Page 18 of Madness Becomes Her

DIFFERING REALITIES

The maze surrounding me only deepens as my panic grows. There’s no one here to help me, either.

Hatter told me to stay away. He told me not to follow him, to stay with Lewis and spend the day drinking tea.

But I hadn’t listened.

I followed him, staying out of sight and lurking behind him as he trekked through two small towns before landing here.

A grand red palace sits overhead, and an enormous, gleaming staircase is before it. Twisting around the mountain that the palace is perched atop, the stairs look like they’re made of glass.

The thing is, to get there, one has to get through a hedge maze. To stay out of sight, I let Hatter get too far ahead, and now I’m stuck.

I’ve even tried to find my way back to the exit to make my way back to Hatter’s house, to no avail.

Suddenly, through the fog of worry growing in my chest, I hear two voices.

“No, I don’t think you should eat it. I’ll eat it and see what it is,” a boy says.

The voices seem to hail from just beyond the hedge I’m beside, so I walk around it silently, finding two bald and frightfully pudgy boys staring at a table with a single cupcake atop it.

There’s a tag on the cupcake, and they’re arguing over who the tag is meant for.

“I’m older!” the second boy argues back.

“By one minute! I’ve told you repeatedly that one minute doesn’t matter!”

Trying to get a better look at the tag, I lean forward, wincing my eyes to focus my vision, but my foot catches a twig, and it snaps.

Both bald boys snap their attention toward me, the cupcake forgotten.

Oh no.

“You there! Come here!”

“Don’t call her over here, then we’ll never get this figured out.”

“She’ll eat it, dummy. Then we can see what kind of magic it has.”

“Magic?” the second boy says, looking at the cupcake in confusion. “It’s a sweet, not a magic.”

“Oh, shut up. You there, girl, come here!”

Sighing, I step forward, straightening the mess of a dress I have on today. It’s pale blue with white ruffles trimming it. My saddle shoes dig into my ankles, brushing against blisters forming from all the walking in circles.

Now that I’m closer, I can see that the tag on the cupcake reads ‘Eat Me,’ which is the opposite of what anyone should do, being that it’s on the grounds of the Red Queen’s castle.

I only know what little Hatter and Lewis would tell me about her, but I know that she sounds dreadfully awful.

The boy to my left, who claims to be the older of the bald boys, lifts the cupcake. “Eat this!”

“No.”

“See,” the other boy argues, “she doesn’t want it. I’ll take it.” He swipes for it, but the first boy pulls it away from his reach.

“Eat this, or we will force you to eat it.”

Both boys seem interested in this, and their attentions fix on me.