As punishment, a parade and festival was run for days. The townspeople lured the cats to the clothes tower and caught them. They packed them into sacks and threw them from the highest towers down to the ground. A cat's landing skills and balance were useless when crammed into a sack. It needed space to curl its body in order to land without being hurt. Also the heights were now unimaginable.
The Cheshire twitched with the broken glass of milk in his hand. The memory was too gory to imagine. Thousands of fluffy creatures, forests of outstretched arms, flying in the air with no parachutes on their backs. And while the townspeople hailed and clapped, while they cussed the devils and demons that they thought inhabited those cats, they smiled while cat blood was spattered on the streets of Ypres. He continued his memory, remembering the day when he and his family was caught and killed.
Chapter 57
One day, the Cheshire's family was caught: mother, father, sisters, brothers, and even him. They were packed into the sack, left in the darkness to die, wondering when they would hit the ground. When a human pulled the sack to crush it all the way down, the Cheshire pleaded all he could. He meowed, purred, and screamed. He hung with his claws upside down, thinking the humans might have mercy on him. But no mercy was given. The Cheshire cried so hard that the Gods gifted him with the power of speech for a moment.
"Help us!" the Cheshire pleaded, his eyes widening at the miracle.
"Did you hear that?" one of the humans asked the other who was holding the sack. "I think the cat just begged for help."
"It did?" the one who held the sack wondered, and the whole Cheshire family felt hope.
"It's me, the Cheshire," he shouted in his tiny voice. "Please. You don't have to do this."
"It really talks," one said, "The damned cats are possessed by the devil. Throw it!"
And with that, the Cheshire's sack sank free-falling into the air. With his family panicking all around him, the look of death painting their faces, the Cheshire felt an unstoppable need for revenge. An unstoppable need for killing everything that is human. His small claws sharpened and kept slithering at the sack from inside. A little before his family died, splashing to the ground, the Cheshire saw sunlight burning his eyes through the holes he'd created. He slid through them like cats do and jumped, landing on his paws, then used his balance center inside his ears to control the movements and not die.
That day, he stood in his place as the sky kept raining cats. Each time their blood splashed onto his face, his grin widened. Each dying cat was his fuel for the apocalypse he was going to bring onto humans of the world later. To do that, he had to gather an army of monsters. Later in the years, he knew he could find plenty of them in Wonderland.
Right now, the Cheshire walked with his human feet over the scattered glass. He knelt down next to the captive girl wondering how she'd look with a grin sewn to her face. But he couldn't do that to her now. After many trials and errors, this was the girl he needed to get back the powers.
"Soon I will perform the ritual," his voice sounded muffled behind the mask. "Soon, Carroll. Then I will have the scariest face in the world. The face that is not a face. I will have the one power that will make me invincible." His power was the kind of power no one could think about. It was smooth, yet deadly. To get it, he had to use Constance, one of the descendants Carroll photographed. If only the world knew that these photographs weren't just a hobby, that each one held a secret within it.
But the world was ignorant and pompous, like always. The Cheshire was going to teach them their last lesson ever. Let's see who has the last grin.
Chapter 58
Kattenstoet Festival, Ypres, Belgium
The Pillar and I are licking ice cream at Il Gusto d'Italia, one of the most famous places in Ypres. It's not like we've come here for the ice cream, but licking it while staring at the madness around us is the best way to hang onto sanity.
The Kattenstoet parade is immense. Many people, a lot of them children, come from all over the world to celebrate that crazy day. It's only seconds before we're pushed among the crowd, urged to walk ahead in the parade. In my modern day Alice outfit and the Pillar's blue suit, we look like freaks. People are either dressed as cats, wearing feline ears, hanging cat's tails or meowing like cats. Girls have whiskers drawn on their faces, and elders have Mickey Mouse cat ears on, along with other medieval clothes and accessories. It's beautiful actually, only if it didn't represent a horrible memory of killing cats.
"This place is nuts," I laugh, holding the umbrella Fabiola has given me. She told me I will need it, but I still don't know how.
"Every dog's dream," the Pillar puffs his pipe. He doesn't look happy. All he is looking for is a sign to spot the Cheshire.
Among the parade, we pass by a famous clock tower where it shows the time is three in the afternoon.
"Ding dong, something is wrong," the Pillar says.