Insanity (4 page)

"See that stare in her eyes?” Lorina tells Edith, as if I am not here with them. “She’s in the cuckoo’s nest.”

“Stop it, girls,” my mother demands. Although she cares, she looks weak. She has no control whatsoever. It makes me wonder where my father is. I have never seen him. Maybe he is dead, but I don't ask. "Can I ask you a question, Alice?"

I nod.

"Do you still believe that Wonderland exists?"

"No." I shake my head.

"It means your therapy is working," my mother looks pleased. I wonder how she’d feel two seconds in shock therapy.

"What is all that talk about Wonderland?" I wonder.

"When you were seven," Edith’s seriousness is annoying. "You went missing one afternoon, and came back saying you’d been to that scary place."

"Edith got punished that day because she was taking care of you, and you escaped her," Lorina can't stop snickering. I understand why Edith is dead serious now. Guilt is eating at her. She hides it by being a jerk.

"Shut up," Edith owns her sister with a sharp look. I wonder how I escaped her when I was a kid.

“Please, girls. Stop it,” my weakened mother pleads.

“Why stop it?” Edith says. “I don't buy it that she doesn't remember."

"Yes," Lorina backs up her elder sister. "She has to admit the horrible things she has done since she came back that afternoon."

"Horrible things," I tilt my head. "Other than killing my classmates?"

“Remember your boyfriend?” Lorina inquires.

"I have a boyfriend?”

“
Had
a boyfriend,” Lorina objects. She seems like she may have had a crush on my boyfriend. “Before you killed him along with everyone else on the school bus two years ago.”

“Why would I do that?” It’s really hard asking someone else about things you have done, but I truly don’t remember.

“Who knows,” Lorina rolls her eyes again, snickering at Edith.

“I remember she said something about monsters from Wonderland,” Edith laughs back. Her laugh is dull. It’s like she’s lazy, barely lifting her lips.

“Wonderland Monsters?” I narrow my eyebrows. I am not sure if they’re joking, or if that is what I said. Somehow I don’t care about all of this. I don’t care about my mother’s submissive silence, my mocking sisters, not even about the Wonderland Monsters. What I do care about is the boyfriend that I killed. It strikes me as odd. Even with a partial memory, I don’t think I would hurt someone I loved. “What’s his name?” I ask.

“Whose name?” Edith and Lorina are still laughing.

“My boyfriend, the one I killed.”

“Adam,” my mother speaks finally. “Adam J. Dixon.”

I don’t know how or why, but the name Adam J. Dixon suddenly brings tears to my eyes.

Chapter 10

Alice’s Cell, the Radcliffe Lunatic Asylum, Oxford

Sleeping has become increasingly hard since I learned about my boyfriend, Adam. It’s not like I remember him or the incident of killing my classmates on the school bus. But Adam to me is like Wonderland. I can't remember them, but something tells me they are real.

What bothers me about Adam is that I am strangely mourning his death. I don’t know if science has an explanation for my feelings, but I can't escape it. I feel I want to cry for him, visit his burial ground, say a little prayer, and leave roses on his tomb. To me, it's a very genuine feeling. I don't think I even feel this way about my family.

I wonder if it’s possible to forget about someone but still experience a feeling toward them. It’s as if I have written his name on the inner walls of my heart. As if I am stained with his soul. Whatever we shared is buried somewhere in the abyss of my mind. I just don't know how to swim deep enough and return to the surface with it.

My thoughts are interrupted by Waltraud's knock on the door. Sometimes it feels like I am the only patient in the asylum.

“I am really tired,” I say. “I don’t want to eat, go to the bathroom, or meet anyone. Leave me alone.”

“It’s Doctor Tom Truckle,” he says, and enters my cell. He has never entered my cell before. When he steps inside, his hands are behind his back. "How have you been, Alice?” He has never asked me so politely.

“Mad.” My favorite answer. I think I should copyright it.

“I’ll make it short,” Dr. Truckle discards my complaint. He looks disgusted with my cell. “This might be outrageously silly, but I really need to ask you something,” he shrugs. I have never seen him shrug. He looks uncomfortable with Waltraud's presence. "How much is four times seven?” he asks quickly, as if embarrassed to say it. Waltraud and Ogier try their best not to laugh behind his back.

“Twenty eight,” I shrug my shoulders. Then a surge of emotion hits me. It reminds me of my buried feelings about Adam. A light bulb flickers in my head. Suddenly, I realize I know the right answer to the silly question. Whoever told Tom Truckle to ask it to me is sending me a code. I don’t know how, but I know. “Wait,” I interrupt Dr. Tom’s departure. “It’s fourteen,” I answer with a hint of a smile on my lips.

Chapter 11

The Pillar’s Cell, Radcliffe Asylum, Oxford

“Fourteen it is!” Pillar chirped, coughing some of the hookah’s smoke in the air.

“That’s the right answer?” Truckle couldn’t see the Pillar clearly behind the smoke.

“Indeed,” the Pillar said. “Now, bring her to me.”

“No. No. No,” Truckle snapped. “That’d be a serious breach in the asylum’s rules.”

“I’ve always thought insanity was about breaking the rules,” the Pillar said. “Be a good mad boy with a suit and necktie, and bring me Alice Wonder. This just gets better and better.”

“What’s getting better?” Truckle couldn’t hide his curiosity. The Pillar knew how to trigger his buttons.

“Be patient, Tommy. Insane things come to those who wait." The Pillar leaned back on his couch. He looked content. A bit drowsy, too. Truckle remembered a moment in the eccentric professor’s trial a couple of months ago. The Pillar had informed the judge that he preferred looking at the world from behind a curtain of smoke. The smoke was like a filtering screen, he had said. It helped him to see right through people’s invisible masks.

“I suppose I can make an exception and get her to meet you briefly,” Truckle considered. “But only if you tell me—”

“I know, I know,” the Pillar waved his gloved hand in the air. “You’d like to know why four times seven is fourteen. The answer is actually buried somewhere in your own childhood, Tommy, but let’s say you can find it here.” He nudged a copy of Lewis Carroll’s original Alice’s Adventures Under Ground toward the edge of the cell. Truckle was going to reach for it through the bars, but pulled his hand back.

“Oh,” the Pillar said. “You’re scared to even reach in. How very sane of you,” he smirked. “Rest assured, Tommy. In Lewis Carroll’s book, there is a part when Alice wonders if she’s hallucinating. She questions her own sanity, and if she’s even Alice at all.”

“What?”

“In chapter two, The Pool of Tears, Alice tries to perform multiplication, but produces some odd results. She does it to assure herself she isn’t mad,” the Pillar said. "Alice finds out that while she is in Wonderland, four times five becomes twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and four times seven is…” the Pillar’s eyes glittered, looking at Truckle.

“According to this nonsensical logic, fourteen.” Truckle felt ashamed of having said that, but he wasn’t good at caging his curiosity.

“Frabjous, isn’t it?” the Pillar waved his hands like a proud magician.

“So this is some nerdy code for those obsessed with the book?” Truckle expected more than this. The professor was a killer for God’s sake. What in the world was his interest in children’s books?

“Nerdy is an awfully racist and out of fashion word,” the Pillar raised his forefinger. “We call ourselves Wonderlanders.”

“Are you kidding me? You sound like you believe that Alice Wonder is
the
Alice in the book,” Truckle chortled. “You’re the optimum zenith of insanity. I don’t think I can even profile you.”

“It’s time insanity has a role model,” the Pillar dragged long enough on his hookah to make a whizzing sound. “Now, go get me Alice, before I change my mind and escape again.”

Chapter 12

VIP Ward’s Door, the Radcliffe Lunatic Asylum, Oxford

On my way to meet this mysterious Professor Pillar, I break free from the warden and run toward Tom Truckle’s office, to get my Tiger Lily. My attempt is overruled again as the wardens grab hold of me and tie me back up in a straitjacket. This time, they squeeze me in hard, so I can’t untie myself.

Ogier grins, watching me buckled up. He taps his prod on the thick flesh of his palm, as if reminding me how much he'd enjoy shocking me if I untie myself again. As they walk me up to the VIP ward, I try to squeeze my head for deeper memories of Wonderland and the people I supposedly killed. I can’t remember anyone, not even the Pillar who wants to see me.

"You're by far one of the worst Mushrooms in my asylum," Dr. Truckle says, adjusting his tie as he walks beside me. He's always been self-conscious about the fancy way he dresses and how he looks. But it's the first time he calls me a Mushroom. "And even though you killed your classmates, I know you're not a naturally born killer. I have been treating you for some time, so I know what I am talking about." He stops before the metallic door leading to the VIP hallway. It looks much cleaner than the mess I live in downstairs. I think of it as purgatory, one step away from the sane world outside. "Like I told you, Professor Carter Pillar is a cold-hearted murderer. He's done horrible things, like pulling his victim's eyes out and stuffing their sockets with mushrooms. He used laughing gas on another victim, and smoked his damn hookah while watching him die of internal bleeding caused from the laughter. He even once hypnotized a man and made him jump off a rooftop of the Tom Tower in Oxford University after persuading him he had wings."

"What's your point, doctor?" I can't help but notice Truckle's uneasiness with the Pillar. It makes me curiouser and curiouser.

“The point is… once you’re alone with him, he is known for messing with people’s minds and convincing them with any ideas he wants to seed in their brains,” Dr. Truckle says. “He always has an agenda, and knows how to read through people’s insecurities. I advise you to stay tied in your straitjacket and as far away as possible from the bars of his cell. Or you'll jeopardize your chances of leaving the asylum."

"I didn’t know I had a chance in the first place.” I stare him right in the eyes, making sure he isn’t lying or playing games.

“I know it’s crazy, but you do,” Dr. Truckle laces his hands together. “Your mother’s lawyer has convinced the court that if the asylum proves you’ve been cured, they will rule out your crimes of killing your classmates.”

“She did that?” So the woman with the name I don’t know must be my mother after all.

“She’s been trying with all her might to help you,” Dr. Truckle says. “If that happens, then you’ve committed the perfect crime in my opinion; killed your classmates, pleaded insanity, got cured, and got your freedom afterwards. That must be every teenager's dream.” He continues, “To believe you're cured, we have to either make sure you’re not fooling us when you say you don’t remember Wonderland, or…”

“Or?”

“Or the Pillar proves you’re sane.” Dr. Truckle rubs his chin.

“How would a madman, serial killer, who dresses as if he is a caterpillar, prove that?”

“By proving that Wonderland is real.” Dr. Truckle’s face suddenly changes, and he begins to laugh at me as he nudges me through the door. I guess he was just messing with my head.

Chapter 13

Tied up in my straitjacket, I walk down the hallway to meet with this Pillar. It's a much cleaner and broader hallway than mine downstairs. All cells are empty. All, except the one with a shimmering yellow light. I hear faint music playing in the background. As I walk closer, I recognize the tune. It's White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane. Smoke circles out of the cell as I stop in front of it, ready to meet him. Pillar the Killer himself.

The Pillar's cell is luxurious in a mad way. Its floor is levitated almost a foot above the hallway's floor. It makes it look like a performer's stage. The Pillar is sitting, legs crossed, on a huge couch. He is smoking his hookah with one hand and holding a jar with a butterfly inside with the other. The butterfly crashes against the glass, wanting to be set free. The Pillar doesn't care.

Silence creeps into the place and I don't feel like starting the conversation. The Pillar's eyes scan me in a most unusual way. It's as if he knows me, has known me, and is making sure it's really me. Although mad people don't intimidate me, I feel mysteriously uncomfortable. He has such an unexplainable presence for such a short and average-looking man.

There is a chair in the hall facing the cell. I sit on it, not taking my eyes off him. His eyes are beady as he waves the hookah's hose in the air. He does it like a maestro orchestrating the song’s unusual melody. It takes me a while to discover he is writing words with his hookah's smoke in the air. The smoke magically sticks. It's a question, one that may have been easier for me to answer more than a week ago: "Who are you?"

This isn't happening, right? This is too surreal, even for my insanity.

"I'm not sure who I am," I say, wondering why I feel the need to comply. "People around me seem to have an idea of who I am, though.”

“Who do they think you are?”

“They say I killed my friends." I raise my eyes and stare in his, realizing that in the weirdest of ways, we’re both killers.

"Why haven't I ever thought of that?" he sucks on his hookah.

"Think of what?"

"Killing my friends," he puffs a ring of smoke back into the room. "But then again, you can't kill something you don't have."

“You don't have friends?” I didn’t except him to open up to me. Or, is he?

“Neither have you.”

“Actually, I do.”