A prologue:

His name is Watership.  My pet Rabbit.  I adore him.  Unconditional love between us.  My best friend.  Even when he chewed through my nine hundred dollar speaker wire.  I’m what you call an audiophile and yes, I spend that much money on just the cables and wires.  I’m geeky.  Used to be a recording engineer /producer.  If your guitar is out of tune I can tell you what string it is.  I’ll tune your drum kit and it will never have sounded better.  I hear every thing.

I’m a goddamn expert.

A blessing and a curse.

He chews things.  That’s what he does.  It’s like his job, his aptitude.  It wasn’t his fault.

The time I spent with simple, cheap Monster Cable on one side of the stereo image made me crazy until the cable was repaired with it’s dialectic sheath repaired and intact.  Yes, I can hear a cable.  Yes it’s about the dialectic, and zero crystal, oxygen free, cryogenically treated copper.  Sound fucks with me.  A blessing and a curse.

He often challenges me at my job of rabbit proofing.  It’s a game we both play like chess.  Willingly.  Both of us.  It’s our game and we’re happy to play it as far as I know.  He has nothing to lose.  Oh well.  He chews, I provide things for him to chew, while finding ways to prevent him from chewing things I’d rather he didn’t chew.  Rabbits are whip smart and so is mine.  He’s clever and determined.  He’s cuddly and gentle and has an ever active velvet nose.  The softest and most adorable nose.  He’s my buddy, loping around the apartment as I go about my business of laundry or dishes.  He follows me.  Greeting me when I come home.  Standing in the entry way all forlorn when I leave.

His name is Watership.  I adore him.

His ears are clumsy, floppy but sharp.

He hears everything.

He is an impossibly soft cocoa brown. His eyes are  kind and bright.  If you don’t know him, they look scared. They’re not.  They are warm.  He shuffles and hops to rub his face on me.  Floppy ears, tender, quiet and sweet.  His nose slays me.

He seduces by simply allowing himself to be touched.  Unconditional love and affection as long as he has no reason to fear you.  He knows if you are dangerous.  He knows.

He knows me.  He follows me.  He understands what I will do next.

The truth is, we adore each other.  He’s my Zen.  I hope and venture to believe I’m his.

I love him in a way that is exclusive between an animal and a human.  He knows me and I know him.  There are very few surprises between us.  No mysteries.  He’s my boy.  I adore him.  His peace.  His love.  His velvet nose.

In light of things I’ve been forced to consider finding a new home for him.  My state of shock has been so overwhelming, I haven’t arrived at where to take him or what to do.  I’ve gotten as far as making up my mind to do something that will afford me to reclaim him once the storm has passed.  If I can weather the storm and find a place for him.  It’s been such a sudden and vicious nightmare.

My friend Jonathan is a good guy.  Maybe he can take him until I do my business.  Maybe he won’t ask many questions.  There’s my buddy Tindle but he’s kinda far.  I could trust either of them though.  I need to do this.  Make something up so they’ll just work with me. Promise a good bottle of wine and bring one when I drop him off.

He sleeps with me sometimes and he’s a snuggler.  Between my arm and torso is his favorite spot.  He’s never any trouble, serene and silk.  He breathes soft and embodies docile.  He parks himself and sleeps.  His velvet nose ceases with his slumber.  More or less.

The nightmare resumes:

He slips inside. The key is smooth, the knob twists. He enters and shuts the door behind,  slick and very quiet.  Clean but greasy.

He throws the bolt.

I see it in my head.

The bolt.

It slides and squeaks.  My stomach drops but I am glued.

I smell rotting lamb and garlic.

I’m aware but not awake.  Not conscious.

I am though.  I understand I think.

I breathe shit. Overwhelming. No air in these fumes. He smells homeless. He smells like piss and puke and shit and sweat. It’s a stench so monstrous.  No oxygen.  Pure noxious.

Fuck.

I gag.

Maybe I’m awake.  Am I?

I retch and convulse but the reek won’t allow for my consciousness.  I can’t swim up from the confusion.  Like a ladder I can’t climb.  I’m down.  Not here.

I’m dismayed and disoriented.

What the fuck is this?

I hear him begin to fill the empty ice trays on the counter. He turns the faucet off after the first one and he whispers….. too full. Very slowly, I hear the trickle, he pores a thin stream into the sink.

He says ah.

He moves to the bathroom.

I see the spring loaded roll snap into place as I hear it.

He says ah, again.

I’m confused and groggy.  Like vicodin and cognac.  I don’t want him here.  I loathe the idea.  I need to fight him but I’ve never had less energy.  I can’t lift my limbs or form a thought much less a fist.  I think about sausage biscuits and hash browns.  Green Tobasco and Hollandaise.  I slip into dreams about Dalmatians and scrambled eggs.  Rural milk delivery and the clinking of bottles.  Blue and smokey mountains.  Syrup and ham.

Dogs chasing and barking in the fog.  Mist in a river valley.  Carrots glazed and cooking in margarine, not butter.  I smell new tires.

My dick is hard.  I have to pee.  I’m suddenly afraid I’ll shit myself.

My eyes are crusted.  My face feels fat.  I’m swollen and lazy.

He’s rolling away from me. Out of my bed.

Crusty eyes and blurry vision.

Out of my bed.

What?

Out of my bed and I smell pigs.  Pungent barnyard.

The front door closes.  I hear the key turn.  The bolt clicks.

I kick my sheets off and stumble away from the bed.

He was here, in my head and in my bed.  I’m so frightened already that I want……I can’t tell you what I want.  This is really bad.

Woozy.  Dizzy.  Lead in my limbs.

I smell the copper of blood.  The ripe, almost metallic citrus of blood.  Bright, dangerous tang entering my nose and collecting on the back of my tongue.  Panic quickens me.  I’m frightened and I don’t know why.  Yet.  Oh my, my stomach knows.

My rabbit is dead.

Watership is dead.

He’s been slaughtered.

He’s been sprayed, torn and smeared on the walls of my apartment.

His skin is on the floor.  Like a bag. A sack on the carpet. Ears and all. He was my boy. His velvet nose.

His gore is everywhere.  On the lamp.  The windows are pink with blood.

He slept in his cage at night or he was in bed with me.  His water bottle smashed on the marble mantle. So sweet and docile.  Above the fireplace is a crude scrawl in his blood. It looks Japanese.

I think of that song by The Vapors.  “I Think I’m Turning Japanese”.

There is fur in the wire around the door of his cage, he liked his cage, he came and went willingly, so I understand he struggled violently.

Ever heard a rabbit scream?

I have. Sounds like a baby human.

Did he scream in fear?  Was he afraid?

I break all the way down. Collapse. Fold. Fall. Lose it.

I sob and scream.  I wail like a woman on TV who’s lost a child or a husband.

I am beside myself.  I get what it means to be beside oneself.  I begin to drink gin.  Bombay Sapphire right out of the bottle.  At first it’s ginger and pepper octane distracts me and then it’s medicinal properties amplify my grief.  I sob and wail.  I grieve while snot pours from my head and eventually I vomit nothing but air while my head swims with impossible despair.

He was my boy.  My pal.  My harmless innocent boy.  Never could have or would have hurt or destroyed any fucking thing.  My boy.  Innocent.  Fucking harmless.  What have I done?

Dawn breaks.

My legs don’t really work.

I scrape his remains.

Gather them.

Thoroughly.

I collect them, all I can get or lift or gather, and deposit them in a ceramic pot I made in grade school.  A Home Ec. project.  His skin.  His bones.  I sob and leak mucus and tears.

I don’t know what to do with the bowl so I cover it in plastic wrap and put it in the freezer. I’m disgusted by it but it’s all I have.  I drink until I can’t anymore and then I lose consciousness.  The next day I take to it a pet cremation service and explain he met a lawnmower.  They look at me sideways but I suspect they don’t usually ask questions.  I’m confused because if I saw the mess that is me with a ceramic bowl full of rabbit I’d call the fucking cops.

His name was Watership, I adored him.

As I sit here, I miss him. He was innocence and unconditional love.

There’s a big piece of lumber always propped against the wall by my trash chute. It’s handy for forcing fat bags of trash down the maw. It looks vaguely nautical, like it should be on a medium sized sailboat. It’s been here for the two years I’ve been here.

I take it with me. Back to my apartment.

Afternoon the next day and I still smell his fucking pigs.

I will wait forever for him.

He is fucked.

I’m not sure what he is. It doesn’t matter. I’m going to kill him.

The onus is mine.  The responsibility is mine.  It is my dragon and I will slay it.

We are no longer fucking around.

7 Responses to “Man in picture v2.0 More (chapter three)”