A Fate Worse Than Death

A Fate Worse Than Death

By

Jamey O’Donnell

Rachel stood in the doorway, not quite sure what she was looking at. Staring out across the back forty of the property, she thought she could see a faint glow of light about a mile from the house, illuminating the windbreak of trees with every pulse, in the hour just before dawn.

The light was definitely green, with nothing out there she was aware of that could be producing it.

Without Old Sam around anymore to bark at anything unusual on the property, she couldn’t be sure what, if anything, was out there. All she knew is that she was looking at something that wasn’t supposed to be there, and in the blink of an eye, a green dot of light took off from the ground and zipped into the sky, vanishing into the early morning darkness.

It was enough to send shivers up and down her body.

Whatever it was, she had never seen anything like it on the property in the past, and it scared her.

Her and her husband had bought the spread 5 years earlier with the intention of seeding, raising, and harvesting corn, but things didn’t go quite according to plan. Just after moving in, her husband had a stroke, and he never fully recovered enough to become the farmer he had dreamed of being. He regained a lot of his mobility after many months of physical therapy, but he now walked with a cane and favored his right side, so farming was now up in the air.

After winning the Powerball jackpot of 57 million dollars, he quit his job at the factory and they decided to move to Iowa from Chicago to become farmers.

Best laid plans of mice and men.

Jacob was still asleep, but would be getting up shortly with the alarm set at 4:30.

The only reason Rachel was up, was to go to the bathroom and she wanted a breath of the cool morning air, so she opened the back door to get a breath.

Had she just seen the greenish glow, she probably wouldn’t have made it a point to say anything to Jacob about it, but seeing the green dot disappear up into the sky, she felt she needed to say something to him, but what would he think?

Probably that she was sleepwalking again, and it was just a dream.

Rachel had been known to sleepwalk, especially after she started taking Ambien, but that seemed to subside after an adjustment in her dosage.

Even so, she would have to say something. It was too strange not to.

After Jacob had awoken and was sitting at the kitchen table sipping his first cup of coffee, Rachel sat down next to him with a cup of her own, and broached the subject.

“You’ll never guess what I saw this morning” she said.

Not quite at full speed, Jacob said to her, “I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

“I saw a green light take off into the night sky from the back forty” she said.

He looked up from his coffee cup, then looked at the back door.

“Was it a little green dot?” he asked.

Rachel stiffened up a bit, then responded.

“Yes. That’s exactly what it was. How did you know? Have you seen it too?” she asked.

“Lots of times. They’re here to protect us. They’re good people. I’ve talked to them” Jacob said to Rachel, leaving his wife almost speechless.

“What?” she whispered, thinking he must be pulling her leg.

“I didn’t want to tell you because I thought you’d think I was crazy. It was a few months back when I got up to take a pee, and I saw the green light out there the same place you did. I opened the back door and was considering walking out there with a flashlight, and all of a sudden out of nowhere, I have these 2 fellas come up on me out from the field. Hell, I almost had another stroke, and then one of them says to me “Relax Jacob, we’re friends of yours. We came to intercept some bad people that were coming your way to take what’s yours. We came to stop them.” I couldn’t believe what I was looking at actually. They were not human the way you and I are human. They were smaller than we are, about the size of children.

I asked them what they were talking about, and they told me that some bad men from Chicago knew about us and the money we won, and they were coming to do bad things to you and me to take our money, so they came and stopped them before they could get to the house.”

Rachel thought that Jacob was either pulling a king size joke on her, or that he had completely lost his mind.

“Stop it Jacob. Don’t tease me.” she said.

“I’m not. I swear. I’ll prove it to you. As soon as the sun is fully up and we’ve had breakfast, we’ll get in the truck and drive out there to where you saw the light this morning.” Jacob answered.

“What happened to the guys that were coming for us?” she asked.

“You’ll see when I take you out there” Jacob answered.

Rachel made a big breakfast of pancakes and sausage, and they both ate at the table while Jacob read the paper, with a million questions going through Rachel’s mind.

Could Jacob actually be serious, or was this just part of an elaborate joke he was playing on her? How was he going to prove what he was telling her was the truth? What in God’s name was it that she was going to see out there?

After breakfast, they both loaded into the truck and he headed out toward the back forty.

“Listen to me Rachel. What you are going to see out here must remain a secret. You can’t tell anyone anything that you see. And you can’t intervene. Those are the instructions I was given by our friends. If you do any of those things, everything will be reversed and these men will be able to carry out what they initially intended to do. Understand?” he asked.

“No. Not really. I have no idea what you are talking about.” She responded.

“Well, you will.” He said.

When they got to the back forty, the first thing Rachel saw was a big black circle in the dirt next to the treeline, about the size of an exceptionally large house. They both got out of the truck, and Rachel followed her husband to the treeline, where they came upon a very large cage made of metal and mesh, seeming to be filled with cottontail rabbits.

What she saw next almost caused her to faint.

At first, she didn’t know what she was looking at, but upon closer inspection, she could not believe she was seeing what she was seeing.

There were two rabbits in the cage that were distinctly different from the rest, and these same two rabbits seemed to be trying to avoid the other rabbits at all costs.

“JACOB!!! WHAT IN THE HELL AM I LOOKING AT?!!!” she screamed.

To her horror, she saw two rabbits with human faces, screaming and crying to get out of the cages.

“Our friends are not allowed to kill anything, so they did the next best thing and changed them into rabbits. They can’t hurt anyone or anything anymore. What you saw last night was them feeding and watering them, since they can’t get out of the cage.” Jacob said.

“OH MY GOD JACOB!!! THAT IS HIDEOUS!” she said, and hideous they were indeed.

Then one of the rabbits yelled out to her.

“PLEASE LADY, GET US OUT OF HERE!!! PLEASE!!!”

“Jacob, we can’t leave them like this!” she said.

“And what do you propose we do with them? Let them out to be eaten by coyotes?” he asked.

‘They are safe in there and no animals can get to them.”

“NO LADY!!! YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND!!! DEATH WOULD BE BETTER THAN THIS!!!” the other rabbit said.

Just then, one of the other rabbits mounted one of the ones with a human face and began pummeling him from behind, causing the human faced rabbit to begin screaming at the top of his lungs, prompting Rachel to cover both of her ears.

Either this was a horrible mistake made by their alien friends, or it was intentionally meant to cause maximum harm.

The men were not only turned into rabbits, but they were turned into FEMALE rabbits.

Being caged with male rabbits would be a fate worse than death, since everyone knows the sexual appetite of rabbits.

“Get me out of here Jacob. I can’t stand to watch this” she asked, and they walked back to the truck and drove back to the house.

Rachel was shaking uncontrollably at the horrific sight she had just seen, and she could not get the screams from the rabbit men out of her head.

Considering these same men that had been turned into rabbits were on their way to do unspeakable things to him and his wife to get their winnings, Jacob was completely ok with what their new friends had done and had not an ounce of pity for them.

“I wish you had never shown them to me” she said, repeating it over and over all the way back to the house.

“Remember what I told you. You can’t intervene. If you do, they will be turned into humans again and they will rob us and probably murder us.” Jacob said as they exited the truck.

All morning Rachel had been haunted by the faces of the rabbits being raped, not knowing how to get them out of her head. She knew she had to do something, because doing nothing would be a participant to their torture. Yes, she knew they were evil men that meant to do her and her husband harm, but now they were just helpless little bunny rabbits and she felt obliged to rescue them, but what could she do?

She couldn’t release them, or they would come back for her and Jacob.

There was a solution however, and she was surprised her husband didn’t think of it first.

That afternoon, Jacob had laid down for his afternoon nap, and she sat at the table waiting for him to fall fast asleep.

As her husband was sawing logs in the bedroom, she quietly went out the back door, got into the pickup truck, started the engine, and drove back out to the back forty where the bunnymen were being held in the cage.

As she was getting out of the truck, she turned and removed the 12 gauge shotgun from the rack off of the back window, then proceeded to walk to where the cage was.

Their only escape would be through death, which is what the rabbits had said to her, almost verbatim, and this way, they would not come back to harm her or her husband.

As she stood back about 5 feet from the cage, both of the human faced rabbits were standing next to each other, both screaming, crying, and pleading with her to save them, while being viciously scrogged from behind.

BOOM!!! Both rabbits were now in pieces, along with the rabbits behind them, and most of the other rabbits in the cage with them.

Problem solved.