Page 34 of Madness
I tear my eyes from the chessboard and glance at the warden, who stares at me with pity.
My brow furrows, “Um… is there a reason I was called here?” I ask, trying not to sound rude.
He clears his throat, “Yes, sorry. I was just informed that your mother – Alice, has been cremated. They wanted to know if she had specific wishes for her ashes.”
I shoot out of my chair, stumbling from the force, and the leather chair clatters to the ground.
My lungs squeeze, and I struggle to breathe in a lungful of air as I spiral and fall back into the same person I was moulded to be by Alice herself.
She was mad.
I am mad… so fucking utterly mad that I’m convinced she’s going to come for me even in death.
“But her head is off, off, off!”Queenie shouts.
“Shut up! I didn’t mean for it to happen!” I shout back, my fist pounding against my skull, desperate to dislodge the voices for even a moment.
“Didn’t you, Alice? You always wished to cause her harm as the night crept in on you. You wanted her dead. Just admit it.”
“I didn’t!” I cry out, my vision turns hazy from the tears, and I sink to the floor, “I didn’t. I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
“Dead, dead, dead.”Queenie mocks.
“Al?” the warden says. I crack open my eyes, not even realising I had closed them, and he is crouched in front of me. “Are you okay?”
“I- “
“I know, silly question. But this place is all a little silly, isn’t it? Come on, sit, and I’ll make you some tea. We can talk if you want?”
He holds his hand out for me to take, and I oblige, letting him pull me from the floor and coaxing me back to the chair, which is now upright.
His shadow flickers, and I shake my head, clenching my eyes closed.
“How do you take your tea?” he asks me, the cup steaming in front of him.
“Just milk,” I answer.
“The correct way,” he chuckles, “Now, what just happened?”
“She was really cremated?”
He nods, stirring the tea, and then hands me the steaming cup.
“Alice would overshare details with me, and from as far back as I can remember, she always told me she wanted to be buried.”
“And that hasn’t happened,” he nods in understanding, “but why the freakout?”
“Because you are both utterly mad!”
“Mad, mad, mad!”
“She was sick. Her mind was sick, and she was cruel. She would tell me that if she weren’t buried, then her soul would be trapped, and if she were trapped, then she would make sure I was too,” I tell him.
I can hear how crazy my words sound the moment they leave my lips, but the warden just nods in understanding, “She threatened to haunt you?”
“The dead cannot speak,” I recite what she would say to me when she was lost to her madness.
Understanding lights up the warden's eyes, and he sips his tea, “The dead are also dead, Al. Her heart no longer beats. She cannot hurt you.”
