The Gruesome Adventures of Alice in Undeadland Read Online Free PDF Page B

“I think so.” Knowing very well, she was not.

Chapter Eleven
    On a lonely hillside a windmill broken like a dead spider turned slowly as Alice and Mousehead looked down upon the Kingdom of Rot. Nearby a herd of undead cattle chewed cud that fell through gaps in their stomachs. They simply began to chew it again and so forth and so on. Alice walked along a dark path until she found a wall of thorns, an infinite number of wet black needles so tall as to threaten the miserable sky and as wide as to threaten to block the wretched horizon. For every stem of thorns, there was a withered rose, brown, sad and dead.
    “We seem to be at an impasse,” Alice said to Mousehead.
    “Over there, an entrance,” pointed out Mousehead, dangling from her neck.
    Indeed there was a deliberate path through the thorns, almost invisible yet visible to a wandering eye, a temptation for further exploration. A wooden signpost marked the spot, but when they arrived Alice and Mousehead found it to be a warning instead.
    Nailed upon the rotting wood, which was held firm by a post, a dead cat grinning from ear to ear smiled at the approaching Alice. It observed them through large green eyes that sat in a larger round head of purple fur. It smiled the widest, sharpest smile. Even in the gloom of Undeadland the two rows of teeth gleamed. As for the rest of the cat, it was a broken mess of matted fur, wrapped around a sickly thin body. It reminded Alice of drowned kittens she had once seen washed up on the banks of the Thames. If not for the fact that several nails held the cat against the wooden board, it would have been impossible for that body to carry that head.
    “Hello. Visitors, is it?” hissed the cat. “An undead and a Mousehead?”
    “I am Alice and I am a girl, thank you.”
    “Forgive me,” with a grin. “You look undead — you look very undead.”
    “She was once a girl, stupid cat, from a living place,” Mousehead joined in in Alice’s defence.
    “Once? Are you to have me believe this undead was alive?”
    “I was alive, a long time ago. I thought I didn’t like it. However, I realise there is no escape from pain and it followed me.”
    “Alas,” lamented the cat, “the greatest of revelations often come too late.”
    “Bah, come, Alice, let us leave this creature to its thoughts.” There was anger in Mousehead’s voice.
    “Now now, little mouse, you may be on my food chain but do not be so eager to enter the Kingdom of Rot,” meowed the cat.
    “What do you know about anything, stupid dead cat?” the mouse shouted, as much as it could for something so small.
    “I know what the Queen does to those who wander her kingdom. I would wander this way and that, floating and making mischief. The Queen did not like that one bit. She liked to take her time, think of wondrous punishments for me.” The cat explained, “She had me stretched, but that just made me tickle. So she had me broken with hammers, but that just made me yawn. I was put in a sack and drowned, buried, burnt, stabbed, slashed, crushed with all manner of things. Nothing could take my grin. So in the end I was left here, dead and forgotten.”
    Mousehead muttered under its non-breath.
    “Yes, ʼtis a sad tale indeed,” the cat replied.
    “Do you have a suggestion, Cat?” Alice approached the creature closer.
    “Indeed I do.” And it grinned. “Let us reach a bargain. You pull me from this wooden prison. In return I will guide you through the Kingdom of Rot.”
    “We don’t need you,” spat Mousehead. “I have brought Alice good, so far.”
    “And a fine job you have done,” Alice interjected. “However, I do think more friends cannot hurt.”
    “So it is settled,” the dead cat said, and it looked to Alice in anticipation.
    Alice stepped forward. The cat was held in place by thick spikes, each as big as both of Alice’s hands.
    She gripped one and pulled as hard as she could. Her skin began to rip and the spike held fast.
    Trying again,