Ep. 68 - A Return to Alice

ext. seawood forest Night

An enormous forest of towering, knotty trees, a thick leaf canvas overshadowing a rambling dirt trail. As night falls on the forest the blinking glows of fireflies and otherworldly fauna give light to the depths of the Seawood Forest. This is not a scary place, but rather a surreal one, a forest that gives breath to dreams.

The Pale Horse in its natural form walks upon the path, head bobbing up and down.

Beside the horse, the Knight of Cups, who struggles to keep awake upon his own steed, nodding off then starting awake with a sudden clatter of iron, never failing to startle himself. Behind him, Alice is set up on the rear of the saddle, her weight pressed against the clanking iron back of the knight. As her head clanks against the metal scales of the knight’s armor, Alice’s eyelids flicker, as one in a dream.

int. funeral parlor night

A simple room of exposed brown wood, floor to ceiling windows, a candle chandelier. An old wooden chair is set next to the room’s centerpiece- a black coffin.

The coffin opens with an effortless swing and Alice emerges, sitting upright. She is covered in crushed carnations, the pedals intermingled with her oily hair. She spits a few pedals out, her hands instinctively tugging at her ratty locks.

The chair, once empty, is now filled- by the FACELESS STRANGER. The stranger wears formless slacks with dangling belts and chains bound across them in gothic style. A heavy sweatshirt obscures the shape. Where the face should be, there is a smudge of color, like a cigarette burn on the eye. Alice finds it almost painful to focus on the face, instead opting to look down to her own hands as she plays at the dead ends of her hair.

When the Faceless Stranger speaks, it is not an alarming tone- but rather quiet, familiar, neither masculine nor feminine.

FACELESS STRANGER
Hello, Alice.

ALICE
(still not looking up)
Hello…

FACELESS STRANGER
You’re not afraid?

ALICE
Not especially…I’ve seen…a lot, lately. I woke up in a meadow full of living plants, listened to the Moon speak, met with knights and queens and had the horse of Death swear itself to me. I’m getting good at just taking all of this as it comes.

FACELESS STRANGER
You’re still scraping by on a dangerous assumption- that none of this is real?

ALICE
What else could this be? A panic attack gone wrong? One cup of coffee too far? Drugs, hallucinations, modern life finally pushing my brain to snap? I’m sure I’m in a bed somewhere far from here, fighting for my life in a coma while some bewildered volunteer reads me a story that my brain interprets into…whatever all this has been. I’ll have to ask for the title when I wake up.

FACELESS STRANGER
Mm. There’s that. Or it could be your visions are closer to the reality than you think.

ALICE
(quietly)
I’ve considered I might be dead, yes.

Alice coldly regards the funeral parlor, the casket, the flowers. None of it is what she’d imagine for herself after death- it is too fine, too calculated, too reliant on a pageantry she does not care for. No, wait. Not quite true. Alice might say she doesn’t care for such a gaudy and romantic display of her active death, but the latent anxiety gathering within the back of her throat betrays this veneer. She’s not worried that this somehow resembles the real circumstances of a body left behind- but rather, she is disturbed at the unsettling absence which gnaws at her own heart- the absence of certainty that anyone would go to such trouble at her passing. This glass tomb is not the resting place she would opt for- but in her mind’s eye, it is what she would hope someone else might choose for her. Someone…

ALICE
But I’m not dead.

FACELESS STRANGER
Hm. I have to agree.

The Faceless Stranger pulls out a silver case with an engraving of twin eagles. They open it, revealing a tight row of long white cigarettes. They withdraw one and with a flick of a match, they begin to smoke, puffs and billows emerging from the muddied mess of their smear-paint face.

ALICE
So…what is all this?

FACELESS STRANGER
For lack of better phrasing, it is the Crawl Space. An in-between, a corridor squeezed between Arcana and the Real. Precious few creatures can exist within it, even Major Arcana struggle to endure here for long. You overused your powers, and thus you find yourself here, where you are forced to rest until such a time as your Arcane Current is restored and you are allowed to rise again.

ALICE
So…I rest, I come back.

FACELESS STRANGER
Yes, essentially. You’ll even return a bit stronger- think of your Arcane Energy like a muscle- you tear and stress it, and it returns even stronger given time and rest. As The Fool…your potential and ceiling are nearly limitless.

ALICE
So I’m basically immortal-

FACELESS STRANGER
(harshly)
No. This is the point that brings us back to crux of why we are here today, you and I- if you take nothing else away from our first meeting in the Crawl Space, then know these two things- that this is Real, and you CAN die.

ALICE
…Who are you?

FACELESS STRANGER
(shifting back in their seat, taking a long draft of their cigarette)
I’m the one you left at life’s crossroads so many years back. I’m the one you wondered about so arrogantly, who you thought you might save, had you made a different life decision. I’m the one who’s causality was cut so cruelly short while you silently celebrated, grateful my circumstances were not your own. I am not the exception, but the rule of your life, the one you set a repeating precedent with every time you backed away, fled commitment, hugged the status quo. Simply put- I am uncertainty, what could have been, the harem of your dreams which you so carelessly manage. I am who you left behind in the Real. And now, in this rare in-between, I am your keeper.

The Faceless Stranger rises, flicking the cigarette into the coffin. The carnations around the lit cigarette begin to catch fire, the flames leaping from one pedal to the next until the coffin itself becomes a cauldron of fire. The Stranger takes Alice by the shoulders, holding her amidst the flames.

FACELESS STRANGER
Our first meeting is the shortest, and least consequential, Alice the Fool. Two more yet remain for you to meet beyond the gate I keep. But for now, my purpose is served…so…burn…

The painless flames lick up at Alice, her vision turning to a bloodshot gray fog of smoke and blacked pedals of ash.