A Bunny Tale

-- Hey little rabbit. You look like you’re lost.

-- No I’m not lost, said the Rabbit, just temporarily misplaced.

That wasn’t something that usually happened when speaking to animals, the questions to the cat didn’t need answers and fortuitously never got answers.

The rabbit looked him in the eyes and asked for a light. The rabbit was smoking…smoking a cigar, a cheroot to be precise, whilst draped decorously, no, languorously around a gilt picture frame.

He knew that frame, recognised it and the photo it contained from somewhere, but he couldn’t quite catch the memory. A small blonde child, with enormous blue eyes that followed him around the room. Now he was pacing, anxious and also feeling terribly misplaced himself.

What was happening

-- You’re dying, said the rabbit.

He didn’t know he had spoken out loud.

-- You didn’t, said the Rabbit.

-- When you say I’m dying, what exactly do you mean?

-- This is what dying looks like, this is the threshold, the bit just before your heart stops. It’s like dreaming except it’s real. I actually am a talking rabbit.

This was a bit of a shock, unexpected in the extreme. Dying. The word sounded peculiar, especially coming from a rabbit. Why was he dying, he hadn’t known he was ill?

-- You were shot

-- What do you mean I was fucking shot, that can’t be right!

-- With a shot gun

The room spun. At least he thought it was a room. It looked like all the rooms he had ever been in. It spun faster and faster whilst he stood still. He saw flashes and fragments of things he knew, people he had met, places he had been. From the jumble a figure coalesced before him.

-- Who is that fella – the one with the wellies and the green jacket.?

-- That’s the Farmer said the rabbit. The one that shot you.

A shooting accident then, a mistake. Somehow that thought soothed him and he looked again at the angelic child in the picture frame.

-- Perhaps I won’t die rabbit. I think I would like to go and meet that child. I want to go to the cinema, read books, eat out, hug my wife, laugh with my friends.

-- But you don’t have any friends and you never go out. Your wife hates you and she has been having an affair with the farmer

The room wasn’t spinning any more, it was still and silent like a field in the snow. The rabbit blew him a kiss and hopped into the frame, which was now empty. The golden--haired child had gone.

He knew he was weeping, noisily. Then with a flash, he was back in the woods, rain mizzling about him, something wet and slimy oozing from his gut.

-- Ssssshhhhhh

-- Kneel down

He heard the words and felt the cold steel against is temple.

-- Time to go little man, said the farmer,

-- After all, 3 is company and 4 is a crowd.

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