Текст книги "Figment"

Other Books by Cameron Jace

The Grimm Diaries Prequels Series

The Grimm Diaries Prequels 1-6

The Grimm Diaries Prequels 7-10

The Grimm Diaries Prequels 11-14

The Grimm Diaries Prequels 15-18

The Grimm Diaries Main Series

Snow White Sorrow (book 1)

Cinderella Dressed in Ashes (book 2)

I Am Alive Series

I Am Alive (book 1)

Pentimento Series

Pentimento (book 1)

This book is a work of fiction (madness). Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincident.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Previously on Insanity:

Figment: Insanity 2 (Mad in Wonderland)

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Thank You

Author’s Notes:

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About the Author

Previously on Insanity:

Living in an asylum after killing her classmates in a bus accident, Alice Wonder is persuaded by another enigmatic patient, Professor Carter Pillar, to save people from the Wonderland Monsters. Professor Pillar, also known as Pillar the Killer, claims she is the Real Alice from Lewis Carroll’s books. He tells her that other characters from the books are reincarnated as humans and living among us. And that a Wonderland War is coming.

Alice manages to solve the riddles by the Cheshire Cat killer who kidnaps girls and sews a grin on their faces. She saves a girl named Constance who turns out to be a descendant of one of the girls Lewis Carroll photographed two centuries ago.

In a mad adventure, Alice learns about the secrets of Oxford University, then she is introduced to the Duchess from the books, now posing as Margaret Kent, a dishonest Parliament woman who uses Wonderland Monsters as assassins to serve high-caliber politicians.

Alice and the Pillar then travel to the Vatican to meet the White Queen who is reincarnated as Fabiola, one of the most respectable nuns in the world, trying her best to help people. Fabiola leads Alice to the final clue to catch the Cheshire who is looking for his grin, which Lewis had stolen from him. The Cheshire’s grin will grant him unimaginable powers in his quest to summon many Wonderland Monsters to use them in the mysterious Wonderland War.

Alice and the Pillar confront the Cheshire in a final battle in Ypres in Belgium, where a bizarre festival called Kattenstoet takes place. After the sky rains cats, Alice manages to save Constance with help of Jack Diamonds, the mysterious card-smelling boy who likes her unconditionally.

The Pillar shows Alice how to meet Lewis Carroll through a secret door in the Tom Tower in Oxford University. Lewis gives Alice a key and tells her to take care of it. Still, Alice is forced to give the Cheshire his grin back in exchange for saving Constance again. The grin grants the Cheshire the power to posses any one he wants.

In a final scene, Alice realizes that Jack Diamonds is actually her boyfriend Adam, one of the people she killed in a bus accident she can’t remember. Then the Cheshire visits her in the Asylum and tells her that she is mad and that this adventure only happened in her head. It was all just a figment of her mad imagination.

Figment: Insanity 2 (Mad in Wonderland)

After her encounter with the Cheshire Cat, Alice Wonder can hardly tell reality from imagination. But when kids have their head chopped off and stuffed in watermelons all over the city, it's clear that another Wonderland Monster has arrived, possibly scarier than the Cheshire. Alice, along with Professor Pillar, has to solve the killer's puzzles before an unimaginable event would cause the death of millions. Then Jack Diamonds appears again. This time, Alice must know who he really is.

 Prologue

Football Match, Stamford Bridge Stadium, Fulham, London, Present Day

The players at Stamford Bridge stadium had no idea of the bloody horrors awaiting them.

The two opposing teams, Manchester United and Chelsea FC, were fighting for the title in the final game of the season. The winner's prize would be a huge silver grail with ridiculously huge handles popping out like rabbit ears from both sides. Although it was no holy grail, it was to be handed, along with a few medals, by the Queen of England herself.

Unfortunately, Her Majesty couldn't come. One of her Welsh dogs had been suddenly sick. The poor dog, whose name was Maddog, had gorged on a sizable portion of the Queen's Brazilian nuts last night, eventually fated with a terrible case of chronic constipation. The Queen demanded she would not attend the game until Maddog pooped, which apparently never happened.

Renowned Parliament member Margaret Kent was sent on behalf of the Queen, excited to watch the game.

The watching spectators didn't care about the Queen, her dog, or the pretentious Parliament woman. The crowd's only concern was the long-awaited game. They looked as enthusiastic as Wonderland rabbits, checking their watches and knuckling their fingers, ready for an afternoon of a brilliant football match—soccer game, if you're American.

After a hard-working week, licking dust off their bosses' shoes, and paying their taxes, all they wanted was pure, mindless entertainment. They watched the players in the field kick-start the match, frantically chasing after the helpless ball as if their lives depended on it. Some would wonder why they kicked the ball away if they liked it that much, but that was a nonsensical argument for another time.

"I can't see anything, Mummy." A chubby kid among the spectators pulled his mother's coat. The kid didn't really like football. He was here because his mother had promised him an insane surprise.

"Shhh," the mother said. The woman wore an absurd red fur coat and big black glasses. "Patience, my dear," she said. "Madness comes to those who wait."

The boy rubbed his eyes with his fatty hands, and then sighed. He rummaged through his snack box and contemplated whether he should eat one of those Snicker Snackers twin-bars, or maybe have a fizzy Tumtum drink. He settled for a rainbow-colored Lollipop Lane as he waited for the insane surprise.

Down in the field, a player kicked the ball so high it landed atop the banks of the opponent's fans. A man with a silver front tooth, wearing the club's shirt, hugged the ball as if it were his newborn baby. A few other fans went bonkers and began kicking him to give the ball back and resume the game.

In such cases, the chubby kid was told, another ball was provided to continue the game.

And so it happened.

One of Manchester's players was given a substitute ball, which they kicked and chased again. That was when the Wonderland madness began...

A few kicks in, the players felt something unordinary about the new ball. The game was halted as the referee approached to check it himself.

"The ball is a bit heavy," player number fourteen said.

"Yes, it is!" another agreed. "That's unusual."

"What's wrong with this bloody ball?" a sweating player asked impatiently.

The referee weighed the ball upon his hand. It certainly was significantly heavier than the standard ball.

Which was impossible.

All balls had to be previously inspected by FIFA, the  international federation of football. Each ball's design followed a set of standard manufacturing rules.

"I think there is something inside the ball." The referee brought it to his ear. "Listen."

The players passed the ball one to another, as they listened to something bumping inside it.

"It's pregnant," a player chuckled before another snatched the ball from him.

"Get me a knife!" the referee’s curiosity ruled over any logic. "I have to slice it open. It could be a bomb!"

Back in the crowd, the chubby kid had his eyes glazed to the scene, licking his lollipop at a faster pace. A surge of excitement ran through his veins as the soundtrack of the movie Jaws growled inside his head: Dum Dum, Dum Dum. Tarararaaaa!

Something wicked was coming his way. And he loved it. "Is this the surprise, Mommy?" the boy asked.

Mommy, looking like a widow in a funeral with her dark glasses, said nothing.

"What's in the ball, Mommy!" the boy insisted.

She only squeezed her son's chubby hands for assurance, and continued watching the incident in the field.

Somehow, right after slicing the ball in two, players began to run away in all directions. The referee who had the ball cut open was the first to run. He ran like a mad chicken, panicked by the egg it had just laid. Then the players followed. They couldn't stand witnessing the horrible thing inside the ball. Most of the players ran aimlessly in the field, too panicked to look for an exit, going nowhere as if they were in the Caucus Race.

Shivers of panic waved like a storm through the stadium—more excitement for the lollipop-licking boy and his mysterious mother, though.

"What's in the ball?" the crowd moaned, sweet horror on the tips of their tongues, kaleidoscopic panic in their eyes.

"This is the surprise, right?" The boy was about to faint from excitement.

Mommy nodded. A thin, almost unnoticeable, hint of a smile curved on her lips.

There was one last standing player in the field. Player number fourteen. The player seemed paralyzed by fear. He bent down and picked up the thing that had been bouncing inside the ball. Holding it, he had to stare at it for a while. He craned his head back and forth, inspecting what he was really looking at. It didn't make sense to him why such a thing was stuffed inside a ball. Who would do such a horrible thing?

The cameraman, although scared, approached the player slowly, trying to broadcast this terrible incident that would cling to the memory of the world later. Player number fourteen held up the thing to the camera.

"It's a..." the player said.

Whatever it was, it was trickling fresh blood.

The chubby boy in the crowd couldn’t hear what the player said. His mother handed him a binocular. The boy focused the binoculars at the player with the horrible thing in his hands.

Finally, he saw it. He saw what was in the ball.

A head.

A human head which had been stuffed inside the ball a few minutes ago.

"It's a kid's head!" the boy hailed.

Some of the crowd began to faint. The rest ran away like ducks, stepping on each other toward the exit door.

"Good boy." His mother patted him as she stood fixed in her place. It seemed as if people avoided them while they panicked and ran around them. "Now be an even goody-dooder and tell the crowd what's written on the head's forehead," she instructed her boy.

Shifting his angle, the boy saw the player, now shivering with his hands glued to the ball, showing it to the camera, eyes shaded with terror.

At this moment, the panic had reached an apocalyptic level, where the crowd stepped over each other out of fear and need to escape the stadium. Still, the player held the ball with trembling hands, showing the world on camera the written words on the head.

The boy smiled from ear to ear as he read it. To him, the scene was all beauty, and he was glad. After witnessing the dead girl with a grin in Oxford University last week, this was starting to become exciting. The boy's eyes glittered as they met his mother's nodding glasses. He hurled the binocular away, licked the lollipop one last time, and screamed from the top his fatty lungs, "You want to know what’s written on the forehead of the dead kid’s head?” he shouted while everyone was already escaping the place. “'Off with their heads!'”

Chapter 1

Alice's cell, Radcliffe Lunatic Asylum, Oxford

It's been six days since I last saw Professor Pillar. Six days since Fabiola, the White Queen, visited me in my cell and showed me that Jack Diamonds was actually Adam J. Dixon. Six days since the Cheshire Cat, possessing Ogier's soul, visited me in my cell and then pranced away, whistling a mad song about me.

Six impossible days of isolation, pretending none of last week's events ever happened.

When Waltraud asks me about Wonderland, I raise an eyebrow and tell her I don't know what she is talking about. When she mentions I wanted to save lives in the world outside, I reply, "How can I save lives when my own life needs saving?"

I don't need to wake up with amnesia to pretend I am insane. I don't need evidence to know that the Pillar, Cheshire, White Queen, the Duchess, and the whole Wonderland War are figments of a lonely girl's imagination. After the Cheshire's visit, the sanest thing to do is to admit insanity and give in to its consequences.

Even if I am not insane, and all of this did happen, I am better off believing it didn't. At least I am not giving Waltraud excuses to send me back to the torturous Mush Room anymore. Believe me, life without shock therapy is less painful.

I've marked each of the six days on the wall, among the dried blood of whoever suffered in this cell before me. Six perpendicular strokes, carved with my short nails as if I am the female version of Count of Monte Cristo, feeling clueless, betrayed, and imprisoned in a dungeon in a faraway island.

A shattered laugh escapes my lips when I stare at the tattoo on my arms:

I can't go back to yesterday because I was someone else then.

It leaves me wondering which yesterday the tattoo is talking about: me before my hallucinations of Pillar with a hookah in a VIP cell, or me before I killed my friends in a bus accident?

Occasionally, I run the tips of my fingers upon the tattoo. I do it gently and with care. I am afraid if I rub it too hard, a Wonderland Monster would answer my call.

I don't think you know what a Wonderland Monster can do to you. With all my pretending that none of last week's madness ever happened, one thing persists to feel so real to me; one thing never fails to scare me and give me nightmares.

The Cheshire Cat.

With no distinguishable face or identity, he frightens the very essence of me. I fear him so much that I need to pinch myself to make sure I am not possessed by him every once in a while. Had I not been scared of mirrors, I would have used them each morning to confirm the absence of his evil grin on my lips.

"You're insane, Alice," my Tiger Lily whispers behind me. She, who is supposed to be my one and only friend, has been mean to me lately. I wonder if they have done something to her when she was in Dr. Truckle's custody.

"Eye. En. Es. Aay. En. Eee." She snickers like an old toothless lady behind my back. "The Cheshire isn't real." Her tone gives me goose bumps. "You made him up, Alice. He is just an excuse for you to avoid facing the world outside. That's why you see the Cheshire's face in almost everyone you meet. You're simply afraid of people, Alice. Any psychologist knows that."

I don't turn around to face her. Usually, when she talks to me, it means I am in my highest moments of insanity. I bend my knees against my chest and I bury my head between them, hugging myself with my own arms. I close my eyes and decide to clap my hands over my ears until she stops talking.

"Nothing is real." Tiger Lily refuses to shut up. "Even Jack isn't real."

My hands stop halfway and my eyes spring open. A single sticky tear rolls down my cheek. I tremble as it glides down slowly. Then I catch it before it hits the ground. I stare at it wobbling in the palm of my hand. My tears are terrified of uh he unknown, the same way I am.

"I mean Adam," Lily teases. "If you killed Adam, then who is Jack but a figment of your imagination?"

Provoked, I turn back, only to find a harmless orange flower in pot near the crack in the wall. I am not even sure she was talking to me. Mentioning Jack triggered a bittersweet knot of pain inside of me. If there is anything I am certain of, it's that Jack Diamonds—true or imagination—is the only thing I wish is real.

Now that I was shown he was my boyfriend, I understand my previously unexplained strong feelings toward him. I don't want to resist my feelings because, in a world as mad as mine, they shine on me with rays of sanity. I don't even have these kinds of strong feelings toward my helpless mother or my two mocking sisters. Jack seems to be my only chance for family.

Lily is right, though. If Jack is Adam, the boyfriend I killed, he must be dead too.

A sudden pounding on my cell's door relieves me from the burden of thinking about Jack.

Chapter 2

It's Waltraud Wagner at my door, the head of wardens in the Radcliffe Lunatic Asylum. Torturing me in the Mush Room pleasures her above all else. "Did you change your mind yet?" she blurts in her horrible German accent, reeking of cigarette smoke and junk food.

"What do you mean?" I tighten my fist around my single tear, squeezing it away.

"You've been unusually obedient for the past six days, confessing your insanity and such." She slaps her prod against her fleshy palm. "It's not like you," she remarks.

"I'm insane, Waltraud. I'm fully aware of it."

"I hardly believe you. How would an insane person know they're insane?" She is testing me. Admitting my insanity doesn't appeal to her. It rids her of reasons to fry me in the Mush Room. "People are kept in asylums because they aren't aware of their insanity. Their ignorance to their insanity endangers society. That's why we lock them away."

"Are you saying insane people who are aware of their insanity don't deserve to be locked away in asylums?" It's a nonsensical argument already.

"Insane people who know they are insane are smart enough to fool society into thinking they aren't," Waltraud replies. I blink twice to the confusing sentence she just said. "Think of Hitler, for an example." She laughs like a heavyweight ogre. Sometimes I think she is a Nazi. I was told she killed her patients in the asylum she worked for in Austria. But when she makes fun of Hitler, I am not sure anymore. "Or, in your case, you're admitting insanity to avoid shock therapy."

A twisty smile curves on my lips. Waltraud isn't that dumb after all. "That's a serious accusation, Waltraud," I say.

"It is an accusation," she retorts. "But it's hard to prove. Who'd believe me when I tell them you're an insane girl believing you're not insane, but pretending you are?"

"Such a mindbend." I almost chuckle. Waltraud's misery is always my pleasure. "Have you ever read Catch-22 by Joseph Heller?" It's a book that tackles this kind of logic. I wonder if Heller was a Lewis Carroll fan.

"I don't have time to read books," Waltraud puffs. "Does it have pictures in it?"

"No, it doesn't," I say. Waltraud probably read Alice in Wonderland and is trying to provoke me. Anything to get me to do something foolish and deserve punishment in the Mush Room.

"What use is a book without pictures?" She snickers behind the door.

"It's a book that describes how something can't be proven until a previous thing is certainly proven. However, the previous thing can't easily be proven either, to put it mildly." I neglect her comment about a book without pictures.

"I don't understand a word you say." She truly doesn't.

"Think of a chicken and an egg. We have no way to know which came first."

"I don't understand that either," she puffs. "I hate chickens." I hear her scratch her head. "But I love eggs."

I wish I could drive her mad myself. Wouldn't it be fun to have her in my cell instead of me?

A scream interrupts our ridiculous conversation all of a sudden. I have been hearing this for a few days now. It's a patient girl pleading to be spared from the Mush Room. It's probably Ogier torturing her. The Mushroomers in the other cells pound on their bars, demanding the pain to end. The screams have tripled since I've stopped being sent to the Mush Room. Waltraud and Ogier have been compensating my absence with too many other patients.

"Why all the torturing?" I ask Waltraud. I'd like to scream in her face and punch her with oversized gloves filled with needles and pins. But the inner—relatively reasonable—voice stops me. If I want to forget about my madness, and if I want to keep avoiding the pain of shock therapy, I'd better keep to myself. When I walk next to a wall, I want people to only notice the wall.

I am not here to save lives. It's not true. Why should I care?

"It's not torture. It's interrogation," Waltraud explains. "A patient escaped the asylum recently while you were locked in here. We are authorized to use shock therapy to get confessions from the patients neighboring his cell."

I jump to my feet and pace to the door, sliding open the small square window to look at her. "Are you saying someone actually escaped the asylum?" I can't hide the excitement.

"You look so happy about it, Alice," Waltraud sneers. "Come on. Show me you're mad. Give me a reason to send you to the Mush Room. You want to exchange places with the poor girl inside?"

My face tightens instantly. I spend my days and nights in my creepy cell, safe from Waltraud's harm—and safer from my own terrible mind. I need to learn to control my urges.

Be reasonable, Alice. Last week was all in your head. You've never been to the Vatican, the Grote Markt in Belgium, or to Westminster Palace in London. If you want proof, it's easy. Think of why the Pillar never sent for you again. Why Fabiola never entered your cell again. Why your sisters and mothers never visited again. It's better not to care about the escapee as well. Even if you escaped, there is no one out there waiting for you outside.

"Play the 'sanity' game all you want," Waltraud says. "Sooner or later, your brain will be mine to fry." She laughs. An exaggerated laugh, the way they portray an evil person's in Disney cartoons. I am really starting to wonder why she isn't locked in a cell, unless she is like Hitler, knowing he's mad and persuading the world otherwise. "Now get ready," she demands.

"For what?" I grimace.

"It's time for your break," she tells me. "You're rewarded for your good behavior: a ten-minute walk in the sun."