Page 5 of Madness

Could Nurse White be right?

Could this place really help my fractured mind be ordinary? To not have the madness that clings to every crevice of my mind not take over.

The chains fall away, and I rub at my sore wrists, staring at the red marks left behind.

The guard steps back a few paces more than necessary, and Nurse White sends me a smile that looks twisted and filled with deadly promise.

I feel the familiar sensation creeping in again, threatening to consume me and send me spiralling into mania once more as the feeling of being trapped here forever ticks away in the back of my mind.

“Tick. Tick. Tick. Alice warned you of Wonderland. No one escapes… never, ever, ever, ever,”Queenie squawks in my head.

Nurse White’s words echo alongside hers, and I know it was all a fantastical allure to pull me into Wonderland willingly.

“You are far too mad for the ordinary world, Alice. Wonderland is where you belong, just as Alice did.”

“Shall we go to the infirmary? I want to ensure you don’t need any immediate medical help, and we can try you with some medicine that may help,” the warden says, and for a moment, I feel as if he’s sincere.

He steps closer, his shoe sounding like a shotgun in the empty, echoey foyer, and the grey silhouette that stalks him turns from man to monster. The dim lights above us flicker, his shadow dances against the cold tiled wall, and the shadow jumps between human and monster.

“A Jabberwocky!”the male voice in my head whispers in terrified awe,“You are trapped, trapped, trapped.”

Alice had told me all about the Jabberwocky that held her prisoner here years and years ago.

He was the warden, but he was older and scarier – or so her stories went.

However, Alice had the ability to weave tales that danced on the edge of reality and fantasy, leaving me unsure of what I could believe.

The line between her truth and fiction was as blurred as the madness that shifts my reality to delusion.

The Jabberwocky stands as the guardian of Wonderland, she said, and he will never let you leave, she also said.

But she did escape.

She defied the odds and managed to weave her way through the maze that is Wonderland, escaping into the normal world, and she was still mad.

Maybe.

Maybe if I stay, the madness that gnaws at my mind will go away.

Queenie laughs cruelly,“We will never, ever, ever, ever go away. We are in your head, head, head forever.”

“Welcome to Eden Institute, Alice,” Nurse White says with a broad, manic grin.

“Wonderland is a wonderful place to be.” The Warden mutters after her, and my head swings to look at him.

His brown eyes are cold and calculating, and they march along with me through the institute's corridors, which seem to stretch out before me. They are sterile and foreboding, lined with doors that hide patients just as mad as me behind them.

I feel a shiver run down my spine as a patient slams his body against the door, the small clear window showing his face that is laced with fury.

He presses his face to the glass, and my mind twists his face into that of the Cheshire cat.

“Welcome to Wonderland, Alice.”

Chapter Three

A timid knock on my room door startles me from the work I’m doing, and I turn around, ready to admonish whoever thought it wise to disturb me, but the words die on my tongue when I see who it is.

Harry stands there timidly, his red hair frazzled and sticking out from underneath his hat.

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