Rabbit Holes

Rabbit Holes

Alice stared at the card, a painted circle, smooth to the touch, with papercut edges and a soft satin finish over the bold black Roman numerals.

The Maiden.

It felt like years since she was the maiden, Since her curiosity and precociousness had led her down her first rabbit hole. The white rabbit had darted under her skirt while she mused about lighter things, and she’d fallen headfirst after him into darkness.

The witch set the card down next to the others in the spread. The Animal and The Empty Room. It didn’t take an oracle to know the story of She, as it unfolded in the cards laid out on the little three-legged table.

“I followed him into his hole, into the dark, never thinking of the danger.” Alice pushed The Animal back towards the black-eyed grifter who watched silently, the remaining cards of the girl’s reading still in her thick-knuckled hands. “I wanted to know, and I learned.”

The white rabbit had found her, delighted by her own blossoming beauty, dressed in a fetching blue dress with a white pinafore, a ribbon in her hair, dreaming of the approaching day when she would be allowed to let her hair down and forego the apron all together for more adult togs.

He touched her hand and wrinkled his nose at her, and asked her to walk with him, so he could show her the world the way this new, almost grown version of her deserved.

“I’ll follow you,” she stammered, entranced by his embroidered vest and gold pocket watch. No one had ever noticed her before.

He led her into the woods, and when the sun could no longer break through the trees, he laid her against the fallen leaves and went down, down, down, lifting her dress and dragging off her muddied tights, lapping all the precociousness from her as her mind whirled with unasked questions, like “why?” and “how do I get back to who I was before?”

“I learned so much from him.”

The carnival witch nodded and managed a small, wistful smile. “There’s always something to be learned.” She set down another card, The Dead End. Alice stared at the black and gray oracle card. The witch stared at Alice.

When he was done with her, the white rabbit had scurried off, far too busy with the important tasks of a white rabbit to straighten her dress or clean the milky remnants of his ardor off her.

“He ran away when he’d finished with me, so I followed,” Alice said. She reached out with one finger and touched the hand at the center of the tangled black web of the oracle card. “I wanted him to make me whole, like he promised. I wanted him to see me after, the same way he had before.”

She laid her hand on her belly, just beginning to swell with the daily reminder of his grunting thrusts in the dirt, the day he’d tangled his fingers in her hair and told her no one could love her the way he did, then had come shuddering with a keening whimper and left her with scraped knees to clean herself of the blood and spurt and twigs as he ran home to his queen. The sun had fallen from the sky that day, when she followed him down the rabbit hole and to the castle, where the queen had shouted at her and hit her and called her a whore before telling him to get rid of her.

“Get rid of her,” Alice said to the witch, staying her hand before she could place another card. “I don’t need to see any more to know I need to get out.

The old woman sighed and laid down the last card, The Empty Room. “The cards are with you, Alice. Do you have the money?”

Alice dug deep into the pocket of the shapeless dress her mother had forced her to wear the moment she started to show and set her purse on the table. “It’s everything I have.”

“Let’s hope that’s enough.” The woman pushed back from the table and motioned towards the back of her tent with her head. “Come along, child. There’s nothing to fear.”

The darkness ahead of Alice smelled of fear and blood and disinfectant. It smelled of a dead end, hopeless and heavy with side of bleach and avarice. The woman pointed her toward the only cot in the room, a moldy bit of canvas stretched on an aluminum frame. It was worse for the wear, but it had never been ‘nice’. It was not a place to rest, merely a makeshift hospital bed for girls who thought they’d try on womanhood and found it ill-fitting.

The woman jabbed her finger at the cot. “Take off your knickers and lie down. It will be over soon enough.”

Alice did as she was commanded and pulled down her panties, lifting her shapeless morning dress up over her belly. A silent, sullen boy brought the woman a dark-stained box and left with a glance at Alice.

“If you’d come to me sooner, we could’ve rid you of your burden with pennyroyal tea and turpentine,” the woman chided. “Now I will have to remove it myself to be sure. Do you understand?”

Alice nodded; her tongue swollen in the desert of her mouth.

“Say the words, child.”

Alice worked enough saliva down her throat to reply, “I understand.”

The woman opened her treasure box and carefully laid out the instruments of her trade on a square of linen. Lips stretched together in a thin line, she drew up a stool at the end of the cot and jerked Alice’s legs down to meet her. “No point in being shy now, love. That moment has passed.” She pushed the girl’s legs to the sides and took a breath. “Hold still, you’ll feel a tug and it might hurt a little. Think of something else, if you can.”

Alice thought of his pale face and shining blue eyes. She thought of his hand soft on her shoulder as he told her how very grownup she was. She thought of the sun shining and the shadows falling as he led her into the forest. She thought about rabbit holes and how curiosity killed the cat and how his queen had turned so red when she found out.

She felt a tug, and more than a tug, and thought about the way he had been so handsome before, and so ugly after. She thought about the smell of his spunk, and the smell of her blood, and the smell of her blood kept getting stronger.

Somewhere back in the tent of the midnight carnival, she heard the woman call out to her boy for linens and hot water. The smell of blood was so strong, it was all she smelled, as the sound of it rushed in her ears like waves breaking on the shore.

The Empty Room called to Alice. All it held was potential, like a rabbit hole. You never knew what was on the other side of the fall until you let yourself go through it.

The Midnight Carnival had been a bad idea, Alice thought as bodies bustled around her, scurrying like they were chasing white rabbits of their own. If everyone would just slow down, perhaps she could hear herself think.

But The Dead End seized her, sticky web cradling her as it held her fast. No more Maiden, no more Empty Room. Just one last rabbit hole to fall down, dark and damp, then dry and full of whispers, then—nothing at all.