"All right," she said, narrowing her eyes to hurt-reducing slits. "But can we draw the bird ladies tomorrow?"
He stroked her face softly. "We certainly can."
Their drawings were pinned up around the room, as evidence of the adventures they'd been on together. The bird ladies would fit in perfectly next to the cucumber-men that lived on the ice volcano. It was too dark to see them now, but knowing they were out there stuck to the plain black walls made her feel good, like friends hovering in the darkness.
"Good night then, sweetie," her father said, and tucked her covers tighter around her.
She peeked up at him through slitted eyelashes. "Can I please see the Hatter? Just for a second."
He sighed and paused in mid-rise. "I don't know, sweetheart. He's tired from his injection. You're tired."
"Just for half a second? It's part of our routine."
He gave a bemused expression, wrinkling his eyebrows like he couldn't believe this child was his. "It is routine," he admitted, "that's true."
"Just a quarter of a second. I want to pat his head."
"You'll be up all night. But all right, a quick pat on the head and that's all."
He eased himself up carefully and left the bedroom. Anna steeled herself. The Hatter was the newest addition to their family, and the hardest thing for her to be around, but still she loved him. He was so small and helpless. It felt nice that she might be able to protect him, like her Daddy protected her.
Her father came back holding the Hatter. He was small and black, a baby Dalmatian with eyes that could still barely see. He made a soft mewling sound as her Daddy laid him down on the sheets by her face.
He was beautiful. Just the smell of him, all fur and milk and laundry-fresh from his new basket, made her head thump harder. The way his little head quivered and his ears shifted angles enchanted her, while the hurt grew.
This was something to fight for.
"Can I?" she asked.
Her Daddy nodded. He helped her ease her slim pale tan arm out of the tight covers, and rest it lightly on the Hatter's downy head. He yelped. Anna melted and ached inside.
"Right here," her Daddy said, pointing at a small white bandage pasted on the Hatter's back, between his tiny shoulder blades. "The doctor made the injection here, so we can never lose him."
"A chip," Anna said, pushing hard now against the icy wall of hurt. "But not a potato chip."
Her Daddy smiled and tickled the Hatter's round little belly. "A chip, that's right. He could go anywhere in the world and we'd find him. He'd find us, too. He'll protect us both, Anna, when he's big and strong."
Anna rubbed the Hatter's ears. He leaned into her hand sleepily. She loved him so much already. She thought about asking if he could stay in the room tonight, but she knew she'd never sleep.
Instead she carefully retracted her arm, and her Daddy helped her slide it back into the covers. "Thank you," she said quietly.
"You're welcome, angel. Now sleep well."
He picked up the Hatter. He tucked her in. He kissed her forehead gently, stroked her hair, then clicked off the dim lamp and eased quietly out of the room.
Darkness surrounded her.
She lay very still and pushed back at the hurt. This was the final routine that ended every day; trying to claim for herself whatever strange new ideas they'd come up with. The birdwomen took a long time to swallow down, and they hurt, though she had techniques that helped: most of them involved telling herself variations on Alice's adventures.
She looked up at the glowing clouds on the ceiling. These were left over from before, so they were OK, but so much else had gone. Her TV was a dim memory; her dolls, once scattered round the room ready for the next tea party, were all tucked away in boxes. She never went outside. She hardly ever left the room. Even looking at the pictures in the Alice books was too much. The most she could handle were the stories themselves, spoken in her Daddy's cozy brown voice.
At last she fell asleep.
When she woke six hours later her Daddy was standing over her, lit only by the glowing white of his eyes.
"Daddy?" she whispered.
He lunged toward her. His right hand glanced off her forehead and his left caught in her pillow, while his white-eyed face plunged closer like a nightmarish worm.
Anna screamed.
His forehead thunked off hers and stars popped across her vision. Instinctively she recoiled, ducking her head into the covers and burrowing deeper. The covers were so tight she could scarcely breathe, but now he was slapping at the pillows so she scrunched herself up at the bottom like Alice in a giant's pocket.
She gasped in hot stifling breaths. It was so dark and she felt dizzy, then his hand slapped hard at her back from above and she shrieked, "Daddy stop it!" but the words were muffled by the covers.
The bed rocked as his weight flopped onto it. Anna instinctively froze.
Silence thumped in the dark like the hurt. She strained to hear above her own gaspy breathing.
"Daddy?" she whispered.
The bed jolted and something snaked across her shoulder. His arm nudged her back through the blankets, and then came a horrible soft clicking sound, matched by a tightening of the blankets. The terror redoubled as she realized what it was: his teeth biting at the sheets.
She screamed and started burrowing through the sheets to the side. Her foot found the mattress edge and she pushed at the sheets as hard as she could. They untucked a little. She squirmed harder, using muscles she hadn't used for a year, until her toes popped through into the cooler air of the room.
Her father pressed harder and so did Anna, widening the hole until she could pour herself through it like hot tea: her foot and leg went first, the other leg followed, then her hips and the rest of her body tumbled through and slumped awkwardly onto the carpet.
She lay for a second panting in the cool air. Clouds glowed above in an eerie white light. It was a dream; it had to be a dream.
Her Daddy's face popped over the edge of the bed like a horrible jack-in-the-box. She froze. It was her Daddy but not her Daddy; the black centers of his eyes were gone, covered over with shining white like Humpty's cracked eggshells. His dark skin had gone gray and his breath sucked in and out with loud raspy wheezes.
He reached down for her and she yelped, then unfroze and rolled under the bed. In four dizzy revolutions she cleared the underside, just as he tumbled to the floor with a thump. She stared in disbelief as he got on his belly and started crawling toward her. It was tighter for him and he came on slow, but he didn't stop.
For the first time since the coma she stood up. It felt incredibly high up, like Alice after biting the cake. The dark room spun and her frail legs wobbled below. She barely remembered how to walk, and she didn't have a clue what to do. Most of all she wanted to call for her Daddy, but he was right here chasing her, and-
CRUNCH
A horrible sound came from below, shaking the house and making her jump. Another followed then another, and her heart skipped a beat with each one.
THUMP THUMP
More hit. Her Daddy was still well under the bed so she chanced a trip to the window. She hobbled over on the scratchy carpet to the window and caught her balance on the wall. The black velvet curtains were tacked to the frame, protecting her day and night from the light of the outside world. Now she slipped her hand underneath the fabric and tore it away.
Outside it was night still, and the road was filled with people.
They were everywhere, hundreds of them in pajamas and sweatpants. They all had the same strange gray skin and the same glowing white eyes, and all of themwere trudging in the same direction down the road, like a river flowing to the ocean.
Then they stopped. Their heads turned as one, like flowers bending in the wind, and their glowing white eyes settled on her.
Her breath stopped.
They charged.
CRUNCH THUMP THUMP
They hit the house and glass shattered, the floor and wall shook, and Anna jerked away from the window to smack up against her Daddy.
"Aaah!" she screamed.
His hand came up to scrape her face and she ducked and staggered round him, running jerkily back to the bed. If she could just get back under the covers and close her eyes then this horrible dream would go away, she knew it. She started to climb up the mattress but her Daddy stopped her with a hand on her back.
She screamed again. He pressed closer trapping her against the bed frame so she couldn't move at all. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
"Stop it Daddy!" she wailed. "I don't like this game." He pressed closer still and his gray face with its white eyes loomed in and she thought she was going to die.
Then the Hatter barked from the other room.
She barely heard the weak sound of his bark over the crashing of people-waves outside, but her Daddy did. He stopped advancing at once and went very still. Anna went very still too, not even daring to breathe.
The Hatter barked again, more of a yelp than a real bark, and now her Daddy moved sharply away. He went through the bedroom door roughly, banging his shoulder off the frame.
Anna let out a quiet sob. The Hatter barked again and her Daddy was stalking now outside in the hall. He'd saved her, but now who would save him? She was small but the Hatter was much smaller. She'd made a promise to protect him.
She got up and started for the door, almost tripping over her big ankles. She could hardly run; her body wasn't used to fast movement at all.
"Wait!" she called over the crashing sound.
It was dark and she stubbed her toe on the edge of the bedroom door. The corridor outside was a dark foreign territory, a place she hadn't seen for months, half-remembered from an old dream.
The dim light of her Daddy's eyes receded down the hall.
"Wait Daddy."
He turned into his bedroom. Anna bounced along the walls after him, calling all the time. Her legs were not used to this, her balance was weak, but the Hatter needed her and this was her one job. She reached the doorway gasping, exhausted from the exertion, to find her father holding the Hatter up before him in both hands.
"Here he is sweetie," her Daddy would have said, "come pet him, I'm so proud that you got out of bed."
But this was not her Daddy, and he didn't say any of that. Instead he lifted the struggling puppy to his face, opened his mouth, and bit down hard into the Hatter's soft and furry back.
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Copyright © 2015 by Michael John Grist
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Cover art by Alisha of Damonza.
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