Sad Rabbit

In a conversation about rules I wrote:

I must stress I know nothing about anything but I agree with you.

If something is done well there are no rules.

Do what you like.

Write the scene as a dream sequence where the characters are rabbits and speak in three word sentences. Might work. Sounds like it’s worth a go.

Then I wrote it.

She was dying. That was the truth of it.

How could Elliot still have kept seeing her? Why didn’t Sarah put a stop to it? Just because they hadn’t spoken for years didn’t mean they weren’t still sisters. It didn’t mean they weren’t still family.

For their estrangement, following that argument all those years ago, to have led to this was ironic. It was more than ironic. Someone would have to come up with a new word for whatever it was.

If she had stayed in touch with Sarah, if they had been closer, maybe she would have felt a bond that would have stopped her. Maybe she wouldn’t have treated her own sister like a stranger, like an extra in her life story.

Had it been spite? Just because of the argument? She hoped not. She couldn’t bear that thought. She could bear being nothing to Sarah but she couldn’t bear being something she thought should be punished. And not like this.

She had prepared dinner. She cooked Sunday dinner for him, shuffling around the kitchen in pain. It was ridiculous. She felt like a fool. Would that make him stay? Would that at least make him stay long enough to explain why he had done what he had done?

It seemed so selfish. She was dying. Couldn’t they have waited? Was a few more months of only being with her and not also with Sarah really so unbearable? She thought she might not really want to know the answer. She had to know, of course.

That was how people were. Destructive curiosity, pulling things apart to see how they work. Then again, maybe that was just her. Maybe Sarah didn’t do things like that.

The doorbell rang. Why would he do that? Announcing his presence like it wasn’t his house anymore. As if he was showing his generosity, gifting her it in compensation for abandoning her.

She smiled at him as he came into the kitchen, trying not to see the look of partly-concealed horror on his face as he saw the meal on the table.

It was supposed to be a quick visit. Now here she was, blackmailing him into staying for longer. Squeezing the last drops from their relationship. Wasn’t she entitled to that? Wasn’t she entitled to more than that?

What must she look like? Hunched over, trying to smile through the pain at this man who wanted to be a stranger to her? How pathetic must she seem? She did feel pathetic.

She tried not to think about what she would offer him to stay, just for the next few months. She tried not to think how far she had fallen, how low she had sunk. Once he had courted her. Once he had yearned for her attention. She had eventually granted it.

And now?

What could she grant him now? What did she have that he, or anyone, would want? Had he made her feel like that, this man who cared only for himself?

Perhaps she had always felt like that, deep down.

Perhaps he had just been like a chain, preventing it from rising to the surface.

The chain was breaking now.

Couldn’t it hold just a little longer?

]

Soon it wouldn’t matter anymore, but right now, right now with the dinner on the table and the pills in their little boxes by the sink, right now it mattered. Why couldn’t he see that? Why couldn’t he care?

She looked into his eyes. He was uncomfortable. She couldn’t bear it.

“Please, don’t look at me like that Elliot.”

He looked like he felt sorry for her. Was that a victory? Was that what she wanted?

“I don’t know what you mean Helen.”

And she couldn’t stand it anymore. She couldn’t be there anymore. She couldn’t exist in that moment. It was too much. It needed to be less complicated. It needed to be simpler.

How she envied the life that lived around the house, passing through and observing their painful lives rather than participating. Why did she have to be here, now? Why couldn’t she be someone else, something else? Just for this moment.

She closed her eyes and let the room fell away. The house sank into the Earth. It was dark. She opened her eyes. She was different. He was different. But it was all the same. She was in a burrow with him. Simple animals.

Even their speech and thoughts had been stripped away. She couldn’t have complex thoughts anymore. She could only express feelings. They were the same. The pain was the same. It was all so basic. She was dying. She could tell.

She could feel her fur and her long ears and she could taste the half eaten carrot lying beside her. She was different. But still finite. Still temporary.

She looked at him in the darkness of the burrow.

He hid in it.

She couldn’t see his eyes.

It felt like the darkness was betraying her, just as he had. It was hiding him from her. It was protecting him from having to face her, to face what he had done. She couldn’t allow that, not after everything that had happened.

He would have to answer.

“You leave me?”

“Leave you now.”

“No leave me.”

"Yes, leave you.”

“But I dying.”

“I still leave.”

"You stay here. We eat carrots.”

“I leave you. No love you.”

“I love you. So much love.”

“That not enough. I love other.”

“My heart broken.”

“I so sorry. I go now.”

As he headed out of the burrow she couldn’t cry. She was fairly sure rabbits couldn’t do that. She wasn’t even sure they had feelings, which was lucky.

Because her heart was broken.

Because she was dying.

In every way.

It was OK though. Down in the burrow it was the way of things. It was nature. There was nothing to get upset about. Nobody cared. And she closed her eyes and thought about whether she ever wanted to go back, or if anyone would care if she stayed.

And in that moment she thought about a book she had read once.

It was about a young boy who was in pain, even though he didn’t always know it. It was about him trying to survive, in every way.

It was about a war that was far away, and yet raging in his own home, and within him. And she wondered if she still had it, if she could read it again.

But then she remembered it didn’t exist.

It was just a dream she had once about a book written by a man who never bothered to publish it, for whatever reason. It felt sad, like so much else. And she thought about that, and Elliot and Sarah, as she lay down next to the carrot.

And she cried. Even though she didn’t think rabbits could.

She cried and thought about how much longer there would be, and whether she wished there was less time or more.

Not that it mattered, because that wasn’t her choice.

It seemed nothing was anymore.