Dream

I had a strange dream in which I was a younger boy. My father drove me to the dentist’s and went upstairs to arrange an appointment for me.

Meanwhile, from downstairs outside the building, I curiously peered through a store’s glass walls and saw a bunny-rabbit and a dog. The run-down store decorated with nothing but old rags and brown thatches of straw, seemingly deserted, as if it were near bankruptcy.

I admired the bunny, who was pretty cute, though I really wanted the nice-looking, warm fluffy dog. My parents always refused my requests for a pet, as they considered animals dirty (wait, aren’t humans technically members of the animal kingdom too?), and if the shopkeeper caught me poaching, I would get in big trouble.

But I just couldn’t resist! This was my chance of a lifetime. So I pushed open the glass door of the store, and out came the bunny.

Ah, get back in you little bunny – I don’t want you! Why didn’t the dog come out? I suddenly realized something and closed the door, locking the

bunny out with me. If the oh-you-think-you’re-so-clever dog sees the bunny, probably its close friend, outside, wouldn’t it want to jump out too?

That said, I held the bunny with both hands near the ground, not so close that it could get away but close enough that the dog could see it.

Muahahaha… success! The dog widened its eyes, round and dark, slightly elevating its body level as it wagged its shaggy

tail. I opened the door, but the dog still seemed suspicious of me.The bunny isn’t trapped here, you know; I’m a friend to all animals.I let the bunny back in, and while the furball pitty-patted its little paws about a foot into the

store to chew on some brown grass, it changed direction, and the dog followed it out too.NOW! I slammed the door shut! Wait… no, no! Augh, after I blinked, the dog wasn’t outside. Maybe it ran away, somewhere far.

Nah, it had probably leapt back the instant I was about to close the door, with the same quick reflexes as a squirrel.

I saw my father coming back downstairs, so I picked up the rabbit as he opened the door, and I stuffed the rabbit into the pocket of my jacket. A rabbit was better than nothing. He opened the car door, and I sat in the back seat as he drove us back home.

On the car, I wondered what I was going to do with this pet. Is it running out of breath in my pocket? I opened my pocket just enough so that I could see the rabbit’s head poke out of the hole, and it wiggled its round head at me. It was still alive and well.

When we got home, my mother was cooking. My father went back into the garage to do his business, in which I never involved much. Like that, I was left alone – well, not really alone, considering that I had my bunny friend with me – on the carpet in a room close to the kitchen.

I took out the bunny with both hands, the lower half of its fat and plump body swinging in front of me. As I tickled it, its body, soft as a cotton meatball and fleshy as a soft pillow, squirmed in my hands.There appeared hovering over its head and over its neck (or, at least close to its neck, as I couldn’t exactly identify where the fat rabbit’s neck was) two bars with numbers next to them.

I remember a science-fiction graphic novel in which the protagonist wore some magical wristband whose colour indicated how she feels – happiness, anger, love, or sadness – and could be used by her futuristic robot boyfriend for psychological data collection. How creepy. She doesn’t mind. She’s a human. My rabbit won’t mind either. Nobody told me what these bars on my rabbit meant – am I dreaming? This is so strange – though I think it had something to do with the aforementioned emotions of that girl from the manga.

When I hugged the rabbit, the top bar went completely green 100% and the bottom bar hovered between 70% and 90%, though I couldn’t get it to fill up. The rabbit rolled up into a ball in a fetal position. I let go, and it came out of the ball. As I grabbed its ears and yanked on them as a test, the rabbit started panicking, frantically flapping its limbs for me to let go. The bars went down to the red 20%s to 30%s. I let go again, and as it crawled on the ground, the rabbit crawled around, the bars bounced back to around the yellow 50%s. No matter with how much love I play with and cuddle it, the rabbit’s lower bar could never fill up the brink of the max. Why?

Maybe it was hungry. I sneakily ninja-ed my way into the ceramic-floored kitchen, my alert-though-too-occupied-to-care mother glancing at me for a sec, and I arrived at a counter with two brands of cereals.

In one box, there were crispy corn flakes shaped like mini-circular potato chips, and in the other, there was a mix of round cracker balls and other oddly-shaped assortments of breakfast addendums. Both varieties were about the size of marbles, though I chose the former, the crispy corn flakes, because I thought it would be easier to chew on for my rabbit. I brought a handful back, and oh god, the rabbit ate them all in no time. It must’ve been really hungry!

That afternoon, my father came back and brought over a few guests, including my sister – thinking about that now, I am surprised that I didn’t notice anything weird about having an extra sister, even though it was only a dream – and knowing that my sister would probably make a huge fuss about the small rabbit, I hid the rabbit in my brown leather jacket and put it in a dark, black corner of a pitch dark room.

Poor rabbit.Anyway, I entertained the guests, and however long it took whether it was an hour or several

hours, after they were gone, I was relieved to be able to get back to my rabbit. As I reached into the coldness and pulled out my rabbit, two awfully scary things struck me.

The first was that my rabbit was quivering cold, and shaking all over in hunger, for I hadn’t fed it in such a long time. It was shivering so badly, and in a brief moment it disappeared from my hands. Oh no! It must’ve run away! If I didn’t find it in time, it would be lost forever, probably starved and dead before it can find food again.

I felt so sad. Depressed. I was indoors, but I felt like it was raining outside. Somehow, I knew.What could’ve I done? I searched and searched, but found no rabbit. Then, I went to the kitchen and prepared some typical rabbit food so the rabbit can eat them when it comes back to me: small and soft lettuce and baby carrots.

The other issue at hand was that I had stolen something from a convenience store. Okay, it wasn’t actually a convenience store; it was more of a retired shack, though I like to call it a convenience store. I telephoned one of my good buddies who was a badminton player.

Ah, don’t worry about it, man! It’ll be fine! Who is stupid enough to spend their time trying to find a useless rabbit? And even if the guy wants his rabbit back, he’s not going to be able to find you.

Even after hearing his reassurances, I felt like a criminal. I had stolen something, and therefore I was a criminal. There is no excuse for stealing. Never. It is what it is.

Yet the cute rabbit had my heart torn, and I couldn’t stand going back to the store to return my awesome friend. To justify my actions, I tortured myself with the shame the storekeeper would scorn me with, the disappointment from my parents in my evildoings, and the mistreatment the guy would’ve given the rabbit in that dirty place.

To be honest, I was probably abusing my rabbit even worse by malnourishing it. When it came back, I would be sure to feed it as much as it needed and never let it be hungry again. Okay, maybe I should limit its food portion to some extent at least so that it wouldn’t kill itself by overeating. Animals don’t know when to stop eating, and if they get too fat, they can die from their digestive systems overloading.

If only it would come back! That idiot rabbit! How you kill me with guilt.I don’t think the police could and would bother to narrow down a list of possible suspects. Since

I only told myself and my friend, one of my close confidantes who I didn’t think had any reasonable intention, no personal benefit he could gain, for ratting me out, and also because I knew he certainly isn’t the kind of shallow friend to do such a lowly thing – no, I had full trust in his benevolence – I was at ease.

At that instant, my rabbit hopped back into my lap.Lord, thank thee! How can I thank thee enough? I was at that moment enlightened to heaven.Okay, no, get back down to earth. You’re still an earthly petite human being. Now, first things

first. My rabbit was still quivering, so I ran over to my food stockpile hidden under a children’s green plastic table and retrieved for it the food.

It consumed it all.I ran into the kitchen – my mother was gone by now, for she may had gone to sleep, though

whatever reason it was, I was not seriously concerned – and grabbed a few more carrots. My rabbit continued nibbling on those, though it stopped shaking and slowed down its eating. I was afraid of it overeating, though I also didn’t want it to die – yes, a hyperbole, though that’s how I felt inside when it was so badly quivering and lost from my sight – either. What could I do?

Water. It needed water.I scooped up a jug of water, and dumped it over my rabbit. Oh geez, what have I done. The

water soaked the rabbit, as it shrunk to about one-tenth its original size. Now it was small and hard and un-furry and shaped almost like a carrot. I picked it up, and accidentally broke off half its body.

Oh my god. What have I done? I’m so sorry.I tried to re-attach the two orange, carrot-shaped halves of its body, but it didn’t work. Have I

committed murder? This is the worst dream ever.The rabbit still slothed its body parts around, so it seemed alive for the very least. Maybe, like

one of those weird lizards, it can regrow its body parts if I feed it enough. Okay, that’s reasonable. Sigh. If only I hadn’t dumped that bad, bad bowl of water! I should’ve used less water, instead.

I got some tiny picklets of carrots and put it in front of my carrot-rabbit. It no longer, by this time, had the bars over its carrot body. It ate the carrots. I sat there. I couldn’t describe it as heavy misery or sharp pain, but rather like a long-lost melancholy. It was like a slow boredom that had left me hanging for several years. What was life about?

This was so awful. I had a nearly-paralyzed rabbit in front of me, and all it could do was weakly and stiffly budge its rock-hard body, and all I could do was sit there and act dumb. I was no vet for pets, and if I brought to them this odd-shaped thing, they wouldn’t believe it was in fact a rabbit. It’s all my fault. If only I had left you in the store, you wouldn’t be like this today. I don’t know how, but somehow a day had passed since I stole that rabbit.

Anyway, this is a bad nightmare. I’m waking up.Good morning.What a beautiful sunshine!It’s a gorgeous day outside. Why am I still lying in bed? Get up, lazy seventeen-year-old teenager.