Something hotter than a brand notched against the lower lips where day in and day out I’d tolerated pelvic massage. I heard a cackle of glee, felt the Hatter lunge behind me.
And then I was on fire.
Every last one of my screams was lost in the pillowed floor, the Hatter’s long-fingered grip encasing my skull, pressing my face down.
There was no way to breathe, the world of pain fading away from my grasp as my body was split in half. Parts of him were inside of me, his jerking on my back frantic.
His grunts crept inside my ears. “I’ll cut the orderly’s fingers off, Alice. I’ll let you watch me devour his soul. The doctor can be made into your newest toy. Do what you will with him. Inflict the pain he deserves.”
The Hatter was blocking my airway, crushing me into nonexistence. Lungs screaming for air, I forgot the pain between my legs, how my thighs cramped from the force of his hips on my joints.
His body strained, bucked, and he threw back his head, shouting in tongues.
I lay beneath him, empty, even while crammed completely full.
“You were delicious,” he sighed, tasting the shell of my ear when my body gave out and vision blurred into nothingness. “What games we will play. What degradations you will adore me for.”
***
Come morning, I was found sprawled on my back, my legs spread wide, tied parted to the rings in the floor. Blood and fluids matted my pubic hair. Pupils pinpoint, I was oblivious to all that went on around, but I grasped flashes of Sir Rothfield, and I saw alarm when he was summoned to look upon me.
He barked at the orderly who’d opened my cell. “Who has done this?”
“One of the inmates escaped the men’s ward. He bashed Calvin’s fingers with the gate until they split from his hand. The bastard stole his keys.”
“She could be with child. Do you have an idea who her parents are?” Sir Rothfield’s anger was not for my state, but for his potential complications. “We would be ruined should her belly grow.”
I felt nothing. There was no shame that the world might see me splayed and oozing. No ice bath was called for to calm hysteria. There was no hysteria. And when I was deemed full awake, there was no talk of a white rabbit, or forced pelvic massage... Nothing was said at all.
In fact, in their fever to rid themselves of a potentially catastrophic problem, I think they forgot about me.
Empty, hollow, just as the Hatter had promised. I was free. When he came to me each night, I smiled to see him and let him do to me what he will. The more he played with me, the more I found I enjoyed it.
In a matter of days, my parents sat in the twin chairs before Sir Rothfield’s desk—the same desk where I had been forced to spread the evening of my arrival. I was led before them, unblemished of scratches, fattened up on rabbit stew, with not a single mark anywhere on my body.
Beyond the tender place between my legs, the true mark was on my soul.
I smiled at them as if all were well, and took a seat to the side when Sir Rothfield broke the great news. “Your daughter has been cured and the root of her malady discovered.”
Taken with the glow of health in my cheeks, with the sheen of my crimped hair, my mother practically gawked. Meanwhile, my father was too busy eyeballing my physician to do more than sneer. “Considering the cost, she should have been cured months ago.”
The charmer who’d once sat in my parents’ dayroom came forth, no trace of the clinical physician in the smoothness of the old man’s countenance. “Alice’s troubles lie in her need for a husband’s attention. She is of age and should be married immediately... with a daughter of such rare beauty, I’m sure there is some young man you’ve had in mind.”
My mother was the first to speak up, setting her gloved fingertips on my father’s sleeve. “Look at her, Charles. Should the Franklin’s boy get one eye of this face, his papa will have no choice but to invest in our interests. I’d wager I could arrange their marriage by the end of the month.”
“The sooner the better.” Sir Rothfield added, smile tight.
My parents could not be so stupid, but I was made to marvel at how easily Rothfield had sold them on such a slapdash scheme.
It was settled, I would marry, and I was to leave the asylum at once. Just as abruptly as I had been thrust into Rothfield’s power, I was taken from it.
On the ride home, I did not look out the window. There was nothing out there for me.
***
What is in a wedding day? There was cake. There were flowers. I was halted by a tight corset and laced into a gown so white even Queen Victoria would approve. Conversation was not a thing anyone in attendance found necessary of the bride. Not a soul asked me about my time spent in Italy.
I was to stand smiling beside my new husband, a man whose father had great wealth.