The Rabbit

I can hear no feel his little heart beating, like a bird bouncing off the bars of its golden cage. It pounds in his rib cage, pumping sweet blood into his body, his legs, his feet. Pulsing in his veins, the beat of life reverberates into the ground itself. It beats with fear and more importantly excitement. Fear of this place, my home, my prison. Excitement for what may be awaiting on the other side. Greener grass? Riper fruits? Perhaps a little female companionship?

It’s alright, my little friend. The unnatural aura you feel surrounding this expanse in the woods is just that, a feeling. Your overactive imagination giving false warning of place that is just a harmless dale in a harmless thicket. Dale maybe too grand of a word, really. It’s more of a teeny clearing, a space between trees. It would take mere seconds to cross and the rewards waiting on the other side, well you can easily imagine. And you’re right, my concerned chum, my bothered little brother. All that you could possibly want or need await you on the other side! Just take a step. One step on the path to paradise. I see you’ve got your foot up, ready to take the first step to a grander world! The first step of just two or three to a place that… that, uh…

Oh, what I have become? Pleading with a rodent to step into this dead patch of fell earth. I ruled nations, feasted on the most succulent sustenances! The aristocrats of aristocrats begged for an audience with me! And here I am begging a bunny (that is obviously oblivious) to wander onto my field of misery so I that I might have the slim chance of dragging him down into my hell to gnaw on his no doubt flea infested hide. But there will be blood and the crunch of bones. And to my great chagrin I crave both. I’ve eaten nothing but dirt and worms for centuries and I want to feel the warmth of life draining down my parched throat. I want to devour it! In life I never craved blood, not really. I was more of a pacifist, I swear. My followers? Well they were a little more eager to spread the word, my word and they didn’t take kindly to being refuted. So, I suppose I spilled my fair share of blood in life. It’s inevitable when attempting to change the world. The whole omelet and egg thing, you understand. But I wasn’t a tyrant, no bloodthirsty despot hell-bent on bending the world to my whims. Not like the other diabolic devils buried in this deep-rooted dead-fall. Yet here I am. Entombed with the vilest of villains. A tragic martyr doomed to eternity for imagined crimes imagined by the unimaginable. I have only my wit to keep my sanity and sometimes I fear both are slipping away. 

But what’s this. The rabbit puts his paw down. His lust wins over his better judgement as is often the case. Another step, yes, my flavorful friend another step and you’re almost there. Almost there…

A skeletal hand erupts from the yellowed grass and dirt mounds, grasping the terrified rabbit by the skin of his neck. An equally skeletal arm wrapped in bandages propels the rabbit into the air as a decimated face breaches the earth. Dust rains from eyes and nose as it rises. Clods of dirt drop from its yawing mouth as its neck, swathed in aged yellowed rags stretches and creeks upward. Vapors rise off these parts as they are exposed to the sunlight.  Smoke roils from the widening mouth, the teeth barely brushing the rabbits kicking hind leg when suddenly, maddeningly its hand is entangled by a vine and yanked back. Its neck is likewise wreathed by a root that has shot up from behind it and pulled in the other direction. More roots unearth themselves to wrap around the thing that has emerged from the ground. Another vine snakes down from a branch and gently wraps itself around the rabbit, lowering it back to the shaded ground from which he so foolishly strayed.

Noooo! Wait, come on, y’all. I just want to pet him. Yeah, just pet the little fella. Maybe give him a little kiss…ugh

The roots pulled tighter at this obvious lie dragging the mummified corpse back into the ground. The rabbit hops off back into the relative safety of the Black Forest. The corpse morns its lost dinner as it struggles against its captors.

I swear, I just wanted some company. Anything other than these wretched wretches you’ve so wrongly confined me with.

Oh, shut up, Buel. A new voice commands. We’re so sick of your nonsensical ramblings. Half the words you so carelessly string together mean the opposite of what you think they mean!

You cram it, Dorris. The corpse now known as Buel retorts. You haven’t spoken in a century and in all that time shut up is best you came up with? Why haven’t you rotted yet?

The trees finish dragging Buel back into the earth and yet another voice enters the conversation. Will you ever learn, Buel? You’re constant need to rage against the trees puts us back decades each time. They can’t be reasoned with or bribed. We must find another way to freedom.

Set us back? Set us back from what? You old bags of bones haven’t even talked in decades and you expect me to believe there is some grand scheme in place? Stop talkin’ shit and go back to eatin’ it, Drago.

All class, as usual, Buel. You’ll always be that backwoods snake charmer who conned the unwashed masses into rioting. How many Noble Families did you murder? You belong here more than any of us. Drago seems bored, having had the same conversation dozens of times. Buel would retort but his mouth is once again filled with dirt. It usually takes a little longer for the one hundred or so wrapped bodies buried here to dissemble into petty bickering and name calling, but what more can you expect from the egomaniacs. All infamous depots, tyrants and cult leaders (like Buel said) the bodies buried in the Floating Cemetery of the Black Forest were planted here over a thousand years. The benevolent sorcerers of the past bound their souls to their bodies so they could never reincarnate to the next life. Spells tattooed on their skins and etched into their bones, swathed in bolts of cotton adorned with even more spells keep these evil folks under wraps and under the ground. The very trees of the Black Forest were enlisted to keep them from leaving its boundaries. During sunny days, the trees release their hold of the corpses. Even trees need a break from viciousness these things radiate. This allows the prisoners to dig through the earth, ever crawling through the dirt and rocks to nowhere in particular. Allowed to move, but never allowed to move toward the living. The sun painfully sears into any prisoner daring enough to break the surface hence the smoke rising from our new friend, Buel. During the winter months the prisoners are frozen with the ground. There is no limit to their sentence, nothing to look forward to except maybe the occasional wayward rabbit.

Around 888 BB (Before Bunny)

Vincent Victor Buel was born in the tree covered mountains surrounding Lake Krazo on the eastern side of the continent. The last son of 8 to a fire and brimstone type of preacher and his snake handling wife, they were very poor and more than a little bit nuts. Little Vinny was given his first snake to shake at the congregation at the tender age of 8, a recurring number in his life. Like most everything else, the grey viper did not like to be shaken and quickly lashed out at the boy. Vinny was bitten twice in the neck and once more in the ear. His mother, all wild haired and wide eyed ripped the viper from where it hung on his ear, ripping the ear in half and splashing the first row in blood. The parish collectively gasped, throwing up warding gestures they fully expected to see a very soon to be dead 8-year-old foaming at the mouth and contorting in pain. But Little Vinny simply rubbed his neck, took the viper back from his mother and bit it’s head off before anyone could stop him. The crowd bowed as his father hoisted Vinny into the air in triumph! His boy was the chosen one! That was the only explanation for his son's survival (that and the fact the his father had drained all the snakes of their venom the night before). Little Vinny would lead the parish out of despair and into prosperity, especially his parents. Soon the word got out and hundreds of faithful filled the pews each week to see the miracle child. The family went from a small cabin church to giant tent that could be moved to where the people needed the most hope and had the most money to give.

This is how Buel was raised, in front of men speaking in tongues and fainting women. His father yelling and dancing to (and stealing from) desperate crowds and his mother throwing deadly snakes at him. Eventually Little Vinny grew into a tall, lean man with a quick smile full of big shiny teeth and talent for riling up a crowd. He traveled outside of his parish to his father’s great pride and envy. His followers grew, entire towns pulling up stakes to stay near their messiah. The Reverend Buel would preach of the equality of every man and every man’s right to their share of the pie. The kings, queens and their noble lackeys were no better than the men and women following him. They were not more smarter than them, god did not love them more. They were just the spoiled brats of men that stole more land and killed more people than most, naming themselves kings. Were there great kings? Sure, some of the bastards were actually pretty ok at bringing law and order the untamed lands. But these kings were few and far between and just because they were great does that mean their children would be great or their children’s children? Greatness isn’t necessarily genetic. And some of these kings married their sisters and some of the sisters married their uncles and that shit is just gross. Buel prophesized the end of kings and nobility and anyone holding down the people’s right to freedom, justice and money. All this sounds pretty good. Sounds fair and logical. Rational people could bring about the changes Buel preached about without resorting to violence and the outright hatred and murder of those currently running the show, right?

Of course not. Things got out of hand quickly. Mobs rushed the castles and estates of nobles executing the king, his wife, his maids and butlers, his dogs, his house plants. Those who weren’t outright beheaded or torn apart by the mob were thrown in the deepest dungeons of their own castles to await trials that never came or if they did were little more than an excuse to accost the poor bastards until they were burned at the stake or drawn and quartered. Buel was fine with all of this. Those rich pricks got what they deserved for looking down their noses at us. That was until he saw the kids being tortured and wasted along with the adults.

He quickly (not quickly enough in some cases) ended the mob rule, set up a tribunal of religious councils, his family mostly and urged actual trials. The main tyrants had already been deposed of and the rest of the so-called nobility didn’t need a killin’ right away. Lock them up, set charges against them and try them. This would hone the new justice system and make precedents for future crimes against the people. This also gave Buel time to get the children out of harm’s way. Unfortunately, some of Buel’s believers believed a little too much and when it was discovered that Buel himself was smuggling the hated nobility’s children out of the city they turned on him. His own family sentenced him to death (they never really liked the kid anyway) but the sorcerers got to him first, dragging him out of his cell in the middle of the night before he was to be executed. These mages strapped him down and carved strange words and symbols into his flesh down to the bone. He was smothered in tar and wrapped in long strips of cotton, thrown in the back of a wagon and jostled along for a seemingly endless trek without food or water. For weeks on the road, no matter how hungry or thirsty he got his pleas were ignored. He thought he would surely be dead soon and he welcomed it. He didn’t die but was buried just the same. Pulled out of the wagon into the blinding light he was able to see the branches of a large tree directly over him, an evil looking, much scarred, reddish monkey staring down at him with what he swore was a knowing grin. Then he was thrown into an 8-foot deep grave and spit on by 8 magicians. The last thing he saw was dirt cascading down on him and his own father, the man who had started him on this path to hell looking down with no expression, not guilt nor sorrow on his stone face.

Now having had centuries to reflect on that horrific day Buel realized he deserved this time, maybe not endless time but a few hundred years of pittance for the chaos he had caused. Not that it mattered, the festering community was right. The trees did not care who was sorry. The sun would not hide behind a cloud because Buel had seen the error of his ways. He was stuck here. He sighed and missed his little rabbit friend.