No, Rabbit
By Alexei Raymond
Certain moments, remembered or imagined, of childhood.
—Archangel, John Updike
White bathed in morning light.
The rabbit’s fur is softer than nearly anything the boy has ever touched. Unlike Monroe’s prickly, short hairs—angular bull terrier that she is, sharp in fur, nail, muscle and bone. Unlike the disappointingly hollow plush toys he has—very few. And an obvious inverse of the rough plastic—hard rubber of his boyish toys. The serene rabbit rests on the reflective tiles of the living room, and where it hops, the boy follows. The father released the rabbit from its cage to allow his child to indulge in barely contained reverence for the rotund fluff of a creature. The tall mother mills about nearby, occupied by matters the boy has not the capacity or will to understand. The mother is a pillar, but the rabbit, these days, is primary.
As the boy follows it—crouching, feet enjoying the sunwarmed tiles—he glances toward his father’s crooked, naked back, where the man sits in front of the computer, apparently at play. Him turned away, face unseen, uninviting, affords the boy the freedom to continue his lagomorphic monomania unchallenged. The boy does, however, at the very least, recognize that everyone is home. Together. It is a weekend, but he is oblivious to that which determines when they all get to stay indoors, like so, and conversely, when they are sent out to the world, to their respective struggles; his kindergarten, his father’s construction sites, the mother’s weepy offices.
The boy doesn't think about the rabbit’s origin, for there is no reason to question much of anything. All simply is. Monroe has existed alongside them, agelessly, so the rabbit must have too. And though Monroe is a huntress and a killer, at the moment she dozes off farther away on the floor—a sprawled body of white, orange, some fleshy pink—no threat to anyone, and certainly not the rabbit. The boy’s tenuous thought hitches then, for if Monroe the bull terrier is Monroe, then the rabbit is…? And he realizes that it is nameless. The realization, somehow, doesn’t bother him. There must be a reason for it; it’s not his place to ask, and he feels no need to christen the rabbit. Perhaps it’s with them only temporarily, for safekeeping. He crouches down low, lower, until he lays his cheek against the floor to look at the rabbit in a sideways, stabilized manner. The rabbit’s black marble of an eye looks at him. In it, the boy can make out the pupil that he is. Funny, pretty. But the eye, despite its lively sheen, seems unseeing, and the rabbit skips forward, breaking line of sight. The boy, before continuing his crucial, instinctive surveillance of the rabbit, remains glued to the floor. Here it's untouched by the sun’s rays, and therefore pleasingly cool. He presses his palms flat against it and momentarily closes his eyes. When he reopens and crawls after the rabbit, he spots moving spots of black on the floor. Then comes recognition.
Ants, ants! They are stark against the tiles. One, two, another. He is more than used to their company in the garden, but to see them where home is, indoors—a sight both thrilling and strange. They wander erratically and one runs in the direction of the rabbit. The idea of the ant crawling under it—into the rabbit’s fur—is displeasing, so the boy scampers after and halts its advance before it can make contact. He picks it up, pressing it between forefinger and thumb, and watches how its mandibles open, shut, open, shut. Antennae haywire in distress. The boy looks to pick up the second ant as well when his mother disrupts the late morning’s lull.
She exclaims, and when the boy veers in her direction, getting up, he too is greeted by the same alien sight. The floor of the living room, which only moments ago seemed like a field of spotless light, is now marked by what can only be described as an invasion. The ants, as if the vast garden has grown too familiar and peaceful in the destructive boy’s absence, decided to march into the living room through the generously open sliding glass doors of the house. Not a mere few scouts, but colony entire. Looking for a scrap. Not in orderly single-file, in formation, as the boy has seen them do outside before he’d disrupt their flow, but in an unstructured, vast horde. And now that they’re inside, in an environment alien to them as their presence there is to the family, they’ve lost their original intent, and are simply wandering, panicked, each ant attempting to trace some scent to make it all make sense.
The boy, watching the minute chaos unfold on their floor, doesn’t move. His mother brings forth a broom, and his father, having risen from the computer, swiftly picks up the rabbit and places it back in its cage, where it sits on the counter. Monroe, too, is roused by the surge of activity. She rises slowly, sleep dripping from her, and climbs onto the couch. The boy skips over to join her there and watches how his parents work in silence, in tandem, to fend off the invasion, sweeping swaths of ants back whence they came. And as he sits there, nervously petting Monroe, he is bitten by a creeping sense of guilt. They must’ve come seeking retribution for all he’s done—surely. So, they know—have the capacity to know. And his parents must know, too, for they’ve seen him at play, have they not? But neither parent’s commentary varies from mild wonderment at the intrusion, or from determining that the glass doors shouldn’t have been opened so wide. The mother sweeps, and the father sweeps, and when it seems like none suspect the boy, his guilt gives way to an appreciation of the unexpected retaliation, a kind of enjoyment. He then realizes he wishes for it to happen again.
Once the living room floor is again spotless, only bathed in less light, with the sun having retreated behind some clouds, the boy approaches the father, who’s already retaken his seat in intense concentration before the computer. The boy nudges his hairy shoulder. His—perhaps greedy—wish is for the rabbit to be released once more, maybe this time in the garden. Only the father, absentminded, half-turning, refuses; the reason given being that the rabbit requires rest, and time to eat. The explanation is unsatisfactory, but the boy doesn’t protest. He walks off, sullen. He walks and walks across the vast living room until he finds his distant mother, and her he asks to watch cartoons. She obliges, and walks him back to the couch, where she switches on the TV and picks the channel airing cartoons in a language he doesn’t understand but nonetheless enjoys. There he sits, and his attention is divided between the scheming boys on TV and the paper-white rabbit, apparently unbothered by its imprisonment. It rests there. Nibbling.
And so, noon turns to after, until the day fades from recollection, with the events keeping it thus far vivid having been concluded.
“Oleg? Privet,1” the man paces around his low-lit bedroom, eyes cast downward, waiting for his father to confirm connection.
“Zaets, privet.2”
“Oh, did I wake you up? Can you talk?”
“Nah, I just—dozed off a little. Yeah, of course I can talk.”
His father’s voice comes through drowsy and wavering.
“Oh, okay, I wanted to ask you something. You know, I was thinking—do you remember that rabbit we used to have? Back when we lived in the house by the cemetery?” A second of hummed thought on the other side, in a distant country, and then—
“No. What rabbit?”
“We had like a—like a small, white rabbit, no? I asked mom, but she can’t remember.”
“Hmpf. No, we didn’t have a rabbit,”
The rabbit’s white fur. The rabbit in the center of that place. The cage on the counter. A softness.
“I mean, we couldn’t, could we? We had Monroe. She’d have eaten it.” Then a chuckle, and more energy in his voice. His father is waking up and easing into a usual confidence.
“Hah, strange… Mom also said that she doesn’t think we had one. But I remember it so clearly. Well.” The man settles by his computer, turning a black bottle of perfume standing there. Empty already?
“Maybe you saw one in kindergarten?” A hint of amusement. Sounds of him shifting.
“No, I don’t… Oh well. Was just wondering. I remembered something. Alright then, davai,3 I’ll talk to you later. Sorry for waking you up. Spokoynoy nochi.4”
Kind laughter in response, an echo of the good night, and call’s ending.
Later that night, the man approaches the rabbit’s silent cage. It sits there, moonlit. Nibbling.
“You were there, weren’t you?”
“Was I?”
“Well, they say I had no rabbit. Both parents, now divorced, confirm independently. But I thought you were there.”
It ceases all movement then, and out the window clouds obstruct the moon’s ashen rays. A shadow wipes the cage.
It’s too dark to make out what rests inside it now.
1Hi.
2Rabbit, hi.
3c’mon
4Good night.
Alexei Raymond chases visions of unspeakable loveliness from a world lost. He is an ardent fan of rabbits, insects, and monkeys. Born in the Middle East, he is currently based in Belgrade. His stories appear in publications such as Blood+Honey, The Crawfish, and Everscribe Magazine. Connect with him at https://x.com/enemyofcruelty.