This is an unpleasant place, I do not recommend continuing to read. I might imagine The Jack King rules here, but frankly I do not know.
The dream started when I was in a small compound with a couple other homes of Mediterranean style surrounded by farmland. We seemed to be growing some vines and livestock. The areas was mountainous and covered in pine trees. The houses were composed of stone and plaster, chipping after years, a terracotta tile roof completed the look. The placement was haphazard, with a road leading up to an oblong cul-de-sac where the buildings crowded, as though afraid of the world outside.
I was with another man, we were busy trying to get the chickens ready. We walked down the road away from the buildings and turned a corner to the right to find the chicken pen empty. We stepped inside to search. That is when the Rabbits came. We shut the door and began to huddle, my head pulled down by the man I was with. He whispered the rules to me as they pressed their bodies against the mesh of the chicken coop:
- You mustn’t ever look at them. Huddle and do not stare.
- You must be quiet, your speech is a curse.
-
The third rule, the most important one, was jumbled. I was given it but the dream and the chaos distorted it. Perhaps I was never meant to know how to be safe.
So we huddled, I felt one of them drip through the fine mesh. They were next to us. I shivered, I tried to be strong, but I peeked. That’s when I saw them, and that’s the mistake I made. They were tall and shadowy, with a sharpness that bled into rounded shapes from moment to moment. Their limbs were long and thin, with ears sticking over their head, shifting in place and time without reason. As my eyes set upon them the entire building burst into flames. All around us the flames spread rapidly. We lost the chickens, the house, and the man who had taught me the rules.
I walked into town to talk to people. We were few, our towns spread out through the mountains but strangely built up where we lay. Libraries, roads, street lights, shops, and even doctors. People were sympathetic, talking of how terrible a loss that was. But as I talked to people I kept getting similar answers about the Rabbits. That we must be careful. That they raid us from time to time and we must know the rules. That there are towns that disappear and towns that appear, the new residents having heard it’s good living. An undercurrent of fear slithered through the thoughts of the townsfolk, the mayor very intensely warning me against disturbing things in his town.
So I left in search of the remains of a town that had been taken, then I understood the mayors apprehension at drawing attention.
It was, by god, it was awful.
I was captured as soon as I got too close walking down the well-maintained freeway. The sensation and experience was disorienting, my body weakening and my mind fogging. My clothes replaced with rags too thin to keep off the chill.
We were kept strewn across the forest floors, denied the homes we once had, save those that would suffer more in sight of the unused abodes. We were not chained by physical bonds, instead it was by the rules and by our own physical weakness. I placed in the middle of an asphalt road on the side of a mountain, surrounded by trees on all sides. There I learned the truth. The rabbits fed on fear and suffering. The rabbits owned the mountains and we were merely cattle that grazed its resources. They were not “raiding” us no more than I was raiding the chicken coop for eggs. They cultivated towns because we formed complex social webs, each connection another link that could be fed off of until they withered.
Once they revealed their ploy they would wander through our ranks, tormenting us with their mere presence and the implicit threat of reality retaliating if we failed the rules. They kept us in rags and fed us the minimum to keep our bodies alive. The food itself was foul, having been gathered by feeding others and making them vomit. I watched some slowly decay into the forest floor, becoming fertiliser for the next wave of plant life, their soul having been worn down into nothing to feed the rabbits.
At first I resisted, but I was so quickly weakened that I knew I would die if I did again. Near me was a woman, one I had found who had siblings near us. The rabbits did not like her, I thought, she kept our spirits up. Perhaps the rabbits adored her ability to make more hope to feed upon. She believed we could get out though, but no one had the strength. She looked at me.
I knew her plan then and I wept. I wept for her loss, I wept for my sin, and I wept for the stain on the others in turn. She killed herself, opening her body like a corpse flower whose petals we feasted upon, our tears watering the seed of the next tragedy.
I gathered the women’s sister and we walked away. Each step a doubt chased us. Was this truly escape or just the next step in some unfathomable recipe?