November 1st

Upsetting Witch

Dinner is quiet as always. The rabbit seems to have had its fun taunting you at meals, and instead sits politely beside you, prodding a fork at the pieces of wrapped candy in its bowl. Witch does the same, though her movements are tinged with a stiffer, mechanical quality. The slight jerk and lurch of her hand, the way she stabs at some pieces hard enough to puncture the wrapper but keeps stirring, is beginning to irk you.

Crunch. Crunch.

Thousands of remarks boil in your throat and buck against your teeth the longer it goes on. You set your jaw to keep them locked in.

Crunch. Crunch.

Squeak. Stab.

You hold yourself together. You've opted to twirl your fork idly between your fingers, dipped barely into the bowl but not touching any wrappers.

Crunch. Squeak.

Stab. Crunch.

You wonder how she works. What she's been coded to say, when she says it, what she can understand. What's behind her face. What she thinks she's doing when she's stabbing pieces of store-bought chocolate in a bowl for half an hour. Her eyes are vacant, her jaw just slack enough to reveal a sliver of her corn kernel teeth.

You narrow your eyes. Is she even there?

"Can you understand what I'm saying?"

Your voice comes out a bit broken from keeping silent, and the very air in the room seems to stiffen. Witch continues to prod blankly at her bowl. After a moment, though, something shifts in her eyes, and she turns her half-lidded gaze on you with a sweet tilt of her head.

"I'm sorry. What was that, little one?"

You tilt your head right back. "Can you understand? Is there some kind of thing that happens in your brain when I go off-script?"

Witch pauses. You swear you hear a faint whirring, almost like a ring in your ear, before she utters a clumsy,

"What?"

"Bunny," the rabbit says gently—and you feel an irritated tightening in your chest at the sound—"I don't think my Witch understands you. Let's retire this topic."

"Just—hold on. She should get it, right?" You manage to keep your voice clear and quick, your hunched shoulders and eyes turned towards the sheep. If you look at the rabbit, you'll lose your nerve.

"You have some kind of voice box, right? So there are some things you can't say."

Witch shakes her head, though her mouth is still fixed in a smile. "I'm sorry. I don't know what you mean."

"There are things you can't comprehend. You weren't designed to."

"Let's retire this topic, bunny." The rabbit's voice deepens and burns in your ear. You don't look its way.

"It's not in your programming. I see you, sometimes, when I'm talking to you, and you look like you're drawing a blank. You look at it."

You wave one finger in the rabbit's direction in a loose gesture, and begin to see the days quickly peeling off the remainder of your life.

"Like you need its permission to speak," you say, on the cusp of a nervous lilt. "So that's who made you, right?"

Silence.

"I..."

You think she's hesitating again, but after a second too long, it dawns on you that Witch has frozen. The whirring has stopped, her voice cut, and her gaze seems less empty than completely bewildered. Her jaw gives a small click, as if to loosen, and when she gleans nothing from you, she turns slowly to the rabbit. There's something fragile nested in her yellow smile.