The Hare-Raising Adventures of Non-Essential Jeff of Rhode Island

Jeff lumbered into the kitchen, opened the fridge, grabbed the plastic milk jug, unscrewed its cap, and took a deep swig. If Alison had seen, he'd never hear the end. But she hadn't. Alison wasn't home; hadn't been since the stay-at-home order. Unlike Jeff, a tired, middle-tier analyst, Alison had been considered essential. Jeff had not only been deemed non-essential, but his boss had determined that he was, in fact, wholly expendable. So, he'd been expended. 

Essential Alison—a lawyer who practiced, well, some sort of law that Jeff had never made much of an effort to understand—stayed in an apartment owned by her firm on the Upper West Side. In Manhattan. 

Jeff quarantined at home. Alone. In Rhode Island. 

It was Jeff's non-essential and expendable opinion that Rhode Island was the state most likely to be deemed non-essential. By whom, he couldn’t say. But if there was an overpaid blowhard out there somewhere who made such determinations, someone like Gregory P. Cartwright, III, his all-too-recent ex-boss, he’d bet that Rhode Island would be atop the non-essential list. Maybe Iowa. Iowa seemed pretty darned non-essential to Jeff. 

Why Alison had been asked to stay in Manhattan, the pandemic’s epicenter, rather than come home to her Providence office, Jeff couldn’t say either. Couldn’t say mostly because Alison had been cagey about it from the start until he’d stopped asking. Which was just as well. In the four months since quarantining began, his conversations with Alison had dwindled steadily from daily to every other day to weekly to an occasional two or three word text. Finally, neither of them had made even that meager effort. It had been six weeks since he’d heard from Alison or tried to contact her. Even in a relationship, he’d proven just how non-essential he was. 

Not long ago, while surfing the web, looking aimlessly at

substantial jobless numbers and sparse job listings, he’d come across an article that talked about how many relationships were likely to end during the pandemic. Another casualty of the virus wreaking havoc on the world. Worrying about a relationship at a time like this seemed like such a first world problem but the numbers were staggering. Jeff had long since added his now defunct relationship to the tally. Their seven and a half year on-again, off-again entanglement had been on life support before the world had changed. Now the plug had been pulled and it was as dead as the hundred thousand plus who’d been unable to beat the virus.  

A whisper of chill air across his bare toes reminded Jeff that the fridge door was still open. One more thing Alison would have shouted about. He took another swallow of milk. Jeff grunted. The milk was going bad. The cupboards were growing bare. He’d need to risk a trip to the supermarket sooner rather than later and he dreaded the idea. 

Before the world got sick, Jeff had never thought himself a hypochondriac. Now, though, he was nearly paralyzed by the very thought of venturing outside the safe confines of his small house. He wondered whether it was still hypochondria when everyone around him seemed to be infected. 

Yes, idiot, as long as you’re not among them but keep acting as if you are, it bloody well is hypochondria. Despite originally being from Wyoming—surely another runner-up on the list of non-essential states—Jeff realized that his inner monologue suddenly had an English accent. How peculiar, he thought before correcting himself. Weird. Americans would say weird. And, you, Jeff, are an American. An American who is currently talking to himself. In an English accent.     

Beyond his kitchen window, a flash of furry movement caught his attention. He gazed out into the yard where the grass was overgrown and wild and in desperate need of a mow. His neighbors had all been dutifully attending to their lawns on what seemed like a daily basis, as if they were all competing to be on the cover of Quarantined Homes & Gardens magazine. Jeff hadn't bothered to regularly cut his grass since coming home. As he could barely be bothered to shower, often for four or five days in a row, he sure as hell wasn’t going to worry about mowing his lawn. 

It took him a moment to figure out what had caught his attention. There it was. Nestled in the too tall grass was a bunny. Rabbit, he corrected himself, you’re not five, you wanker.  

It was speckled grey-brown and looked like any common rabbit one would find most of the world over. At least as near as Jeff’s untrained eye could tell. This particular rabbit had small tufts of white fur., Jeff assumed rabbits had fur but wasn’t sure. Was it hair? Was there a difference? Regardless, the patches of white were on either side of its long ears. Its left ear was bent at an angle while its right stood erect and twitched sporadically as it reacted to the noise outside which included, inevitably, a neighbor’s mower. 

Jeff studied the rabbit and got an uneasy sensation that it was watching back. He felt like the animal was sizing him up. Judging him. It just sat there, staring intently at the non-essential, expendable, sad sack excuse for a human being that stood on the other side of the window.  

Jeff thought of the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland and chuckled at the idea of running into the backyard and chasing this common rabbit with one floppy ear down some mystical hole, escaping the world and all its pandemic miseries to some magical land of wonder. Even as he dismissed the silly notion, he couldn’t deny feeling a tug, a barely noticeable but all-too-persistent nudge, to do just that. To run outside, to chase the rabbit, and to get whirled away into a fantastic world of imagination. 

Rubbish, Jeff thought. Absurd. Completely bonkers. 

Jeff spent a full minute staring at the rabbit. What an exceedingly boring creature. It did what Jeff supposed rabbits did. It chewed grass. Its mouth moved at a frenetic pace as it chewed blade after blade. He soon grew bored with the banal spectacle of the grass chewing rabbit and wandered away from the window and out of the kitchen.

Jeff returned to his sofa and scrolled through seventeen new spam messages. He hadn’t gotten a text, call, or email from an actual person for longer than he could remember. Weeks, at least. Maybe months. Nor had he sent any. He’d never had many close friends, just some fairly casual acquaintances who faded quickly once the world ended. 

He flipped through channel after channel of cable television, found nothing worth watching, and finally settled on a rerun of a cooking competition show where each chef is given an odd variety of incongruous food items that they somehow have to combine into a palatable dish. 

Jeff wasn’t sure what appealed to him about the show. He had no talent for cooking, mostly sticking to reheating boxed frozen meals or pulling up to the drive-through. His palate was hardly refined either. He was perfectly happy with a burger and fries and the only thing he knew about more exotic fare was that it probably cost more than he could afford, with a smaller portion size, and wouldn’t taste as good as a cheeseburger. If it couldn’t be found on the Cheesecake Factory menu, which was at least thirty pages long, it probably wasn’t worth eating anyway. 

Despite his limited culinary skill and the taste buds of a fussy four-year-old, though, Jeff couldn’t stop watching the cooking show. Jeff had no idea what beef tartare with encrusted Fruity O’s powder and mashed potatoes made with crumbled white cheddar cheese crackers with a foie gras beurre blanc sauce might taste like; hell, he didn’t even know what foie gras or beurre blanc were, but it sure looked tasty and the judges seemed to think so too.  

After watching three consecutive episodes of the cooking show, Jeff’s stomach told him to stop watching food and to start eating it. He pulled himself up from the sofa, drummed on the stubborn flab of his belly, and made his way back into the kitchen. 

When the world ended, as he'd begun to think of the pandemic, Jeff had been in reasonably good shape for a thirty-seven- year-old desk jockey. There was a modest gym at the brokerage firm’s office complex. Membership to the gym had been a complimentary benefit to all of the tenants in the building and Jeff had been a semi-regular gym rat, trying to visit at least two, and sometimes three, times a week. He ran the treadmill mostly but also lifted a few weights and even punched the heavy bag every now and then. His hour-long break often consisted of twenty to thirty minutes of gym time before grabbing a salad or wrap at the building’s cafe. 

Since losing both his job and gym access, though, and no longer having to walk more than up and down the stairs in his house a couple times a day, Jeff had noticed that he’d put on a little bit of weight. Not a ton. Probably only a few pounds. Five. Five pounds, he thought. Maybe ten at most. Definitely no more than fifteen. Alison had told him that his penchant for frozen dinners and fast food diet would catch up with him eventually. His metabolism wouldn’t protect him forever, she’d said. And, it turned out, she’d been right. Like so much else in his life, Jeff’s metabolism had ultimately let him down. 

A voice in the back of his head, one that he swore sounded a hell of a lot like his mother’s, told him to stop blaming everyone and everything else and to shut up and take a little bit of responsibility for a change. Jeff drooped his head a bit at this admonition. Whether it was his conscience or his long departed mom talking to him, Jeff didn’t like how on target the criticism felt. And he wondered why that voice hadn’t come with the sardonic chastisement of an English flavored accent. 

Jeff opened the freezer and pulled out a Chuck Wagon frozen meal—enough grub to fuel your whole caravan! This carton contained a Chuck Wagon Steak-n-Taters tray. Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes, peas, and a brownie for dessert. He thought about the cooking competition show and wondered for a moment if he had any Fruity O’s cereal or white cheddar cheese Krisp-It crackers, but he was sure he didn’t. Even if he had, he was equally sure he’d have no idea how to encrust his Salisbury steak with fruit cereal powder. He made a mental note to grab a box of cereal and crackers when he next ventured to the store just the same. 

After he popped the food tray into the microwave, he glanced out the kitchen window. Jeff hadn’t intended to look for the rabbit again but there—right there—in the grass, in what sure as hellfire seemed like the exact same spot as before was the critter. Not just any rabbit, Jeff was certain, but the rabbit. His rabbit. Jeff thought for a minute about Harvey, the imaginary six foot rabbit of the eponymous movie. The imaginary six foot rabbit that only Jimmy Stewart’s character could see. He laughed at himself. This was no six foot rabbit. Just a common cottontail and it probably wasn’t even the same one. The news had reported that animals were beginning to show signs of retaking nature now that man was spending so much more time indoors. 

Still, Jeff put his forehead up against the window and stared. He didn’t know what it was about this animal that had drawn his attention earlier in the day, much less now. But he felt a pull towards the little bastard. He studied the rabbit from his side of the pane. It looked much the same as the rabbit who had occupied that very spot a few hours before. It had the same white tufts of hair or fur or whatever on either side of its ears. It had that oddly bent left ear. It looked back at him knowingly, as if they were the only two creatures on Earth that shared a secret. It chewed furiously. And that was it. It didn’t move. It didn’t react to seeing Jeff again. It just sat there. And chewed. 

Jeff shook his head and tried to break free from the wild, nonsensical thoughts that were bombarding his mind. Even if it had been the same rabbit, so what? Maybe the sun hit that patch of grass in just the right way. Maybe there was just the right divot there to make for a comfortable resting place. Maybe any number of explanations beyond the bizarre idea that the rabbit was watching Jeff and waiting patiently for him. Waiting for what? For him to go outside? If he stepped foot outside would the rabbit summon other camouflaged rabbits hiding among the unmowed tall grass of the yard? Would there be a hundred special operations rabbits ready to pounce on him the moment the sentinel rabbit gave the signal? Would their faces be covered with war paint and would they have heavy ammunition belts strapped around their fuzzy grey-brown fur? 

Fur. Jeff was almost sure that it was fur. And that he was losing his mind. The rabbit glared up at him, chewing away. Jeff stared back. “I am not losing my mind,” he said aloud before realizing that he was alone in the house and the only living thing besides himself that might have heard him was the rabbit outside. 

“I am not losing my mind!” Jeff shouted, half hoping that the rabbit actually could hear him. 

Just then, Jeff watched as the rabbit disappeared. It had been there one second, gone the next. There was nothing magical about the vanishing rabbit, though. Instead, Jeff watched in horror as a massive hawk swooped down from out of nowhere, and clutched the rabbit in its razor sharp talons. In a flash, both the hawk and hare were gone. Aghast at what he’d just witnessed, Jeff’s mouth hung agape and he couldn’t take his eyes from the space lately vacated, albeit unwillingly, by the rabbit.

Jeff jumped with a start as behind him the microwave began to beep. He was just about to turn away from the window to grab his dinner when something came crashing violently to the ground. It landed near where the rabbit had been just moments before. Whatever it was rolled into the grass in a tornado of blood and feathers. Wanting a better look, and not trusting his eyes from this distance, Jeff ran to the back door and threw it open. 

There, in the tall thick grass was a hawk. The hawk. Its feathers were matted with blood and one seemed as if it might be snapped completely in half. The bird cried out pitifully and tried to regain its feet but failed. The great broken bird flopped around for a few moments like a dying fish gasping for air before it flounced no more. 

From beneath the huddled mass of hawk, Jeff noticed a slight movement. It was brown-grey where it hadn't been coated in a viscous bath of crimson. The rabbit, Jeff thought. It’s the rabbit! Sure enough, the rabbit pulled itself out from under the hawk carcass and gave a small hop away from its corpse.    

“Arsehole,” Jeff heard a distinctly English accented voice say. He looked around but saw no one. Despite the fact that the voice had been accented, he knew it hadn’t been his own increasingly weird inner monologue that he’d heard. Jeff looked in wide-eyed amazement at the rabbit, now completely sure he’d gone bonkers. 

“Did you...did you,” Jeff stammered. 

“Oh, yeah. I suppose I did say that outloud, didn’t I?” said the rabbit. Jeff thought it must be the rabbit, though its mouth did not move. Not it. Her. The voice was distinctly feminine.

Jeff could do nothing but nod. 

“Ah, well. You probably would do best to pretend you didn’t hear me, eh? Yeah?”  

Jeff nodded again, still in shock. 

“Right. Good. Good.”

“How did you kill that hawk?” Jeff blurted, pointing to the dead raptor. 

“I’m a talking rabbit and you’re wondering how I killed that thing?” she said. “That’s your first question?” 

“I have others,” protested Jeff. 

“I should hope so,” she answered. “But I’ve no time. I’m afraid I’m running quite late. Best be off.” 

“Off?” Jeff managed. 

“Quite. Ta!” 

“Wait!” Jeff nearly shouted. “Off to where?” 

“Why, off to Farflung, of course,” she replied. “It’s where I’m from. And where I need to get back to. I was just here to snack on your grass. It’s quite delectable! But, as I said, I must be off.” 

Jeff spent far less time than he probably should have before asking his next question. Far less time than a sane man might take. But he was talking to a rabbit, so he’d chucked sanity out the window already. “Could I come with you? There’s nothing for me here,” he said, waving towards the house and, really, towards the infected world beyond.

The rabbit sized him up for a moment and considered. “What the hell. C’mon!” 

And that’s how Jeff left his non-essential life behind and went on to live in the magical world of Farflung. 

Just kidding. 

The rabbit quickly hopped away and Jeff chased after her. After a short distance, Jeff saw a swirling, rabbit-sized gateway of energy. The rabbit jumped into it and disappeared. Sure the gateway would expand to accommodate him, Jeff likewise leapt and crashed face first into the ground. From beyond the portal, Jeff heard the rabbit laughing say, “arsehole!”

Non-essential Jeff sighed, climbed to his feet, returned to the kitchen, and ate his lukewarm Steak-n-Taters.