Rabbits(43)

For just a second, I thought I saw a flash of something slither behind the wall of brackish green, but then it was gone.

If there was something in there, swimming around in the briny darkness, trying to catch a glimpse of another world through the sludge, I definitely understood how it felt.



* * *



—

Baron’s curtains were closed but his window was open.

He smoked a lot of weed, so he always kept this window cracked a few inches.

I knocked on the glass and called his name. No answer.

“He must be out,” I said.

“Let’s take a look,” Chloe said, and she lifted the window another couple of inches and pushed the curtains aside.

Baron was there, sitting at his desk in the middle of his living room in front of his computer. He was wearing a set of huge white vintage-style headphones and just staring at the screen.

We knocked and yelled a few more times, but he didn’t budge.

Chloe lifted the old wooden window up as high as it could go, which was just enough room for the two of us to fit through.

“I’m climbing in,” she said.

“I don’t know…”

“What? He’s not jerking off or anything,” she said as she jumped up and pushed her head and shoulders through the small opening.

“Okay, but—”

“He’d totally climb into your house,” Chloe said, then she slid headfirst through the window and into Baron’s apartment.

She was right; Baron would totally climb into my house. I took a look around. Our B&E appeared to be going unnoticed.

“Fuck,” I said, to nobody in particular, and followed Chloe inside.



* * *



—

Chloe gently removed Baron’s headphones and waved in his face.

“Hey,” Baron said, blinking. “What’s up?”

He didn’t appear angry that we’d just broken into his place. He was completely out of it. For a moment, I wasn’t even sure if he recognized me.

Then, “K-mart, what’s happening?” he said, his eyes working to focus.

It was as if he’d been looking at me through some kind of thick fog from someplace far away, kind of like whatever had been swimming around behind the algae in that tank.

There was a small black wooden box on Baron’s lap, which I assumed had to be filled with weed. He picked up the box and set it gently down on the floor next to his desk as he shook his head and tried to focus his eyes.

“What’s going on?” he said, still dazed.

It took about a minute or so for us to notice the smell. I thought maybe there was a dead badger rotting in his sink or something, but it quickly became clear it was Baron himself. He smelled terrible—and it wasn’t just that he hadn’t showered in days, which he clearly hadn’t. It looked like he’d peed himself—and possibly more than once.

“Not much,” I said. “What’s up with you?”

“I think maybe I lost track of time a little,” he said, slowly coming out of whatever weird state he was in.

“Do you think maybe you lost track of a bit more than that?” Chloe said as she looked around the room.

Baron’s place was a complete disaster.

There were dishes piled everywhere. Stacks of documents covered his desk and side tables. Dozens of ripped bits of paper and Post-it notes littered with messily scribbled words and symbols had been pinned to a huge corkboard. Aside from the names of a few famous Rabbits players like Hazel, Murmur, and The Dark Thane, there was nothing in any of the photographs and images accompanying the notes that made any sense. It looked like a murder wall from the lead detective’s office in a serial killer movie, minus the cinematic red threads that were always connecting things.

Nothing appeared to be connected here.

“When’s the last time you showered?” Chloe asked.

“Fuck, is that me?” Baron said. His nose scrunched up suddenly, as he finally noticed the smell.

“What are you doing?” I asked, leaning into the screen.

“I don’t remember,” he said, still clearly dazed. “Watching a movie, I think?”

Chloe led Baron into his bathroom, turned on his shower, and shut the door behind him.

The video Baron had been watching was just a few minutes long. It was playing in a browser window on some kind of darknet website.

The video reminded me of that demonic student film that made the girl crawl out of the television in The Ring and Ringu, but this thing Baron had been watching felt much worse, darker, and more weirdly lo-fi.

The video begins with an impossibly tall shadowy figure hunched over a second figure seated on a metal chair. They’re in the middle of a small room. The walls are covered in countless thousands of tiny arcane markings. Every once in a while, the light flickers a certain way and the markings suddenly look alive, like so many tiny insects crawling the walls to try to escape the sudden unwelcome illumination.

A minute or so into the video, the tall shadowy figure leans down farther and whispers something into the seated figure’s ear.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the seated figure begins sinking into the chair. At first it looks like they’re simply sliding down, trying to escape the tall shadowy thing, but that isn’t the case. The seated figure isn’t sliding down at all—they’re actually disappearing into the chair.