The Rabbit Hutch

by Tess Gunty

That’s why you got to butcher them when they get a certain age, or you have a heck of a mess.”

The will warms an action, the mind receives it, and thought bodies it forth. This understanding, however, discerns an action by the process of knowing good and evil. Blandine has plenty of will—the will is like a fire baking every action in an oven, according to Hildegard

She attaches her gaze to the machines, obviously longing for a return to the standard script, which demands nothing of strangers in public spaces but the exchange of a few half-smiles, to indicate that you won’t knife each other.

It’s a lot to ask of us without collateral, don’t you think? Especially when there are so many competing stories, and the stakes are so high. Inferno or paradise. Forever.”

I think that we see whatever we fear, whatever we want. We look at the world, absorb thirty percent of its data, and our subconscious fills in the rest.”

it’s clear to Blandine that when a person is in the middle of divine ecstasy, she’s really just interacting with herself. An elevated form of masturbation.

“It’s like what Simone Weil says. ‘To know that this man who is hungry and thirsty really exists as much as I do—that is enough, the rest follows of itself.’

“We’re all just sleepwalking. Can I tell you something, Joan? I want to wake up. That’s my dream: to wake up.”

In general, she feels too much or too little, interacts too much or too little—never the proper amount. It seems to her that she’s spent her whole life sitting in a laundromat, freaking people out.

As usual, when she confronted the world about one of its problems, the world suggested that the problem was Joan.

She looks around the park, astonished that no one can hear the noise inside her body.

She legally changes her name to Blandine, after a teenaged martyr who stoically endured public torture at the hands of the Romans.

In her writings, she adopts an annoyingly gendered humility, painting herself as some idiot savant, some silly little woman. This initially annoyed Blandine, but upon reflection, she realized that it was a brilliant choice: it was the only way her exclusively male superiors would let her assume as much spiritual authority as she did, lecturing priests and publishing her books. Kings consulted her.

Slowly, images return to her: worlds of cotton candy and light, mothers and geometry, lilac triangles and little jumping goats. Voices telling her that she would be free, one day. That she would be held. She did have visions. Didn’t everyone?

Despite herself, Blandine feels affection for this man. Maybe it’s pity. His optimism is embarrassing, yes, but she finds herself helplessly rooting for him.

Later, she’ll wonder what made her accept his offer so swiftly: an investment in her life, or an indifference to it?

Nobody can break into you if you break out of your body first.

The rage shovels her out of herself, like it’s mining her for something to burn.

Messages build themselves in her mind, in her hands, but she never sends them. She knows that not contacting James is the right thing to do, but God—how much like a sneeze unsneezed it feels.

loved you for your noble bearing, your wisdom, your purity, your soul, and all your life! So much so that many people said, “What are you doing?”

It is so natural for Moses to care about the people he finds online, and nearly impossible for him to care about the people he finds in so-called reality.

Be an original. You’re just like her, and her, and her.

Her job never allowed her to be a child, so her psychology never allowed her to age. It was not advisable for a child to have a child, but she, so childish, liked to disobey.

He wanted to ruin her for everyone else.

as far as I can tell. If you had no choice but to obey every impulse, we wouldn’t call it a ‘sin’—we’d just call it an instinct.

want to meet someone who’s suffering and talk with them as myself, not as some representative for a boss I’ve never met.

The bat’s mouth was open, exposing four micro-fangs below a walnut nose. It looked ridiculous, its threat in life reduced to a joke in death.

Humanity, take a good look at yourself. Inside, you have heaven and earth, and all of creation. You are a world—everything is hidden in you.

The soul is not in the body; the body is in the soul.

For she is terrible with the terror of the avenging lightning, and gentle with the goodness of the bright sun; and both her terror and her gentleness are incomprehensible to humans.

Honestly, in that sense, social media is a lot like the Church of Scientology. Or QAnon. Or Charles Manson.

They are both breathing quickly, pumped with a familiar panic—one that arrives the first time two people reach for each other. The kind that says: if you get any closer, you will shatter this.

“And his profile pic was really him. In his thirties. I thought that was kind of ballsy. Using a picture of who you used to be.”

As he lulled the passengers with stories, someone began to pass around a Tupperware of sliced watermelon, and a drunk man offered to share the miniature bottles of whiskey from his bag, and Joan felt such overwhelming affection for her species, she feared she would sacrifice herself to save it.

He is dressed in monochrome—white athleisure, something bloodthirsty in the casual glamour of it.

I started fantasizing about all the embellishments I would report back to them. I’d say that the strap of her tank top fell. I’d say that she touched my arm. I’d say that she put on perfume before stepping out of her bedroom. I was so preoccupied with my version of events I could barely hear her.

Reason, says Hildegard, is the third-highest human faculty. After body and soul.

“I consider myself a criminal, do you understand?” “Well.” She bites her cuticle, releases a tear. “You are one.” But not in the state of Indiana.

I hurt you, and I think it’s as simple as that. I hurt you—that’s the appropriate syntax for what happened. I. Hurt. You. You make it sound like you had the same control over the matter that I did, like even though our dynamic was messed up, you were still some kind of totally free agent—and I don’t want to infantilize you, either, but I have to tell you—whatever you wanted to happen should have been irrelevant. You’re so angry, Tiffany. I can see that. You have every right to be angry at me. But it sounds like you’re angry at yourself for supposedly choosing this, and your choice should have been moot, don’t you see?

So many people crammed inside this building, the teenager marvels, and nobody knows how vast his night has been.

Tina was not yet an alcoholic married to an incarcerated robber; she was a child who loved Atomic Fireball candies, jungle ecosystems, and doing “gymnastics” off the diving board.

He’s in luck: this one looks like it’s sleeping. But soon, this makes him feel worse. Even in its death, the mouse is a gentle guest, asking nothing of him.

Sapphire has a hard time determining what obligations she has to the people she encounters, and what obligations they have to her.