The Adventures of A Madman.

The Knowledge of Madness

I come into the story quite a bit later. My name was Terance Nightingale, Though you will come to learn that the name i came to be known as is The Mad Hatter. I suppose i let it slide for a few years and the damn name just stuck. Oh well. Of course i'm not sure weather it was the voices in my head calling me that, or if it was actual people. Or other...things. that reside here in underland.
I was lucky, I came to be in one of the more famous underworlds. The Citadel. Two cities, once whole now divided in two due to warring factions.
The red queens army and the white queens army. Both having large kingdoms they gathered all the followers they could, The Red queen using fear tactics and other such.... Motivations. The White queen using a more...loving approach. well, i wouldnt call it loving, but it certainly beat the red queens.
You either joined a side and were then killed by any of the opposite faction, or you ran and hid. Which i did and for the longest time i did very well.

I was a pickpocket back in my days of the living. Running through the streets of... lagdon...lewdongly....lasidone? le'dan? Oh well. You lose a part of your memory the longer you are down here. Most people couldn't tell you how they died. Some even forgetting they are dead, and on that belief are let free of the insane asylum. Breaking into the mortal world as they have done for thousands of years.

I was a thief. I stole anything i thought i could get a swing for. What else could a young boy with no future hope do? I was always on my own, or so i recall. I can't remember anyone ever raising me or even caring for me. I was a loner. A nobody on the side of the of the cobbled roads.
I suppose the reason that ive not forgotten my true home is that this....place. This new home reminds me of the place i came from.

The land of the living. A mix of the three plains. Having madness, pain and peace. Though, perhaps it isn't the starting world. perhaps it's the world bridging the gaps between the rest. Who knows.

I stood alongside the road waiting for a coach. Those were my main profit. The rich used those things as freely as a butterfly uses it's wings.
I would run up along side the coaches unseen by the driver and hop on. Holding on to the back for dear life. When it finally stopped i would jump down and wave my homemade knife in the faces of the riders. After of course killing the driver. They have guns! You always silence the man with the gun.
I wasn't paying attention however. The couple had a gun of their own. I saw everything in slow motion.
A shot. Muzzle flash. Red. My knife falling from a young man's hand. My hand.
I saw everything that day. I swear. I Was God for those few minutes after my heart finally stopped beating and my brain was still active.
I was free of the diseases and the toxins that had clouded my mind for the past sixteen years.
I remembered the young girl i had fallen in love with. Alice. I met her in the streets one day, a small girl. Blonde, no more than 13.
I fed her and gave her money. I offered for her to stay with me. and she did for a while. But not for long. She decided to continue other advancements.
I heard the shot first. Then the screams. I awoke to find her and my pistol both gone. I ran out of the shack we were hiding in and there she was. In the middle of a crowd of people. Who seemed to jsut come from every where at once. I ran to her body dazzed and disbelieving.
There was already a pool of red about her body. It was a clean heartshot. She didnt feel any pain, or so they told me. The surrouding people said they had witnessed a young man take her by the arm, kissed her, and looked back at her, love in his eyes... Then the shot directly through her heart.
What they didn't know was that she wanted to die. She was planning on it. They boy only wished to part with her, leaving that hell of a world behind.
But he didn't have enough time, so he ran and hid once more.


I searched for the boy for years. Wanting to find him and kill him myself. To Torture him as he did so my heart.
I never found him, though i think i may have of late. I know i did when i was shot.
I found him, Hiding in the one place i would have never searched. MY heart.
And once i found him, Lying there in the pool of my own blood. I made peace with myself and her. For her decision, for her leaving me.

I opened my eyes.
It was over. But the girl. I called her alice in my mind, why? I don't remember her name completely, but it certainly wasn't Alice.
But she had the Idea behind an alice. Even with the blonde hair.
Maybe if she had lived she would be THE Alice.
Oh well.
"Strange tides of late mouse, what say ye?"
mouse replied in her own way. A grimace and a frown.
"Ah, i agree"
She gave me a questioning look as if to ask what was wrong.
when after five minutes i gave no reply she put her arm around me and caressed my head. Nearly bringing me out of my trance. But to no avail.

We underlandians all have those moments when we remember our time of the living. When we realize that this world isnt the first we've visited. And you feel in that instant that something is off, something is wrong in that world. That you are meant for more, As if fate itself has deemed you worthy of higher power. Like you have been awarded godship.

I snap out of it and look her in the eyes, sit up, and walk out the door.