Authors: Cameron Jace
Insanity
INSANITY
Cameron Jace
Copyright © 2013 Akmal Eldin Farouk Ali Shebl
Edited by Jami Hampson
Formatted by
Author's HQ
Kindle Edition
All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this e-book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. Thank you for respecting the hard work of all people involved with the creation of this e-book.
All facts concerning publication dates of fairy tales, scripts, and historical events mentioned in this book are true. The interpretations and fantasy elements are not. They are products of the author’s imagination.
Other Books by Cameron Jace
The Grimm Diaries Prequels Series
The Grimm Diaries Prequels 1-6
The Grimm Diaries Prequels 7-10
The Grimm Diaries Prequels 11-14
The Grimm Diaries Prequels 15-18
The Grimm Diaries Main Series
Cinderella Dressed in Ashes (book2)
Stand Alone
Pentimento (A Dystopian Fairy Tale)
Table of Contents
Prologue
Christ Church, Oxford University, Present Day
The girl sprawled on the ground was dead...and loving it. Or why else would she be grinning like the Cheshire Cat?
It was early in the morning at Christ Church on the Oxford University campus. A thick mist hovered like veiled ghosts over the quadrangle garden known as Tom Quad. Water trickled steadily from a fountain in the middle like a ticking time bomb. The surrounding buildings loomed behind the cold air like a killer carefully watching the consequences of his brutal crime.
"Do dead people grin, mommy?" a young boy munching on a tart asked a woman in an expensive red coat.
The woman in the red coat was speechless, hypnotized by the grinning girl lying dead on the grass. It was as if the girl was laughing at the living, reminding everyone of their inevitable fates. A breeze of cold air chilled the woman back to reality. She sensed something evil lurking in the mist, so she dragged her son away from the scene of the crime. Some people don't like a murder for breakfast. It's just not their thing.
A few early-wakers stood around the corpse though. None of them questioned the girl's identity, or the significance of the murder taking place inside the college. Again, it was that
frumious
grin on the girl’s face that caught them.
"She must be in Heaven, with a grin like that," a senior student joked. He was athletic, not funny, and a typical jerk. The grin didn't conjure happiness. It was sinister, hollow, and nonsensical.
A professor in a tweed jacket knelt down to inspect the body. "It's not a natural grin. Someone did that to her," he declared. "Oh, my God." He looked away from the corpse, cupping his mouth with his hands.
"What is it?" Senior Jerk panicked.
A nerdy girl with thick glasses appeared from the mist, then knelt down next to the professor. "What is it?" she inquired.
"Her lips and cheeks were sewn up with a needle, bearing her teeth to look like she is grinning. It's sick." Professor Tweed said.
"That's bloody gross," Senior Jerk mooed like a cow.
"Look what I found." Nerdy Girl held a tattered copy of Lewis Carroll's Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in her hands. An original library edition from 1865. "The dead girl was gripping it. She had it open to this page."
"What page?" Professor Tweed’s curiosity seemed to have cured his nausea.
"This one, where Alice tells the Cheshire Cat she often sees a cat without a grin, but never a grin without a cat. It's highlighted." Nerdy Girl's mouth hung open, locking eyes with Professor Tweed, before they stared back at the grinning girl.
"Is this some kind of a sick joke?" Senior Jerk growled, craning his Ogre-thick neck.
"May I see the book?" I said in my raspy voice. I know I hadn’t spoken all that time, but I usually like to speak last, after I’ve heard what else there is to be said.
“Here,” Nerdy Girl kindly handed the book over.
I checked the highlighted page. "It's true,” I said. “There's also a message scribbled in the margin," I showed it to them. It read: Save Alice!
"Do you think she wrote it before she died, like a clue or something?" Nerdy Girl adjusted her glasses. "Or maybe her name
is
Alice." She rummaged through the dead girl's pockets, looking for an ID.
"I don't think so," I point out the necklace dangling from the dead girl's neck. "It says her name is Mabel."
"I know who killed her!" another squeaky voice popped in from the mist. It belonged to an old woman, hunching over her wriggling cane. "It's the Cheshire Cat!" the few teeth she had left in her mouth chattered.
Senior Jerk chortled. "Are we seriously having this conversation?"
"Don't laugh, young man," the woman struggled on her cane, eager to see the dead girl. "It's all over the news."
"I remember now," Nerdy Girl snapped her fingers. "Cheshire, the Cat. He's killed four girls, until now. Two in London, two in Cambridge, and now it appears that he’s killed one in Oxford. All the girls were grinning after they died. I saw it on TV."
"So that's what Alice meant by a grin without a cat?" Senior Jerk mocked them, tucking his hands in his pockets and shrugging his shoulders. Being a jerk is more of a habit or a personality trait of sorts, not an attitude. It's incurable.
"Let me take a closer look at her," the old woman held out a hand.
"I don't think we should be doing this," Professor Tweed snatched the book from my hand, as if I were a lazy student who just got an F in his class. I don't usually tolerate such behavior, but I made an exception. "We're tampering with evidence," he explained.
"He’s right," Nerdy Girl leaned away from the corpse. "We should wait for the police. Did someone call them?"
"They're on their way," I replied. "I called them once I came across the corpse."
"So you’re the one who found her?" Senior Jerk pointed his big finger at me.
"I did." I always do.
"Why are you grinning then?" he snorted at the same time the professor adjusted his glasses to get a better look at my face. Nerdy Girl shrieked. She bumped against the corpse and fell on her back, not taking her eyes off me. The three of them were in a sudden state of shock. It was the old woman who didn't waste time. She threw her cane at me and galumphed back into the mist, screaming that she’d found the murderer.
My grin widened.
I wondered who I should kill first. Professor Tweed, Nerdy Girl, or Senior Jerk? I’d save the old woman for last. She wasn't going anywhere, running aimlessly across the garden, like in a Caucus Race.
Part One: We’re All Mad Here
Chapter 1
Underground Ward, the Radcliffe Lunatic Asylum, Oxford
The writing on the wall says it's January 14th. I am not sure what year. I haven't been sure of many things lately, but I’m wondering if it’s my handwriting I’m looking at.
There is an exquisite-looking key drawn underneath the date. It's carved with a sharp instrument, probably a broken mirror. I couldn’t have written this. I'm terrified of mirrors. They love to call it Catoptrophobia around here.
Unlike regular patients in the asylum, my room is windowless, stripped down to a single mattress in the middle, a sink, and bucket for peeing--or puking--when necessary. The tiles on the floor are black-and-white squares, like a chessboard. I never step on black. Always white. Again, I'm not sure why.
The walls are smeared with a greasy pale green everywhere. I wonder if it's the previous patient's brains spattered all over from shock therapy. In the Radcliffe Lunatic Asylum, politely known as the Warneford Hospital, the doctors have a sweet spot for shock therapy. They love watching patients with bulging eyes and shivering limbs begging for relief from the electricity. It makes me question who is really mad here.
It's been a while since I was sent to shock therapy myself. Dr. Tom Truckle, my supervising physician, said I don't need it anymore, particularly after I stopped mentioning Wonderland. He told me that I used to talk about it all the time; a dangerous place I claim I had been whisked away to, when my elder sister lost me when I was seven.
Truth is, I don't remember this Wonderland they are talking about. I don't even know why I am here. My oldest vivid memory is from a week ago. Before that, it's all a purple haze.
I have only one friend in this asylum. It's not a doctor or a nurse. And it's not a human. It doesn't hate, envy, or point a finger at you. My friend is an orange flower I keep in a pot; a Tiger Lily I can't live without. I keep it safe next to a small crack in the wall where a single ray of sun sneaks through for only ten minutes a day. It might not be enough light to grow a flower, but my Tiger Lily is a tough girl.
Each day I save half of the water they give me for my flower. As for me, better thirsty than mad.
My orange flower is also my personal rain check for my sanity. If I talk to her and she doesn't reply, I know I am not hallucinating. If she talks back to me, all kinds of nonsense starts to happen. Insanity prevails. There must be a reason why I am here. It doesn’t mean I will easily give in to such a fate.
"Alice Pleasance Wonder. Are you ready?" the nurse knocks with her electric prod on my steel door. Her name is Waltraud Wagner. She is German. Everything she says sounds like a threat and she smells like smoke. My fellow mad people say she is a Nazi; that she used to kill her own patients back in Germany. "
Get avay vrom za dor.
I'm coming in," she demands.
Listening to the rattling of her large keychain, my heart pounds in my chest. The turn of the key makes me want to swallow. When the door opens, all I can think of is choking her before she begins to hurt me. Sadly, her neck is too thick for my nimble hands. I stare at her almost-square figure for a moment. Everything about her is four sizes too big. All except her feet, which are as small as mine. My sympathies, little feet.
"Time for your daily ten-minute break upstairs," she approaches me with a straitjacket, a devilish grin on her face. I never get out. My ward is underground, and I take my break in another empty ward upstairs where patients love to play soccer.
A big muscled warden stands behind Waltraud. Thomas Ogier. He is bald, has an angry-red face and a silver tooth he likes to flash whenever he sees me. His biceps are the size of my head. I have a hard time believing he has ever been a 4-pound baby.