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“Considering the company you keep, I’ll pass,” she purrs, rolling onto her back. “His queen is responsible for the loss of my kind,” she lazily waves her paw towards the twins without specifying which one. Tweed snatches the baguette, ripping it down the center with his bare hands to dump the barbequed rat inside. Bon appetite.
“Come Malice, we have much to reminisce,” the cat whispers, floating into the sky. I shrug, more intrigued by Tweed trying to still me with a warning hand. Yeah right, as if I’ve ever been one to do as I’m told. Following the pretty pussy, I figure it has been twenty-three minutes as the rain suddenly stops and we’re permitted entry outside. Pools of water drain from the shabby train carriage, pouring down the sloped tracks we turn away from. Fresh earth perfumes the air, the rain churning fresh soil and varnishing the wood in a layer of gloss.
Eating as I walk; I track the cat drifting into the tree line. Every so often, she looks back to check I’m still here, along with the two shadows looming over each of my shoulders. Two rows of sharply pointed teeth slot together, her smile wide and permanent. Whereas her head and tail are thick with fur, I now note that the body in between is hairless. Like a sphinx in pale brown with cream lines – not stripes as I first thought – but twisted marking that avoid each other like tribal tattoos. The paws, though, are huge. Triple the size I’d expect with deadly extended claws.
“I hate that fucking cat,” Tweed snarls so close, I can’t hide my flinch. His breath skates over my neck, my pulse thrumming in excitement. Surely, it’s almost their dinner time too. Leading us past a field of mushrooms, ranging from the heights of the tree trunks to the piddly tiny excuses for fungi, we venture towards the sound of trickling water. The sky rumbles, pre-empting that storm Tweed warned me about. A black cloud sails overhead, below the canopy and zipping around with unusual speed. Just like the cloud on the map, which was shaped like a cat’s head…
“Are these your woods by any chance?” I muse, tossing the rest of my baguette aside when I feel a carb stitch coming on. A daisy shoots out of the ground, blooming in size to snap its petals like a Venus flytrap and gobble it up, before retracting to miniature again. The cat circles its tail a few times, floating backwards to reply.
“Once home to all felines. Alas, I’m the only one left.” Slinking over a stream that flows in slow-motion, Cash scoops me up and leaps across, setting me down at the mouth of a cave.
“So, you’re a Cheshire, I suppose.” I had only met the one, and foolishly presuming just like that Jabbercocky – that’s all there was. Slipping into the cave, purring echoes around the walls, drawing me further inside.
“My provided name is Chelsey Cat, but you once called me by another,” she says. The words bounce around, her body faded from view so I can’t tell where they are coming from. Fingers slip into both of my hands simultaneously, the Tweedles preferring to keep me close.
“I’m fairly certain I’d remember meeting you,” I call back. My sneakers tilt on the rocky ground, my vision going blind. The vampires can see though, bringing me to a swift halt as the smile reappears in front of my face.
“Meet, not so much. Abandon would prove more accurate,” she grins. The lock is unbolted, a doorway in the darkness swinging open for a burst of light to bleed out. Feathers. White feathers, everywhere. A disco ball of artificial light glimmers across the poultry graveyard, giving me insight as to why there are no chickens left either.
Chelsey Cat dips, sprawling across the features and stretching out her back. She twists bell-up, scratching her furry head against the softness. Peering up at me from this angle, a memory filters through my empty skull and I gasp.
“Dinah?! I thought…I thought you ran away,” I breathe, releasing the twins to skid into the feathers on my knees. A heap of byones and blood splatter hides in the corner of the cavern, a giant litter tray in the other. Free of shit and piled high with sand, the roll patterns suggest she’s had a jolly old time playing in there above anything else. Chelsey grins, a malicious twinkle in her teal eyes.
“Not ran away – ran after. I followed you down the rabbit hole,” she purrs as I scratch her tummy. “Lost my way, found my kind,” she shrugs her boney shoulders like she isn’t affected by being trapped here all this time. But I can see the truth. I mean…look at her. Her deranged smile, her ever-glinting eyes. A body that’s more bone than meat.
Shifting against my knees, the fur of her large head and fluffy tail leaves brown hairs on my cargos, whilst the skin of her torso is smooth and soft to touch. My heart slows as realization settles in. She’s not my Dinah anymore, not by a long shot, and the housemaid I stabbed with a steak knife for losing my beloved cat was, in fact, innocent.
“What happened to you?” I whisper, tracing the tribal lines with my finger and pointedly ignoring those who lurk by the doorway. Especially when Tweed tries to order me into leaving - ‘or else.’ Chelsey shuffles upward, dropping into my lap on her back.
“I’m on my ninth life you see, a stripe for every time. But this loyal pet will set you free, with her last life on the line.” I smirk, her lyrical sense appealing to my better nature. She slots into my lap the same way she slots straight back into my life. As if she never left, and I’m starting to wonder if she really did.
“Was it all doom and gloom last time, or was I just too naïve to notice?” I mutter, half to Chelsey and mostly to myself. Stroking the soft patch of her belly back and forth, I become lost to the movements. Falling under my own trance as misery knocks at the fringes of my mind. Sorry pal, no one’s home. “I don’t suppose you know where the Hatter is?” I sigh, already knowing her answer will be another dead end.
“I’ve spent the best part of twenty years in this cavern, curled up to focus my energy on astral projecting to you. Anytime I leave, I’m reminded of exactly why I shouldn’t.” I knew it. Chelsey wasn’t a voice in my mind. A figment of my imagination I created to not feel alone. She was always there.
“You never left me,” I stroke the length of her fluffy ear. The black slits in her teal eyes regard me like twin lasers and that’s when I nod sharply. “And I won’t leave you either. You’re coming with us.” Scooping her up, her huge front paws push at my collar bone and just when I think I’m about to be ripped to shreds, Chelsey leans into me. The rumble of her purr resonates inside my chest, her face nuzzling my neck as I return to an amused Cash and pissed off Tweed.
“No fucking way,” Tweed tries and I barge past him. Cash extends an arm, trying to stroke the kitty as I go. Chelsey hisses at him over my shoulder, the fur of her tail standing on end like an electric shock has zipped through her body.
“No need to be like that Chels,” Cash chuckles. I slow to let him catch up, intrigued by his admission. “You were fond of me once.” Her hissing increases, her obvious hatred hindering the use of her jaw.
“I was on my first life and stupid. I’ve learnt,” she grits through closed teeth. I chuckle, stroking her back into submission. Chelsey snuggles into me, lulled into a soft sleep despite one of her eyes remaining open, watching the Tweedles every move through her dreamy state.
Breaching the cave, the darkness of night is falling incredibly fast. A rumble of thunder overhead fails to mask the crackled roar of a beast amongst the gray cloud that batters around between the trees like a ping pong ball. My footsteps still. You know what, on second thoughts, perhaps waiting in the cavern of feathery fluff is best.
20
Ten years after Alice’s disappearance
“Hurry, brother!” I shout, running bare foot through the manicured gardens. Wiping the jam tart crumbs from the corner of my mouth, I whoop loudly, uncaring of the fish-faced chef cursing me from the back door. Diving behind a hedge shaped as a heart, I grab Dum’s ankle as he races by. He trips, kicks out at my hand and then ducks into my hidey-hole too.
“She’ll be looking for us,” he grumbles and I nudge his shoulder.
“Find your sense of fun, for fuck’s sake, Dum. Or else we might completely lose sense of who we are.” Producing the last of the tarts from my pocket, I blow off the fluff and offer it to him. His green eyes narrow and he pushes it back in my direction. Such a prude for the rules. I have no such qualms myself, shoving the tart into my face and grinning around the mouthful. My twin continually looks behind the hedge, checking for the pompous queen who no doubt won’t be far behind. She never is where he is concerned. Fascination turned obsession; I’ve decided.
Movement glides across the lawn, a beige and brown feline losing its fur with each leisured step. Yawning wide, she strolls on, a trail of mice following like the piped piper leading them to their certain deaths. Upon seeing our hidden, hunched figures, her back rises and she hisses violently. Tweed juts out his foot, ordering the Cheshire to ‘move the fuck on’.
I don’t know what he has against the cat we found once in the Enchanted Wood. Maybe she reminds him too much of the Alice, considering that’s all she would mewl for at first. I brought her home, gave her some milk, and she attacked me in my sleep as a thank you. Swings and roundabouts.
