The Gruesome Adventures of Alice in Undeadland (6 page)

“Here are my heads. Aren’t they wonderful?” The Queen giggled at the jars and the undead trapped inside.

“Here are my arms; I like the lady ones best.” They hung like slaughtered meat on hooks.

“This is where I keep the legs, here are the eyes, and over here are hands. I have lots because I’m the Queen and I can have anything I want.”

She skipped to a tall stack of shelves.

“These I like the best.”

Each jar held a grey and blackened heart. Floating in liquid and refusing to beat.

“Then why would you need me?” Alice asked.

The Queen stroked Alice’s chest; she tut-tutted at the damage.

“Allow me,” the Queen said before beckoning to a maiden.

With needle and thread the handmaiden moved with an ethereal grace. Almost floating, she took Alice and sat her in a leather doctor’s chair. The handmaiden swished this way and that, her skinless hands a red blur, until she finished and bowed.

Alice cradled herself. The hole in her chest was gone and inside Alice could feel her heart. But there was more. As Alice stood, the handmaiden brought a dress mirror before her. Alice marvelled at the reflection. Her undead damage was gone, sewn together with the precision of a surgeon. Although Alice was clearly still dead, she looked more like a doll rather than a zombie thing. What was more, she could feel her parents’ love filling her once again, seeping from her heart.

“Now.” The Queen crept forward, her eyes blacker than any darkness before. “The London Mousehead tells me of — is it true there is life?”

“Yes, Majesty.” Alice felt herself sinking back into the chair.

“With breathing? And hearts that beat?”

“Mostly, Your Majesty.”

The Queen considered. She didn’t notice that the cat was floating downward towards her.

“I would love to have beating hearts. I would love to send my army to London and bring me life. Tell me, Alice, how do I do that?”

Alice thought for a moment. The crimson man stood next to her and stroked his scythe.

“I do not know how I arrived. I fell, that is all I can say.”

The Queen’s smile didn’t waver as she produced Mousehead from her pocket; she held it to Alice’s face.

“Why do you lie, poor, gullible Miss Alice?” Mousehead spat. “You told me of a pipe that connected our worlds.”

The Queen added, “Alice, my best new friend, you can take me home with you or you can stay here, with me, in more jars than any undead has ever before.”

But Alice had no idea how to return home, never mind how to lead an army there.

“I…I…” she could only say.

But then there was no need to finish any sentence. At that moment the cat floated down and with a huge grin crushed Mousehead in those sharp yellow teeth, chewing it to a pulp.

The Queen screamed, letting her balloon loose, and the cat floated to the impossibly high ceiling.

“Goodbye, Alice. Remember, the Queen is only a child on the outside. You know what to do,” were the cat’s parting words.

“Off with her head…” the Queen tried to command, before Alice did something no one in the kingdom would dare. She slid from the chair and picked up the Queen, holding her tight. The crimson man paused in front of them, unsure what to do. The Queen squirmed, but before she could wriggle free Alice took hold of her stitches and pulled. The Queen’s face began to slip.

“Please don’t fight, Your Majesty. I would hate for you to come undone,” Alice advised.

The Queen went still but was far from quiet.

“Guards!” she screamed like a tantrumming child, and almost instantly they were surrounded by the faceless red soldiers.

“Let me through,” Alice shouted, “or Your Majesty will be less.”

The Queen nodded in agreement and the guards created a corridor, lined with their blades.

Slowly Alice backed down and out of the room. She followed her previous route, guards not far behind and the Queen seething threats. Alice, with her prisoner, found herself outside and into the thorn garden under the watchful eye of the entirety of the Queen’s army. There were crimson men everywhere. Alice, still moving with caution, made her way to the drawbridge, only to find the way blocked at both ends by the crimson guards.

“Now, Alice,” the Queen said softly with an undertone of frustration, “if you kindly let me go, I will only make your undeath miserable for only millennia.”

Alice looked at the soldiers creeping forward. Alice looked at the sky, ever grey. Finally she looked at the moat chasm swirling around the palace.

“Your Majesty, you forget.”

“Forget what, Alice?” The Queen was curious.

“I have leapt from misery before.”

Alice, with the Queen, ran from the drawbridge into the never-ending oblivion. Alice smiled as she fell further into the chasm, while the Queen kicked and ranted as she went spinning. The moment before the nothing claimed them, Alice was sure that underneath the Queen’s screams there was cheering from the palace.

Then they were both gone.

Epilogue

The undertaker and his wife had seen death in many forms, yet never grew accustomed to the sight. For example, in the darkened parlour surrounded by coffins and lit by a dark wax candle, the undertaker looked down upon the girl on his table. She was around thirteen years old, with long blonde hair, and thus far no one had claimed her. She had been seen jumping into the Thames, her body found an hour or so later.

“What a waste of so much love and potential,” the undertaker’s wife noted. “What does this world do to them?”

The undertaker and his wife, although young for their profession, had been unable to have children of their own. The wife had secretly thought that death had somehow seeped into her.

“I think I will take care of this one,” the undertaker said. “I don’t want to see her in a pauper’s grave. She deserves more.”

The wife nodded. “We shall give her a name; let’s not have a blank stone.”

“That’s a nice idea, wife,” the undertaker said. “And what shall you name her?”

“I like Alice,” the wife replied.

With that Alice coughed and breathed and opened her eyes and sat up. Of course, the undertaker and his wife very nearly died of terror.

Later, after all the shock and when the undertaker and his wife had stopped screaming, they listened to a story they could scarce believe, of a world where the unwanted dead went. It was also decided that no one else would scarce believe it either. So in the end there was nothing for it. Alice found new parents and the undertaker and his wife found a daughter.

CARINA
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ISBN: 978 1 472 09467 4

The Gruesome Adventures of Alice in Undeadland

Copyright © 2014 Sebastian Brown

Published in Great Britain 2014

by Carina, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited, Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real-life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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