Alice & Dorothy Read online

  Chapter 3

  Alice stood outside of a large vanilla coloured house. The sun was warm on her skin, the grass a vivid emerald green. Cotton candy clouds sped across an aquamarine sky at an unnatural pace, sending shadows speeding across the landscape.

  She had some sense of movement about her, a growing feeling. She had mushrooms in her mouth; the taste coated her teeth. The house was the general shape of a large rabbit; it had twin chimneys sprouting from a thatch roof in the shape of rabbit ears, while thatch rested between them like a tuft of brown hair. The House of the March Hare, she thought. She knew the place, but she had no idea from where.

  There was a table set under a tree in front of the house. Sitting at the table, The March Hare himself was having tea with The Mad Hater. Between them was a large Dormouse, slouched over on the table asleep. The other two paid little attention to the sleeping rodent; indeed they used him as a pillow to rest their elbows and were busy talking over top of the creature.

  The table was large, with many seats, but the three creatures were huddled down in the corner farthest away from Alice.

  The Hater elbowed the March Hare; nodded toward Alice. Said something quietly.

  The March Hare put a paw up.

  “No room!” he cried. The Hater chimed in. “No room here! No room for your kind!”

  “There’s plenty of room here,” said Alice. She waved at the table. “You guys are using three seats out of, like, twenty.”

  “No room, whore,” The Dormouse said, yawning and snapping his teeth. They were jagged shards of bloody bone. He tucked a hand under his chin and resumed his light snoring.

  “Plenty of room,” Alice said again. She yanked a chair out and sat at the far end of the table. The Hater and March Hare watched her intently. Finally the Hare stopped scowling and smiled.

  “Have some wine,” he said amicably.

  Alice looked across the spread. High class silver, fine china cups and saucers, teapots with little ceramic paintings of flowers and grapevines. There were at least a dozen. Little painted bowls filled with milk and sugar. Clotted cream and jam. Vanilla.

  “I don’t see any wine,” said Alice. “Just a lot of teapots.”

  “There isn’t any wine,” The March Hare said. He looked at Alice as though she was the dumbest bitch he’d ever seen. “It’s all teapots, stupid girl.”

  “Why did you offer me some then?” said Alice. She crossed her arms. “Pretty shitty to offer me something that isn’t even here.”

  “It was pretty shitty of you to sit at our table without being invited,” The March Hare said.

  “I didn’t know it was your table,” Alice said defensively. “There could be fifty people sitting here, and you three fags are bunched up in the corner. I figured there was room.”

  “Your hair wants cutting,” The Mad Hater said. He held a scalpel in his hand, pressed his thumb against the blade until blood stained his white glove. “Cut it? Close to the shoulders. All the way around, girly. Clean and jerk.” He smiled, and his teeth were aligned in perfect ceramic symmetry. A million dollar smile on anyone else. In the Hater’s mouth, they looked like terrible weapons.

  “Hey,” Alice said. She tried to cover her shock at the creature’s tone with a look of her own. “You just keep that sick shit to yourself.”

  “Caw-Caww!” The Hater said. “Bitch! You’re dirty! Nobody loves you like I do!”

  “Murderer,” The Dormouse mumbled. He snuggled into the rook of his arm.

  The March Hare broke into hysterical laughter.

  “Why is a Raven like a writing desk?” he asked.

  “I can probably guess that,” Alice said. Anything to steer them away from their current topic.

  “You mean you think you can find the answer?” said the March Hare.

  “Yeah that’s what I said.”

  “What are you, a fuckin’ retard?” The Mad Hater’s voice was like hot gravel. “Say what you mean.”

  “I did,” said Alice. “I mean what I say.”

  “No,” said the Hater. “Say what you mean.”

  “It’s the same fuckin’ thing,” said Alice, exasperated. She hated they way they babbled. None of it made any sense.

  “Not the same!” The Hater shouted. He slammed his hand down on a porcelain teacup. It shattered into tiny white shards, hot black tea spilling out across the fine lace tablecloth. “It’s not the fuckin’ same thing and you know it! STOP LYING, WHORE!”

  “Whore,” Dormouse agreed. He opened one lazy black eye for a moment, rolled it around, and then closed it again.

  The Hater sat back down. He seemed to be disappointed that he had made such a mess in front of his seat. There were shards of teacup sticking into his hand, he paid them little mind. He pulled the gloves off one finger at a time.

  His hands were black, scabrous claws. From his dinner jacket he withdrew another, identical set of white silk gloves. He put them on and pulled them tight. He made hard fists with them. Then he straightened his coat and flashed his hideous perfect teeth toward Alice. When he spoke again, his voice was calm.

  “You may as well say that I see what I eat is the same as I eat what I see.”

  “He’s right you know,” said the March Hare. “You might as well say I like what I get is the same as I get what I like.”

  “Might as well say I sleep when I breathe is the same as I breathe when I sleep,” Dormouse said between snores.

  “It is the same thing with you,” The March Hare said, elbowing Dormouse in the ribs.

  “Shut it,” Dormouse said. “I’ll eat half of you and leave half on your mother’s front step as a gift.”

  “You guys are fucked,” Alice said. “It’s a loony bin around here.”

  The March Hare smiled. “Have some wine,” he said amicably.

  Alice rolled her eyes and shook her head.

  The four of them sat in silence for a time. Alice fingered the porcelain dishes in front of her. They were beautiful, like the ones she’d seen at her grandmother’s house when she was a kid. Her grandmother had been a hoarder; she collected music boxes and McDonald’s Happy Meal boxes and commemorative coins. She collected posters and books and old radios from the 1920s recorded on vinyl. She’s also collected a lot of garbage; chicken buckets and plastic bags and old clothes. By the time they got around to having her committed, her house was so full you couldn’t even get the front door open all the way.

  “Lovely girl,” The Mad Hater said. Do you happen to know what day it is?”

  He’d pulled a large gold watch out of his front pocket. A filigreed chain anchored it to his lapel. He shook it several times, unnaturally fast, and then looked at it with a touch of fear on his face like he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. Or perhaps he simply couldn’t believe it.

  Alice tried to remember what day it was. It took a moment, but then a number came to her from the foggy banks of her memory.

  “The fourth,” she said.

  The Mad Hater shot The March Hare a murderous look. “Two days?” He asked angrily.

  “What,” said the March Hare. He was busy stirring sugar into a new cup of tea.

  “My watch is two fucking days behind, you imbecile,” The Hater said. “I told you butter wouldn’t be good for the works, didn’t I?”

  The March Hare shrugged. “It was the best butter.”

  “It was lung butter,” the Dormouse said. He yawned again.

  “Quiet you,” The Hater said. “Don’t make me drown you in a bucket of water.” He looked back at the March Hare. “I bet you got crumbs in the fucking thing. I told you not to use the butter knife, you cock smoking faggot.”

  The March Hare took the watch from him and shook it himself. He put it up against his ear and listened.

  “Let me see it,” Alice said.

  Nobody looked at her. Nobody acknowledged that she had spoken. She was forgotten for now.

  The March Hare dipped the watch in his tea and shook it out. He looked at the watch again
and sighed. “It was the best butter, you know,” he said again.

  “Let me see it,” Alice said again. This time the March Hare shrugged and tossed the watch to her. Alice caught it in both hands and flipped it over. It was as big as a large glazed doughnut, perfectly etched in gold and silver. On the back was a design made out of hundreds of tiny gems. There were diamonds and sapphires and rubies. It looked like a blue car sitting in a parking lot. At the bottom of the picture two stones were missing, and their empty sockets stared back up at her. “What is it? It’s beautiful.”

  The Mad Hater shrugged. He was cleaning his teeth with a silk glove. The sound reminded Alice of the sounds bedsprings made when you fucked on an old bed. He gave the air of someone very bored with the conversation. The Dormouse was sound asleep but The March Hare was watching her intently.

  Alice flipped the watch over. Instead of hands and a face, the watch face was barren of any features. It was polished, mirror-smooth gold. In the middle of the empty face, it looked as though someone had taken a sharp knife and gouged the number “2” in a childlike scrawl. She looked up at the Mad Hater, confused.

  “This is your watch?” she said. “It doesn’t even tell the time. Pretty useless, don’t you think?”

  “Why should it?” The Mad Hater said. He cupped his hands, motioning for Alice to toss it back. When she did, he fondled it like a lost child. “Does your watch tell you what year it is?”

  “No, what would be the point of that?” Alice said.

  “Exactly,” The Mad Hater said. “That’s just the case with my watch.”

  “Uhh, what?” Alice said. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  The Mad Hater sighed. “The Dormouse is asleep again,” he said. He took his cup of steaming hot tea and splashed the entire cup onto the top of the sleeping creature’s head.

  “Fuck!” Dormouse screeched. It was an inhuman sound, like three or four voices screaming in pain at once. His head snapped up, and he snarled at the Mad Hater. His jagged teeth slashed into his gums and his snarl widened into a roar. Blood and saliva dripped freely from the wounds onto the tablecloth. Where the creature’s fluids touched the silk lace, it turned black and thick bug hair sprouted forth like mold.

  The Mad Hater looked back at him, unimpressed. The two held each other’s gaze for a few moments. Something silent passing between them. Alice smelled violence in the air. It was thick, like summer gnats. Finally the Dormouse turned his head away from The Mad Hater and turned his eyes on Alice.

  “I was just going to say that,” he said to her. His voice had been restored to civility.

  “Did you guess the Riddle yet?” The Hater said, smiling. All hints of violence were gone from his face.

  Alice shook her head. “Why is a Raven like a writing desk? No clue. What’s the answer?”

  “Haven’t the foggiest,” replied The March Hare.

  “Me either,” said the Hater. The Dormouse mumbled in agreement. Alice noticed that in spite of the horrible red patch on the top of his head from the burning tea, he was on his way back to sleep already.

  “Neither of you know? What a waste of fuckin’ time,” Alice said. “Why would you sit here telling riddles that have no answers? Actually, never mind. It’s not that surprising, really.”

  “If you knew Time the way I did,” said the Hater, “You wouldn’t talk about wasting it. It’s Him.”

  “What?” asked Alice. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “What I mean, little strumpet,” The Hater said, leaning over the table toward her. His face had suddenly taken a vile, predatory slant to it. Alice’s stomach rolled just looking at him. “I daresay you have no concept of time either as a thing or a person. You have never even spoken to him. I know this for a fact. He and I were grand friends,”

  “You were lovers,” said the Dormouse. “He ripped your sweet ass open like a hot knife through clotted cream.”

  The Mad Hater looked down at his companion, his face dark. “More tea?” he said quietly.

  “Do it,” the Dormouse said, “And I’ll serve this whore your balls and your eyes with her next cup.” He rolled his lazy eye back toward Alice. “She’ll eat them, too. Every last bite.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Alice said.

  “You’ve never even spoken to Jesus Christ…” The March Hare began. He caught a look from the Hater and the Dormouse and immediately shut his mouth. Looked down at his teacup and fingered the handle.

  “If you knew Time the way I did,” The Hater said, resuming his discussion, “that is to say, as I once did, on friendly terms, why, the man would do anything you liked with but a whisper and a nod. For example, let’s say you are being frigged in the exit by some fat guy, why you could ask Time to change the hours to days and stop time at a motel, skin hot from the shower, her lips…”

  “There you go,” said the Dormouse. “Off with your fantasies again.”

  “I wish you hadn’t interrupted,” The March Hare said, in a whisper, shifting in his chair.

  “I was merely stating that Time would happily stop it for you at any point you wished. Stop it even; hold it there forever if you wanted.”

  “Is that how you guys get on?” said Alice. “Stuck on a moment? I guess my watch would be useless if I could pull that off.”

  “Not me,” said the Dormouse. “These two are assholes are cuh-razy.”

  “Look,” said the Hater, swatting away the Dormouse’s comments. “I’ll tell you. Last March was a bad year for us. We were sentenced to death by the Queen. It was my big day, I was singing for her High and Mightiness, tra la lah, singsong voice, very lovely, very, very pretty, I have a singing voice like my mother, when I wish it, you know?”

  “Very lovely,” said the March Hare.

  “Like her big fat tits,” mumbled the Dormouse.

  The Mad Hater broke into braying, hysterical laughter. The March Hare pulled his hands off the table, watching his companion closely. There was a worried look on his face. The Dormouse snuggled his nose into the crook of his own arm.

  Alice pulled back from the table. She’d been around unpredictable men before; her father had been prone to bouts of random fury much like this. The Hater actually seemed a lot like her father, when she thought about it. They even kind of looked the same, with their severe British faces and large teeth.

  “Excuse me,” said the Hater pleasantly. “As I was saying, I had merely gotten past a single verse when the Bitch Whore Queen began screaming—‘He’s murdering time! Off with his head! Chop off their cocks!’ –and the like. Terrible things come from her mouth when she sets her mind to it.”

  “Much like this one, I imagine,” the Dormouse said.

  Alice said nothing. She was watching The Hater intently. He palmed a silver bread and butter knife, slid it up the cuff of his shirt. Looked up at Alice and smiled. Teapots reflected off their sheen.

  “Ever since that day,” he said quietly. “Time has forgotten us. It’s been 6 o’clock since that day in March. Tea time.”

  The March Hare sighed, picked up his teacup and swished the contents sourly.

  “I could use a beer, frankly,” he said. “Always tea though. Always tea time.”

  “So,” Alice said, looking at the teapots around the table. Sets of three, every one. The teapots were arranged in essentially the same setup that the three were sitting in now. “You guys just sit here and drink tea all day? Is that why this table is full of teapots?”

  The Hater rolled his eyes.

  “No, not all day,” he said. “Tea is at 6 o’clock. Since it is six o’clock, we must have tea.”

  “We’re supposed to wash up after tea,” said the March Hare, “but that time hasn’t arrived yet.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Alice. “Why don’t you just go do something else?”

  “Because,” the Hater said, lightning flashing across his face. “It’s 6 o’clock! Why can’t your deranged little girl-brain get a handle on this? We don’t drink tea because it’s
6 o’clock, we do it because at 6 o’clock we must have tea.”

  “Good God,” said the Dormouse. “This again? How terribly boring. Thought you had it figured out by now.”