Watching You, Watching Me, Chapter 3 - Mad Extremes
He hadn’t known it would be possible to find new depths to his madness. But that’s where Tarrant found himself.
All because of that slurvish mirror!
Ever since that day the mirror had been even more sporadic in its views than before, as if it had only wanted to tease him with the briefest of Alice-glimpses after that. Tarrant had moved the mirror so that he would be able to view it from almost any point in his workshop and began taking up his trade once more. It wasn’t until recently that he had seen Alice more clearly, laughing and walking past, as though crossing in front of a window. He noticed that she was in the company of someone, a tall man whose face was often blurred or distorted.
The came the day when the mirror decided to clear once again and showed Alice darting into her bedroom and then being caught by the tall man. Tarrant had been terrified at first that she was being attacked but all too quickly it became apparent that she was welcoming the man’s attention.
When the pair had faced the mirror together, that was when Tarrant finally saw the man’s face clearly.
Ilosovic Stayne. The Red Knave.
And he was taking possession of Tarrant’s Alice!
Alice never saw him in the mirror that day. Tarrant knew that much even in his madness. But Stayne had seen him and laughed, thinking he had claimed a victory.
And hadn’t he?
Alice’s innocence was gone. It wasn’t even the horrible knowledge that Stayne was the one who had taken it. No, it was more than that. It was that Alice had given it to him. Freely. Happily.
No amount of screaming had changed that fact and when the mirror went dark again Tarrant felt his mind descend into its own darkness.
In his mind’s eye he relived each moment of that last image. He watched the Knave as he touched those Alice-places that were Alice and Tarrant’s alone! Worse yet was the way that Alice had responded to that man’s touch. Tarrant knew the expressions that crossed her face and he recognized the desire in her eyes that reminded him of that first moment that she had been daring in front of the mirror. The only difference is that the desire was now for someone else.
Stayne!
His mind flipped back and forth between those two different days until it felt like each of the thoughts was nibbling at the edges of his mind, sending tendrils of red through the black of the Madness that had taken him. The colors brought no relief however and he only found that they twisted and choked him instead. He heard Alice’s voice - the screams, gasps, cries, whimpers -that were not meant for him. Tarrant discovered the color of Alice’s passion was purple, but this purple pulsed with darkness and he tried to turn away from it.
Alice!
How had Stayne gotten to Alice’s world? To her side? To her bedroom?!
Trapped in the darkness with the ribbons of color wrapped around his limbs, he howled. The darkness swallowed the sound and then threw it back at him, amplified ten-fold. Tarrant clapped his hands over his ears and closed his eyes against the sound of his own anguish. When he felt the force of the cry ease he lowered his hands. In the blackness he saw another thread of color winding its way toward him. This one was a dark crimson streaked with black and he tried to back away from it. The Madness held him fast and he shook his head, not wanting that tendril to touch him. It came ever closer and the moment it touched him, wrapping around his ankle he heard laughter in a familiar and hated voice.
No! No! NO! He struggled, trying to get away and escape but Stayne’s laughter continued, mocking him. The crimson/black of the laughter began to burn him, the pain spreading from that one point of contact across Tarrant’s skin until he felt as though the fire consumed him. His skin cracked and split under the intense heat even as the laughter continued. His Alice was gone. Taken. Perhaps had never been.
Tarrant’s heart clenched at that last thought and suddenly the pain of fire and the laughter were gone. His skin was unmarred by any sign of the flames that he had felt. He held his hands up, their whiteness a stark contrast to the dark of the Madness. Bandaged and stained, they showed no sign of the damage he had felt. As he stared at them, he saw Alice’s (not real) hands pressed against his, transparent fingers twining with his.
Alice?
Her voice filled the darkness, gasping and whimpering, begging and pleading for more…more…calling out a name.
Feeling his whole body wrench at the sound of Stayne’s name on her lips (but she didn’t know, couldn’t know it was him…please don’t let her have known) he cried out and his hands balled into fists, shattering the pale image that had been before him. Tarrant tried to scream but the darkness was too thick, too dense and instead his lungs burned from lack of air. He fought for air, falling to his knees in the center of the Madness, drawing in the air and blackness bit by bit. Memories and not-memories spun around him, still so vivid even when he closed his eyes.
Child-Alice
She had been so young and innocent and still so very contrary. Tarrant had wanted to protect her from the worst of the world that he knew was out there. Had wanted to keep her in Underland with him. Had wanted to watch her grow. But she’d left so suddenly. Until she was gone, he hadn’t realized how much she meant to him.
Right-proper-sized-Alice
This memory tugged him to his feet, drew him along, the ribbons of color and pain trailing behind.
She’d come back. Convinced they were all a dream, true, but she’d come back! He was happy with this memory. He wanted to keep it safe from the rest of the Madness but the Madness would not let him rest.
He’d seen the way that Stayne looked at Alice in the Red Queen’s castle. He’d known back then but had put it out of his mind. Too many other things to think about just then. And if he had seen how Stayne looked at Alice, then that man must have seen how he, Tarrant, looked at her.
Stopping in the black, he watched as ribbons of blue began to wind themselves around his chest, squeezing him tight enough to make him gasp. If the Knave already wanted Alice, then knowing that he was taking her from Tarrant would indeed be sweet revenge. Tarrant found himself growling, hands clenching and unclenching in fury. And Stayne had done just that.
Taken! Gone!
Colors exploded around him as he howled. His voice trailed off into incoherent Outlandish mutterings and the colors swirled, writhing around him, trapping him even though he made no move to escape. Voices rose and fell, mixing with his own.
“I’ll miss you when I wake up.”
“Why is a raven like a writing desk?”
“You wanted this.”
“Yessss…..”
“Alice!” he cried out, his cutting through the others for a moment. Everything seemed to halt in that instant as though the Madness itself was stunned.
Then it struck back with a vengeance.
Tarrant had always known that he was half mad. That he wandered in and out of the top layers of insanity. It had never been enough of a voyage that someone hadn’t been able to call him back. Always (always) there had been someone who cared who could pull him back out of those encounters.
He knew now that there was much more Madness to be had.
The cacophony of sounds and voices was at such a level that he was vaguely surprised that he had not shaken apart from it. Around him the colors swirled, mixed with the ghostly images of memory and fantasy. Closing his eyes again did nothing to shut them out. The Madness was in him.
It reached through, the ribbons of color piercing him, winding their way inside until he couldn’t tell where he ended and they began.
Tarrant was consumed by it all, trying to hold onto anything, any memory or thought that might not be taken from him and twisted but everything slipped out of his grasp.
Tarrant…
His name, only a half-remembered thought in her voice, was the final, unbearable, torture.
He let go.