Alice

Okay, my idea-in-progress that's been developing over the last week or so has just gone BLARGHAlALALA! and made me write part of it.

I'm gonna post it so I can see if anyone likes it. The story is called Alice, and the main character (the one telling the story) is called Sarah. I won't explain it all - that would take too long - so here's the bit I wrote.

EXPOSITION MANIA!!!111!!eleven!!

When I came to I was lying on a cold, damp stone floor. I sat up, shivering. That was when I realised, as I tried to wrap my arms around myself, that my hands were manacled to the wall. I pulled and the chains holding me prisoner rattled. They were only just long enough for me to hold my arms out in front of me. I wriggled myself into a sitting position. My legs were free. I looked around. Wherever I was was very dark. Almost too dark to see anything, but I could just about make out the outline of a door and some stairs leading down from it. I stared down at the floor, and then switched my gaze to the heavy metal cuffs on my wrists.
“Oh, you woke up,” a soft, light voice said. I looked up sharply. The door had opened and standing at the top of the stairs, holding a candle, was Alice.
“Alice…” I said in disbelief. “Alice, why?”
“Why what?” she said, closing the door and coming down the stairs. Her feet were bare and very pale in the candle light.
“Why did you bring me here and chain me up?” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm. She looked thoughtful for a moment and then her face resumed it’s usual seriousness.
“Little girls who ask why are always punished,” she said. “But maybe you don’t have to be…not yet. Sometimes I had to wait.”
“What are you talking about Alice?” I said, my voice rising. She didn’t acknowledge me. “Alice! Why are you doing this to me!”
She sighed a little and went up the steps to sit about half way down. She tucked her legs to the side, placed the candle next to her on the step and folded her hands in her lap. She looked so harmless.
“Should I tell you?” she said, half to herself. “But then you might tell on me. That wouldn’t be any good.”
“Alice, just let me go,” I said, pleading, “Just let me go now, and I promise I won’t tell a soul what you did. I won’t tell anyone you abducted me, I’ll just say I went to your house on my own, I swear. You won’t get in trouble.”
“But you will tell,” Alice said sadly, looking up at me. “You say you won’t but you will. I know what you’re like.”
“You don’t know me at all, though!” I cried. “I never spoke to you before!”
“I know you though,” she said, “You’re like me if I wasn’t like me.” I frowned, confused.
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It does. If I wasn’t like I am, then I’d be like you. So, you’re me if I hadn’t become me.”
“Alice,” I said quietly, “Just tell me what’s going on. If you’d just explain why you’re doing this….”
“Okay,” she said and her voice was so…I don’t know how to describe it. It was as though she were both devastated and relieved. In pain and the happiest she’d ever been. She locked her eyes with mine as she began to speak.
“I am Alice Mayfair and I am fourteen years old. I was born on May the first in 1995,” I knew this already but I didn’t interrupt. I was too busy trying to figure out how I could use the time she took to tell her life story to somehow get out of here.
“My parents are Peter and Felicity Mayfair. You’ve never met them, so I’ll describe them to you. Peter is a big man and he has hair blonder than yours. Felicity is tall and thin, like me, and has hair like mine as well. Do they sound normal to you, Sarah?”
I nodded – anything to keep her happy.
“You’re wrong, of course. But then, so was everyone. So is everyone. They look normal, people think, so they must be normal. They aren’t.” Her expression darkened – a shadow passing across her face, turning it from pretty to ugly in an awful transition.
“They’re the most hateful parents anyone could have. I love them though,” her face returned to normal. “I love them more than anyone in the world. Of course I do. You want to know why I’m doing this though.” She fidgeted with her dress.
“I’m not very good at telling stories. Mother said that stories are like lies and lies are the worst thing in the world apart from awful, evil little girls that don’t deserve air. That’s me, you know,” she paused, blinking slowly for a few moments that dragged on and on.
“Mother and father hate religion as well as stories and lies and me,” Alice said, “They tell me all the time why it’s bad. It’s just fairy stories about pretend men and women so that people can feel good about bad things and bad about good things. Gods broke the world.
“Anyway, shall I really start to explain to you properly now then? Don’t answer, I shall have to say this all at once, or I’ll never say it at all, and then you’ll have to be punished for stopping me.” She took a deep breath, as though steeling herself. Then she explained to me why she had chained me up.
“It started when I was little. They didn’t start until I was four, though. I had four years of innocence, which I am thankful for every single day. The first ritual wasn’t that bad. They only tied me to my bed and said that if I could last the day without food, water, or using the bathroom, then I would be deserving of life. I made it. For a week after that I was Good – with a capital ‘G’. Then the week finished and I was Evil again. So they tied me down again. They did this every week until I turned five. Then my uncle and aunty came to stay with us. They said that the number five was a wicked number, and I had to have the wickedness beaten out of me or I would be Evil forever. This time when they tied me down they hit me with knotted rope. Then I could be Good for months at a time! I didn’t want to be Evil, Sarah. I wanted to be Good. So I never read books and I never listened to songs with Evil words and I never watched TV or saw a film. For five years I never did anything that the other children did. Of course, once I started school then Evil had to be beaten out of me at least every other day. They were teaching me Evil but I had to know about it so that I could keep it away from me. I didn’t just become an outcast when I came to secondary school. I’ve been alone my whole life.
“But I need to go back a bit, so I can tell you about the years from being five years old to being ten years old. When I was six they started with the knives. They would tie me down, beat my arms and legs with knotted rope and then leave me for a while. Then they would return and cut by the bruises to let the Evil out. The Evil was what made my skin go black and blue. If I was Good then the ropes wouldn’t have left a mark, you see.
“When I turned seven they couldn’t tie me to the bed anymore – I didn’t fit in that babies cot now. So they built this room. Those chains you’re in used to only ever go on my arms. Every week at the very least mother, father, aunty and uncle would bring me down here and chain me up. Then they would leave me in the darkness for a long time. Sometimes father or uncle would sneak down when mother and aunty went out and they would pleasure themselves with me. Once father was too rough and my legs bent back and back until one of them broke. I didn’t scream. I cried but I didn’t scream. If I’d have screamed then the Evil would have had to have been cut out of me again.” Alice stood up and came over to me.
“Are you beginning to understand?” she asked, bending very close to my face. Then she stood back and slid her dress off of her shoulder and dropped it to the floor. I stared in shock.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
Alice went back over to the stairs, picked up the candle and walked along the walls. As she did so she lit some candles there that I hadn’t seen and soon the room was flooded with light. Then she came back over to me. Her body was tall, slim and perfect, and she wore plain white underwear that neither concealed all nor bared all. Her skin was pale and covered in scars and bruises and burns. I gaped at the sight. She turned slowly in front of me, letting me see all of her injuries. All down her back there were horizontal scars and scabs, some bleeding a little, some old and puckered. At the tops of her legs there were little cuts and bruises everywhere. On her stomach there were burn marks that clearly spelled out the words ‘EVIL LEAVE THIS GIRL.’ There were strange symbols and letters cut into the tops of her breasts as well. These must have been recent, as they were formed from thick, dark scabs. Alice let me take this all in for a while, and then put her dress back on, brushing down the skirt. Then she went and sat back on the stairs, as though nothing was wrong.
“They did this all the time,” she said, continuing her story, “I told you that father and uncle pleasured themselves with me didn’t I? Yes, yes I did. But what they didn’t know was the mother and aunty did as well. They brought men and women I had never seen before down and made them do things to me whilst aunty and mother did things to them. They were paid for it as well.
“This continued until I was ten. When I was ten the men and women came less often. But because of what they had done, I wasn’t Good anymore. Mother told me that if I had been Good, then Goodness wouldn’t have allowed the men and women to touch me. I was Evil though, so they could, and because I was Evil I had to perform rituals with them to keep it at bay so I wouldn’t hurt anyone. Every single day from when I was ten up until I was thirteen I followed the ritual with mother and father. First I had to catch uncle’s blood as father drew it from him. Uncle didn’t like the ritual, but then, he was never allowed to leave the cellar until he died after it began. Then aunty would take my dress and underwear and pour the blood on me. After it had dried, they would burn my front to drive the Evil back and then cut my back to catch it as it ran.
“After they had caught the evil they would pour it away. Father, mother and aunty would go upstairs then and leave me for hours. Later they would come and wash the blood off of me with icy cold water and let me go to bed. When school finished the next day, they would do it again. Can you imagine it, Sarah? Can you imagine how that would feel?”

Hows that? Do you think that all those things are enough to make a girl go completely phsyco, kidnap the new girl and possibly kill her parents later? I think it's enough to be honest.

Ah, Alice is crazy but I like her as a character. She's gone insane really, but she holds it together and acts rational but is still creepy as fuck. I was thinking about her last night and she scares the bejeezus out of me.

Sam.