Johan writes a character study on laziness

The laundry is out to dry. It sits on the clothesline, long since fresh and made anew. There is a breeze, one that tugs at the pieces—the linen, the shirts and the mismatched socks. But I have not eyes to see it. Nor can I feel the wind, though I have long desired its touch. 

All that can reach my room is birdsong and the dim afternoon light. I can see the mould that bespeckles my once-white walls. I can see from my bed clouds that threaten rain. There is a new song, not the magpie or the wattlebird, but one that I know was made for me. The laundry it dances, a grand ballet—and in the pirouettes, there the chorus is sung. 

It beckons to me. It is acutely aware of its purpose, that which it has served diligently, and now it expects a transaction. So simple it would be to go outside—to take in the laundry—but it is a precipice on rotten foundations. It is that simple. One step too many, and you face your end. A slippery slope. It is an act that I cannot offer, and the laundry knows it. I fear I am the rabbit in the eyes of a wolf. 

I desire naught from its knowing, from the knowledge that it is there and that it awaits me—that it shifts and flutters in the air yet is held perpetually in place. 

In that, we are equal. But what right does it have to mock me? To offer me a mirror and expect surprise … I know the contents of which is held far too well and despise it doubly so. There is no awe in knowing that which is already known, there is only a simmering feeling, like the smell of the dishes that perpetually rot. It is regret and dissatisfaction and malcontent that fill the bottom of the sink, that fuse together to make an odour wholly unique to there and now. 

I can smell it. Even here, as I lay sprawled on my bed, it desires not to leave me to myself. It exists not from my world, but of the other… a domain not mine, but hers. It fills up the room, crawling under the crack in the door, making its way ever towards me, finding purchase upon the carpet, reaching the base of my mattress… and it’s here—here upon my bed—and it wants nothing more than to force itself down my throat. It wants me to gag and spittle, and wretch bile from my gut. I hate it. I rebuke it. I cast it away—from my mind, my being, my presence. It does not exist if I do not exist.

***

I have always wondered upon the evolutionary reasoning for rabbits and prey animals of that ilk—did God hate them so? He made them such timid beings, blessed naught with gifts to fend off the dark. And what else could evolution be seen as, but divine will? Man has always existed in fear, but God has ever been a merciful shepherd. We were naked flesh, babes born unto the biting cold, but evolution has seen us bestowed. He gave us minds to think and hands to enact creation. We made ourselves pelts for nature did not provide. 

But what of the rabbit? How has evolution gifted these simple creatures? They have been given not fang nor claw to protect themselves, nor poisonous barb to enact revenge. God has marked them martyr, for they exist only as living food stock for those bigger. 

If He were kind, he would have made them into apples. So that they could feel no pain, feel not the wolf tear their fur from their flesh, nor bite down oh so terribly hard and gut them soul and all so that all that exists is meat. But then again, apples and sin were never too far apart…

And it is sin alone that sustains their existence, evolution gifting them naught but an unmatched capacity for carnal reproduction. It is a cruel irony, programmed as we are to continue ad infinitum. Even as we decay, we take false comfort that we shall forever live in those we ourselves have brought onto fate. But what is waiting for the babe, fresh from the rabbit’s womb? So clear his eyes, mind fresh and unsullied with nary a thought. That will be your downfall, little one, born as you are to nature’s factory farm. 

Not a rabbit. 

Not a creature at all. 

Just blood and visceral gore. 

Born into this world to be a victim 

of cruelty without moral compass. 

***

For the longest time I could not fathom the reasoning, why rabbits would freeze up when faced with death? Where was their desire to live? I would watch documentaries all through the night and I would scratch at my skin and bite my nails raw and pink, and shout shout shout at the television—Run! You cowards, this is your deciding moment. Don’t you see the wolf offers only death? Where is your will to live? Where is your pride? And without fail, I would watch their lives be snuffed. And see what was once rabbit be turned inside out, so easily the wolf would rend it a new form, unrecognisable to its soul. 

That made me realise. God is not all loving. That has ever been a lie. Empathy is a fragile virtue. It is a contradiction. Empathy exists only so long as evolution allows it. For in our minds, there is always that knocking… knocking… incessant insect! It buzzes within our brains, and it calls to us with only this: Exist, and do not stop existing! 

And this brings into motion the ultimate thesis, if God made us in His image, well he must be as flawed as we. Empathy is selective, and God has proved it thus.

So alien humans must look, awkward and malformed. I wonder that too, when rabbits look upon us, what do they see? They see creatures who want for their perfection. A rabbit is the perfect being, so capable they are at existing… simply existing …  they have ravaged the globe. They look at humans and see monsters, concealing their forms under false hides. We present ourselves in bright colours and patterns intoxicating, for under these feathered disguises is a body that exist despite itself, not because. 

What is the meaning of a creature who is born hairless, and upon maturity, has grown hair that is all but an affront? Pale pink and fleshy, dotted with hair that offers no resistance… A rabbit cannot comprehend the creature that has been given God’s favour. And it is an unkind unknowing, for it is not an unknowing at all, that God has favoured His disciples for one fact alone: that He is vain. He sees a flawed creation, so alike they are, and He can’t help but feel for it. He cannot look upon the rabbit and smile. That is a being too unlike him, its perfection is impossible to parse. 

***

I laid sprawled on my bed, merely a mattress on the floor. And I could feel it. They had no eyes to judge me, but they burrowed their way into my soul all the same, biting biting at my mind … I could feel it under my skin, like scarabs scuttling under the epidermis. The laundry waited. 

Maybe this was it? That primal fear, twisting my insides so that they squirm and writhe, pupils dilating, mind taken over by an unknown force, so utterly crushing and unfathomable. Maybe this was what the rabbit felt, as it darted too close to the sheets—

I couldn’t. Don’t you see? It’s not possible. No, no, it’s not… It’s not a matter of possibility, of yes and no, of can I and can I not? There is no equation, no curtains that would part to begin a play, nor a chorus that spurred Antigone to her fate. 

I exist, that is a simple fact, but existence is a prison—it promises only misery, suffering, deceit. Pray tell me, I beseech you now, chorus and spectator of mine alike, what would happen if I were to stand up? If I were to walk across to my door and open it? If I would live … truly live … on the terms presented to me by my very birth? 

I would be fooled. I would trade one prison for another. Let me put on a tie, that very notion an ouroboros of oxymorons… You yourself put a collar around your neck, so that you be presentable for your master. You think it not so? Come to work without it. 

This is a part of you that they make you see. Not the part that wraps around your neck, but the part that dangles down your chest. But here you are, excuse at the ready. It’s okay to be nervous, you are in the office now naked and afraid. Just remember your li(n)es: it’s at the dry cleaners! But it is not enough. You are a fool.

You will find that it displeases the boss to find their slave unshackled. They desire your submission. They have given up the whip, but their lust has ever grown in its absence. It is not enough to have one chained, they must chain themselves. Your soul is desired, not just your body. 

I hear a noise. Not the bird song that had lulled me so calm into the realm of thought, but a terrible, unwanted noise. It was an intruder to my palace of freedom. I could hear a door creak open and then bang close. It was followed by footsteps outside my door. They were uneven steps, one foot dragging whilst the other substituted for the fault. She was home. The slave has been granted temporary reprieve. But who am I to call her that. A slave that she is, but she is not mine. I am hers if any, born from her flesh and her womb. But that itself was a transaction. The familiar ties chain both ways. She is my slave, and I hers and we both suffer in the sin. She gave me life and thus born me unwantedly into the act of living. And in labour, she was destitute and malnourished. She consumed little nutrients for one, much less for another. And so, babies do what babies do. There is no empathy for the mother, the baby is not even a thing and yet it has been programmed thus: live. So, the baby does what it must, it will extract the nutrients from the host, teeth and bone marrow all. 

I hear coughs—fleshy, wet, guttural coughs. The kind that leaves you shaking, holding onto the very world for support, the kind that when you pull your hand away you are met with sanguine despair. I sigh. I cannot live in all fantasies, there is knowledge that I cannot hide. Those coughs are death bells, Charon ready at the lapping waves. And so too did I know that those death bells were heralds for not one, but two.  

I’ll just lie here a moment longer. Just for one moment more, and God I’ll ask a favour of you just this once, please make this moment beautiful. Life is coming for me. I know that now, but in the present I am content. In this flittering moment, seconds compressed upon seconds, I am free. The birds are with me. I can hear them outside the window, and I know they sing for me. For all in God’s kingdom, I have been the most blessed. Innocence is a virtue, but it is at odds with existence. The rabbit gets torn apart; inertia does not grant it any mercy. It falters, for it cannot comprehend. Its innocence is its hamartia. 

I have been gifted peace without sacrifice—is that not the goal of all beings? An animal toils so it can then rest, it flees so it can rest but afar. A man toils so he can then not. And yet man has deemed me thus—an outcast. For I am an object of envy. They think of me when they toil, and I do not leave their subconscious eye. 

I am a babe, fresh to this earth. 

Let me linger.

I know not

taxes nor the sins of man. 

Let me linger for just one moment

upon this beautiful earth.

See how it is green and how the birds sing

for you. 

We had already found heaven,

yet you have made it

wretched and foul. 

The laundry can wait no longer. 

Life will know no joy. 

A crease will stretch across my brow, and 

I will have an ache in my back. 

The world is a malaise.

But I step outside

to the wolf behind the linen.