I am going through a current writer's block/general laziness with a longer fic and as such, wrote this to get a little bit of the drive back. This is the first story I've ever uploaded, and I'd like to improve in my writing, so feel free to give any sort of criticism that you might have.
The inspiration for this story came from a short comic by False Knees called Inner Jungle.
The only light enters through an almond-shaped hole between planks of wood. The rabbit lays alone and stares at the empty air. He is alive when the girl is around, any other waking moment he may as well be asleep.
Sleep, he does more of it too, his coat is greying and he moves about on his own less. The wires on his hutch door begin to look and smell of rust again. The girl will see it and she will call for the man to come and take a look, that is if the man doesn't see it first. A day or two later and it will be replaced with shiny new silver.
He has gotten used to the singular silence when the girl is not about, though perhaps it would be better if it bothered him, that meant he had the company of other rabbits to miss.
He had other rabbits once, long ago, long enough that he doesn't remember much about them anymore. There were two of them, or three, or four, and their names? Names, he sometimes almost forgets his own, never mind them. With no other hutch mates to call him or introduce himself to, his name is almost a sort of secret.
To remember who they once were was like trying to make out the shapes of silhouettes in a fog. One of them was a doe, he was almost certain, and did she have dark fur, or did the lack of light in the barn make it seem as such? What was her voice like again? What did she do?
What had happened to them all? He sweeps his paw through a murky puddle of years long past and picks out a day where they shared warmth as they slept. In the next one, he sees himself alone. He combs through until he finds himself and his hutch mates running, experiencing for the one time in his life a thrill, his heart bolting and head giddy. They run faster than him, becoming smaller in the distance. The mist envelops them and he can see no more. A blur and he is back in the hutch.
A mouse scurries over the hay-littered floor of the barn, paying him no mind. It investigates the table legs and sniffs the air before squeezing its body through a hole in the floor from whence it came.
He rests his head on his paws and waits for the girl to return, she will take him from his hutch and she will stroke his head, she will bring her hand to him and present a slice of fruit for him to eat, she will bring him to the pen and he will run, not far, but in small circles where she can see him without turning her head, she will then take him back to the barn where he will wait for her again, as such he has done for years.
The tiny light between the planks is cut out for a brief moment as the mouse walks by it from outside, underneath the sun, going where it pleases.
"Have you ever thought about leaving home?"
Laurel ponders for a moment, "Leave? What for?" he asks.
"To be out there."
"And what will I do when I'm there?"
"I. . . don't know," Laurel says out loud. He looks about his hutch and thinks, for the first time, that it is either too big or too empty, "never mind it, pretend I didn't say anything."