• The Royal Flush
   

They sat around the large wooden table in silence, seeming lost in thought while they played their game. The irony of the current situation seemed lost on these particular figures; they had the heads, arms and legs of normal men but the main part of their body was as thin as a playing card from a deck of cards. In fact it actually was a card and had the markings of the suit to which the character belonged. These were the notorious card guards and their duties were to carry out the order of the Queen of Hearts to the letter so that the inhabitants of Wonderland would feel the misery and pain that she intended to be experienced by all her subjects.

However every worker needs to have a period of rest and this is what the card guards were enjoying at the moment. Doing what they did best ­ playing a mean game of poker. Except this particular game seemed slow, cumbersome and forced ­ almost as if every player was caught up in life deciding thoughts, so much so that the game had to take a backseat in the proceedings. Who could blame them ­ I mean, ‘she’ had arrived back in Wonderland and that little girl had grown up to become one hell of a problem.

The club guard was especially depressed. He was one of the new members of the Royal Guard and felt he was far too young to die; life had seemed rosy bullying the denizens of the lands about and he had shown that he could be especially tyrannical if it was necessary ­ promotion had definitely been mentioned. Course there wouldn’t be much chance of being promoted if he was dead.

The first and only time he had seen her was in the mining town of Pandemonium. He had been enjoying himself by harassing a little child who was attempting to clear one of the smaller mineshafts but the rocks had obviously been far too heavy for her. ‘So what if the little wretch broke her back ­ the crunch would definitely be satisfying’. Well, this is what he had thought until ‘she’ showed up.

He hadn’t even noticed her at first; he had been too busy whipping the little girl with his favourite leather strap. It was when his strap suddenly decreased in size to around a couple of inches that he realised something was terribly wrong. The huge blade had missed his hand by mere inches and had taken the leather strap to the other side of the room where it had become embedded in the rock wall. The blade then fizzled and disappeared, reappearing with a burst of magic in the corner of his eye. He turned and saw the young female standing there examining the edge of the blade.

She was of average height and had long red-brown hair but there was a few things that were rather unusual about her. Firstly, she seemed extremely pale, frighteningly so, and the guard felt like he was staring at a ghost. Secondly, the girl’s eyes were a striking jade green but they seemed disturbingly large. And finally her grin; it was the most sadistic smile the guard would ever lay his eyes on. It was only when she opened her mouth and remarked with a sickly sweet voice that ‘she was sorry she had missed his hand and next time she would take more care in skewering him’ that he realised he was dead.

It was hard to explain ­ she was only a young female, probably around eighteen years of age. But she looked like some kind of demon as she advanced upon him. The problem was that she seemed so innocent; everything from the sound of her voice to her movements as she skipped up to him. Her touch was delicate as she rubbed her fingers up along the edge of her knife and her large green eyes seemed like an entranceway to a world of beauty and peace. Those eyes were definitely the key because as he looked into them, they seemed to change and the beauty were long gone replaced by an indescribable rage such that he felt he was looking into the pits of the seventh hell itself. Her innocent smile replaced by an insane grin, she sliced the knife in front of him causing him to jump back once more to narrowly escape death yet again.

‘W-what is it you want??’ stammered the club guard in utter terror as his weapon got knocked out of his hand after he had made a clumsy swing at the girl and completely missed.

‘Your head on a stick’ she replied, in the same sort of tone a little child would use when telling her father what she would like for Christmas. ‘On second thoughts, your head on my knife would be better, I don’t have a stick at the moment I’m afraid’.

The guard had no idea what was going on and would certainly have died if a comrade hadn’t come to his rescue. A foolish diamond guard sitting on a lookout posted had noticed the commotion and had started firing his weapon at her from up top distracting her for a mere moment. Thus giving him enough time to run like he had never run before through the streets of Pandemonium in roughly the opposite direction that Alice had been. Of course he had later found out that they had found that guards head in one of the gutters later that day. Ah well.

He could still hear her words echoing in the back of his mind as he had started his run. ‘Oh please don’t run, I promise I won’t take your head. Oh fiddlesticks, that diamond guard is being such a nuisance. Well Ill catch you soon Mr. Guard, I promise and then we’ll play a fun game. I call it ‘how fast can I feed you your nose’. It is rather fun!’ The guard realised he was unconsciously rubbing his nose at the poker table and stopped. Normally the other players would have noticed the huge pause in the game except they too seemed lost in their thoughts.

The rotund spade guard was especially upset. Only a few days ago he had had the pleasure of walking around on his legs and hadn’t realised that a child would come along in a few days, hack them off, and then proceed to beat him with them. It was a wonder he had survived, but this was Wonderland after all. Would the torment never end? Unlike the club guard, his memory of the event was not so clear and it was probably because his mind was deciding that it would be best to shut itself off then relive the whole horrible event. One thing he did remember though was the child’s voice, her terrible green eyes and being forced on the ground where he was then choked by his own foot.

He remembered then. For a brief moment it suddenly came back to him. The girl ­ Alice they called her, hadn’t actually seen him at first since she had been preoccupied with some of his comrades. What in God’s name had prompted him to trip her up was beyond him. ‘Maybe I had thought it would be funny’ he thought to himself gloomily. ‘I mean what was the little wench going to do, cut off my legs and beat me with them?’ He let out a deep audible sigh. Course no one heard him ­ everyone had their own problems.

The diamond guard’s problem was simply that he had been here. When Alice had lost her temper and decided to hack his friend up, he had been rather confused about what he should do. He had chosen to run of course but only after he had observed the whole event.

‘Mother always told me that it was rather rude to trip people up’ Alice had explained to the spade guard. ‘She said that rude people would get eaten by the boogieman. You know come to think of it, why is there never a boogie lady? I could be the boogie lady you know. I was always so good at acting! Dinah and I, I remember when we re-enacted Puss in Boots… oh how that was fun!’

The most disturbing part of that monologue was that she had conducted it while waving the spade guards legs around while she talked as if they were some macabre props from one of her shows. And then she lost her temper again and started beating him with them. It was amazing that the guard had survived but it was widely believed that Alice had just got bored after a while and had skipped off leaving the guard unconscious and leg-less by the side of the road. It was not a nice thing to observe especially since it could have been the diamond guard instead.

The most senior figure at the poker table was the heart guard. Head of his division and modelling a huge handle bar moustache, the old warhorse was a little shaken up. He hadn’t observed this ‘Alice’ person close up but he had been on one of the blockades where he had ordered his men to fire upon her to prevent her from entering the Queensland. She had them somehow constructed a wall of ice around her so that all the projectiles bounced off and then proceeded to lob some kind of toy over the wall onto the feet of his men.

It had been a Jack in the Box. It had a really nice tune and popping out Jack and everything but the only problem as far as the Heart guard could see had been the flame-thrower. He had been the only one out of its range but he had stood there and observed the rest of his squad gets burned to a crisp. While the darned music played in the background! Heck he was even sure that the little girl hummed the same tune in response as she skipped under the blockade into Queensland. She probably would have waved to him too if he had had the guts to actually look over the top of the blockade at her. It was going to be a long day.

The club guard and the spade guard were out of the game, and it was just between the heart guard and the diamond guard.

‘So what the heck do you have you blighter!’ exclaimed the old guard to the diamond guard. The younger guard proceeded to lay his cards down with a wide grin. ‘Royal Flush’ he exclaimed. The heart guard sighed and tossed down his cards. And then his head followed suit and rolled off his shoulders and plopped down into the middle of the poker table.

It took a moment to sink in. There was a lot of blood too, confusing the issue. But the remaining players glanced up in horror to see the culprit standing behind the body with a wide smile on her face. ‘Won’t one of you gentlemen show me where I may sit? My feet are killing me!’ she sighed.

The diamond guard and the club guard jumped off their seats and made for the door. Which was jammed. As they stood there hammering on the door, screaming their heads off, Alice decided to have a chat with the only remaining player at the table who, of course, wasn’t going anywhere.

‘I am very impressed’ she said to him as she looked down upon the spade guard. ‘I would have though you would have died ­ I mean you did make me terribly upset.’ She seemed to pause for a moment as she examined the poker table. ‘You like playing games then?’

The spade guard looked up at her. If it was actually possible to die from fright, he could vouch for the fact that he was pretty close right at that very moment.

‘I see that you do! Well, how about a game of dice?’ she asked. She produced three large dice from her pocket and rolled them on the table. Three sixes. With a blinding flash of light, a doorway opened on top of the table.

And then the thing came out. There really was no other way to really describe the creature and the ‘thing’ is probably the best way to do it. It initially decided to introduce itself to the spade guard with one of its hands, if that’s what it was; and then it lost its temper for some unknown reason and the spade guard didn’t know what hit him. Literally.

‘Gentlemen, won’t one of you open the door for a lady?’ Alice asked one of the guards clawing at the only exit way. It was then that the diamond guard realised that in all their panic, they had simply forgotten to undo the inside lock on the door. Who knows how the girl had entered, but if she was happy to leave, he wasn’t going to argue. And as swiftly as he could, he opened the door and stood by the side.

The spade guard wasn’t in the trusting mood however and decided to make a break for it. With lightning speed he made for the exit and you could say he made it. Well, his head made it, the rest of his body didn’t. Alice sighed to herself ­ she was getting bored with the whole beheading thing. It had been amusing the first few times, especially when she realised that the heads sometimes still had the power of speech for a few seconds. And even that had become boring.

‘Patience is a virtue isn’t it Mr.Guard?’ she asked.

The diamond guard nodded. She handed him a Jack in the box. ‘I want you to keep this as a present’ she said. ‘I must take my leave now but it has been rather fun, we must do this again sometime!’ And with that she left.

The box started to play a pleasant tune and the diamond guard let out an audible sigh of relief. ‘Sometimes it pays to play it cool’ he thought to himself with a triumphant smile.

~END~