“Say ah!”

A girl said, holding a carrot out for me to eat.

“No! I won’t eat it! I won’t eat it! I swear I won’t!”

That’s what I thought and resolutely turned my head away.

“Oh! Don’t be like that!” The girl said cheerfully. “Here!”

She moved her hand forward and struck the carrot against my nose. Because of the vegetable being so close to me, I couldn’t help but automatically sniff it. The moment I did, I instantly regretted it because I felt an unbelievable urge to eat it.

“No!” I thought firmly. “I must not eat! I must not eat! I must not—! No! No! No! Dammit!”

Disobeying my command, my body formed to open my mouth and made me bite into the carrot.

“Oh! Look at you eat! You’re so cute!”

That’s what the girl said, seemingly enjoying me nibbling away at the carrot. Suddenly, she pulled the carrot away, and I almost chased after it.

“Come on! Resist it!” I thought to myself as fiercely as I possibly could. “Mind over body! Mind over body! Stay in control!”

That’s what I thought, but when she grinned and shoved the carrot at my nose again, I ended up smelling it. As soon as I caught the whiff of smell the vegetable gave off, I was fighting against my body to stay in control while it wanted to eat it.

“I will not be humiliated a second time! I will not be humiliated a second time!” I kept repeating to myself.

My body, on the other hand, refused to listen to me and fought hard to nibble at it.

“No! No! No! No! No!”

I shouted in my head five times, but it was too late. My body moved on its own and began nibbling at the carrot once more.

“For crying out loud!”

I cursed at my body for being so stupid for being driven to eat to the point of ignoring me, its owner.

“Aww!” The girl squealed, looking happily at me. “You are so cute, darling!”

“I am not your darling!” I thundered.

Sadly, I ended up making whining sounds with my mouth and whimpered irritably. Unfortunately, this woman misunderstood the sounds and thought I wanted more. So, she did the unthinkable and pulled back and carrot, smiled evilly at me, and shoved it at me again.

“You can have as much as you like, darling!”

That what she said with a gleeful smile on her face.

Goddammit! How did I get myself into this when I, a human, died and got revived as a rabbit? All I could do was sigh at this unacceptable reality and thought back at the events that led me to being here.

[ ====== ]

My name is Lark, and I was born into a poor family. My father worked as a construction worker while my mother knit clothes and other stuff as her job. They did whatever they could to sustain the family with the minimal wage they got.

Our society was run by a ruthless corrupt empire that dealt a harsh hand to its citizens by reaping all of our rewards for themselves. In exchange, they only granted minimal wage for hard labour, and never cared enough the people to increase the wages at all.

It was a time of poverty, with the rich becoming richer, and the poor becoming poorer. Many people tried to stand up to them, only that they were quickly dealt with by means of assassinations and public execution by labelling them with false charges. Those who feared for their life, accepted their life standard and went on with their own business.

I understood the struggle that my family was going through for my sake, and I didn’t request them about anything. It was a difficult time that we lived in, so we had to make difficult choices to continue living peacefully.

However, our peace was shattered when several groups of men and women initiated a revolutionary against the empire. They spoke words that ignited the flames of hatred that everyone had been suppressing for a long time, and spurred them on into rebelling against the empire.

In order to squash this rebellion that could pose a threat to their rulership, the empire initiated an all-out raid during one night when everyone was asleep and would not be expecting this to happen.

They targeted the slums that were the main supporters of this revolution, locking the doors from outside and setting the homes on fire. People banged on their doors desperately and screamed for help, but no one was there to save them. Everyone was too busy trying to save themselves from the night raid.

My parents, and I lived a little away from the slumps, and so we escaped from being burnt, but we were still in danger. The night raid had completed its first operation of burning down the activists, and moved onto its next mission; capturing innocent victims to be scapegoats.

“Quickly, Lark! In here!” My mother told me urgently.

She led me away by my hand into the deeper part of our house, where there was a hidden side door. Being a construction worker, my dad had the experience of building things and had created this hidden part of the house in case we needed to hide.

That’s what I thought when she opened it, but when I went in, I found out that it only had room for one person. I was confused and looked worriedly at my parents, who were smiling to reassure me.

“It’ll be fine,” my dad told me with a smile.

“We’ll be back soon,” my mum told me, and she rubbed my head before shutting the door on me.

For probably ten minutes I stood before I crouched down and sat in waiting for their return. Everything was silent, and I couldn’t hear anything that was happening outside. I didn’t even know what was going on, except that something was wrong and it had my parents worried.

I picked up and pebble and started playing with it since I had nothing to do. Like that, I waited, and waited, and waited for their return. Yet, even after several hours had gone by, there was no sign of them returning at all.

As the hours went by, I started to worry, but I was told to stay in here and wait for them. I’m obedient to my parents, and I did whatever they told me to without questioning them because I trusted their judgement. But, with them not returning at all, for the first time I decided to go against their wishes.

I placed my hands on the door and tried to slide it open, but it was much too heavy for me. Since I was just a twelve-year-old kid and skinny, I didn’t have the strength in me to move the door. That’s when I looked at the pebble I was playing with and decided to use it to make a hole in the door.

For several minutes, I banged away at the door while the pebble kept chipping away with each impact. But I didn’t care and kept at it until I finally made a hole that I could fit my hand through. With a firm grip on it and pushing with the other, I managed to slide the door open.

When I got out, I found that nothing in the house had been touched. Everything was like it was before I entered to hide in there. No signs of a struggle, and no signs of a battle; everything looked normal.

At first, I thought, “Yay! My parents probably escaped to safety, but a difficult situation must’ve come up and that’s causing them to be late in order to come and get me.”

While that thought made me feel reassured, something in my chest told me that I was misleading myself. So, I carefully walked through the house without touching anything and saw that the door was fully open.

“They must’ve left it open when they escaped in a hurry,” I thought to convince myself.

I peered out cautiously to see if anyone was there, anyone dangerous from the government. My parents had told me to always be cautious of officers from the government and don’t let them carry me away even if they appear to be friendly.

Since I couldn’t see anyone, I walked out and instantly clamped a hand over my nose. That was because I started smelling a foul stench that made me think of burnt flesh. However, the smell was so strong that it made me think a hundred or so chicken were burnt or something. Well, I had no idea at that time that it was the smell of the dead people that were burnt alive by the night raid.

With my hand clamped over my nose, I moved through the deserted slums, which did not resemble like it anymore. So many buildings destroyed and reduced to rubble, I felt sorry for the owners. Then I quickened my pace and got out of there to go and find where everyone was.

It took me a few minutes after leaving the slums to hear murmuring sounds of people. I smiled and hurried my footsteps to reach them, only to find a large crowd had gathered in the town square facing the front.

“How awful!”

“How crude!”

“Bastards!”

“Shush! Don’t let them hear you, or else we’re next!”

“Sorry!”

I kept hearing people murmuring to each other, but what they said did not make any sense. So, I struggled myself to weave through the crowd to reach the front only to find a shocking scene. In front of me was a platform with rows of sticks that had the heads of decapitated heads stuck to them.

Shocked filled my insides, and I gulped in shock. Then I began scanning from left to right at the decapitated heads of the people. Some of them I did not recognise, while others I recognised as the neighbours that lived close to us and maintained a good relationship with us.

And then, as I neared the end of the row, my eyes widened in horror when I spotted them, the heads of my parents. I saw that the both of them had a still expression mixed with shock, grief, terror, and horror at what was happening to them before they met their end.

I continued to stare at them in shock before I felt something rising from within my stomach. For a second, I tried to clamp my hands over my mouth, but the wave couldn’t be contained, and I threw up on the street.

Some people noticed me, but they just ignored me and turned their attention back to the stage. No one gave me a second glance as they were listening intently to the public speaker announcing the details of the executions. Once the wave died down, I looked up out of breath and listened to the speaker say things that shocked me.

“These are the people that had sparked the ignition of tonight’s attack in destroying your homes, your neighbourhood, and tried to kill you as well,” the speaker said in a loud powerful voice, which got carried to all sides in a clear wave. “We immediately dispatched our most elite of members to capture the culprits and executed them before they could cause anymore harm to you and our empire!”

“No! My parents aren’t the culprits! They did nothing wrong!”

Those were the words I wanted to shout at that time, but my words got stuck in my mouth. I was fearful of drawing attention to myself, I feared the retribution that I would have to face if I spoke up, and I realised the full impact of the advice my mother gave me about staying clear of the authorities.

“They are not to be trusted.”

I heard her voice echoing inside my mind, and glanced at their heads. I wanted to cry, but I felt afraid to do so. I wanted to call out to them, but I was scared for my life. Thus, I ended up staying in the crowd and acted like the person next to me; appearing to look like I was not related to them.

That’s how I lost my parents and ended up becoming an orphan with no place to call home.