Unlike what I did the past six weeks. I know now it was a mistake pretending what was not.
If I am mad, make my day. I should have not avoided the Mush Room in order to pretend last week's events didn't happen. The Pillar's words ring in my ear again: Insane people are only sane people who give in to the madness in the world. I am not sure he said those exact words. I am remembering the meaning behind what he said—again, if he ever existed and wasn't a figment of my imagination.
As I sit, I hear the girl's muffled screams from the Mush Room inside the main building again. Her screams send shivers of anger down my spine this time.
Waltraud and Ogier must enjoy torturing her, laughing at her and buzzing her over and over again.
Don't even think about it, Alice, my inner voice warns me. You're not meant to save other people's lives. You're just a mad girl trying to avoid shock therapy at best.
I fist my hands and clench my teeth when the girl screams again. This could have easily been me. Each time she screams, I remember the unexplained visions of poor children asking for a loaf of bread. Did Lewis mean he couldn't save them? The regret in his eyes was unmistakable. Do I want to regret not saving the girl in the Mush Room now? Do I want to regret not saving myself?
I can't. I am no hero, but I just can't stand witnessing someone's unjustified punishment.
"Stop it!" I scream at Waltraud and Ogier from behind the wall. "Stop torturing her!" My voice seems louder than I can handle. A surge of electricity runs through my veins, and I can feel the pain of the Mush Room's instruments already. "Stop torturing her!" I repeat, pounding on the ground.
I still can stop. Maybe Waltraud hasn't heard me. But I am stubborn and I can't tolerate the screams. I throw boulders at the walls.
The screaming stops.
A few minutes later, the main door to the garden springs open. Waltraud stands in front of me, slapping her prod on her thick palms. A smirk, ten miles wide, illuminates her face.
"You were saying something, Alice?" she asks as Ogier approaches me. "I knew you couldn't play your game long enough."
The grin on Ogier's face deserves an Oscar for the Most Stupid Portrayal of Evil. He keeps grinning at me with such joy while Waltraud handcuffs me to send me down to the Mush Room—and it's not the Cheshire's evil grin.
I don't care anymore. I will stay my ground, and say what I feel is right, even if I am mad.
"So, you're mad after all," Waltraud grunts. "You still believe in Wonderland. You believe in it so much you're willing to exchange places with a girl you don't know in the torture room."
"Why don't you shut up and just finish this," I grunt back.
"Do you know I tricked you into this?" Waltraud lights up a cigarette. "I had to make the girl scream her best so you'd hear it. We weren't really treating her that bad. I knew you think you're born to save lives. Foolish you." She laughs and high-fives Ogier.
They pull me down and usher me along the corridor leading to the torture room. My lips begin to slightly shiver at the taste of the coming pain I know so well. The Mushroomers on both sides bang the bars of their cells again. "Alice. Alice. Alice!"
At the room's entrance, Waltraud's phone buzzes.
She checks the number and grimaces. "It's Dr. Truckle," she mumbles, and picks up.
Waltraud listens for a while, her lips twitching and her face dimming. She hangs up finally and stares disappointedly at me.
"You're very lucky, Alice," she says. "Dr. Truckle is sending you for further examination outside the asylum."
A faint smile lines my lips. This must be the Pillar. Something has come up. A new mission, maybe? I am baffled at how happy I am. Who was I fooling for the past six days? I am addicted to this. I am addicted to leaving the asylum, addicted to the madness in the outside world. I am addicted to saving lives.
Waltraud unties me, her lips pursed. "Go get dressed now. But remember, when you come back, your brain is mine. I'll mush it into mushed potatoes with ketchup made of your blood!"
Chapter 7
Entrance, Radcliffe Lunatic Asylum, Oxford
The Pillar's mousy chauffeur picks me up from the asylum's main gate. Instead of arriving in the black limousine, he's driving an ambulance. Two guards from the asylum escort me to the back door as if I am the most dangerous girl in the world.
I still don't get why an ambulance. Maybe to camouflage me being transported for inspection in another hospital.
The guards snicker as they push me into the empty back of the vehicle. I glimpse the words written on the back doors before they close on me: The Carroll Cause for the Criminally Cuckoo.
Now I am sure I going to see the Pillar soon.
Once the chauffeur takes off, he requests I sit next to him in the passenger's seat. This is the first time he talks to me. His voice is thin and annoyingly low. It's like he has tight throat or something. No wonder he doesn't talk much. I watch him comb his thin whiskers while he drives—sorry, but I refuse to call those hairies on his face a mustache.
"Where is the Pillar?" I demand.
"I am driving you to him." He hands me a mobile phone for communication. It's a new one with a fairly big screen. He pushes a button on it to show me a YouTube video.
I feel like a spy on a new mission, watching the latest report.
The YouTube video's purpose is for me to catch on. I learn all about the Stamford Bridge crime. The head stuffed into a football. No doubts this is the Cheshire's doing. The phrase "Off with heir heads" seems like one of his messages. Then I watch recorded local news about a man named Roman Yeskelitch who found another head in a watermelon he just bought.
I realize why I am out now. There is a new Wonderland crime happening out there, and I am needed. I can't deny my excitement. I am not going to lie.
Rolling down the window, I stretch out my hands like a child and sniff the day's cold air.
A few minutes later, the Chauffeur stops in front of a "Richmond Elementary School." At least the school bears a coherent name. I have no idea how no one comments on the name of the vehicle we're in, let alone why we're arriving in an ambulance.
"Why are we stopping here?" I ask.
The chauffeur points over my shoulder. When I look back, an old woman in thick glasses appears out of the school's main gate.
"You must be Alice." She approaches with welcoming sparks in her eyes. Her attitude screams "teacher," one of those kind-hearted and very talkative few in every middle-grade school.
I step down reluctantly. The woman pulls me in her arms, kisses me on the cheek, hugs me, and tells me how Professor Pillar never stops mentioning me.
She ushers me into the school, telling me Professor Pillar is so kind to agree to lecturing her kids. A lecture about the virtues of going after one's dreams. It turns out he told them I am the optimum example of achieving my dreams.
All I do is nod. The woman will eventually send me to the Pillar, wherever he is.
I want to tell her she has a dangerous serial killer in her school. I want to ask if she'd never heard about Pillar the Killer. But she doesn't stop talking, so I have no room to even comment.
Finally, she departs, leaving me at a corridor leading to a few classes. She tells me the school management preferred to give the Pillar all the privacy he needed in the classroom.