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_ Screaming Alice and the Throne of Bone _

2023 by Zorha

South London Junction Railway

September 3rd, 1873

Another disjunction in the track jostled an already cantankerous Michael Faraday. It slowed the passenger train down ever so slightly, but they were already several minutes behind schedule. Its owners, the LCDR, were not exactly known for their punctuality, but the white furred weasel was quite the opposite. Some considered the scientist succinct to the point of being brusque. Faraday was a very driven individual, often working himself to nervous breakdowns on more than one occasion.

The sudden shriek of a steam whistle pierced the otherwise deathly silent night as the engineer accelerated the locomotive, yanking them forward in a futile bid to make up time. The constant chuga-chuga-chuga of the S&D Class 1001's six drive wheels increased in tempo. Just inside the carriage windows, shafts of moonlight spilled through the rain streaked glass. The silver light glinted off the intricate buttons pinning the posh leather upholstery to the well padded couch seating. Through breaks in the stormy clouds above, a nearly full moon shone down upon them.

Clearly annoyed by the less than gentle ride, Faraday attempted to smooth out the wrinkles in his dark double-breasted frock coat. Once satisfied the elder mustelid attempted the same with his unruly shock of white head fur, to little avail.

"I just don't understand, Madam Shuck, what the purpose of this dour outing is meant to accomplish ..."

Faraday peered into the gloom opposite of him. Inside the shadows of the passenger carriage, the scientist could make out little aside from the intermittent flashes of moonlight off golden rimmed eyeglasses. In the couch across from him, he vaguely knew where the feminine wolf lurked, but could not make out much of her attire. The moon disappeared abruptly as they entered the Upper Sydenham Tunnel, plunging them into abysmal darkness. Olivia Shuck appealed to the brilliant mind in an attempt to calm Faraday's anxiety.

"Dr. Faraday, I'm deeply impressed by your work distilling and describing the aromatic bezin ring ..."

"Miss Shuck, firstly, I am but a simple Mister." The weasel cut the wolfess off. "Secondly, while I am delighted with your knowledge of the chemical sciences, I must acquiesce. I have no idea what the infernal blazes you are going on about ..."

The two sat in uncomfortable silence for a few moments, save for the distorted echo of the locomotive's drive bouncing about within the double tracked tunnel they now shot through.

"If you are talking about bicarburet of hydrogen, I was never able to fully determine its structure."

Just as suddenly as it disappeared, the moon blinked back into existence, shedding its silvery light back into the luxurious carriage. The nocturnal skyline of London, the onyx jewel of Queen Victoria's world spanning empire, zipped past their rain streaked window. Splintered forks of lightning arced between the dark clouds crawling above them. The flashes illuminated the stoic wolfess sitting before Faraday in strobes. Portentous cracks of thunder rattled their windows. He made out the vague outline of the wolf's black skirt. Her large paws remained neatly folded in her lap, deathly calm despite the hasty manner in which their engineer drove them hell bent towards their final destination.

The scientist continued, but was hesitant now. "I believe August Kekulé had made gains in that area ... before I ..."

Faraday's normally incontestable voice trailed off suddenly, as if a nagging and most uncomfortable thought now tugged at his failing memory. Olivia's upright posture stiffened, something that did not escape the former book binder's astute attention to detail. One of many things that struck the scientist as queer was Miss Shuck's blood red necktie, laying off her white blouse with unusually square shoulders.

Her pale eyes regarded him coldly. Glossy black fur turned to silver in the moonlight. The look on her muzzle was calculating, and a wave of sudden doubt and mistrust washed over Faraday. He looked about the posh but eerily empty carriage, suddenly realizing they were very much alone. Noticing this, Olivia continued her high praise of the scientist's most esteemed discoveries, just as another shrill whistle screamed out into the stygian night. The Paxton Tunnel swallowed them whole.

"Mister Faraday, your insights into the primordial forces of electromagnetic induction have enthralled me. Do you think, perhaps, one day they might be used to drive locomotives along rails? Instead of more volatile and less predictable thermodynamic principles?"

The engineer applied the brakes just then, perhaps a bit too hard and with little warning. The screech of metal on metal was deafening within the claustrophobic Paxton Tunnel. Faraday found himself blindly thrown forward into the opposing couch. With much cursing he steadied himself upright, accidentally touching the wolfess' exposed knee.

"Madam!" Faraday flustered at his own impropriety, jerking his paw away. "Whatever locomotion they employ in the future, I hope it is less impulsive than what we have now." He smoothed his rumpled attire out again, this time also including his dress trousers and cuffs, just in time for Luna to return outside their window.

"As for employing principles of electromagnetism in travel, perhaps someone will devise a linear rail Columbiad gun to fire us at the Moon in this very sky. It will be decidedly safer." Faraday wasn't sure, but this close up, he could swear the pale irises of the wolfess were burning somehow. It didn't deter him from his heated outburst. "That being said, perhaps you should have absconded with Jules Verne instead!"

The locomotive slid screaming into High Level Station. It ground to a halt within the terminus of South London Junction Railway. The cold iron engine gave a last gasp as a billow of steam poured out of its sides, filling Platforms 1 and 2 in banks of eerie mists. Within moments Miss Shuck and Mister Faraday stepped from the passenger carriage. The lantern poles sitting between platforms did little to illuminate the mists swirling now on the darkly polished wooden planks.

Errant drops of rain splattered on the curved high glass ceilings above them. Luna had fled behind the turbulent clouds. Lightning arced above them with a crack of booming thunder. The lost souls in top hats and bonnets that milled about aimlessly on the other platforms flickered, then disappeared back into darkness.

Miss Shuck started down the stone steps to the subway level, and Faraday, feeling a bit forsaken, followed just behind. At the bottom of the steps the wolfess pulled one of the lanterns off the brick wall and lit it, continuing on her way. The clack clack clack of her black leather boot heels striking the stone floor echoed about ominously in the subway's cavernous depths.

The lantern's small flickering and oddly pale light bounced off the octagonal flared ceiling supports. Faraday felt like they walked through a Byzantine crypt, although the red and white bricks comprising the pillar's tops were laid out in such a way that they reminded him of red crowns. It immediately brought to the imagination Lewis Caroll's Red Queen from 'Through the Looking Glass'. At the far end they climbed another series of stairs. Miss Shuck waited just at the top, turning to look back at a befuddled Faraday, who took the last few steps in awe.

He marveled at the Palace of Crystal sparkling off the spectral light given off by the comparatively tiny lantern. The roof of the central transept formed a half circle of iron struts and paneled glass over a hundred feet high. The north and south wings, also half circle glass ceilings, measured almost 2000 feet from end to end, and 400 feet wide. The entire structure consisted of 3300 iron columns, 2150 iron girders, 250 miles of sash bar, 293,635 panes of glass, and sported 990,000 square feet of exhibit space.

Flocks of visitors came to see the magnificent paintings, ancient statues, priceless vases, and fantastical scientific advances on display from across the globe. While it certainly was an astonishing feat of industrial and engineering ingenuity in and of itself, architect and stained glass enthusiast William Morris called it "Wonderfully Ugly" and refused to step inside. However, the northern wing was empty this particular night, still being rebuilt from a mysterious fire in 1866 that gutted the Assyrian court and nave.

Faraday found his muzzle partially open as Olivia swept the pale light of her lantern in a slow circle, exposing artistic wonders of the Old World, and industrial works of the New. Lightning flashed over the central green to the south east, lighting up exquisite fountains. Beyond that, primordial beasts lumbered by a lake, frozen in both time and error, their gargantuan heads raised to the tear soaked heavens with silent roars.

"Prince Consort Albert and Queen Victoria beseeched you to help plan and judge exhibits for the Great Exhibition." Olivia began, hoping to jog Faraday's shoddy memory. "You ... brought the future ... to 30 million souls ..."

"I ..." Faraday began, tears suddenly streaking down the white fur of his short and heavily wrinkled muzzle.

"You ... one of the greatest minds of mortal men ... of science."

"N-no ..." Faraday stammered. Overtaken by an eclipse of meaning too great for his humble heart, the scientist called out for his wife. "... where is ... Sarah?"

The once soft features of Olivia's visage hardened into an iron clad frown.

"I want ... to go home ..." Faraday said, almost feebly.

"Very well." Olivia murmured. She questioned to herself why she even brought him here in the first place. "Back to Highgate."

The wolfess took the distressed weasel by the arm and led him back down to the subway. By the time they got back to the entrance to High Level Station, two conductors were already directing the other wayward souls to board the carriages. Oliva handed Faraday over to one of the conductors, who pulled him up the short steps into the carriage and directed him to his seat. Oliva remained on the platform, looking on stoically, and only then did Faraday press an anxious paw against the glass, suddenly feeling like he had no tether back to his eternal resting place.

With a ghostly wail of steam, the phantom train backed out of High Level Station and into the rain. Instead of taking one of the two tracks back through the Paxton Tunnel, however, it climbed up an elevated rail next to the parade wall, lined with stone arches. The train continued gathering momentum, faster and faster, barreling toward the brick wall a few feet south east of the main tunnel.

For the Dead Travel Fast.

The morose hellhound watched on as the train grew insubstantial and descended through the track. It followed a long disused and forgotten subterranean maintenance line, before disappearing through the now bricked up entrance entirely.

The train never came out the other side. And its passengers stayed in limbo, now nothing more than dusty skeletons dressed in their Victorian finest. Or so the story goes to this very day. As for Faraday, he scoffed at table turnings and seances. He never once believed in all that supernatural bollocks.

For all the good it did him ...

Baltic Yard Warehouses, London

September 4th, 1873

Oliva's paw reached for a flask containing a cyclic polymerisation of ethyne. Her paw stilled abruptly, and the suspended red hot iron tube continued to drip its product away. On a different table, an experimental phonograph flooded the laboratory with an extremely low fidelity string quartet. A rhythmic electric buzz of a Jacob's Ladder arced repeatedly nearby. The most peculiar item of note was a small beehive frame behind twin panes of glass and its plethora of potted exotic flowers dotting the nascent laboratory.

When the quartet hit a very pronounced molto adagio, the wolfess laid her trembling paws flat on the workbench. Without warning small wet drops splattered nearby her claws, and sizzled.

What was happening?

Olivia blinked. Only then did she realize her thick eye lashes were wet, stained with tears. Confusion washed over her face. A volatile mixture of regret and anger coursed through her gut. Her thoughts turned to the now lost soul of Faraday. He had once been her most prized soul. The greatest mortal mind of recent age. And now ...

Her eyes sealed shut. She reared back and with an enraged swipe, smashed the fragile lattice of glassware before her. The crash was deafening in the still night, only broken by the occasional ship horn in the far distance. She opened her pale eyes, now lacking irises, burning with phantasmic malice. All of it was pointless now. Faraday had come so close to unlocking the secrets of lighting; one of the Divines' most powerful tools.

Abnoba had been right about one thing at least. The reign of Gods and Goddesses, Kings and Queens, was quickly coming to an end. If an uneducated lowly book binder like Faraday came close to unlocking the secrets of this material universe, what need would anyone have of royalty or even divinity? More tears fell on the workbench. Was that why Abnoba faded from this flawed existence, leaving her alone throughout these endless years? Did Abnoba feel she no longer had a purpose? A sudden wash of existential dread coursed through the hellhound.

What would be her purpose in this new Erewhon?

She turned and walked over to the beehive, placing a paw on the plate glass. Since before there were beekeepers, this hellhound had separated the wicked hearts from the lighter ones, directing which souls should go where in the afterlife. That was her purpose, long before ascribing a name to herself even entered her listless mind. As long as there were mortals, she was needed.

But what was a mortal's purpose?

Olivia thought back nearly 1800 years ago to one of Abnoba's last lessons to her. That even the lowest of mortals' lives held immense opportunity and importance. Olivia's eyes narrowed. No. Her consort had been mistaken. If the greatest of recent mortal minds could not comprehend his own importance in the celestial order, then Abnoba was wrong, and Nietzsche right. A low growl rumbled from her tight, black muzzle lips as something seemingly inconsequential snapped in the hellhound.

No, the defining purpose of all mortals ... is to die.

One corner of her black muzzle lips trembled, curled into a deranged grin. Her right eye twitched involuntarily. With an abrupt and deliberate shove the beehive toppled off the table. The plates of glass shattered on the rough wooden floor of the warehouse, and a swarm erupted from the remains to exact vengeance on the hive's destroyer. Not quite satisfied with this demented catharsis, the broken hellhound left the largely demolished laboratory. On the way out, she intentionally stepped on the remains of the hive. Her leather boot gave an atrocious crunch. The bees buzzed angrily around Oliva, but did not attempt to sink their stingers in her, for she was as lifeless as their own Queen now.

As Oliva left the warehouse and slipped into the thick London fog, the huntress also decided it was time to slip into a guise a bit more fitting for tonight's hunt. Her skirt and blouse shifted seamlessly into hearty knee length trousers and simple wool work shirt. A leather backing hat and leather apron now sat on her broadening shoulders. Her jawline squared just a little more. Her glasses faded away. The bloke that walked out of the Surrey Docks was a spittin' image of a Blondin, he was.

As the porter passed the huge gasholders of the Surrey Gas Company, the Chime of Quarters played out from Westminster Palace. At the end, nine resounding bongs reverberated throughout the eerie London night. Farther from the docks, the silence was unnerving, save for the occasional clomp-clomp-clomp of distant hooves on damp cobblestone. A now full moon shone down, fuzzy in the thick fog, bathing the side streets of London in regal silver.

The porter made a few circuits around the unlit back alleys near Rotherhithe Station. Oliva had a few run-ins with less savory elements of London's south east side over the years, mostly in the Thames Tunnel and surrounding areas. It was no small irritation of Oliva that vermin had infested one of the most spectacular feats of engineering the world had ever seen. Now that the railway had transplanted that den of thieves and prostitutes, it was a little bit harder to find them here. A few hours passed, more than the porter disguised hellhound would have liked.

A little while later a lady of the night checked in on him. Quite polite really. The stout wolfess was in her 40's, and her thin, short, raven black head fur still managed to defy her age. A rather generous offer of 50 shillings convinced her to keep him company during his long overnight shift at the docks. That's all the effeminate bloke wanted, was a bit of gab from a pretty lady. Not that queer at all. And she was a regular ol church bell too, all the way to the Canada yard. When they came to a dead end with nothing but empty barrels between the stacks, she went all fifteen puzzle.

Before she could turn around, the porter slammed the hilt of an obsidian skinning knife into her right temple. He caught her from behind before she could drop like a sack of potato flour and in fluid motion dragged the edge of the knife around her neck. Her carotid burst with crimson. Oliva let the body drop unceremoniously to the yard, her form shifting back to her baseline feminine build. She took off the backing hat and let it drop to her hind feet. She looked down at the corpse for a moment, then up to the hunter's moon above, a small hint of disappointment playing across her muzzle.

Olivia had never caught Abnoba before. This felt so ... anti-climatic. It was over all too quickly. All too pointlessly. It pretty much summed up this faffing tart's life.

And Olivia had snuffed it out prematurely. The Gods were indeed dead. And there was no divine retribution coming for Oliva and her profane desecration of the natural order. She allowed herself an unhinged cackle before kneeling over the body. The huntress gutted the stout whore like a fish, knife slicing through dress and greasy viscera with ease. Olivia put aside the slimy coils of intestines before pulling out the liver and parts of the lungs, which steamed in the chilly night. Finally she extracted the heart.

She held it aloft to the moon, inspecting it in the faint light. It was lighter than she expected, no doubt due to the woman's polite and friendly demeanor. But alas, Oliva had seen fit to be the wolf's Justice, Jury, and now Executioner. The wolfess bit into the heart, a gush of foamy crimson overflowing her jaws, before consuming it completely.

Delicious.

Midnight struck. Oliva spent the next few hours quartering the corpse, before splitting the torso first longitudinally, then into three sections: thoracic, abdominal, and pelvic. She noted a burn on the thorax, and a pale mole on the inner side of the right nipple. She dexterously opened up the joints of the ankles, wrists, and elbows with care. Finally she put the tip of the knife on the top of the wolf's forehead, before running it longitudinally around the skull. The handle, damaged from the initial strike, and further weakened from the huntress having to saw through the hips and shoulder joints, finally broke.

Oliva glowered. She had lost the knife's twin the same night she had lost a silver locket nine hundred years earlier. Holding the obsidian blade by its shank, she made a clumsy horizontal incision behind the base of the skull. Unable to make clean cuts, Olivia resorted to buttonholing the rest. She cut around the wolf's square nose before peeling off the other lupine face with a wet slurp.

Cupping the bloody face with delicate care, Olivia Shuck kissed the softest pair of muzzle lips this side of the current millennium.

Once finished, she realized in hindsight that she had nothing to wrap the dismembered body in, as she had cut up the dress alongside the body. She shook her head at herself, realizing she would have to invest into butcher paper. She threw the limbs and other body parts into a barrel with a smudge of tar still left in it. Big Ben bonged out twice. Oliva carried the barrel to a small rowboat and rowed her way up the Thames.

Though the Pool was chock full of anchored ships, no one questioned a butcher delivering a barrel of freshly quartered meat from Canada docks. While going under London Bridge Oliva dumped out the scalp, some of the limbs, and the pelvis. The hellhound added to the bones already interred in the tombs under the bridge's new stone foundations, singing maniacally.

London bridge Is broken down,

Dance over my Lady Lee.

London bridge Is broken down,

With a gay lady.

How shall we build It up again,

With a gay lady?

Once under the Trembling Lady Olivia dumped the torso and most of the remainder, knowing full well the current would gift London with a grisly puzzle in the coming days. She kept the paws, the left tibia, and the skull, rowing back to Rotherhithe. As the skyline in the east turned pink, hinting at dawn, she passed 16 Cheyne Walk. She would claim one of its current occupants almost a decade later.

Whitehall, London

September 15, 1873

Oliva sat in her new comfy leather backed Gothic reading chair, paging through the South London Chronicle. She paused only to sip a spot of tea and adjust her spectacles. She gave a rather disturbed smile, more than pleased with the coverage her little hunting expedition had brought about. Already Scotland Yard was abuzz, speculating, grasping at straws. In the end she decided to move her operation to Whitehall in order to observe her new quarry in close, clandestine detail.

Up on the walls around her, various naturalist periodicals sat in brand new picture frames. Various taxidermy mounts of disturbing and now extinct animals adorned the tables around her, the most recent being the Dodo bird. Her favorite trophy, however, was the upper part of the other wolf's skull, freshly polished. Under that, her obsidian skinning knife sat on a brand new bony paws stand, complete with a new hilt; that of the right side jawbone of her first victim. A single tibia sat in a container just under the table next to her. But it was lonely.

Yes, she would start a collection. And when that collection was complete she would build a Throne of Bone. And she would sit upon it; a new Queen for a new Reign.

From Hell.

~ Fin ~