polychrome_lexicon

No. 337: The Rabbit

A human figure, bathed in fluorescent striplights, lay on marble flooring. Skin met stone, and warmth slowly turned into cold. He looked up and blinked.

“Once more...”

Night fell radiantly on open eyelids. The stars were all electric, and hummed a familiar tune, droning like workers. The room was a mathematical equation, missing a fraction.
And the black telephone rang seven times before he answered it -

"Hello"
"Put some clothes on"
- Hung up on him.

The moulded plastic clicked back into place. The telephone sat, like a good little schoolboy, on the large brushed steel table in the centre of the room. He found his clothes on a white shelf and wept discreetly, hurriedly; got dressed.

~

"He's crying"
"He'll stop. Any other... developments?"
"Just exhibiting the usual. Auditory hallucinations. He was still incoherent the last time we tried."
"Yes."

There was a brief pause. The two men flicked through their clipboards and peered through the one-way mirror at their subject.

"Shall we try again?"

~

Mr. O. did up the Velcro on his massive rubber shoes. He knew his name was O because once, he'd seen their notes, and that's what they called him. They used lots of silly long words to describe him. He wiped his eyes and heaved himself up.

"They don’t understand. But I am glad. You are here." Staccato words, childlike intonation. Excited. "What do we want to talk about today?" He spoke through small, ornamental teeth worn to impish points. Frenzyfingers rattled on the steel table; slaughtersmooth and surgical. He looked down and smiled, sadly. "When you took me last night, I saw how beautiful the world is".

A key turned. Huge chrome doors swooped and gaped portentously at the head of the room. The two men paced inside. A startled O hid his imaginary companion and shook like windblown leaves.

The men surrendered to knowing smiles.

“Aw, I think he’s made a friend.”
“In this place? He really is a crazy fucker.”

Once, twice: a rolled sleeve, the curve of an outstretched palm. Giggleglimpses of knifeflash in deep, deep crimson. Callous and godless voices spilled from dry, unloved lips, and for 37 minutes, childlike screams echoed down marble halls.

The men wiped their brows.

“You don’t hurt rabbits,” said O. “He said you mustn’t hurt rabbits and that I am special and he is watching me.”
“Aww, well we both think you’re special, don’t we?”

~

“Wake up, O”
“No, NO… Go away”- flailed his fleshy fingers.
“Hush. They’re gone. It’s me”
“Um, okay” - nodded eagerly.
“You’re going to leave this place”
“Can’t” - shook his head glumly.
“You will. I am your shepherd.”

~

In the observation room, phantom imagery danced and played upon glass and retina alike. The men passed transitory looks at each other across the computer terminal; their mouths slung open somewhat. Smug words harder to come by; wasted breath to further dry their tongues. And they knew there was no red button for palsied fingers to press. The doors had been locked.

~

“The doors are open, O”
“Where am I going?”
“Left”

O’s bearfeet pawed and padded as he shuffled through the doorway and into the corridor, where the odour of disinfectant hung in the stagnant air like a dead bird. A thin metal grid spiderwebbed across the ceiling, veiling mirrored strips and flickering lights lined with insect cadavers. The ventilation fans sucked and gasped like harlots as O noticed the small room adjacent to his. A room like a swollen tick.

“They watched you from there”
“Why me?”
“I’ve watched you too, though they’d never guess.”
“Who are they?”
“Demigods. Now go inside.”

O nodded, vacant but trusting, and opened the door. It seemed less contrived, more door-like than the ones he had grown accustomed to staring at. They used to make him feel inhuman sometimes, now he understood why - they were designed to.

The room was empty, swivel chairs still swivelling with residual inertia. For the first time, O saw his old room from outside. Everything had a subtle brown tint through the one-way mirror, making the steel fittings look uncharacteristically soiled. The table, the pipes. He sighed and left through the back door.

~

When they found him in the foyer, he had a puppy.

“How did you get in here?” Mosley spoke with the righteous indignation of the superior. “He’s got a bloody dog? How’d he get that in here?”

O chuckled at the puppy’s fluffy bellywelly and prodded it affectionately. Mosley gasped, started to walk towards them, and then hesitated.

“He’s got my bloody dog?”
“You brought your dog to work?” asked his partner Watson, knowing his question merely served to highlight the obvious. Mosley didn’t waste time dignifying it with a response. This had to be a trick, or a dream, or some other chimera. “How’d he get your dog, Mosley?"
"How the fuck should I know. Restrain him. Give him sixty milligrams. Get me the dog. And shut up."
"What?"
"Shut it Watson".

O chuckled on as the hypodermic nosedived through his thick hide. “I like your dog” he said. “I’m a rabbit. He said this is how I’d die, but that it would work this time.” O paused. “He said you’d lose your faith.”

Sleep snuck up on him like a lithe thief, and he met it with a smile as he slipped into a dream.

~

The first thing he saw was his angel, clay-faced and gaunt. It swept its threadbare arms in theatrical motions and glided towards a rock pool, impelling O to come and look. An image started to form, stretched over the water’s surface.

Mosley the scientist, slumped against a blood-splashed wall. Around him, an open book of Chinese astrology, a brand new Bible, a torn up psychiatric journal, a gun. O remembered Mosley as an assured man, but he didn't look like that anymore.

Suddenly, something soft stirred amongst the lush grass and brushed against O’s ankles; a white rabbit. But as he leant down to pet it, it withered, like blossom, and died.

At that, the dream ended.

O never returned.

die_daily

First let me say that I thought the title was interesting. I don't know why, and perhaps that's the reason, but numbers in titles intrigue me. So, right then, a patient study this is.

The thing I didn't like about this is that it moved too fast. You have a fantastic opportunity at the beginning to make no sense whatsoever, to make the language disjointed, to talk about strange objects and personify them, and in general to write the opening paragraphs in such a way that it feels and reads like a drug induced haze.

Read Denis Johnson. Angels, in particular. He has this wonderful ability of starting chapters in a haze, so to speak. It's like being lost in a fog of obscurity; it gradually lifts and what seems like nonsense starts to make sense.

So, personally, I would try to give the beginning more atmosphere through language. Make the sentences choppy. Or make them ridiculously long, but readable. Make your language reflect the mood.

One of these should probably go. We're talking about a telephone here, after all. It isn't important enough for two sentences. But if you're trying to say that the telephone looked like a schoolboy to the patient, then just say the telephone is a schoolboy. Write it better than that, but hopefully you catch my drift.

Is his name Mr. O (as in, Mr. Oh) or Mr. 0 (as in, Mr. Zero)?

This could be written better. There are some unnecessary periods in there. I like the made up words, but this paragraph as a whole seemed out of place. It's the only spot thus far that things get rather wierd. I think it needs to happen earlier, and it needs building up. It took me a couple reads to understand this, so it jarred an otherwise good reading experience.

Overall a good start, but it needs to be thought out a little better and structured accordingly.