November 1st

The Kitchen

Your next five days don't pass easily.

Of course, you have no way of knowing how much time has passed in the cellar but your own flimsy circadian rhythm, the occasional fuzz of the phonograph upstairs, pinching each of your fingers in search of a new pinprick and counting the plates of chocolate that appear at your feet every time you awaken. The rabbit seems to have smartened since you were last locked down here—or maybe it's just grown angry with you—and decided to take your "meals" down to you instead of letting you upstairs to the dining room. If you'd barely had a way to tick off the hours down here before, you have nothing now.

The bulk but sheer emptiness of those candy meals is starting to weigh on you. It's like swallowing blocks of styrofoam. You'd barely found the time before to worry about what eating nothing but chocolate for weeks would do to your body, more focused on keeping yourself alive, on the rabbit's good side. Well, now that's thrown to shit. You feel full, but hollow. You'd give a gallon of your blood to that thing to be thrown a lick of salt. Your stomach's been turned to putty, your skin cracked and oily, your limbs slack and useless as you keep yourself slumped against the corner, seeing little reason to move at all. You're sure you're growing delirious—though even if you're aware of that, you can't help but wonder if the rabbit and the Witch are just fattening you up to eat. That seems to be their style.

It's no use starving yourself, if they are; you've tried. All that does is leave you weak and miserable.

Twice, you've counted, you were awake when the rabbit opened the cellar door to deliver your food. The light from the stairs, however dim and thin it is, hurts your eyes, and you have to squint to catch the rabbit's silhouette before it slips into the dark and shuts the door behind it, somehow aware that it's been seen. It doesn't say a word to you as it lays the plate at your side, wrappers shuffling and scraping in the silence. The second time it arrived, too sick and exhausted to think, you'd lolled your head to the side at the fairy strapped to the chair across the room and gave her a lazy, sardonic look.

Get a load of this guy, you thought at her lifeless body. Coming to pay me a visit again.

That was the fourth night. You'd heard faint breathing in front of you, too, as it laid the plate down, waited an extra moment and then took off. You knew it was nearing the end then. It didn't seem so cross with you as before. You suspect you wouldn't be as cross in its place, either; you can't imagine looking something like yourself in the eyes and feeling anything but pity.

I feel like I'm dying.

The rabbit comes the next night—day?—and doesn't slink away when you spot it looming by the door. It hasn't brought a dish this time. It stares at you a moment, as if checking that you're awake, and walks towards you, its silhouette growing sharper in your squinted, teary eyes. Its ears are sitting higher on its head, almost perked, and its movements are languid and smoother than you've seen before. It must have had a spa day.

Once it's only about two feet from you, it bends down and lifts one of your shackled wrists. Before you can panic, or jerk your hand away, or even say a word, it inserts a claw into the keyhole and the shackle pops open, giving you a startle. It falls off your wrist and onto the floor with a clank.

You see now by the light from the doorway that your wrist is horribly limp and dark with bruises. The rabbit lifts your other hand and pauses. It lifts its head to look at you again, a long, piercing stare of consideration. You're too tired to move much. You just look back into its empty face, at the frayed pasted-on fur sticking out from its cheeks. It tilts its head, and doesn't move for nearly a minute. You think of what it could possibly be trying to say.

Will you be as much of a nuisance this time?

Will you try to leave?

Have I killed you enough yet?