The Guest

The Guest

The rabbit may as well have been a rock, for all of the movement it made.  His five feet by three feet wooden hutch was adequate, but not.  Rabbits have hind legs that propel them along at a precipitous rate, but not now.  He was frozen into ice, not even a flick of his velvety white ears.  The pink nose, ever wrinkling and twitching, was frozen still.  Only his eyes, the whites of which displayed themselves so alarmingly, were dancing, gyrating frenetically, as they sought some explanation for the presence of the unthinkable.

For the rabbit was not alone.  His hutch, ever the solitary confinement that it was, now featured a guest, a most unwelcome guest, one who had appeared without knocking, to join him in the sultry August afternoon.  No hands meant no knocking, which was appropriate, because the guest had no hands, and no feet either.  This intruder-no mistaking that-was unwelcome, and unprecedented, and silent as the grave. 

One second the bunny had been assiduously avoiding the afternoon rays of the blistering sun, stretching his length out in the shade, along the north wall of his domicile, almost catatonic in the dry heat, and the next he was a non-quivering wreck, still unmoving, but vibrating within every iota of its existence.  His very soul was stripped of its equanimity by the instinctual recognition, that he was face to face with his mortality.  

The eyes into which the bunny stared were unblinking, for there were no eyelids.  The gaze presented to the bunny was hypnotic, and he would have shifted his gaze in an eye-blink, except he could not move.  Every pore of his existence shrilled out to him that to move was to perish.  

He had to think, only he was prevented from doing so, by the icy grip of dread.

The scaly, diamond-shaped patches of olive-drab green, contrasted with the vibrancy of the shining live oak leaves in the background, as the alabaster-like form glided soundlessly along the top wooden slat of the hutch.  There was a two inch gap between the top of this slat, and the framework of the compound, through which the intruder had gained entry.  

Thirty-six inches down his frame, the buttons of his rattle, numbered eight, indicating that he had shed his thin overcoat, and donned a larger size, eight times, though in the animal kingdom, size meant nothing, when it came to instilling fear.  The intruder was a master of the craft.

The rabbit wanted to speak, to blurt out insubstantial questions about the unfairness of it all, but he couldn’t move.  He wanted to withdraw, into the vestibule, if you like, anything to avoid the implacable gaze.  He wanted, more than anything, to wake up from this deadly nightmare.

And I, standing a dozen paces away, could do nothing but wait with him.  If I moved, it would certainly spell disaster, the same as if the bunny moved.  Time refused to stand still.  It would move inexorably forward.  Events would unfold, as surely as the sun continued its immutable progress across the unseeing, unforgiving universe.

“I’m sorry, Darling, I was distracted.  What did you say?”  The man looked up from his desk, papers overflowing, drifting aimlessly around his scholastic arena, and pushed his glasses more firmly into place on the bridge of his nose.  He was the consummate academic, his digs reflecting the fact that he had little interest in the domestic apportionment of his belongings, and even less interest in rectifying the situation.

The woman had just entered the room.  “I said it’s time for you to get a real job.  This writing crap is just that.  I can’t pay the bills with unpublished short stories.”  And she hovered there above him, as he attempted to fight off his panic, and failed, hurtling down into the bottomless pit of despair.

“Of course, dear.  You’re right.”  

Say good night, bunny.