The Windy Shindy (An Alice Story)

The first thing Alice saw, as she crept dripping across the threshold, was the Cheshire Cat, suspended upside down, and one-legged, from a wrought iron chandelier.

“Welcome!” he said, his smile glowing back at her like an upended half-moon.

“Well, hello,” she replied, her voice coarser than when they’d last met, the passing years, if they could be counted, surely numbering in the forties.

Alice removed her coat, extending it to the butler who’d led her in from the rain, then returned her attention to her host.

“And what is the purpose, if I might ask, of you dangling upside down in the foyer?”

“Purpose?” he said, quizzically. “And what is your purpose for standing the way that you do?”

“This is just how I stand,” she said.

“And this is just how I dangle,” he countered.

“I suppose it is,” she conceded, adding, after a glance around the foyer, “Am I early?”

He laughed when she said this, “I surely couldn’t tell you.”

“But there’s a clock right there,” she said, pointing to an old grandfather.

“Oh, yes. There must be a hundred clocks in this place, but you see, they all tell a different time, so who’s to know for certain which is the right one? Surely no one here can tell you.”

Alice stood puzzled.

“And what time do you think it is?” prodded the Cat.

This seemed an odd question to Alice, but she answered all the same, after a moment to consider. “Well, I couldn’t say for sure, but I would think it at least a quarter past eight.”

“Then let it be a quarter past eight,” he said, the matter - at least from the feline’s perspective - quite thoroughly settled.

The butler soon returned. He was a heavy, balding man of advanced years, his steps faltering along with his hairline. “If you would please join us in the dining room,” he said, extending an unsteady arm.

The butler loped as much as he walked, guiding Alice into the grandest, most decadent room she had ever seen. The walls seemed papered in gold - the shiny, glittery pattern shimmying its way to heights that seemed unending - and pocked with large arched windows, as if one of them might fling open at any moment, to the reveal of a monstrous cuckoo. Directly before her hung a massive chandelier with tear-drop crystals the size of her ears - glowing proud as a peacock, as if trumpeting its unmatched beauty, and daring anyone who might look upon it to take a contrary position.

Beneath the chandelier she observed a long table, itself laden with an assortment of the oddest, most peculiar crew that one could conjure. Six in total, three apiece seated on either side, themselves seemingly part of the gaudy scenery.

“Alice!” called one of the guests. As she drew in closer, a necessity with her failing sight, she discovered the voice to have emanated from a very hat-less Mad Hatter. He was flanked by Tweedledee on his left and Tweedledum on his right, both who’d grown in size, even if their clothes hadn’t, and both seemingly fast asleep.

“Oh, Mad Hatter, I should have known you’d be here.”

The Hatter wore a blue suit offset by a white-ruffled shirt. His hair was neatly parted, with just the faintest bit of gray intermixed within the dark follicles. His hat decorated the ear of his chair.

“Of course I’m here! Where else would I be? Only I’m no longer The Mad Hatter, I will let you know. The treatments, such as they are, having attenuated some of the madness.” He then reached forward, plucking a glimmering olive from a glimmering platter, before popping it into his mouth.

“Oh my,” said Alice, mortification washed over her face. “I’m very sorry. I didn’t mean to offend.”

“No offence taken,” he said after a chew, “none whatsoever. I was positively bonkers before, much like this spread, you see.” He motioned to the glittery accouterments and decadent hors d’oeuvres splayed out generously across the table.

“So then what shall I call you?” she asked, “if not the Mad Hatter?”

“Well, the treatments, such as they are, have attenuated some of the madness, at least from what they tell me. But it’s still there all the same – the madness, that is – and liable to burst forth now and again. So now they call me The Not-So-Mad Hatter, or the Intermittently-Mad-Hatter, either of which suits me just fine, I suppose, as long as I remain slightly less bonkers than this spread.”

“I see,” said Alice, stifling a smile.

“And the treatments, such as they are, if they are ever completely successful, then I suppose I might then be called The-Not-At-All-Mad-Hatter, or The-Completely-Sane-Hatter. Which do you prefer, of those two?”

Before Alice could answer, there came a voice.

“On and on with the treatments!”

It was Caterpillar, seated opposite the Hatter, himself ensconced by Rabbit on the left, and Walrus on the right. He wore a velvet smoking jacket and cradled a mahogany pipe, intermittently exhaling sweet, circular puffs of smoke into the air. Unlike the humans, none of the three animals looked all that different than when she’d last seen them, save for rabbit, who was both missing an ear, and had seemingly traded his pocket watch for a pair of thick, black-rimmed glasses. He, too, was fast asleep until Alice reached out her hand and placed it on one of his paws, awakening him with a start.

“Oh my, what is it, what is it?” he then stopped mid thought, his eyes finding the source of his interrupted sleep.

“Oh, Alice,” he said, straightening up in his seat and pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose “you made it, after all. How wonderful.” He roused to his feet, standing as erect as he could on the chair, yet even then a dash beneath her line of sight. In the next moment he began to sob.

“Rabbit,” she said, kneeling down to comfort him. “There’s no need to cry.”

“I have missed you,” he said.

“And I you.” She leaned in for a hug, then drawing back, asked, “My dear Rabbit, whatever happened to your watch?”

“It broke,” he said, quick to answer, but slow to elaborate.

“Whatever happened to his ear,” cried the Slightly-Less-Mad-Hatter, “that is the real question on your mind, is it not?”

She prepared to deny it, instead turning silent.

“The time has come,” Walrus said, “to talk of Rabbit’s ears.”

“You mean ear don’t you?” said the Hatter.

“He says that all the time,” said Rabbit. “He thinks it’s rather clever.”

“No I don’t,” protested the Hatter.

“I was talking about Walrus, if you don’t mind.”

“Then you don’t think me clever?” said the Hatter.

“That is not what I meant.” He responded curtly, his patience seeming to wane.

“But what did happen to your ear?” cried Alice.

“Treatments and ears and more treatments,” interrupted a voice from above. Alice lifted her gaze to find the Cheshire Cat perched right side up in the chandelier, the gleaming crystals reflected in his pearl-white teeth, a large black bowtie now prominently showing around his neck. “Surely there will be time for all of that. Why don’t you have a seat, dear Alice?”

The butler pulled back her chair, and Alice found herself seated at the head of the table, with rabbit at her elbow to the right and Tweedledum at her elbow on the left, the latter still fast asleep. The opposite chair remained unoccupied.

“Cat!” called Alice, her neck craned upward, “however did you afford this mansion?”

“I diversified my portfolio,” he said plainly, “branching out primarily into index and bond funds.”

This may have been the maddest thing she’d ever heard, but he said it with such sureness that it was impossible not to believe him.

“Of course, not all were so fortunate,” he added, “some invested heavily in the common sense of man and the honesty of politicians,” at which she observed Caterpillar bite down firmly on his pipe, noticing, for the first time, his smoking jacket to be slightly tattered.

The Cat then leapt from the chandelier, landing softly upon the table, just slightly aside of the centerpiece, a bouquet of yellow gerberas.

“This is just wonderful,” beamed Alice, looking thoughtfully around the table.

“Indeed,” said the Cat. “And the very best thing about wonder, you see, is that there’s always room for more. And now, my friends, we wait.”

“Wait for what?” asked Alice, looking briefly into the bewildered faces of those around her, at least those sufficiently awake to manifest such a state.

“For our final guest, of course,” and in the immediate aftermath of this statement there came a loud knock at the door, as if it had been synchronized to this very moment. The butler trudged slowly from the room and disappeared from view. Then ensued a great clamor, highlighted by a loud, shrill voice dispensing all varieties of pejorative commentary. Moments later the butler returned to the room, the Queen of Hearts trailing impatiently behind him, flanked by a guard on either side.

“Would you please get out of my way?!” she pushed past the butler, tromping directly to the lone empty chair at the head opposite Alice, mounting the seat with some effort.

“It is so good to see you, dear Queen,” said the Cat, still seated on the middle of the table.

“Say it again feline?” she said, straining at the words.

He repeated the platitude, though the Queen’s attention had already drifted.

“Ugh, gerberas?” she remarked, alluding to the centerpiece. “My idiot first husband loved yellow gerberas. Laid them out at every dinner. Dreadful things, much like him. I ruined him of course.”

“Well that isn’t very polite,” said Alice.

The Queen carried on as if she hadn’t heard, which may well have been the case, her hearing, it appeared, having suffered a similar fate as Alice’s vision. Suddenly she stood up in her chair and clapped her hands together. “Commence the entertainment!”

The guests’ eyes wandered to one another, then to the Cat, who remained seated beside the gerberas.

“My dear Queen,” he said, at which point she thrust her hand in the air, palm up, into which her closest guard placed some sort of apparatus. It appeared not much more than a stick, and she immediately drew it to her ear.

“My dear Queen,” he repeated, “this is a dinner party. Though I can assure you that entertainment will be supplied. Now if you might…”

“Wait for the Nogumpf!” she shouted, at which point they noticed a small, green, snail-like creature dangling precipitously at the end of the stick. It repeated the Cat’s words directly into her ear, as it would do for the remainder of the night as was necessary, each time someone spoke to the Queen, and sometimes even if they hadn’t.

She grumbled to herself after receiving the messages, then, as if for the first time, noticed the other guests around the table.

“Must I dine with these miscreants?”

“A terrible inconvenience,” admitted the Cat. This message was promptly relayed by the Nogumpf, and the Queen sighed in response, as if their presence were a great imposition, but one in which only she was sufficiently magnanimous to bear.

The room having drawn quiet, the Cat straightened up very proper, as if he were set to make an announcement, which in fact, he certainly was.

“Welcome, my dear, long lost friends. How long has it been since we laid eyes on one another? How many years passed harmlessly into eternity? And so it was recommended that I bring us all together again - at least those that still drew breath - for a reunion. What a curious command it was, and it commanded a curious response. You see, tonight, one of us is to be murdered!”

The twins, having only recently awoken, were quick to shut their eyes, as if the act might turn them invisible, and steer them free of harm. Caterpillar expelled a tremulous smoke ring while Rabbit thumped his feet nervously against his chair.

“Murdered?” gulped Rabbit. “You mean to say one of us is to die?”

“I suppose that is correct,” said the Cat. “Yes, I am sure that one cannot be murdered without dying. I suppose the opposite might be true, that one could be alive without living, I see it everyday, in one form or another. But to be murdered without dying, I would imagine, to be a near impossible feat.”

“This certainly sounds like a bad idea,” muttered the Not-So-Mad Hatter.

“A reasonable conclusion,” said the Cat, “I think the treatments - such as they are - may be working, after all.”

“Murder?” cried Alice. “You’ve invited us here just for that?”

“Of course not,” said the Cat, seemingly insulted. “There will also be gazpacho.”

“Will there be mussels?” asked Walrus, the sole member of the table seemingly unfazed by the morbid announcement.

“Indeed,” said the Cat, “you see, isn’t it wonderful?”

“I don’t think it’s wonderful at all,” remarked Alice, her earlier good humor having quickly evaporated.

“And just who is to be murdered?” asked Caterpillar, before closing his mouth on his pipe.

“Well that’s just the fun of it,” said the Cat, “nobody knows for sure. It could even be me, for all I know, which would be a thrilling surprise.”

The storm had picked up outside, with heavy sheets of rain rattling windows. Bolts of lightning cascaded in the near distance.

“And how do you expect us to eat,” cried Alice, “knowing that one of us is to die?”

“Oh, not to fear. The portions, you see, are very small.”

“That is not what I meant,” said Alice.

“I see,” said the Cat. “Well, perhaps the next time you will say what you mean, so that I might understand what you meant. It is easier that way.”

She prepared to rise when he interjected.

“My dear friends, perhaps I may allay your fears. Indeed someone is to be murdered tonight. This is, after all, a murder mystery party.”

There was a collective sigh amongst the guests, except for Walrus – who remained indifferent – and the Queen, who appeared deflated. “A pity,” she said. “I would have liked to see a murder or two,” she then leaned in, looking down the table to Rabbit, “and you, haven’t I killed you already?”

Rabbit slunk down in his chair, reaching up to rub the spot of his missing ear.

“And you,” she said, turning to Caterpillar, “didn’t I grind you up for medicine?”

“You tried,” he said, humorlessly, again closing his mouth on his pipe.

One by one the Queen circled the table, trumpeting, without exception, that she’d tried to kill every dinner guest at one time or another, or had designs on same, even suggesting that she might yet try to finish the jobs. Finally she arrived to Alice.

“And you! I’m sure that I took your head at one point, however did you re-attach it so perfectly? I must have the name of your doctor. My crows feet, you know.”

“Isn’t she lovely?” said the Not-So-Mad Hatter.

“Well that’s all behind us now,” said the Cat.

“It doesn’t appear to be behind her!” said Alice, crossing her arms.

The Cat just smiled, as if all of this were part of the fun. “Now everyone,” he said, “dinner will soon be served. But if we may first get to the rules.”

He invited the guests to reach beneath their chairs, which they did, each finding an envelope beneath their seats.

“These envelopes contain your character,” grinned the cat. “This is who you will play this fine evening.”

One by one, they opened their respective envelopes, furtively scanned the cards inside, and then placed them, at the Cat’s urging, face down on the table.

“Brilliant,” cried the Not-So-Mad Hatter. “But when do we begin?”

“We already have,” said the Cat.

“But what of the rules?” said Alice.

“Oh yes. That’s the very best part. You see, there aren’t any!”

“Then how will we know what to do?” countered Alice.

“Only you can answer that,” said the Cat, who then disappeared amid a puff of black sulfur, leaving the eight dinner guests to eye one another suspiciously.

It wasn’t long before the first two courses had been served, the guests consuming their repast, one eye on their food, one on their fellow guests. The Queen castigated the butler each time he appeared, repeatedly suggesting he had a “common” face, and she was just as quick to assail the rest, each time they slurped or chewed too noisily, or didn’t slurp or chew at all, and were thereby too quiet.

The evening had disintegrated into an oppressive, stilted affair. The Queen was as universally reviled as they had remembered, and none could seemingly fathom, based on the furrows and ticks of their brows, what had struck the Cat to include her.

“Well, this is very unpleasant,” said Alice, finally breaking an uncomfortable silence and throwing her napkin down atop her place setting.

“I rather enjoyed the cabbage,” said Walrus.

“That’s not what she meant,” said Rabbit.

“Alice is right,” said Caterpillar, “our host has abandoned us to the company of this wicked woman, and we’ve received no guidance at all on this fiasco but these measly cards.”

“This is certainly not what I’d envisioned when I received the invitation,” said Alice, pushing her seat back and rousing to her feet just as the butler wheeled in the next course.

“Why does she get to leave?” yelled the Queen.

The butler approached Alice from the side.

“Is everything all right, milady?”

“No, everything is not all right. I am leaving!”

“Master will be most displeased,” he responded.

“Then that will make two of us,” she said.

Just then a window burst open, a gale of wind sweeping in to extinguish every candle, turning the room pitch black, resulting in a flurry of movement and a frenzy of wild noises. A scream cut through the air just as Alice heard the window shut tight. The butler soon returned light to the room with a few strategically lit candles, the scene much as it was before, with each of the dinner guests seated where they should be, save for the queen, her chair knocked back against the floor, her feet dangling limp over the edge.

The dinner guests immediately circled around her.

“So the game has finally begun!” called the Hatter.

Alice drew a spoon from the table and knelt closer, placing the object just beneath the Queen’s nose.

“It is more than a game,” said Alice. “She’s quite properly dead.”

“Look here,” said Caterpillar, “she appears to have been gored by a tusk.”

Each peered in on Walrus when they said it. He remained in the circle but did not flinch.

“Walrus, you rapscallion!” said the Hatter.

“And here,” called Rabbit, “she had been beaten on the chest most violently. You can see by the large, messy fingerprints. Chocolate, I’d say.” Both Tweedledee and Tweedledum, in a most ambitious portrayal of innocence, immediately clasped their hands behind their backs and looked to the ceiling.

“That’s not all,” said the Hatter. “See her mouth, twisted the way it is. She has been poisoned. You still dabble in poison, my old friend?”

Caterpillar didn’t answer, instead taking a conspicuously long puff on his pipe.

“And these thump marks,” said Alice, “Oh, Rabbit. You didn’t?”

Rabbit turned his head down sheepishly, but said nothing.

“And these ligature marks around her neck,” said Alice, and the Not-So-Mad Hatter raised his hand into the air, devilish grin on his lips.

“It would appear that each of us has killed her,” said Caterpillar.

“All but Alice,” said Rabbit.

Only then Alice herself turned silent, slowly lifting a small knife from her pocket, the blade a perfect match to a tiny perforation located directly over the Queen’s heart.

“Then we’ve all done it,” said Caterpillar.

“And who has killed these two?” asked Rabbit, pointing out the Queen’s two guards, themselves slumped over dead upon the floor with nary a mark upon them. The guests looked quizzically at one another before the Not-So-Mad Hatter drew in for a closer look.

“It appears they died of lethargy. I saw it often while attending my treatments, such as they were. Though it could have been apathy, I suppose. The symptoms are very much the same. I might make a more certain diagnosis, if I weren’t so tired, and if I could be bothered.”

“Lethargy?” said Alice.

“I suppose it could even be acute existentialism,” added the Hatter, “but that’s even more difficult to prove. And even if we could, what’s the point?”

With that, the guests drifted back to their seats - the butler having just served the main course, as if nothing out of the ordinary had just transpired. Quietly, they consumed their meals, the Nogumpf having wiggled its way to the charcuterie board, where it began to munch a piece of cheese not much smaller than its head.

It was a somber affair to the end. The guests departed en masse immediately following dessert, the butler disseminating their coats and umbrellas before leaving them in privacy. They embraced warmly at the door, but with brevity, and none mentioning the incident, as if the sooner they departed the sooner the entire affair would be forgotten. The Cat remained conspicuously absent throughout, having never re-appeared since his sudden departure atop the dinner table.

After exchanging a tender hug with Rabbit, kissing the spot of his missing ear, Alice found herself alone in the foyer. There she waited for her driver, her sole company the Nogumpf, who sat upon her shoulder, and whom Alice had resolved to foster. She stood facing the door until the scent of sulfur spun her around. There she found the Cheshire Cat on the floor before her, seated on his back haunches, and adorned with his widest smile of the evening, as if he had a great secret he wished to share, or perhaps not share, depending on his humor.

“Well there you are,” she said.

“Indeed, here I am.”

“And where have you been all night?” said Alice.

“Oh, here, there and elsewhere.”

“The vanishing host,” said Alice.

“Surely the best kind,” he responded.

Alice then turned very quiet, bowing her head.

“I’m afraid we’ve done murder.”

“Yes, it would appear so.”

“You don’t seem surprised,” said Alice.

“You played the role you were assigned,” said the Cat, as if that answered things.

Alice reached into her pocket, slowly removing the card she had taken from beneath her chair. Turning it over, it revealed a single word: YOURSELF.

The Cat beamed back in silence.

“The cards, they were all the same, weren’t they?”

Still her host didn’t respond.

Finally there came a knock at the door. Alice looked through the glass to see her chauffeur standing with an umbrella. Alice reached for the door, pausing at the last moment.

“Cat,” she said, hesitantly, “I must ask. Why would you ever have invited her? The most despicable person if I’ve ever seen one. It was as if you’d wished her dead.”

“Quite right, dear Alice. And of course I might take the credit, if there were any credit to be taken, only it was not my idea at all, this party, or the composition of same, but that of my faithful servant. It was his idea, and his alone, to bring you all together in the first place.”

“His idea?”

“I’m not nearly so sentimental,” said the Cat.

“How peculiar,” said Alice. “Well, I suppose in this case, everyone except the butler did it.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” said the Cat, “I wouldn’t say that at all.”

“I don’t understand,” said Alice. “Are you suggesting your servant plotted to see her dead? Whatever reason would he have to cause her harm?”

“Well, he did come to me ruined after all.”

Alice’s face twisted to puzzlement, at which the Cat just turned and sauntered away, but not before uttering one last phrase at his feet, one that fell too softly for Alice to hear.

She nearly called after him, only then she felt the Nogumpf wiggling its way to her ear, repeating, for Alice’s benefit, the Cat’s parting words.

“My dear Alice, surely you saw the yellow gerberas?”

                COPYRIGHT ?? 2018 Michael Paul Michaud

           Photo credit: Pixabay May 19, 2018. CC0 Creative Commons.

Michael Michaud is the author of BILLY TABBS (& THE GLORIOUS DARROW) and THE INTROVERT. Follow him at fb.com/MichaelPaulMichaud