkwardly slips into her dress, and thankfully she still has her deck of cards. When she gets her hands free she’ll have to look through it to see if the Thirteen of Heartless is still in there, but she suspects it is, because she realizes she forgot to tell Malice that she’d need the card in order to put the heart back in.

And of course, the two corpses of the Tweedles remain, lying in the blood-soaked dirt. The rattle is lying on the ground a few feet away from them, forgotten.

She says, “Who wants the rattle, then?” She looks over at Tweedledum, who is lying face down in the dirt. “You? Hey, look at me when I’m talking to you. Fine then.” She walks to the rattle and after struggling a bit, picks it up, carries it over to Tweedledee, who is lying face up, and tosses it onto his chest. “There, now you have your precious rattle. Ga ga goo goo, you little baby.” She stares at his unmoving face, frozen in a contorted expression of pain. “Where’s my thank you? Well fine, guess I’ll go.”

After a few moments thought, she decides to visit the Caterpillar, who lives a short distance away, to get untaped. She begins walking.

After a few moments, she stops, turns to look at you, and recites this poem:

Tweedledum and Tweedledee,

Were each given a fake toy gun,

So that Tweedledum and Tweedledee,

Could pretend duel and die just for fun.

So they tried to see who best could act,

As if they were shot by a gun,

But real shots rang out, and their ribs both were cracked,

And they died without saying who won!

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Caterpillar

Soon she comes to it, a spot to the side of the path where there is a particular mushroom atop which sits a particular three inch long caterpillar smoking from a hookah.

She awkwardly positions herself to take a tiny bite of the mushroom, as the little caterpillar watches tinily and quietly.

She was required to visit the caterpillar every other day, but that was before her heart got stolen. Biting from the left side of the mushroom always makes her shrink.

And shrink she does. Just as she suspected, everything shrinks at a different rate—her clothes always shrink a bit slower than her body, causing her dress to temporarily be too big for her, and what she was counting on is also true—her arms and wrists shrink faster than the tape wrapped around them, so soon she is easily able to pull her hands free.

She sits now, on the ground, a respectable size for conversing with the atrocious insect. She doesn’t like him at all. He’s immature, literally—he refuses to grow up and become a butterfly. But she’d always been too polite to protest with any more than a level of meekly.

The Caterpillar watches her with detached interest from his differently spectacled eyes—a year ago, he took to wearing a monocle on one eye to appear more distinguished. He lifts the hookah from his insectoid mouth and shoots smoke rings in her direction. “You snuck up on me! Usually I have to put up with your distracting shadow over me before you shrink. Why I say girl! Do you know you’re not casting a shadow?”

Alice looks down to see that it’s true. But she shrugs it off. Weird things happen all the time in Wonderland.

Alice brings out her deck of cards and begins looking through it, quickly finding that the Thirteen of Heartless is still there.

Now the Caterpillar says, “Cards? What’s the meaning, girl? And why did you put tape around your wrists?”

Alice is grateful for the freedom to fold her arms, which she does now. “I didn’t do it. It was the Tweedle twins. They—they were trying to make me cry.” Since she had so recently acquired the skill of deception, she decides to put it to use now, and pretend she’s the same Alice as usual—and she won’t mention the twins’ demise.

The Caterpillar takes a small puff from his hookah, exhales smoke. “Boys will be boys.”

“Brats will be brats. They will get what’s coming to them someday.”

“Perhaps, but not from the likes of you. Why, you are just a weak, little…meek, uninspiring, unimpressive, tiny little little girl.”

“You should be glad I am. That way, I can talk to you.”

“Yes, I’m glad to make you test for me, but I know you. You would goof off if you could. Won’t stay on task. You’re lucky to have me to provide you with guidance.” He tuts and adjusts his monocle with one of his many many thin caterpillar legs.