Malice in Wonderland Bundle 3
Lotus Rose
The Jabberwocky Trilogy
Lotus Rose
Table of Contents
Title Page
Book One: Sing Me a Little-Girls-Goodbye
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Book Two: Hush Little Baby, Don’t You Cry
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Book Three: Mama’s Gonna Give You Wings To Fly
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Books by Lotus Rose
Book One: Sing Me a Little-Girls-Goodbye
CHAPTER ONE
QUEEN MALICE MAKES her way between the small trees of the forest, clearing the path for the floating head of the Cheshire Cat following closely behind her.
Her mind is distracted, and a branch she’d sloppily pushed aside springs back into her face.
“Oh!” she exclaims. “Oh...bother! Stupid, rude tree appendage!”
She yowls and grabs the branch and breaks it off the tree. She repeatedly slaps the branch onto the ground while screaming at the top of her lungs and now tosses it as far as she can throw it.
The Cat lets out a surprised, “Mreeeoww!”
Malice turns around to see the Cat backing away with big wide eyes.
That only infuriates her more, because she knows what he’s thinking.
He says, “You’re not going to go on another rampage, are you?”
She puts her hand on her hip. “And what if I am? I mean, no, I’m not. I’m fine. My heart’s still beating, after all.” She can feel it thumping hard in her chest (though in a technical sense, it’s actually more of a ticking). It’s her ticktock heart—the mechanical heart the Tinkerer had given her, because she’d been “born” without a heart of her own when she’d started out as the twin 13-year-old version of the original Alice. The ticktock heart has kindness programming that kicks in to keep her from acting too vicious and heartless.
But lately the contraption hasn’t been working as well as it used to.
“Yes,” the Cat says. “It’s still ticking, but is it working?”
Malice glowers at him, imagining that if she’s quick enough she might be able to grab him and do some damage, but then of course he’d pull his vanishing act and teleport away.
“Queen?” he says.
But now the “good thoughts” from her heart finally blast into her mind.
Her scowl vanishes, replaced by a pleasant grin.
No, she thinks to herself, I shouldn’t be cruel to the Cat. I should want to grab him so I can kiss him, not strangle him.
“Your heart’s working now?” he says warily.
“See, I’m fine!” Malice blurts, trying to sound more confident than she feels. “The kindness programs are working splendidly. Aw, get over here, sweet puss, so I can rub under your chin?”
He shakes his floating head from side to side. “If it’s all the same to you, Queeny, I’ll wait until after your heart gets fixed.”
If it gets fixed, Malice thinks. I just hope that Doctor Froud knows what he’s doing during my appointment tomorrow. Because if he can’t help me, the only one left around here who can, is the Queen of Hearts. And I absolutely refuse to go to her.
Malice makes a show of smoothing her gown of medium-poofiness, which is black in color, like usual, to match her hair. “Very well. Now, Sleepy B’s hut...” Sleepy B is the 11-year-old girl, formerly known as Sleeping Beauty, to whom the Jabberwock has been assigned as a guard.
“I believe it’s just past those trees. We’re almost there. Let me look...” His head rises up above the tree tops. “Ah, there it is!” he shouts down, before descending again.
Malice grimaces. She’s not exactly looking forward to getting there, because the purpose of her visit is to convince the Jabberwock to go to Jabberwock Valley in order to regain his vorpal blade and possibly get a new jabberwock body. He’s been resistant to the idea, so Sleepy B had asked Malice to speak to him, thinking he might listen to her. Sleepy B had asked Malice to come alone, so he wouldn’t feel ganged up on. So, Malice had left the Mad Hatter and Humpty behind. But the Cheshire Cat had simply decided to tag along—and trying to control the feline is simply too exhausting.
“Well let’s get on with it,” Malice mutters.
They arrive at the clearing. To the right of the hut, about thirty feet away, is a large, extravagant pillared mansion in an ancient Greek style, except the building seems to be made entirely of skulls and bones. It is the abode of the L
ord Reginald’s decapitated head, which used to be connected to the Headless Horseman body. Reginald is a necromancer who maintains a group of skeleton servant girls to attend to him.
The Jabberwock is standing guard in front of the hut’s door.
But of course, the Jabberwock of today is a pale comparison to his past form—because today, the Jabberwock has no body of his own. Malice sees before her, the cape-wearing headless body of the Headless Horseman holding the decapitated head of the Jabberwock in one hand. The Jabberwock is currently renting the Horseman Body, which he can control with his mind. Of course the Jabberwock hadn’t always been decapitated—he’d had his old body from before Alice arrived when she was 7 to when she turned 13 and chopped his head off. Malice had been 13 herself, a month ago, before she’d started fiddling around with a magic watch, and her body had been fast forwarded to age 15.
“Heya, Jabby!” Malice calls out while waving.
A big fangy smile comes across the Jabberwock’s muzzled monster head. “Hello, Queen. And Cat! Greetings, my fellow bodyless head!”
“Greetings, Jabberwock. Chopped any intruders to bloody bits, yet?”
The Jabberwock says, “There haven’t been any intruders to chop. Only visitors.” He taps the tip of his sword’s hilt in his scabbard. For a few days, he had been carrying the Knight’s sword, but had recently returned it to him. Now the Jabberwock carries one of the random swords that had been lying around in the castle’s armory.
Malice says, “Well, you’re doing a good job. You look mighty strong and intimidating standing there.” She pats his arm—technically it’s the Headless Horseman’s arm, but it’s as good as the Jabberwock’s own as long as he is borrowing and controlling it. “Oops,” Malice says. “You can’t even feel that, can you, sweety?”
“Fraid not, Queen, but it’s the thought that counts.” He raises his hand over her head, but thinks better of it.
“It’s okay,” she encourages, and he pats the top of her head—she’s not even wearing her crown—she’s been leaving it in her chambers more and more. “I want to talk to you about something in a little bit, but first I want to speak with Sleepy B. She’s inside?”
“Yes, My Queen, and F-me Shoes as well...”
Malice sneers. “Well, of course she is.”
No! I shouldn’t hate her or be jealous of her! She has a good heart and it’s not her fault she’s so beautiful.
This is how she knows her ticktock heart is working: when she has to tolerate these goody-goody thoughts flooding into her mind. She’s grateful the thoughts keep her under control, but they tend to make her act overly sappy sweet at times.
“Confounded heart,” she mutters under her breath.
“What was that?” the Jabberwock says.
Malice shakes her head to clear it. “Sorry, just talking to myself. I’ll go in now. Cat, you coming?”
The Cat answers, “I believe I shall stay out here for the moment, with my old bean the Jabberwock, if he doesn’t mind.”
“It’s no bother,” the Jabberwock says.
“Yes,” the Cat says, through that creepily huge grin of his, “hopefully, an intruder shall come along who shall require a bit of ‘adjustment’ of the disemboweling sort.”
“Ugh,” Malice says. “Well, I’ll leave you two to your guarding. It shall keep you out of my hair for a wee while, at least.”
The Cat chuckles at that, and Malice enters the hut.
CHAPTER TWO
MALICE LOOKS OVER TO one of the corners of the hut, where Sleepy B is lying in bed under a blanket. She sports her teased bleach blond hair and heavy black eyeliner.
The young woman named F-me Shoes is sitting next to her, naked as a jaybird as usual—well, she’s wearing her usual red stiletto shoes, which most jaybirds wouldn’t bother with. She has long brown hair, and has heavy eyeliner on as well—in fact, she’d been the one who’d taught Sleepy B how to do her eye makeup. F-me Shoes used to be one of the fairy tale beings named, Goody Two-Shoes, before all the fairy tale beings became twisted. Malice feels her negative feelings for the girl being counteracted by the ticktock heart.
Sleepy B looks over and grins, revealing her fake fangs. “Queen Malice! Finally you’ve arrived! I’ve been buttering Jabby up. He’s sure to cave at any moment!” Malice finds herself wondering what Sleepy B is wearing—Malice had been nagging her to dress more respectably.
“Greetings, Sleepy B! Hey, you!” Malice calls, as she makes her way to the bed—there is a lot of clutter and furniture she has to navigate around—it must be difficult having to fit things in such a small, peasanty space. It’s a definite step down for Sleepy B, who’d formerly lived in a castle. But of course, Sleepy B might not even know the difference, because before she was awoken just a few weeks ago, the poor girl had been asleep for years, being read stories by the Storyteller—her dream energy had kept the fairy tale beings alive within a different realm, known as Fairy Tale Land.
Malice stands at the bedside now, next to F-me Shoes, looking down at Sleepy B, who’s tucked her entire body up to her chin under the covers. This, of course, is despite the fact that it’s the middle of the day, and that Sleepy B managed to sleep so many years in the past, that she is incapable of actually falling asleep anymore. Yet still she craves constant bedtime stories—and since she’d fallen out with her father, she had to settle for any bedside storyteller she could get.
Hence...F-me Shoes.
“I think he’ll listen to you,” Sleepy B says from her blanket cocoon.
“Yeah,” Malice says, while thinking. She looks over at F-me Shoes, who has an expression on her face like she just tasted something bad. Malice rolls her eyes.
F-me Shoes’ mouth tightens into a line and she stares blankly at the bare logs that make up the wall.
Malice really doesn’t like F-me Shoes, because she always walks around with no clothes on—and she has the luscious, sexy body of a late teenager, a few years older than Malice, who is 15. Malice has caught Hatter and Humpty checking out F-me Shoes’ body and of course it makes her furiously jealous—the only thing keeping her feelings in check is the kindness programming of her ticktock heart.
Sleepy B says, “Well, I think we should just get to it. I’d invite you for a spot of tea, but it’d only make poor Jabby feel out of sorts, since you know, his head isn’t connected to his stomach anymore.”
“Of course, I do quite understand. Let’s bring the lad in.”
Malice walks to the door, opens it, peers out. “Jabby honey? Won’t you come in for a moment? I’d like to speak to you.”
“Certainly, Queen,” he says. Moments later, the Jabberwock walks in, carrying his head. Technically, it’s the Horseman Body that does the walking, but in Malice’s mind, the Horseman Body is the Jabberwock—it’s the part of him not attached to his head.
The Cat zooms in as well, says, “With my help, all the intruders were repelled.”
The Jabberwock chuckles. “Yeah we had to fend off a horde of twisted fairy tale beings.”
“I did most of the heavy work.”
Malice chuckles. It was obviously a joke, because nearly all the twisted fairy tale beings had been unleashed into the much-less-magical “Outside World,” where Alice now lives. The Headless Horseman, Sleepy B and F-me Shoes are among the small number of fairy tale beings still in Wonderland, as far as Malice knows.
She gives the Jabberwock’s head the best comforting smile she can manage. “Won’t you sit down, hon?” She gestures to the small, dining table.
The Jabberwock groans. “Oh, here we go. Well, let’s get it over with, then.”
The Cat says, “She trying to manipulate you, Big J?”
The Jabberwock doesn’t reply.
Malice pulls out her own chair and sits down, rather than wait for someone to pull the chair out for her. She finds many of the formalities around being a queen to be boring, a waste of time, and actually unempowering. She quite likes pulling her own chairs to sit in.
> The Jabberwock sits across from her, and lets out a long-suffering sigh.
The Cheshire Cat’s head hovers to the side of the table.
Sleepy B and F-me Shoes give them their privacy as F-me Shoes quietly recites another bedtime story.
Malice lightly strokes her cheek. She takes in a light breath, and now begins. “Now, Jabby, we haven’t known each other all that long, but during my short reign, I’ve come to value you tremendously. And you’ve always been kind to me—they tell me you’re much nicer than the other jabberwocks. I appreciate that. If Alice were here, I’m sure she would too.” She stops to give him another comforting smile. He grins back from his decapitated head being held up by the Horseman Body’s arm.
The Jabberwock had always been known for being strangely kind to the little girl Alice—of course he had still been cruel, because back then for several years, the citizens of Wonderland had been heartless. Even back then, the Jabberwock had demonstrated a tolerance for the little girl Alice that the jabberwocks back in his original home of Jabberwock Valley didn’t share. Because the jabberwocks are mortal enemies of little girls—they kill them as much as they can. Jabberwock mothers even sing their children “little-girls-goodbyes”, which are like lullabies, but which are sung about killing and dismembering little girls, to ease their little darlings to sleep at night.
The Jabberwock is holding his head politely at Malice’s eye level. That’s one advantage he’s gained from being decapitated, at least—being able to adjust his head height level.
The Jabberwock’s mouth swishes side to side. “Yes, I’ve always been different from all the other jabberwocks. And look at me now. I’ve gone through so many changes, it’s like I’m an entirely different creature altogether.” He gestures at his borrowed body. He’d made a joke, but he looks utterly miserable.
“Yes, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. You’re a proud warrior, and we’re all very fond of you.”
The Jabberwock sneers. “But I’m supposed to be a scary monster.”
From across the room, Sleepy B calls out, “You are scary, Jabby!”
He says back, “Thank you, sweety! But you’re supposed to be pretending not to listen.”
“Oopsy!”
As Malice glances over there, she’s reminded again of F-me Shoes sitting there, with her hot naked body. She cringes as the rush of hatred floods her thoughts, before being beaten back by the kindness programming.
