Night: Colbie and Her First Kiss
Quadrice (Scenes 1-3)
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
—Edgar Allan Poe,
"Annabel Lee"
1
Alice exited Katherine’s library and looked at the pool of blood Auna had left on the landing at the base of the stairs when she died. The blood, once pulsing with life through Auna’s veins and arteries, now lay in a black crusty pool as the last remnant of Auna’s corporeal being in the Phantom Realms.
Alice stretched out her hand, manifesting a knife in her palm, and ran the blade across the palm of her other hand, then crouched and put her palm flat over the dried pool of blood, letting her own blood mix into it.
She said, “I peer Through the Looking-Glass on page 34, and what do I find but the Red Queen full sore? I peer Through the Looking-Glass on page 91, and what do I find but the White Queen undone?” Then the blood on the landing glowed as two bouquets of roses appeared on top of it, one of red roses and one of white, so she added, “Rise up, oh ye Queens, from the depths of my mind, and unburden yourselves from the chains that bind!”
And the bouquets tore apart in a swirl of red and white petals, and amidst the swirl of petals appeared the Red and White Queens in red and white Sunday dresses, respectively, their bobbed hair and the skirts of their dresses fluttering in the swirl of her spell.
Both queens took a knee and kneeled before Alice, saying, “What do you command, your grace?”
“Escort me to the ballroom,” Alice said and stretched out her hands to them, “for I am your Queen now.”
So the Red and White Queens took Alice’s hands and kissed her knuckles as if they were her suitors, then led Alice on either side of her up the stairs.
But when the ceiling lights flickered, Alice caught sight of Aaron Rancaster manifesting out of a haze on the top landing of the double grand staircase. So she ran up the steps past the M. C. Escher lithographs and mezzotints and met him at the landing and said, “What’s going on, my Lord?”
“We have intruders,” Rancaster said, and turned to the Red and White Queens. “Once you escort Alice to the ballroom, close the doors and let nobody else out.”
“Yes, my Lord,” they both said.
“How many are they?” Alice asked.
“A dozen, at least,” he said. “This mansion is full of surprises, so tread carefully, Bambina. One of them is an old acquaintance of mine, in fact, and she’s not to be trifled with.”
“You really think so?” Alice said, and a slasher’s smile stretched across her face. “I look forward to meeting her.”
“Don’t, Bambina. She’s old enough to be your mother, but don’t,” Rancaster said and smiled and shook his head, then leaned over Alice’s shoulder and whispered into her ear. “You just came back from a long sleep, so your powers aren’t fully manifested yet. Till I know you can stand on your own, I’m here to prevent you from doing anything foolish. Is that clear?”
Alice paused and looked away and said, “But if I somehow get tangled with her, you’ll come to my rescue, right?”
At this, Rancaster cracked a smile, saying, “With guns blazing and sword shimmering, I’ll be that very Prince!”
And with those words, he bowed to her and took her hand and kissed it, sending color to Alice’s pallid face. Then he turned on his heel and walked into a darkening haze enveloping the top landing of the staircase and disappeared before her eyes, leaving the Red and White Queens to escort her to the ballroom.
At this, the Red Queen said, “Follow us, my Queen.”
“Your guests are expecting you,” the White Queen added.
Alice looked at the doppelgängers of the late Auna Wenger (both wearing Sunday dresses, one in red and the other in white) and looked on their deadpan expressions and soulless eyes, then smiled and said, “Oh, we’ll make a beautiful threesome, my lovelies. Carry on!”
Holding hands like the best of friends, the newly-formed trio of doppelgängers stalked into the inclined hallway leading up to the endless rows of hallways and mirrors one floor above, passing six doors along the left side and stopping by a seventh door before the turn into another hallway.
The Red Queen grabbed the handle and opened the door and let Alice and the Red Queen, while she herself stood guard.
With the White Queen accompanying her, Alice said, “Have my guests been waiting long?”
The White Queen shook her head, saying, “Not very.”
“These intruders,” she said, “where are they?”
”Inside and outside these walls,” the Red Queen said.
“Do we know who they are?”
“Rancaster recognized a few of them,” the Red Queen said, pausing in the entrance hall before the double doors leading into the ballroom.
“Who are they?” Alice said.
“Cooley and Blaze, Nico and Mara Cairns and Kendra Tellerman, Colbie and her mother, among others,” the White Queen said, then knocked on the door three times. “Akami and I will watch for them. Enjoy your debut, my Queen.”
When the masked doorman opened the door, Alice felt a strange familiarity emanating from his person, before passing into a long gallery that was the ballroom amid a torrent of applause and whistles from waiting masqueraders. When the doorman closed the door, Alice faced her adoring audience and smiled and said, “My darlings, your Queen has arrived!”
More applause broke out from the crowd of masqueraders, many of the men whistling at her and some of the men and women cheering her name. “Alice, Alice, Alice, Alice . . .”
But Alice herself raised her hand, and the crowd became silent. She said, “Loyal retainers of the house of Rancaster, allies and friends, it’s been a century since I’ve walked among you. You have all proven your loyalty with your presence here tonight, and here I am before you in triumph, unbroken and unafraid!”
Again, another round of applause broke out.
“But my arrival has come under the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” Alice said, quieting her listeners into silence, “for this very mansion belongs to one of our enemies: the house of Hearn.”
Now boos erupted from Rancaster’s masqueraders, many of them wielding cane swords and knives and daggers hidden under their garments and coats and dresses, and most of them ready and willing to sate their bloodlust at Alice’s command.
“Have patience, dears,” Alice said. “There’s a time to live and a time to die, a time to mourn and a time to cry. Doubtless, you have done all this and more for my sake, and for the union of Master Rancaster and myself. For that, you have my gratitude and strength and love. There’s a time for all things, and in a little while, there will be a time for you to fight. I myself have done my share of it. I have seen two scions of the house of Hearn, and just before entering this room, I’ve even fought that nameless Prince Prospero who had stormed this very room and driven you out. What do you have to say for yourselves?”
Now the room of masqueraders stood in the hush of judgment from their Queen Alice, none of them daring a word.
“Neither Rancaster, nor I were there when that happened,” Alice said, “but I ask you now. Will you stand and fight for me?”
A resounding “Yea” roared through the room from the teeming crowd of masqueraders.
“Will you stand and fight for the honor of Rancaster?”
And another resounding “Yea” roared through the room.
“Will you stand and fight for the honor of my name?”
And yet another resounding “Yea” roared through the space.
At their acclamations, Alice smiled a slasher’s smile and said, “Then I promise all of you that your time (our time) has come. With you by my side, we will cut down our enemies starting with the house of Hearn!”
2
When Leslie finished, Colbie just stood there gaping at her mother in amazement. Throughout Leslie’s story, images of her mother’s misadventures through the Phantom Realms fluttered across her mind, and she wondered about these references to Edgar Allan Poe, who was something of a mama’s boy himself even by early Victorian standards.
Colbie said, “What does all this mean?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Leslie said, pausing for a moment, then: “Colbie, did you meet Auna Wenger in your dream, by any chance?”
“No,” she said, “but I met someone else. She called herself Alice.” She paused on her mother’s thoughtful expression, wondering what she was thinking about, and said, “What is it?”
“Those wounds you received,” Leslie continued. “Did this ‘Alice’ have anything to do with them?”
“Yeah,” she said, avoiding her mother’s eyes because she had struck her in the face and made her bleed. “She nearly killed me, but you woke me up just in time.”
“And your dream bedroom,” Leslie continued, seeming to connect the dots in her mind. “Did she do that, too?”
Based on what her mother told her, Colbie could just imagine the mess Alice made of it, balling her hands into knuckle-white fights on the kitchen countertop, and said, “I escaped before she tried to kill me, but she better watch out. If I ever see that trash-talking slut bag again, I’m gonna—”
“Colbie, don’t!”
“I can’t help it, okay, Mom?” Colbie said. “That bitch tried to kill me! And she was talking smack about you and Dad, and—ugh! She fucking pisses me off so much!”
“I know how you feel, trust me,” Leslie said, “but you can’t let that get to you—not now,” and she walked over into the family room and checked the time on the LCD clock above the television: 5:16 a.m. “It’s a quarter past five, so we still have time.”
“Time?” Colbie said. “Time for what?”
“Time for one more dream dive,” Leslie said, and she stalked off out of the kitchen and into the hallway.
“Wait, are you serious?” Colbie followed on her mother’s heels into the hallway at the base of the staircase. “It’s less than two hours before daybreak. We need at least—”
“I know that,” Leslie said, and she opened the door into a closet underneath the staircase and turned on an overhead light. The light showed a rack full of jackets and overcoats and boxes of shoes on a shelf overhead.
“But I lost your key,” Colbie said.
Leslie turned and smiled at her daughter, saying, “There’s more than one way to enter a dream, you know,” and she beckoned Colbie to come into the closet with her and said, “Close the door.”
Once inside, Colbie swung the door shut behind her, enclosing herself and her mother in the closet, squinting below the overhead light. All at once, the air around them tingled, and Colbie felt pressure welling up against her ears, as if she were on a plane ascending into the air, so she did what her mother did. She pinched her nose and exhaled to equalize the pressure in her ears and acclimate herself with the space.
“We’ll wait here for ten minutes,” Leslie said. “We’ll be better off instead of entering your dream cold turkey.”
“My dream?” Colbie said. “Why my dream?”
“Because you have some explaining to do,” Leslie said, then pushed aside a row of jackets, revealing a blank partition whereon she placed her palm flat against it and pushed into it. A hidden latch clicked open and manifested another door that opened into the ever-shifting haze of dreams with the turn of the knob, but she delayed opening it. “I need you to tell me everything that happened to you today.”
“But, Mom, I already—”
“Everything, Colbie,” her mother said, “including last night.”
“But why last night?” she said.
“I know something happened to you, because I felt chills this morning right here,” Leslie said, grabbing Colbie’s hand and placing it on her stomach. “I felt it here.” She then looked her in the eyes, pausing for a moment as if to reflect on everything she felt when she woke up this morning. “I already told you everything I know. Now you have to tell me everything you know. I need you to be straight with me, okay? Don’t hold back anything, no matter what it is.”
But Colbie refrained from meeting her mother’s gaze, unsure if she was able to tell her mother just yet, let alone prepared to face her mother’s reaction if she told her the truth. And on top of that, even in the realm of dreams, her mother’s presence daunted her with the threat of being found out, of facing the slings and arrows of her mother’s rebuke, and of crumbling to pieces as her mother left her when she needed her most.
So she tested the waters and looked into her mother’s eyes and said, “Promise you won’t get angry?”
“I’ll try not to,” her mother said.
Colbie looked away again, shaken at her mother’s words, and wondered if she could confide in her mother at all with her attraction to girls or even with her near-death experience. She still felt her eyes raw and red from crying many times after her friends told her about Nico’s sacrifice that brought her back to the world of the living. Now, on the edge of losing herself as these secrets threatened to choke off her words, Colbie played the coward and went the easier route, telling her mother everything that had happened during her fight with Alice and everything that had happened on the previous night in her collective dream dive with her friends, yet she never mentioned Mara stabbing her.
Instead, she said . . .
3
While Colbie let her mother have it, Cooley materialized before the mirror in the underground vault and said, “I’m back! Did you miss—” Cooley stopped when she caught Nico and Blaze (both girls down to their bras and panties) egging a blushing Mara into taking off her bra with whistles and innuendoes, because she had lost the next hand of Strip Poker at the table. And under the peer pressure, Mara had caved in and was about to reach behind her back to unclip the fastener of her bra when she looked in Cooley’s direction and froze. “What’s going on here?”
That’s when Nico and Blaze looked back amidst their game, as well, with their table strewn with cards and cans of root beer and the floor beneath covered with discarded clothes.
“Oh, we’re just having some fun to pass the time,” Blaze said, smiling at Cooley. “Isn’t that right, girls?”
“We didn’t want to play,” Nico said, “but she bribed us with root beer—“
“—and we love root beer,” Mara said.
“Not as much as tonight, girls,” Blaze said, ogling the twins. “Oh, we’re gonna have soooo much fun tonight!”
“Blaze,” Cooley said, crossing her arms over her chest, “what’s going on?”
“Oh, just some harmless fun,” she said. “Care to join?”
“Are you drunk?” Cooley said and looked from Blaze to Nico to Mara. “Are you all drunk?”
“What do you mean?” Blaze said and took another swig at her beverage and burped. “We’re not drunk! We’re drinking root beer, not actual beer, I promise.”
But the disbelieving Cooley went ahead and grabbed a can—
“Hey, that’s mine!” Nico said.
—and took a sip out of it and repeated the same process for the rest of the open cans on the table, then felt relief slipping past her gullet and coming to rest in her stomach. Even so, she glared at Blaze and said, “You’re still a bad influence! Now all of you,” she added, glaring at the trio of miscreants around her like a mother about to scold her naughty children, “clear all of this up and PUT YOUR CLOTHES BACK ON!”
The trio of penitents cowered under Cooley’s glare, till they each got dressed and cleaned after themselves, yet all the root beer they drank had filtered out of their stomachs through their kidneys and into their bladders.
So Nico said, “Where’s the bathroom?”
“We need to pee,” Mara added.
“And I think I need to throw up,” Blaze said and burped again.
Cooley just stood there and face-palmed herself, then summoned another mirror and placed her hand over the reflection. Since the last thing she wanted to see was three root beer-filled girls emptying themselves on the toilet, Cooley imagined the door to the bathroom and manifested it in her mirror. A moment later, an astral copy of the door to the bathroom appeared in the underground vault beside the table.
“There’s just one toilet, so go one at a time,” Cooley said, “and please flush it after you're done!”
The trio of girls traded glances and smiled and said, “All right, Mamma Goose!”
