And (Scenes 14-16)
14
After a time, Mara looked up towards the double doors of the grandfather clock at the end of the ballroom, both doors dislodged from their hinges, and the empty dial-face stared back at her in idiot indifference, almost daring her to try them.
She picked herself up and ran up to the beckoning door handles.
She grasped them and pulled.
And she pulled.
And pulled.
Yet no matter how Mara pulled and yanked, leveraging her weight against the handles with each pull, she wasn’t strong enough. The doors refused to give way.
So Mara stepped some paces back and manifested her kodachi in her hand, flooding the violet section of the ballroom with waves of psychic energy around her, and slashed the double doors in one desperate arc, but had the opposite effect. Katherine’s protective seal over the doors kicked in, reflecting Mara’s attack back onto her in a tsunami of psychic waves blasting her all the way back into the white section of the ballroom.
When Mara hit the floor, she spat up blood on impact, grimacing in agony as her own powers shot through her body like God’s judgment tearing through her astral body, eating up her soul, and gulping down what was left of her wavering spirit, till she had nothing left to give.
She lay there for a time, winded and wheezing and aching all over, a shattered remnant of what she once was—loving, daring, hopeful, and strong—now reduced to a mere shell of herself—self-loathing, timid, despairing, and weak.
Mara then turned her head and looked over to Kendra lying against the roadblock. She struggled up to her feet, grimacing at the spasms of pain erupting through her body, and limped and hobbled towards Kendra’s side, where she found her motionless with blood oozing down the roadblock from the back of her head, her once heaving breast now still as a corpse’s.
She collapsed to her knees at the sight with images of Nico flooding through her mind and welling up her eyes full of tears, and she banged her fist against the floor, thudding echoes throughout the ballroom. In this way, she mourned in silence, for she had no words left in her to speak words of atonement or swords left in her to fight off the guilt eating away at her soul. For even as words sharpened the emotions of the human heart into swords, like swords they could be blunted into uselessness, unable to describe the soul-shattering pain of the present.
Then the light of the chandeliers flickered above her head and went out, one by one, drowning the ballroom in darkness, then came back on again all at once.
With those lights, Alice Liddell in her blood-stained Sunday dress appeared before her and said, “Hello, there!” And she kicked across her solar plexus and away from Kendra’s body.
Mara’s vision blurred in and out before refocusing on Alice with Kendra’s body. “Please, don’t hurt her!”
“Oh, I think she’s beyond hurting, this one,” Alice said, pressing a hand to her chest. “Tsk, tsk, tsk, such a pity. I would've had fun with her, too, if I had the chance.”
“Wha . . .” Mara said, struggling to her feet once more. “What are you talking about?”
But Alice ignored her question and reached around Kendra’s back and held her silver cord in her hand, saying, “Ah, what do we have here?”
“Don’t!” Mara said.
“Ohhhh, but I will if you don’t cooperate,” and Alice manifested her knife and placed it over Kendra's lifeline. “Isn’t that right, Lord Rancaster?”
“Quite so,” he said, and when Mara turned around, she saw that demon of a man pressing his hand to the door. He then manifested a six-shot revolver in one hand, twirling it around like a gunslinger, and took aim at Mara’s legs. “Bambina, your masked ‘Prince Prospero’ is inside there.”
“Really?” Alice said, perking up. “Oooooh, I’d love to have one more tango with her!”
And before Mara broke into a dead run, before she got out of the way, before she could even blink, the gun went off and she felt a wave of fire erupting through her left leg. She screamed and collapsed, clasping her leg with both hands, grimacing and gritting her teeth, but to no avail.
“It hurts, doesn’t it, Mara Cairns?” Rancaster said, ambling to where Mara lay in agony. “It hurts more than anything in the world, because you’re still tied to that living body of yours. That’s what life does to you, darling. It beats you down and makes you hurt all over till you don’t want to live anymore, till you just want to end it with one merciful bullet to the old noggin. It takes real courage to keep on living a life of anguish, and you’ve only had a taste of it.”
He then grasped Mara by the collar and forced her to stand up on one leg, then noticed the earpiece in Mara’s ear and said, “Call your friend, darling. Let her know you’re here.”
Yet through the pain, through the tears, through it all, she glared up at his despicable face and said, “No.”
“Do you really want to test me, darling?” he said. “Call your friend, now!”
“No!” Mara yelled, and spat in his face.
But her show of defiance only made Rancaster smile and wipe the spit from his cheek. So he let Mara fall to the ground, renewing the agony in her leg, then picked her up by her wrists and pinned her arms behind her back and said, “Bambina, come over and make her talk.”
Alice ran up to her and said, “No restrictions?”
“Keep it civil,” he said, “but have your way with her. We don’t have much time left, so make her talk.”
So Alice took her knife and undressed her like a piece of meat, cutting the fabric around her waist and cutting the straps holding Mara’s dress over her shoulder and letting it fall to her feet.
But through it all, Mara kept her silence, praying that Colbie won’t try to contact her.
“It’ll only get worse, darling,” Rancaster whispered in her ear. “Call here now.”
“No!” Mara said.
So Alice went to work on Mara’s blouse, saying, “Now comes the fun part,” and cut her blouse down the middle all the way to her hips, revealing her bra and panties.
“Call her now, darling,” Rancaster said.
“No!”
So Alice cut the straps of her bra, letting the cups fall and reveal her breasts, then cut the waistband of her panties, letting it fall down her leg. Now Mara was completely exposed, and when Alice brushed her fingers across her pubic hairs, she fidgeted and turned her thighs in and began to cry. So Alice took her knife and stuck the point of it in the swell of her leg wound, whereon Mara yelped and winced and grimaced, gritting her teeth to the last inch of her endurance, yet through it all, she endured.
“Call her, darling,” Rancaster said.
“No,” she said as tears ran down her face, as her voice became labored under the strain of physical torture.
So Alice changed tactics, dissipating her knife, and said, “How did you make love to your sister, hmmm? Did you kiss her?” And she attempted to kiss her lips, but Mara turned away. “Did you fondle her breasts?” And she fondled her breasts and thumbed her nipples, making her struggle under Rancaster’s hold. “Did you play with her pussy?” And she placed her fingers to the lips of her pussy, making Mara fidget and clamp down her thighs.
Now Mara was a crying and sniffling puddle of tears and mucus, her resolve now shaken, so Alice changed tactics again and said, “Maybe you’re not the type of girl who likes being played with. Maybe you’re the type of girl who likes watching, instead. Maybe you want to watch me play with her, instead,” and she pointed towards Kendra’s prone body by the roadblocks.
“No, don’t!” Mara yelled.
“Oh, but I bet you do!” And she ran back over to the roadblocks, coming to Kendra’s body, and crouched down over her.
“No! Please don’t,” Mara said, struggling against Rancaster’s hold. “Please, don’t mess with her, I’m begging you!”
“Oh, now you’ve turned into a beggar, have you?” Alice said, taking up Kendra’s silver cord and manifesting her blade over it. “Then beg for me to stop, like the bitch I know you are! Beg, bitch! Beg!”
And Mara broke down, saying, “Stop it, stooooop iiiiit! I’ll do anything—just stooooop!”
“Anything?” Rancaster said. “Will you keep your word on that?”
And the defeated Mara nodded her head, ready to do anything to keep Kendra from losing her life.
So Rancaster turned to Alice and said, “You can stop now.”
“But why?” Alice said. “I haven’t even started!”
“Stop acting childish, Bambina,” Rancaster said. “It’s unbecoming of a future queen.”
Alice gritted her teeth, but dissipated her blade and pouted and said, “You’re no fun.”
“I’ll cut you a deal, Mara Cairns,” Rancaster said. “All you have to do, darling, is call your friend beyond those doors and tell her to give you up. Turn yourself in, and all of this horror will be gone, I promise. Will you do that?”
At this point, Mara was too shattered for words, so she just nodded her head again and cried some more, praying that Colbie won’t contact her, praying for the dawn to come, praying for this nightmare to end.
15
On the other side of the portal, Colbie landed with a thud and a tumble onto a checkered tile floor of Katherine’s seventh room.
When she picked herself up and looked around, Colbie saw Katherine’s astral body, covered in a shroud the color of blood, lying over a bed of roses atop a catafalque with a pink rose clutched in her hand over her chest. The rose itself inside her hand was pulsing with Katherine’s heartbeats animating its petals, lighting up the inside of the mausoleum with a pulsing glow because Katherine was alive and well, even when submerged in unconsciousness. She looked on at the wondrous scene of Katherine lying there, sleeping like a painted lady on a painter’s canvas.
Colbie approached the scene under the influence of three cognitive dissonances: one between Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” and “Little Briar Rose” from the Brothers Grimm, another between that dark Sleeping Beauty movie Colbie had watched with her mother and Katherine before her, and a third between the kiss that the Prince shared with his Sleeping Beauty and the kiss that Colbied had shared with Mara and Alice. All these dissonances flooded her mind and quickened her heartbeats and faltered her steps, yet Colbie nevertheless reached Katherine’s side and steadied herself on the catafalque.
She took deep breaths to steady the quaking of her heart, looking over the peaceful expression of Katherine’s face, while her mind raced a mile a second, the synapses of intuition making connections faster than she could comprehend. Both tales and their adaptations on film and in Colbie’s dream had one motif in common: the prince. That’s when she remembered the strange woman’s words to her by the double doors of the ballroom: ‘Think of Sleeping Beauty, and you’ll know what to do.’
As such, Colbie placed her hand over the pulsing rose in Katherine’s hand and took one more deep breath to steady her nerves, then lowered herself over Katherine’s face and kissed her lips with the lips of death.
Out of Katherine’s clasp was torn asunder the beating rose into fluttering petals. Out of those lips arose new life, an inhalation of breath from lips to lips and an exhalation of spirit from soul to soul. And out of that one soul arose two spirits—Cooley’s wrapping her arms around Colbie’s waist and returning her kiss with a sister’s affection, and Katherine’s reanimating her astral body and wrapping her arms around Colbie’s neck with a sister’s friendship.
Colbie pulled away from both embraces and said, “Kathy?”
Katherine sat up on her catafalque and looked at the pink rose Celia had given her, now shredded of its petals, and turned to Colbie and said, “You woke me up just in time.”
Colbie grabbed her hands, helping her to her feet as Katherine clung to her shroud, and said, “Can you stand?”
“I think so,” Katherine said.
So Colbie hoisted Katherine’s arm over her shoulder and helped her towards the blasted double doors of the grandfather clock, wherein neither girl could see past the splintery gaps. All was blurry between the gaps of the broken doors, so Katherine placed her hand on its shimmering seal and summoned her mirror to it, showing a reflection of themselves against the backdrop of the mausoleum’s interior.
“Don’t push yourself,” Colbie said.
“I won’t,” Katherine said, then touched the palm of her hand on the reflection, took a deep breath, and yelled, “Reflect!” But the spell was unable to complete its circuit, her mirror shimmering their reflections, but nothing else. “I need another mirror on the other side of this door.”
Colbie thought of Nico’s plan and said into her earpiece, “Nico, this Colbie. I have Katherine with me on the other side of these doors.” But there was only static. “Nico, this is Colbie.” Again, only static answered back. “Nico, this is Colbie!”
“Nico’s gone,” Mara said, sniffling on the other end of the connection. “Colbie, I have to tell—”
“Gone . . . What do you mean by that?” she said, waiting for Mara’s reply, then: “Mara, what happened?”
Mara didn’t reply, and Colbie and Katherine traded worried looks, so Katherine said, “Mara, tell us what happened. . . . We need to know.”
“Nico blew the double doors,” Mara said, “but I still couldn’t get them to open. After everything we went through, after everything Kendra and Nico did, I still couldn’t do it!”
And she cried into Colbie’s earpiece, and her words brought an icy premonition stabbing through her chest.
“No,” Colbie breathed. “Mara, what happened to Nico? What happened to Kendra?”
“I’m so sorry, Colbie,” Mara said. “It’s all my fault. Kendra, she’s . . . she’s . . .”
“Can’t you just wake her up?” Colbie said, praying that Kendra was still okay, still breathing, still—
“I can’t!” Mara yelled. “Nothing I can do can make her wake up, not from this. I’m sorry.”
Before Colbie broke down in tears, Katherine said, “Colbie, what time is it?”
Colbie looked at her watch and said, “Six-twenty-three.”
“There’s still time,” she said. “I can still save your friend. If you can just get her to place a mirror up to the door, and I can repeat the spell and save her!”
At her words, Colbie’s hopes renewed, and she said over her earpiece, “Mara, do you remember Nico’s plan? Get a mirror up to this door, and we can get through and save Kendra. Hurry!”
But Mara didn’t respond; she only sobbed at the other end.
“Mara, please, stop crying,” Colbie said, feeling the horror of the moment seeping into her voice. “We’ve got this. Just hang in there for me, please!”
Again Mara stayed silent, sniffling.
Nevertheless, something thumped on the other side of the door, and the last voice Colbie ever expected to hear spoke through the static and said, “It’s there, darling. Now both of you come out of there, like good proper ladies, and nothing else will happen.”
Colbie and Katherine held their breath at the sound of Rancaster’s voice over the connection, and both traded looks of dread on their faces.
Katherine placed her hand to the mirror, but Colbie grabbed a hold of it, saying, “It’s a trap!”
“But we have to save your friend!” Katherine yelled.
“What if it’s a trap?”
“I’d listen to your elder, Lady Amame,” Rancaster said. “And if you need more coaxing,” and a metallic click resounded through Colbie’s earpiece, “I have your precious Mara Cairns here with a gun pointed at her head. I’ve already shot her once. A second shot will do her in permanently. And if you still refuse to come out, I guarantee your friend will die. Lady Alice will make sure of it!”
Colbie no longer needed convincing.
Katherine replaced her hand on her mirror and yelled, “Reflect!”
16
And both girls appeared on the other side of the door before the second mirror, both turning only to see a sobbing Mara stripped down to just her blouse, and held with arms locked behind her back by that man in the white suit.
At first, both girls were silent in shock, but Colbie regained herself and said, “What the fuck did you do to her?”
“Oh, just got through to her,” Rancaster said. “It took quite a bit of coaxing, but she saw the light—praise God!”
Colbie stalked towards the man with murderous intentions, ready to summon her winds.
“Nah, ah, ah, darling,” he said, taking his gun and pointing it at Mara’s head, and looked over to Kendra lying motionless next to the roadblocks, where Alice held her knife over her silver cord. “Unless you want your friend to die, you won’t do a Goddamn thing with that dagger of yours. So put it away like a good little girl, and all will be well with her.”
Colbie followed his gaze and seethed with a flutter of wind swirling around her like a tornado of malice and said, “I swear to God, you fucking bitch, if you don’t put that knife away, I’ll—”
“Or what?” Alice said. “You know we’ve got the upper hand here, Lady Amame. Either you let your precious Mara here go, or your precious Kendra here dies!”
Colbie stalked towards her.
“Colbie, don’t!” Mara said.
“But . . .” Colbie said, taking another step towards her. “But, Mara, I’m—”
“Please, let me be,” Mara said, tears streaming down her face as she looked down to the floor. “Just let me be. I’ve already caused your friends so much pain. Think of Kendra, think of Celia, think of my sister. I don’t want to be the reason why your friend is dead, so please . . . Please, I’m begging you! Let me go. Just let me go.”
“Mara,” she said.
“It’s a losing gamble, darling,” Rancaster said. “Two lives hang in the balance, and their lives depend on you making the right decision. It’s now or never, Lady Amame, and for your sake, I hope you make the right decision.”
Colbie gritted her teeth, mentally cursing the bastard before her and the bitch by the roadblocks, but she lowered her dagger by her side and said, “Tell that bitch of yours to back off of Kendra. Now!”
“You heard the girl, Bambina,” Rancaster said. “Back off.”
“Why should I?”
“Keep your word, Bambina,” he said.
So Alice got up and moved away and ambled towards Rancaster and Mara, while Katherine ran towards Kendra and threw her shroud over her body and said, “We should go, Colbie. We can't do anything for Mara right now.”
“Any last words, darling?” Rancaster said to Colbie. “I promise you, the next time you see your precious Mara Cairns, she won’t be yours anymore.”
So Colbie looked at the pitiful specimen of humanity before her, looked at this tormented soul on the verge of giving up, and said, “Mara, can you hear me?” And when the girl raised her head and looked at her, Colbie said, “Mara, I promise you, I’ll do everything I can to get you back. I promise. As God as my witness, I promise!”
And before Mara had a chance to speak, the lights overhead flickered on and off, and a darkness more than night flooded Katherine’s ballroom, turning it into a void that drummed to a beating heart. And in that beating void, the forms of Rancaster and Alice and Mara dissipated into wisps of fog emanating below his feet.
Colbie kept her eyes on that spot where they left with Mara with them, letting the gravity of the situation fall on her shoulders, till she caved in and fell to her knees and cried, till the sound of her mother’s words merged with her sobs and took her down the rabbit hole of sleep and into her mother’s arms.
