Malice in Wonderland #1: Alice the Assassin Read Online Free

want to strangle them, but she just grins and bears it.
    Finally it is just her and the guard card in the room. It’s the same card guard card as usual. He stays after each party to provide her list of scheduled duties, and he is a total idiot. She thinks it’s maybe because he’s only the number three, or maybe it’s because he’s so flat, and not much brain matter can be fit in such a flat surface. He has been the source of much of her sorrow, and she wants to get revenge.
    The cake is still there, flickering with its candles, forgotten.
    “Guard card,” she says, cooingly. “It’s my birthday, so I’d like you to do the customary thing and blow my candles out.” She feels a thrill go through her. Never before has she been able to engage in the level of deception she intends in the next few moments.
    “What? Why would I blow the candles out? It’s your unhappy unbirthday!”
    “Idiot! It’s my birthday. Haven’t you been paying attention? The rules are the opposite today. I don’t blow the candles out, you do.”
    “I do? The Queen didn’t mention anything about that. Besides, the candles are blowproof—they can’t be blown out.”
    “Wow, how dumb are you? Must the Queen tell you everything? Everything is the opposite today. The candles are the opposite of unblowable, because it’s my birthday, not my unbirthday. Wow, just how dumb are you?” Alice had never been so deceptive before. It’s a good skill to have, she thinks.
    The card says, “But I just saw you try to blow them out a while ago. They went out and came back again.”
    “Moron! That was a few moments ago! And that was me, not you. The candles can only be blown out by you, not me, because this is my birthday, and not my unbirthday! How dumb are you?” She hopes she is being sufficiently confusing. She fights the urge to chuckle.
    She watches the card ponder what she said, or at least try to. He nods. “Okay.” He leans down and blows the candles out. He grins at her.
    The candles spring back into flame.
    Alice shouts, “Idiot! You have to lean closer!”
    “Closer? But—”
    “Closer! Moron! Imbecile! Buffoon! Do it!”
    The card leans closer than before, blows the candles out. He grins at her.
    The candles burst back into flame.
    “Closer closer closer! Do you not know the meaning of the word? Don’t make me tell you again!”
    This time the card leans very close indeed, but before he even has the chance to blow, he catches fire, and begins flailing about while screaming, but the flails only make the flames grow higher.
    Alice merely watches while laughing and pointing at him.
    The card now lies as an ashy burnt smoking remnant of the card, now quite dead.
    She digs the keys to her chains from the ashes then slips the chains and keys in her pocket.
    When she goes to the jewelry box, she finds that her heart is missing.
    Someone has stolen it!
    Her thoughts turn dark, filled with ideas of revenge.
    No one steals something from me, unpunished! I’ll find out who did it, and I will make their life, or death, pure hell!
    And first on her list of suspects is Humpty Dumpty. Her mind fills with the delicious fantasy of chaining Humpty Dumpty and torturing him to punish him for stealing her heart.

 
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER THREE
    The Cheshire Cat
     
    Tra la la la la la la.
    She hops and skips wickedly.
    Things are definitely different with me.
    Why, just yesterday, my black dress symbolized my brooding melancholy and now it shows my malevolence and duplicity.
    She’s smugly satisfied with the words she had chosen—they were quite impressive in their number of syllables.
    They show how much smarter I am than the average girl.
    She stops when she hears the familiar purr in her right ear.
    The Cheshire Cat.
    “Kill yourself,” he whispers, as usual. He swoops out to face her, floating in front of her.
    He’s a floating, grinning cat head with no body.
    Alice tries her best not to glare him down evilly. She puts on the meek