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

glares at his brother and proclaims, “Mine!”
    “Nohow!” says Tweedledee.
    They continue circling and seem not to notice Alice as she takes the pistol out from her dress.
    She takes a stance in the way she remembers from detective stories as a younger child.
    She braces one hand with the other and does her best to aim with the little shark fin thingy on the edge of the bullet tube part.
    But she encounters several problems. For one, she is not tall enough to get a clear head shot of either one of them, and her lack of height makes a double head shot impossible, due to the working of angles. She has studied angles a great deal, and knows that out of all of them, none of them would work, at least not without a ricochet.
    Also, they are moving so rapidly, round and round in a circle, that it’s difficult to get any kind of clear shot, inexperienced as she is.
    Perhaps she could aim for one of their hearts. As far as she knows, even though they are both vicious and cruel to her, they both have hearts. But pulling that kind of shot off seems difficult indeed. And maybe they don’t even have hearts after all.
    She begins to realize her situation is dire and dreadful. Even if she manages to kill one of them, she would afterward be unarmed and suffer the wrath of the other, and that would not be a fair fight—she’s just a little girl.
    She thinks she’ll put the gun away. Perhaps she can slip away without being noticed. They haven’t noticed her this whole time standing here, pointing a gun at them, after all.
    She begins to lower the gun. She notices her hands are trembling from fear. It appears being heartless doesn’t mean you don’t get afraid.
    But Tweedledum notices her, stops circling, points. “Well look at that! It’s Alice!”
    Now Tweedledee stops and turns to look at her. “Well, ditto! It is! And she has a toy pistol!”
    Thank goodness he thinks it’s a toy. “Yes…” She musters up a grin on her face. “A toy! I brought you a new toy!”
    Tweedledum says, “Well give it over. I know how to use it. Better than him.”
    Alice doubts that statement. They both seem generally bumbling and incompetent to her.
    Tweedledee protests, “Nohow! I’m a cowboy I am!” He grabs his belt and does the side to side cowboy hop. “Yee haw!”
    Tweedledum grunts. “Yeehaw! He’s no cowboy, nohow, no way. Why I’m a sharpshooter. Cool and professional. A sharpshooter you see, remains calm and collected and never says yeehaw…unless it’s to mock, which I just did right then. So give the gun to me and ignore this yahoo.”
    “Nohow!” Tweedledee protests.
    Alice does her best to steady her nerves.
    She doesn’t know how she is going to get out of this most troubling predicament. She opts to distract them for a few moments. “Patience! First thing’s first, I’m searching for something that got stolen from me. By Humpty Dumpty, I suspect.”
    Now they are nodding at her, both saying “Ditto. We saw the idiot doing it.”
    “Well why didn’t you stop him?”
    Tweedledum shrugs. “Why would we? He was only stealing from you.”
    Alice fights back the urge to put a bullet right into the middle of his pudgy, scrunchy face.
    Tweedledee says, “Ditto on that. You’re so unimportant, it doesn’t matter. What did he steal anyway? We didn’t see.”
    Tweedledum says, “Ditto to not seeing.”
    Her voice quivers with rage. “He stole my heart!”
    They both stand looking a bit perplexed, then dumbfounded, then at exactly the same time, they burst out laughing. “Is that all? So you’re heartless now, is that it?”
    With a look of indignation, she nods.
    Tweedledum says, “So are you no longer the goody two shoes?”
    “Yeah, no longer a doormat? Are you going to get revenge on us, is that it?”
    She shrugs.
    “Ditto! Revenge of the little girl!” More laughter.
    Their faces suddenly turn mean. “Just know, that if you try anything, it’s…” At the same time, they both make the gesture of