Treadmill - 3

My sleep in the night was bitter and unfulfilling, when I awoke it was not by choice but by force. The light shining into the room seemed to burn through my eyelids and coerced my body to awaken. I felt the labors of my day weigh down upon me even before they had begun. The situation was dire, I needed to establish personal residence, try and secure some of my belongings from the storage space I had dumped it all in back home in the city. I took stock of my briefcase and other small belongings before eventually preparing to leave. That is, if the door was ever going to open. For all I knew I was dead in here. The windows were out of reach, and I've never been one for heights. Especially heights on twenty year old high rises.

Before long, the old man returned and started snooping around the building before quickly turning to me and ordering me into the car. I was ready to leave, but I sensed that something was amiss. I checked my pockets twice, and I was sure I had everything, but couldn't shake the feeling that I had left something behind.

The old man was very insistent on leaving. Being without transport in a foreign place I agreed to leave before I got to the bottom of my crisis. I knew I had left something there, but the most important thing in my life right now is my briefcase. Passport, License, unspeakable amounts of money, what more does a man really need?

The open road. There's nothing quite like it. This time the old man seemed to be more jovial and friendly. Perhaps he'd been left at some unfamiliar juncture at one point and knew what I was going through. "I'm not about to go prying into your personal life here, friend," he said lightly whilst fiddling about the radio, "but you're here for one reason or another. You obviously need some place to stay. You want me to drop you off at a motel or something? Closest inn is up a few miles, 'course you'd need to be going east to really find any big civilization."

"No," I said quietly, "a motel will do me good. I can't just up and go like I've been doing, I need a plan."

And with that, we rode on.

Benny and me.

Benny is my new furry friend. I met him two days ago while I was sitting around at home. He came back to the deck and started munching on some stranded blades of grass and prancing around rather slowly, as a bridge that extends itself one way and retracts back onto itself.

Slowly slinking 'cross the green garden grove Benny seemed to gaze upon some poor morsels growing out the ground. In seconds they were no more. Sitting on my workbench, I took a moment to observe his more peculiar maneuvers. Benny never met my gaze that first time, and ran beyond the hedges before I could interact with him.

Today, as I stopped my day to indulge in some literature, Benny came from beyond the brush whence he had left. Sensing his apprehension at seeing the large bipod towering over his bunny-ridden existence, I fled to the kitchen and procured some lettuce from the crisper before returning onto the porch and watching the yard. When Benny had retreated from the deck and onto the lawn once more, I quietly snuck out onto the deck and started scattering the lettuce leaves upon the ground. Halfway through I opened my book and began reading again, still keeping one eye on Benny for some kind of recognition or interaction. His pace was slow, like a cautious tightrope walker, but eventually he had finished what I had left on the ground.

For the next several minutes we sat in silence. I lit a cigarette and started to open communication to Benny. First I gave him my name, then his, and started playing with sounds. I whistled every time that I threw him another shred of lettuce, and I think I may have developed a way to summon his presence in my yard. Eventually, Benny left to go do rabbit things and I saw him make his way towards a thatch where I think he makes his home. Tomorrow I'll go and repeat my experiment and see if he'll give me some company again. Maybe one day he'll invite me over and we can do some rabbit things, so I can learn a new way of life.