TIME
“Wake up Theodore.”
“He’s a heavy sleeper.”
“Is he unconscious or sleeping?”
“Dip his paw in water.”
“Use a chime.”
“Yes, set the alarm, let’s have some fun.”
“Wake up hunny bunny, it’s me, Florence. Hunny?”
“Is he alive?”
“Well, he is breathing.”
“That doesn’t prove anything.”
“Shake him.”
“Theodore, wake up, it’s time Theodore.”
“It’s not working; he’s in some kind of a trance or something.”
Theodore was slouched against the back of the door in which he had entered. His friends circled about him slapping his face and trying to return some colour to his pale expression. He was breathing and his eyes were ajar, but his eyes looked like two dark spheres, staring off into nowhere and obvious of nothing happening around him.
“Should we call someone?”
“No. Just wait. I’ve seen him like this before. Just give it a minute or so. If need be we’ll sneak him back to quarters. Just give him some air.”
The rabbits all leaned in and started blowing air on his face while beside them; Florence fanned their efforts with a small piece of folded paper.
“I think it’s working, look his face is wrinkling. More, give him some more air.”
The rabbits all huffed and puffed and blew the warm musky tunnel air into Theodore’s face and with it carried the particles of dust swept up by their shuffling feet and the tiny bits of dust and moon granite; directed by the rabbits’ blowing breaths, filled the cracks in Theodore’s eyes, itching him into conscious frustration.
He scratched at his eye and he winced and he cursed, pushing his friends out of his way as he jumped back onto his hind legs and fought to free his sight from the swirling dust about his face.
“We have to go” shouted Theodore.
The other rabbits all looked at each other strangely.
“What are you talking about man?”
“Yeah, relax dude, chill ok? You’re freaking out is all.”
“You scared me, Theodore. But you’re ok now. Must have been a stroke or something. Do you feel ok hunny bunny?”
Theodore stared into the eyes he had known for a decade and yet, it seemed like it was the first time he had ever seen himself looking back, in her reflection. And the look on his face was of pure suspension, of haggard disbelief and he wondered if this was how he had always seemed when he was adrift in the current of her attention; bedding in her affectionate detention.
“What happened man?” asked Rex.
Theodore looked at his friend Rex, a rabbit he had known since he was just a child. And he saw no youth in him whatsoever. And his other friends too, all of them looking over in strange wonder, they too looked so very old and so different to the sound of their voices.
“Did you take some bad acid man?”
Theodore looked at Rex with a riotous stare.
“How did you even get in here? Look at this place. What is it?” said Rex.
“It’s like a storage room or something,” said another rabbit.
“There’s a tunnel,” said Theodore.
“What tunnel?” asked Rex.
“There up ahead. I was just running through it.”
“I think you got some dust in your eye man, there aint no tunnel here. Look around.”
Theodore wiped his eyes and his eyes atoned with the darkness and he could see that the room was no bigger than his closet, just a square meter or two with four enclosing walls, a low roof, not a blinding bright white light in sight, no tunnel for him to have found himself sprinting, nothing, except for a few scratches in the grey moon granite where he sat.
“What were you doing here?”
“I just felt like it, I guess. Did you see anyone in here with me? Another rabbit? It looked like me? Did you see it?”
“It’s just you hunny bunny. I think we should get you home.”
“I must not let them know I’m crazy,” he thought.
He shook his back thoroughly sending more dust into the air and clearing his thoughts of the sound of chiming that was still ringing in his ears.
“What time is it?” he said.
“It’s the end of the day, come on, we’ll get you home,” said Rex.
The rabbits opened the door and looked quickly down the hall to make sure there were no authorities patrolling to counter their sneaking about. As his friends walked up the hallway, Theodore looked back through the left door and into the room where he had been.
It was nothing like he had imagined it and everything like his friends told him that it was. The walls were close and claustrophobic and the room itself was darker than his own perceived imagination.
Where were the lights?
Where were the stampeding lated feet?
Where were the death machines and the sirens of their imminence?
Where was the small animal?
Where was he?
He closed the door and followed his friends along the hallway and out onto the train platforms. The terminal was abuzz with energy and zest and expectation and all of it hinged on so very little; a book to read, a movie to watch or somewhere to sit and drink away their idealistic wishing into a common slur of drunken accusation and unforeseen apology.
“Tonight is gonna be fantastic. Have you heard of these guys?” asked Rex.
“What are you talking about?”
“The Band. Man, what a name, what a band. You’re gonna love em. That’s what everyone is saying.”
“Listen I might give it a miss. I’m really tired. I think I’ll just kick around at home. Maybe I’ll write something.”
“A new song?” asked Rex enthusiastically.
“My book,” said Theodore.
“Hey, good for you man. That’s great. I can’t wait to read your book man. How much have you got written so far?”
Theodore looked pestered by his care.
“It’s difficult. I start and then I start again and you know, I just want it to be perfect. I’m a perfectionist.”
“What’s it about?”
“I don’t know really. It’s hard to explain.”
“Wow, sounds great. Listen if you change your mind, we’ll be at the bar until around midnight. We can come and pick you up if you like.”
“What are you doing?” Theodore asked Florence.
“I might go with them.”
“Ok.”
“Well, I’ll sit with you on until you get off, ok hunny bunny?”
“Fine,” said, Theodore.
The train pulled up and hundreds of rabbit all scampered aboard and they all climbed and scuttled over one another, some looking for someplace comfortable to curl up for a brief nap while others indulged in just another frisky encounter.
Theodore watched as Florence did just that, hopping away from him as he sat by the shaking door and joining a group of rabbits she knew from school that she hadn’t had sex with in years and she called out to Theodore inviting him to be a little more sociable but when he shrugged her off, she went back to catching up with her old friends.
“This is not what I imagined.”
Theodore was staring into the horned rabbits watching blandly as his lover sexed with an awesome sum of strangers and he felt both no desire to join her, no will to have it stopped or no irking for him to turn away. He felt like an incomplete sentence, without adjective, and of no admiring or telling context whatsoever and so he stared at rabbits doing what rabbits did and he thought nothing of it.
“What did you imagine?” asked Rex.
“I always thought something was gonna happen, something grand, something different. I’ve been waiting; my whole life, for something to happen. Haven’t you? I mean, do you feel grown up? Do you feel responsible? And what the hell is that supposed to feel like?”
“I dunno. I never really thought about it I guess.”
“Seriously. I’ve been waiting to feel different, not the way I‘ve always felt. I thought that when we finished school we would think different, that knowledge was something we could wear, like when you put on a jumper and you feel warm, you take it off and you feel cold so you know when you have it on and you feel good for having it on and you use it specifically in places where it pays to have it on, so you’re thankful that you have it and that too feels good. A warm jumper or a cozy blanket on a freezing night are bliss. You can’t deny that you are wearing either of them but everything else, I mean, being a responsible rabbit, having a career, being successful, they don’t feel like anything. Do you remember when we started out?”
“I try not to, no. Man, those days were tough. You shouldn’t think about that kind of stuff. Try to think positive. You’re a handsome rabbit; you’re dating a beautiful bunny, hell I can see you guys getting married one day you know, settling down, monogamous sex, children, secure investments, the works. You should be happy, man, she’s a great catch. You think too much, that’s all. Have you seen The Guru lately? You should book an appointment, seriously. He has this great picture now of this sad bunny rabbit and she has all these real depressing words scribbled about her and it’s really thought provoking, you know?”
Theodore looked right into his friend’s eyes and then through him. He wondered what words might be scrawled upon his belly should anyone dare to take a photo.
“We’re getting older and I’m still here, waiting. And the worst part is I have no idea what I’m waiting for. I felt like this when I was two and again when I was five and again when I was nine and still feel this way and I imagine that this is probably the type of thing you think about just before you die, that you’ve always felt like you were supposed to change, that something was supposed to happen and even though a lot of things happened, really, in the end, none of them actually did. I mean what do we do all day?”
“We burrow.”
“For what?”
“To get the sun.”
“How many years have we been burrowing? How many years have we been digging our paws into this blasted moon? What if there is no sun? What if we can’t dig through? Are you ok living your life in a tunnel, probably dying without knowing if the extent of your labour had worth or purpose? Doesn’t that concern you?”
“I don’t think about it, Theodore. I burrow because that’s what I do. It’s what we do. We’re rabbits and rabbits burrow and we have a purpose. It’s enough to believe that there will be a sun on the other side. Do I think there is a sun? Of course there is, there has to be?”
“Why, Why does there have to be? Prove to me that there is.”
“Prove to me that there isn’t. This is hope, Theodore.”
“It sounds stupid to me.”
“Well if there’s no sun then why are you doing it? There has to be a light side of the moon. There has to be. I believe in it and I don’t care if you don’t. Look can we talk about something else?”
“The only thing that ever changes is the colour of my petals.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“What were you doing in that room?”
Theodore’s desire to respond felt as small and empty as where he was found.
“Burrowing,” he said.
“So you’re not coming to the show then?” asked Rex ending the debate.
Theodore looked at Rex with a tired expression.
“No,” he said. “I won’t be going to the show.”
A small mangy rabbit hobbled up towards Theodore and Rex and stopped just shy of their kicking paws and he held out his own with his sad eyes sinking deeper than a pirate’s treasure, anchored towards his sad little paws that were all dirty and his claws, chipped and worn away.
“Please sirs, I am so hungry. I do not want your money, just a crumb or even; if you can spare it, the bits of food that catch in the corners of your mouths and in the joins of your teeth.”
It was amazing how a rabbit’s eyes could seem so large and eclipsing when they were sad or feigning a great sadness and Theodore pushed his hands into his pockets and felt and heard the mashing of silver coins and there must have been some educated magnet inside his pants being controlled by his mind because as much as he felt some primal desire to help this starving rabbit, he couldn’t lift his hands from his pockets and he felt like he was dreaming as if he needed to scream but every time he opened his mouth, it would offer him no service.
And he felt exactly like this right now, having a burning desire to give and an educated recurrence to give not.
Theodore shook his head in some automated display as if he were shooing a fly or fending a wayward drunk; some vial pestilence or a physical and terminal threat. But this poor little rabbit was neither and the threat in itself was the feeling that he had deep down inside of him.
“We don’t have any money. Go away. Go on, get” shouted Rex.
Theodore’s hand clenched the coins and he imagined that he had the courage, should the small starving rabbit return, to pull the coins from his pocket and give them to the tiny beggar because that was what he wanted to do but it was not what he was capable of doing and so, as the small starving rabbit turned away and hobbled along the train looking for some congenial red eyes, Theodore followed him with his own sight and said nothing. He held onto the coins, promising to give them away should young and hungry rabbit simply turn in his direction. But he had no voice to call out to assist and so he imagined it had all been very different.
“You see, this is what I’ve been talking about all along. The government should be doing something about these poor rabbits. It’s not fair that they hobble around train by train with their big sad eyes and their grumbling bellies with their paws out begging for scraps and money. It’s not fair. I mean, I work hard for my money and they just have to sit around all day feeling sorry for themselves, blaming everyone else for their plight. And you know they’re just lazy. They don’t want responsibility. It’s easy to be poor. You just sit on your bum all day long with your hands in their air. Try working, doing something for a living, having something at stake. Everyone wants something for nothing. Don’t you think?”
Theodore said nothing.
He might have agreed on some learned principle, but he couldn’t mouth a single word. He felt in every way, abstract. And so he clung to the coins in his pocket as if they were all that he had and all of the meaning he had every known were now scrunched in his little bunny hands and he wished he had the gall to just throw all of it away, but in no direction other than someone else’s face.
The train pulled into the station and Theodore said nothing as he hopped away from his seat and ignored the waving and air kissing of his girlfriend and the air slapping of his friends as his little paws touched the cold marble of the station and an air-conditioned breeze swept through the caging tunnels and he thought he could see, in the midst of the black, there just beyond the headlights of the train, deep within the cavernous tunnel, a small and pudgy and hostile looking face, staring right into his eyes.
“Hey Theo, remember we have that show on tomorrow night. Don’t you flip out on me. I need my vocalist on fire. I’ll pick up round seven. I can feel it, man, this is gonna be the one. We’re gonna get signed I can feel it. We’re gonna be rich baby” shouted Rex as the train’s doors closed and the giant mechanical carrying thing shuffled off into the dark tunnel.
He stayed for a second looking into the tunnel and looking for that black and white face, the one that had been haunting him for so long, the one that had been busy undoing the years of his sure binding. He looked at where he had seen The Badger staring back at him, but the feeling of acrimonious spying was now gone as the darkness was no longer perturbed by that cranky old badger and his belligerent complaining eyes.
But he wished The Badger were still there.
And so he walked in a way that was like a cripple dragging himself back to his waiting chair and it looked as if the i
maginary springs that all rabbits seemed to possess were; in Theodore, neglected or omitting.
There was a strong gale blowing through the vents. Theodore brushed up his fur and shivered away the cold that dampened his skin. He went to undo the locks to his apartment like he always did; taking the key from around his neck and holding it so the bottom was at three o’clock so it would need one swift and slight turn to slide into its place at six.
Theodore pushed his hand towards the lock and the pressed against twelve and six and it slid straight in and he stopped for a second and he lowered his little paw and he stared at the lock and watched the shiny and silver ‘T’ dangling from the end of a chain that was tied to a ring that wound through the key itself and it swung back and forth like a pendulum and it ticked and it clicked as it spun to and fro like the beating heart of a grandfather clock and his eyes followed; to the left and to the right, and as it slowed, so too did the racing that had been dashing about in his mind.
He had never turned a key from twelve to six. Not once in his life had ever he encountered something as aberrantly rare as this.
He thought about Florence and he imagined her being someone whose name was only brought up in some past tense and how perfect that past would be if her act had ended and he had staged some new obsession since that ending to now when he was looking back with distant appreciation. And as he thought about her as someone he had known and as someone whose burdens he had once attended to as his very own, he didn’t think about her with any consolidated feelings whatsoever.
He saw her face as an event, as a period of time or a group of periods of time; spent time, wasted time, time wished away, time spent waiting for something to start, for something better to come.
He wondered how far he would have to turn his paw to move the key from twelve to six. Would he need to turn the key twice? Or could he do it in just one twist?
The pendulated ‘T’ slowly drew its swing to a fancy stillness. Theodore stared through the silver letter at a splinter in his door that was sticking out of the frame. The door was blue but the splinter underneath; in the part that had broken away, was painted a different colour.
Though it was undeniable that the door was blue, it appeared to him now that it had once been black.
“Good evening Theodore.”
He could hear the voice and he knew the face that had shaped the words so he felt no pining to turn around. He nodded his head, still staring at the oddly coloured slinter sticking out from the door.
“Tis a fine evening to be coming home, wouldn’t you say?”
He said nothing.
He lifted his paw to the key and turned and the door opened without a single twist, creeping open, spilling free of his unready paws. And then; as he stood beneath the towering frame, an eerie silence wept upon his ears.
He hadn’t locked the door.
He went in and sat down in front of the fireplace. He always left enough wood to burn through a working day so that when he returned he would only need to gently place a handful of kindling or a small yet generous piece of wood to bring the fire back from the breath of extinction and bring a subtle texture to the dim light within his apartment and he sat in front of the fire warming the pads at the bottom of his paws and his fur brushed and shivered as the warm air massaged his freezing skin and he listened to the sound of raindrops from an old tape machine for there was nothing more soothing than the sound of rain from inside of one’s cozy warm home.
Then, through the sound of light rain splashing against slippery stone came the deafening chorus of bells tolling in their hundreds and thousands; the sound of shapely metal being clamored and hammered and oh the bells they rang and they clanged and they dinged and they sang and it was less like a song and more like an obliging verse and faces pressed against front paws and eyes looked to the front and important things were surely about to be said.
Theodore turned on the television and the light stung his eyes and the sound of the anchor quizzing an engineer about a recent collapse in one of the sub tunnels, it caused an uncomfortable concern to his ears and he tried to change the channel and to dim the light but the buttons; though pressing, had no effect and as much as he slapped the control against the palm of his paw, nothing was doing.
The batteries were dead.
The news then flashed images of new tunnels being burrowed and they believed that we might have passed the core and that from that point on, it would be a short travel away from reaching the other side and channeling the sun’s light through. The anchor and the engineer looked thrilled and their eyes lit up like neon lights as they exchanged congratulatory glances.
The television then played a popular meme; an image of a beautiful looking rabbit, her hair tied in a pretty pink bow, her lips glossed red and her long lashes, like sexual whips, painted midnight black, half closed as if she were bowing into a blush and her cheeks were just the slightest bit red and her lips were full and alluring and her eyes; though partly shaded by her lashing lashes, spoke of contradiction for she was a thing of beauty yet according to the words etched on and about her, she felt not as if others imagined her being.
She was beautiful yes, but the words on her chest said that here breasts were too small and she was striking yes, but the words on her paws read ‘weak’ and ‘fragile’ and should she open her mouth the world would surely listen but on her lips it was written ‘I’m afraid I have nothing to say’ and in her paws was a sign; a simple white card, with the words ‘I’m ugly’ and ‘life, is to hard’.
Theodore didn’t see the television. He was pouring himself a glass of whiskey and looking at a white page sitting on the table and beside it a black pen that was splotching ink from its tip onto the bottom of the page. He drank from his glass and placed it down on the table and sat in front of the blank page. He tried to think of something to write but his mind felt stained and so he scrunched the paper up into a ball and lay the pen back down on the table with its tip drawn upon a corner of another blank page and he took his glass and he went into his room and though he could have done many things, he chose instead to close his eyes and to lay his head on his pillow.
He might have wanted so much to speak, but he had neither the practice nor the intention and so he kept the momentum he had always known; feeling as if something was about to snap or collapse and instead of getting out of harm’s way, learning to appreciate and to live with this new unsettling feeling.
Then he went to sleep.
Dark Side of the Moon Page 4
