002 Killer Rabbit

To the disappointment of the anxious audiences, there is no fear in Meph’s eyes. The heart trembling knocks and the voice filled with evilness only managed to pull his attention to the door. Nothing else.

Meph was born with alexithymia. A rare disease even before the Magic Age. To simply put, he can’t feel any emotions. And fear, among other emotions, is a important part of human mechanism of self-protection. As much as his mom tried to teach him, Meph gets into all kinds of trouble because he doesn’t know when to back off.

Run when the hair on your arm stand up. That’s one of the many survival lessons she taught Meph. But she is no longer in the picture. She left him alone in this merciless, post apocalypse world.

At least he won’t suffer the trembling fear when death knocks.

Standing calmly in front of the door, Meph waits, an arm’s length away from the malicious voice.

Rule number one of the Soul Trial: Everything can be a trial.

A question. A conversation. Anything. And just like any trial, there is reward in passing, and punishment in failing.

Meph has no intention to try the latter with his life.

In his silence, the temperature drops again. Meph looks down at his hand, trying to clench his fingers, only to realize that they are becoming numb at the coldness.

Even if ignoring the question delays the punishment, it’s obviously not without consequences. He has to answer.

Is Alice in here?

Meph looks around, at the limited space around him. There is no place for a person to hide. The only possibility is if Alice drank the shrink potion and is now tiny, hiding in some unlikely corners.

But the bottle is still full, sealed by a wooden cork that looks untouched.

Something strikes the back of Meph’s mind, but he couldn’t pin down that flash of thoughts yet.

“Alice, are you in there? You have to be in there. You have the key.” The low voice asks again. This time not just asking a question, but adding information.

A key is needed to enter this room. Alice had it. It stands to reason that Alice still remains inside considering the room is locked from the inside. But there is little space for a person to hide.

The air around Meph gets colder, as if on the edge of dropping again. Meph realizes why -- ignoring the question and it will drop. He looks around, checking the empty room one last time before he bites the bullet--

“No, she is not,”

It sounds like the visitor is hinting at a “yes” to the answer. The question is--

Is it a trap or a hint?

The visitor fell silent. Did his blind shot hit the bull’s eye?

Meph walks forward and presses an eye on the peep hole. It almost feel like the visitor puffed into thin air.

He didn’t.

Meph’s body stiffened, and it takes him a second to realize that’s his body reacting to “fear”—

The visitor is a white rabbit. Or, he once was. The rabbit wears a white shirt under dark suits, two long, huge ears draping randomly. Above the neat bow tie is a rotten face. Two sets of needle like teeth sticking out of his sharp, pointy rabbit snout. At where his eyes used to be are two deep, dark black holes.

He is a rabbit skeleton!

It’s the White Rabbit in the story. Meph recognizes the visitor instantly. Only, the rabbit is long dead, rotting already. And the most creepy thing is--

Those two empty black holes are looking right into Meph’s eyes, with a huge, evil grin forming on that face slowly.

“You...lied...” The rotten face wiggles in a twisted way, the hole that once was a mouth opening and closing with evil in the sound coming out of it.

With those words reaching Meph, the temperature around him drops suddenly to a whole new level. It’s a coldness that penetrates everything, the kind of brutal coldness that makes the the winter of Eden which Meph could barely endure feels like a warm summer breeze.

The answer is wrong? Meph frowns, on alert instantly when he understood that indication--

Alice is in this small, closed space! With him!

How could it be?!

Meph darts around and started searching. He doesn’t know what this game is about yet, but he knows he can’t afford another wrong answer. The temperature has dropped three times now, and there is frost sneaking up the window glass already.

Another drop, and he would die of hypothermia.

He needs more information!

Meph moves the raven table, closes the window, opens the glass bookshelf and moves every book, trying to trigger some secret door. Among his hasty search, mixed a flat synthesized female voice--

DING!

[Alice found—]

It’s the same emotionless voice that greeted him. Unfinished, the voice bursts into a blast of distorted audio, running into some sorts of glitch.

Meph freezes at the voice. Alice found? He turns around swiftly, eyes tracing back the messy trail behind him. Something he just touched triggered that voice, but...

Alice found?!

Did Alice turn into a book or the raven desk or...?

At this moment, the rabbit at the door suddenly bursts into a loud shriek. He grabs the doorknob and starts shaking, the whole room trembling like in earthquake as his shouts none stop at the top of his lungs like a maniac--

“Who sent you? Who sent you? Who sent you?!”