Page 66 of Madness

I nod, offering her what I hope is a reassuring smile, “They care about you more than you realise. We all do. You’re important to us, Red.”

She nods carefully, falling into thought, “Sometimes I forget that.”

“Just promise you won’t shut us out. We’re here for you to lean on. Let us be there for you, Atropa,” I say, hoping she listens to my words.

A soft, almost inaudible sigh escapes her lips as she meets my gaze, “I promise.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

“Is he too far gone?”

“No, no, no. He’s just nearly mad enough,” Queenie sighs, “But still is not nearly mad enough either.”

The voices in my head are becoming harder and harder to pull apart, and I am no longer able to keep them in separate cages inside my mind.

“Have I gone round the bend? Have I finally lost it?” I whisper to myself in the reflection of the mirror, hoping for some semblance of sanity to answer back.

The mirror remains silent… as if it could ever talk back, and offers me no solace.

My eyes look normal – no wild, frantic gleam, no shadows of delusion… nothing to indicate that I’m entirely mad. Yet the voices and the conversations they are having, as if I’m not even here, tell a different story.

“I’m afraid so, Alice. You’ve finally gone mad… bonkers even… entirely off your head.”

“Head, head, head!”Queenie chants in a rhythmic loop.

“Mad… I’ve gone entirely freaking mad.” I mutter, sinking to the cold, hard floor.

“He has, he has, he has!”

“Do you think we can push him far enough? To do what his legacy is prophesied?”

“There is no prophecy. I am just Al.”

“No, you are Alice. You just aren’t Alice enough to do what is needed to be done.”

“Then what do I need to do? How do I get rid of you?”

There’s a knock at my door before the masculine voice can answer, and a guard enters, searching for me to escort me to get my medication.

“Time for your medication, Al,” he says as I come back into the room.

The red crimson-uniform-clad guard morphs, and I rub my eyes to try to make sense of what I’m seeing as he transforms into a giant red playing card.

“Guard, card. Guard, card. Guard, card. Card, card, card.”

I expect Chesh to appear before me, the wide, toothy grin to apparate as he reveals that he’splayed another joke, but when nothing happens, I sigh in defeat.

Maybe I am destined to be mad after all.

“Come on.” The guard card snaps at me, clicking his fingers, “We don’t have all day.”

I follow him from the room to the medical ward, hoping that it’s the nicer nurse who is handing out meds today and not Nurse White.

Just as I step out of the room, the masculine voice echoes in my mind, making my steps falter,“You cannot get rid of me, not until death rids you of me.”

The medical ward is always cold and sterile. Even the stark white light seems to rebound off of the white walls, making it almost blinding in its emptiness.

The distinct clicking of Nurse White’s heels against the tiles is almost mocking as Queenie shouts inside my head,“Click, click, click!”

---