Figment - Jace Cameron. Страница 14

I am imagining her in a white coat, a bit too tight for her size. Big-boned, almost square; red curls of thick hair with a pencil lost inside the bush. Fat cheeks, bubbly and wavy, too.

The waiting is killing me. I am about to zip up and scream at her: Here I am. Just take me out!

"So, here you are." She stands real close, reeking of cigarettes, the cheap stuff, and some other smell I can't identify. "Someone made a mistake shoving you here." She kills the boredom by uttering everything she does aloud. I know because I used to do the same in my cell. "Your sorry arse belongs somewhere else, young lady."

This blind game isn't fun anymore. I realize I will probably never know how the mortician looks like after she delivers my corpse to the chauffeur's car. Then she stops again and coughs. This time, she coughs really hard, as if puking. I hear the cigarette swoosh into something. What's going on out there?

A heavy thud causes a ripple through my metallic table. The rollers skew sideways. The woman chokes.

The tune of Don't Fear the Reaper continues in the background, but the woman stopped whistling, if not breathing.

"Help!" she barely pronounces, while her fat hand slaps like a heavy fish on the side of my bag.

What am I supposed to do? Help her, right?

And blow my cover?

What is happening to her?

Surprisingly, the woman stops choking.

"Bloody cigarettes," she mumbles. I hear her stand up. Her voice is a bit rustier, the music in the background making the whole incident sound like a joke.

There is a long moment of silence, only interrupted by her heavy breathing. She should also stop smoking. And eating—what's that smell again? Yeah, she somehow reeks of baking.

She decides to change the song on the iPod. Am I ever going to get out of here?

I am not familiar with the new tune. An American sixties song. A merry song, actually. Funny and quirky.

"'I am a Nut' by Leroy Pullins," the mortician documents. Then the lighter flicks again. "I love this song!"

What? She is smoking again?

This time she takes a long drag, as if her near-death experience rewarded her with an additional lung.

She moves toward me again, tapping her paper chart. Her feet aren't as heavy. I wonder how.

She takes another drag and whistles along with the song. The singer is a nut himself. All he says is "I'm a nut," a few fast words, then "I'm a nut" again. Then he stops to a stroke of a chord of his guitar and says, "Beedle-dee-bah, beedle-dee-bah, beedle-dee-ree-pa-dom."

I have to check this song out, if I ever get out.

I hear the woman stop and swirl in her place like she's Elvis Presley on mushrooms. I am about to laugh. What happened to this mortician woman? Am I back in the Radcliffe Asylum already?

She approaches my bag and taps a hand on it. "Here you are, Alice Wonder," she says. I picture her with a big smile on her face, pushing against those chubby cheeks. "Time to take you were you belong."

Finally! I sigh. This took forever.

The smell of baking on her breath makes me hungry. I should have had a big meal back in the asylum. What's with all the mentioning of food today?

I don't care. I just want to get out of here.

Instead of being rolled outside, the woman's hand reaches for the bag's zipper. Maybe she wants to check out my face. I wonder if I will look dead enough to her.

Hold that breath, Alice.

The zipper slowly reveals my face to her, and the reeking of baking strengthens in my nostrils. There is a long silence, followed by the end of the nut song. The silence doubles up uncomfortably. I do my best not to open my eyes. But I don't know if I can hold my breath any longer.

"Very paradoxical, I must say," the woman says with a satirical tinge to her voice. "If you hold your breath long enough, you're dead. If you give up and start breathing, you're mad. Isn't that so, Alice from Wonderland?"

My eyes snap open.

I inhale all the air it can. I am in utter shock. A silent shiver pinches through all of my limbs, and madness almost blinds my vision.

What did she just say?

Although the mortician looks exactly like I imagined her, the smell of baking on her mouth says otherwise.

It's the smell of a Meow Muffin.

Chapter 17

I am paralyzed with horror. All my wishes to rid the world of the Cheshire evaporate in his presence. His grin, plastered on the poor mortician's face, is unmistakable. Damned are those who lay eyes upon that grin too many times, for it's unforgettable and will guarantee a lifetime of nightmares.

"What do you want from me?" I scatter the syllables on my tongue. I wish there was a way to camouflage my fear—maybe some hookah smoke like the Pillar's that I'd hide my real fears behind.

There is none.

"Love you, too." The Cheshire flashes a chubby grin and then takes a long drag from his cigarette. His view from down here makes me feel like an ant. His posture is like a towering building of nightmares.

Instinctually, I slide myself out of the bag and jump off the other side of the table.

The Cheshire doesn't move. He watches as I wound my left knee and almost twist my ankle. I run toward the faraway bulb, the one I hadn't come near before. It turns out it leads to a metallic double door leading outside. I limp a few times, fall, and pick myself up again. Part of my escape is me hopping on all fours like a rabbit.

The Cheshire still stands still. I know because of the muffin smell. He is behind me, dragging on the mortician's cigarette, enjoying the show.

I am such a coward, running away like that. I reach for the door's heavy handles. I don't think I am ready for the Cheshire yet.

"If you don't know where you're going, any road'll take you there," the Cheshire mocks behind me.

I stop in my tracks. I don't know why. A flash of a Lewis Carroll in Victorian England flashes before my eyes. It's like an electric shock. Painful but effective. It wakes me up and unwraps me from my spider webs of fear.

I give up on the handle and turn around to face the Cheshire. This is what I should do. I shouldn't run. I am here to catch him, not escape from him.

I don't know what Carroll's dream was about, but I know I don't want to end up regretful like him. I don't want to say, I couldn't save them, a week from now.

"Oh." The Cheshire licks his paws. Cat's habits. He stands between two rows of corpses on his sides. It's totally funny, in a very sinister way, to see the mortician gleaming with evil intentions. "So, you might be the Real Alice after all."

I stand with my back to the door, grimace, and shake my head, wondering why he says that.

"A Real Alice wouldn't run away from me," he elaborates. "The door is locked, however. But you didn't know that, did you?" He jingles a keychain in his hands. "Someone could still open it from outside, but no one knows you're here, Alice."

"How do you know that?" Frankly, I am shocked the door is locked. I don't know if he is lying to me. Maybe he is tricking me to see if I'll go back and try to open it. I stand my ground, fists clenched.

"Nobody cares for you, Alice." He grins. "You know that."

I can't argue with that. Only Jack seems to care. Where is he when I need him?

"You've always been like that," he continues. "Even in the books, you were a lonely, possibly mad, girl wandering Wonderland—which was probably all in her head." He laughs and smirks and grins and confuses the hell out of me when he says that. "You never made a real friend in that book, remember?"