‘Snap his throat,’ the compulsory thought jabbed her like a stove prod as she looked hungrily at the rabbit that washed its face with dry paws in the cage.
Her eyes stared down with grim triumph but the victor, in this case ‘her,’ didn’t feel any sort of euphoria which she would imagine in her sleep next to Theodore, her one son, her beloved boy, the only one who brings meaning to her life. When she thought what the rabbit did to him and her, death was not enough. Long, drawling torture with every bit of humiliation seemed to be the answer.
So much grudge, so much hate that she didn’t know that she was even capable of seeped from her tiny body and filled the shed like bluish fog that coils around distant peaks she sees in dawn.
Nobody would have known that the tiny woman was engrossed with the thought of wrapping her thin stick fingers around the creature’s neck, snapping the bone and ripping the tendrils along. The thought of breaking the rabbit’s neck
She once overheard a vagrant preacher using a peach box as a pulpit to preach against the sins of the heart–especially stubbornness. He spent long time over the great sin of refusing to forgive one’s neighbors. Upon hearing the parable of the unforgiving debtor, she learned that the ‘neighbors’ didn’t mean the kindly customers of Fullgreens. Neighbors transgress time and space, and that means she has to forgive the rabbits she used to live with in a tightly knit community before she turned human. A single thought struck her.
‘What right does he think he have to demand such thing?’
The rabbits she lived with probably have completely forgotten the pain and suffering they inflicted on her, when all she did was try to hide her pathetic self with a smile toward the females like a belly showing dog and roundabout answers to the males lest she faces butt-hurt retribution.
If she can only talk with God, she wanted to ask him, ‘Where is the room for ‘forgiveness’ when repentance doesn’t keep the door unhinged?’ Thankfully, the God they talk about is silent, so gratefully silent. She is long tired of voices that she imagined ‘they’ were saying to her, trying to ‘heal’ her of her self-destructive nature–selfishness, blindness, stubbornness, frivolousness–all these were attributed to her even when she decided she couldn’t take any longer and left with Theodore to a dry corner of the woods where there was barely any thing to salvage. It was a sheer divine luck that she met Gale.
She would have been more than happy to dwell in this fascination over the Fullgreens’ God and go to Sunday services with Gale and Theodore and eat the holy Sacrament. But now time has brought him back to her life and a thousand blows to the body couldn’t smite…no, she will try to not get there.
‘I don’t care what others would say. They never been in my place. They would never understand,’ her mind obsessively revolted against the overlapping voices of judgment that take on the faces of her past tormenters-tall looming hares, long ears that struck as much fear and animosity as swooping owl wings.
Voices like
“I heard that Don would like to marry a younger girl,” a female rabbit younger than her leered at her during their communal grass hazing. She was always trying to get at her at the slightest chance. All eyes flew to Michaela. She could barely gobble on the green blades.
“Don’t go off so fast, Micha,” a middle aged female rabbit called out to her, “Don’t you think you should escort Don?” Don was an expert scavenger. He didn’t need no ‘escorting.’ He needed a quiet, docile doll to do his every bidding.
“So you want a wife with a cotton tail, Don?” a male rabbit who always liked to kiss up to Don glanced at her and smiled, “How about a younger wife?”
Don smiled amiably back like a true gentleman, but she can see the leer in his eyes and nervous twitch of his whiskers, “I wouldn’t mind.”
An imaginary black curtain, heavier than anything but deceptively diaphanous, by the name that words like ‘dread,’ and ‘entrapment’ alone cannot capture, collapsed on her and she has never felt free since.
And oh, that night. That night that changed everything.
“He promised you to me!” Don’s voice.
“I am so sorry, Michaela.” The leader’s voice.
“You are so ungrateful.” A former female companion’s voice.
When the name of her mother escaped from her lips as she looked at the familiar faces around her in terror, Don said,
“You shouldn’t say your mother’s name out loud when in exasperation. You are sullying your mother’s name. Ignorance isn’t something to be proud of.”
“This is hilarious,” Don’s friend bursted into a guffaw.
Like someone rising to the surface of the water for breath, she came back to the butcher boy’s shed and she covered her ears with hair falling from her cap, her voice wavering between a ghostly whisper and a suffocated sob, “Oh, God, no, no, no, no, no, no, God,”
Luckily, she was able to get away from that madness. She wasn’t hurt in any way and she got back in time to see Theodore in the arms of Gale, but out of frenzy she bit his arm. Gale saw her in her worst. But he included her nonetheless. Why, she could never know.
Since that incident, she became afraid of saying her mother’s name. She has begin to associate the name of God with a cry for help, and right now she just wanted to replace her past with her present, extricate her from the maddening inertia of her mind, dragged to bogs by memories.
But then for some reason, in her crowded mind, a quiet image of Gale appeared behind her, jolting her out of her toxic thoughts with his stunned round amber eyes and slightly parted lips. Then suddenly something more powerful than murderous rage made way into her mind–the tender fear of losing someone.
‘What would he think if he finds out what I do here.’
The question didn’t need a moment of further rumination. The answer is obvious.
Disappointment–that would be the watermark of their relationship if he finds out. Her staring down at an impotent neighbor, reveling in his incarceration.
‘May…maybe…if I explain my connection,’ she thought hopefully. Then her eyes gleamed and she managed a tiny smile, ‘Yes, I can tell him. And he will understand!’
She began to rise, patting off the dust of her skirt, then Connor came to the shed, which would have not been unusual if he didn’t look so agitated and in rush, grabbing both sides of the door.
He rushed to her and grabbed her by her arm,
“You go to leave now!”
Her eyes widened, and Connor quickly licked his dry lips and explained, “Your boss is coming.”
She began to feel both of their hearts thrumming in this small shack. She wasn’t ready to tell Gale her story and she definitely didn’t want him to see her with a caged rabbit.
“I…I need to hide.”
But there wasn’t any place to hide. The shack was filled with equipment and goods. Connor was pretty much helpless himself, which she could kind of understand, him just being a boy. Still, she looked around and detected what looked like a thick fabric. Thinking that she could at least use it to hide the cage, she picked it up without hesitation.
“Wait, don’t touch that!” Connor called out, his voice shrill enough to cause anyone to stop whatever he or she could be doing, but it was too late.
As she stared down at the shawl she knows so well–the worn out marks, the thread falling, Theodore’s bite marks, she turned paler every second.
Her eyes flung open to Connor as she heard him approaching her, the soles of his shoes crackling on dry hay as they stomp in her direction. She clung to the dark green checkered shawl that still had the stains of a violet eyed hulder’s blood to her chest, but she couldn’t dare see what she imagined would be ominous dark green eyes. The shawl was pressed tightly against her heart that palpitated as she felt her ears drowning down the sounds Connor was making.
She didn’t anticipate being in a moment where she is so terrified for her own life since she became human, but this is it, she thought.
‘Please don’t do anything till Gale comes,’ she wished as she still had a lot to look for before resigning her fate.
And then, finally after what felt like forever, somebody appeared at the shed’s doorsteps. Surprise fleeted across both of their faces as they looked up the bright face of the simultaneous savior and intruder. Her boss.
*** Special Comic “What went in his head at that moment?”
Hulder Tales 