White White White

“So you believe the Devil is responsible for all this?” Cassandra asked, a little incredulous to my taste. “Well, yes.” She sat pensive for a while, her long black tail followed a curly path around her feet to lay its tip beside her left front paw. “Excuse me for a minute. I have to go find something to eat. I can’t think on an empty stomach, you know what I mean? Be right back.” A short while later, she came back, still smacking away at whatever it was that she’d scoffed down –she wouldn’t say what- and started to clean her paws with articulate long-drawn licks. “What are you going to do about all this?” “The Devil has a penchant for being around warm things and warm places,” I told her. This I had deduced from some of Haakon’s ramblings. “… and where I come from, it’s not very warm. In fact it’s very cold. So the appearance of Satan could mean two things; either Svalbard was getting warmer, or the Devil had somehow learned to adapt to the frosty circumstances of the arctic. Whatever it is, something is abrew and I plan to best this fearsome foe on his own turf, which naturally, must be somewhere South. I feel I’m getting closer everyday.” “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps you’re right.” Cassandra assumed a Sphinx-like position, her tongue pursuing the jagged edge of her mouth, back and forth, back and forth. It was almost hypnotizing. In fact it was hypnotizing. “Are you listening to me Bunny? Bunny? Are you listening?” is the last thing I heard. After that my mind gave way. I have no means to know how much time had past, but I woke up a good deal later. Mortal panic crescendo-ed onto my being like the sound of an approaching ambulance; my vision impaired by Doppler-like contortion. Slowly, reality executed a fearless comeback. Accepting what my senses told me would mean that I was surrounded by more than a thousand identical red-eyed white rabbits. I could not speak. The throng of rubescent eyes homed in on me and an irrational jolt feared their laser intent. Slowly they edged closer and closer in a narrowing circle around me. The high temperature of the gargantuan roofed-in space convinced me that I had arrived in hell itself. I decided to speak to my cloned assailants; “Is there anyway I could check my email around here?”