Dr. Angus Bumby's office provided a rather dismal atmosphere. Appealing decorations were scarce: a proud, yet battered, portrait of Abraham Lincoln poised centrepiece on peeling wallpapered brick; beside the window towered a bookshelf of knowledge; a desk adorned centre space with two chairs perched opposite one another slightly forward of that. In dimly lit corners, secrets resided and demons observed.

A model globe collected dust, it's presence perhaps proposing a forgotten desire to travel. Upon the wall adjacent hung a mirror cracked and dirtied, reflecting only bitter sorrow and concealed truths.

To one side stood a fireplace-

… a fireplace ...

Fire.

They burned. Her whole kin screamed as they charred, flames eagerly licking at porcelain complexions, cracking the delicate ceramic of living dolls. Mannequin hearts pulsated as connecting strings that puppeted bodies seared and separated. Skin melted like wax-work under their ash-polluted clothing; hot crimson liquid evaporating in intense heat. Ablaze, the dollhouse was engulfed entirely. Carbon monoxide dreams and patchwork quilts of smoke: it was time for bed. Time to sleep. Eternally.

Emerging as the sole survivor, the young girl was immortalised by chance. Coronated with a cloak of burns, blisters and bruises; her victorious crown was a cloud of thick smoke which stained tangled strands of hair. The burns on her digits appeared as blood-stained hands. Paint the roses red, indeed! Oh, the Queen! The Red Queen in all her gore-covered glory!

Except Alice was anything but a victor; the newly orphaned victim's existence had deteriorated significantly, anguish her solitary companion in a cruel, uncaring world. Villains lurked in her mind; in her reality; in her Wonderland. Evil loomed and watched contentedly.

Golden flecks in dark hues accentuated in the firelight - a centaur contemplated her from its position of concealment in woodland shadows before galloping forth into further darkness. Meanwhile the blaze burned brighter; hotter; larger. An animal of fierce determination very much intractable. An untamable beast. A monster.

Alice clutched her toy rabbit as the last of the Liddell family's screams incinerated into ash while scorching embers raged havoc across the night.

"Forgetting is the first step towards healing, Alice. Memory is a curse, and forgetting is the cure."

Alice was back in the dim room once more; the psychiatrist's voice clawing her out of the rabbit hole of illusions she'd begun to helplessly tumble down.

"Forgive my cynicism, but your advice seems much too delusional to prove saintly. Forgetting shan't save me."

"To allow oneself to be caged by the past is to refuse freedom. It is to refuse sanity. Try to work with me. Trust in me, Alice; I'm here to help."

Each session seemed a duplicate of every other: Alice would weep and demand the truth about that night. For all the blanks - and, indeed, there were many - to be filled in was her one burning desire. Dr. Bumby merely objected; he recited the notion of memory causing unproductive behaviour and the likes. To dispute and appeal never came to much avail. Regardless, Alice always tried, ambitious for some revelation to accidentally slip and subsequently provide another piece to the ever-perplexing puzzle of the past.

Such persistence and unwillingness to drop the subject amazed some that she had not found herself a place at Rutledge once more - after all, the mental domino-effect of catastrophe following the fire had caused her admittance initially. An obsessive, sometimes violent, nature attached to such crazed goals should surely drag her back to the asylum? Her mind was in ruins, very much in her own words - a danger to both herself and others in her frequently deluded states.

Yet Bumby insisted he would nurture her fragile, mutilated mind. He was content in his abilities to bury the past and transform the already frail human into little more than a blank canvas for chromatic suggestion to be painted upon. Better to start afresh and blissfully unaware than the alternative way of living. Certainly more profitable.

"But I need to know the truth, doctor. To recover what is lost: my shattered memories. I need to know about the fire. My poor sweet Lizzie-..."

"You are predictably stubborn as ever, girl. Such stubbornness shan't get you very far if not propelled in the right direction. If it keeps becoming such a distraction, we may have to work to disregard such a trait altogether."

Such suggestion was met only with bitter distaste. Alice shook her head.

"And leave me entirely vulnerable? I'd rather be stubborn than weak."

"Not vulnerable, your current reputation does a good enough job of that. No, merely more impartial to change."

Annunciation accentuated his goal of making a difference.

Different denotes neither bad nor good, but it certainly means not the same.

Intentions perhaps were in layers. Upon the surface one could argue the importance of change in order for development. Yet consequences would surely follow any decision, be it for better or worse, and even then an outcome could mean something opposing to two separate involved beings. To one would generate profit; to the other only chaos was likely to ensue.

Simply, Alice was not a fan of change in vast quantities. Particularly not when questions which lingered very much unanswered were not subject to depart until done so.

"It sounds one in the same. I must know my reality."

It was a bold statement from one so deranged she didn't even know her own mind. Bumby greeted irony with a mildly amused eyebrow raise.

"And yet you claim this 'Wonderland' of yours is more active in your imagination than ever.

Now, Alice. Tell me more about 'Wonderland'. Let's see if we can shape it into something more-... productive, shall we?"

A key dangled in front of her, swaying left to right to left. The sound of the clock drowned out all noise; all sense of being.

Tick, tock. Tick. Tock.

Tick-...

Go to Wonderland.