When the Alanon meeting opened with the serenity prayer, Rasputin became convinced they were saying grace, and was sorely troubled because he had visions of being the main course. He then noticed there were no forks and knives in evidence, so he relaxed enough to listen as a woman recounted an episode with a drunken husband and how she had let him sit in jail over the the long weekend. "The quiet around the house was so nice I just couldn't bear to spoil it," she said to a round of laughter.
Rasputin was suddenly all ears, this sounded a lot like his bunnyhood when his father would get drunk on the carrot wine he used to make and then would get violent and loud. Rasputin remembered times when he'd wanted something, anything, to happen to his father. And finally when something did, involving a lawnmower and an angry rabbit with a hangover who was determined to show the homeowner whose lawn this really was, Rasputin felt a sense of relief which had caused him some guilt, even to this day. He also, in a moment of clarity he was not at all ready for, realized he had become his father.
The revelation, that he had become his father, rocked Rasputin. This was something he had sworn never to do to the point of it being something of a mantra, and here he was twelve minutes into his first Alanon meeting sobbing into a wad of tissues and for once unable to launch his canoe on the river of denial which flo...wed through his life. This was, he realized, worse than being imprisoned by the chickens.
"Thank God for Gin," Rasputin said as he settled back on his sofa determined to erase the Alanon meeting and the understandings he had attained from his memory. Soon he felt himself sliding down the familiar tunnel into a happy state of nothingness.
In a fleeting episode of lucidity between the fourth and seventh drinks Rasputin came up with a plan for ousting the church and its new found grip on farmville. "Battle of the higher powers", he scribbled on a piece of paper so he would remember it later. A few minutes later he added "sindication" and then the handwriting trailed off to a squiggly line
The hangover would have been tolerable if Rasputin had awakened in his own bed with the ticking of the alarm clock as the most pressing issue of the moment, but instead the sense of having his head in a vise was compounded when he discovered a large, and very fat, woodchuck sharing the bed with him at the Motel 2 and a... half located on the wrong side of the tracks in Farmville.
Not only was the woodchuck naked she was, it soon developed, needy, and she latched onto Rasputin as though he was a deck chair on the Titanic after all the lifeboats had left. Being imprisoned by the chickens was nothing compared to havin...g her call him "darling" and making references to the wonderful things he'd promised the night before.
Rasputin, for his part, was thinking that the water had risen at least to the Promenade Deck, was offered a life jacket of sorts when it became clear that she didn't remember his name either. He slipped into the bathroom. turned on the water in the shower and with some difficulty squeezed his way out the small window and dropped into a barren patch of ground behind the motel.
No sooner had Rasputin touched the ground then he felt a hand grip him by the ears and lift him into the air again. For a moment he was sure the woodchuck had discovered his escape, but as he turned he found himself looking at a pair of mirrored sunglasses. He immediately realized he did not look his best.
His captor was quickly joined by two others, one, a woman with close cropped blond hair, who were wearing suits and seemingly identical sunglasses. The multitude of reflections was unnerving. A second later he was dropped, but only fell a foot into a stiff canvas bag which was cinched on top blocking out much of the light.
They carried him around the side of the motel, and not so gently tossed him into the back seat of a hulking black suv with tinted windows. If there was any upside, Rasputin thought, it was that he was not dealing with amateurs, these folks..., whomever they were, were clearly well practiced in abducting rabbits. Whatever was going on was probably not any worse than being in that motel room with the clingy, needy woodchuck.
The drive took a while, and the still hungovered bunny took advantage of the quiet and the dark to catch some much needed sleep.
Rasputin awoke as the bag was lifted from the car and carried by someone walking quickly across a hard surface. Quicker than you could say rendition he was passed to another person who climbed a set of titanium stairs and ducked through the doorway of a private jet. Two minutes later they were airborne, the bag was opened and he was dumped onto a leather couch.
It took him a minute to get his bearings, the hangover had progressed from acute to a state of generalized meanness and anger and Rasputin who had never been one to let insurmountable odds influence his behavior said, "Who the hell are you,... and when do we get to Aspen?"The three large men sitting opposite, seemed to think this funny, one of them smiled a centimeter, another touched his mirrored sunglasses making sure the were in place, and the third pulled a large hypodermic needle from a leather pouch.
"Unless that's medical grade heroin, put it away. As the song goes, I know when to fold em," Rasputin said as the rendition jet leveled off at cruising altitude. The man holding the syringe looked at one of the others, got a nod, and eased the needle back into the leather pouch.After a moment the man who had given ...the signal spoke, "You have a choice
we have anice septic, solitary cell in Syria, a fetid chamber in Afghanistan thatyou would share with six very hungry men, or a nice walled estate inPalm Springs from which you can plot and then steer your conquest ofFarmville," He rea...chedacross the space and picked up Rasputin, roughly manipulating his armsand legs as he continued, "But you will be our puppet."
It took Rasputin a few moments to wrap his brain around the idea that none of this existed. These agents had probably forgotten the names they were born with ( or had them surgically removed), the plane probably showed up on no radar screens, and he had the choice of becoming stew or a steward.
For a moment he considered using his ninja skills and trying to takeover the aircraft, but instead he decided that living to see theafternoon was as good a plan as any. If he appeared to cooperate hemight learn something and sooner or later they would let their guarddown and he would be able to make a move
The men with sunglasses took Rasputin to a walled estate in Palm Springs, but instead of lounging by the pool sipping cold drinks, he was confined to an airless closet where a flat screen television was playing a loop of rabbit recipes from various shows on the food network. After two days of this tenderizing they to...ok him from the closet and placed him on the butcher block counter in the kitchen.
Rasputin had taken a dislike to the agents with no acronym in general and to one in particular who had a shaved head and an attitude like a constipated rhinoceros. this was the one who said, "So what's it going to be, lunchmeat, are you going to tell us the names of your contacts inside Facebook? Or," he turned to th...e stove where there was a large pot, "do you want to try this on for size?"
Rasputin was a bold rabbit, brash even, but brave, not so much. He also knew this was his best card and was determined to play it carefully. "You want to partner with me , fine, I could use the help, but you've got to let me play him. Y...our style of intimidation wouldn't work with him.""Partner with you?" this struck the agent as about the funniest thing he'd heard since they'd blown up a suicide bomber as he was assembling his bomb.From behind him came another voice, "Let's try this, you get us a a back door into the data set, one that avoids the privacy settings, and give us a query that serves up all the Unitarians and fans of NPR - and you won't be the appetizer at dinner tonight. Hell, if you can sort it by zipcode you might even get a place at the table.Not to be outgeeked Rasputin asked .and. or .or.?
While Rasputin waited for his contacts at facebook to provide the dataset to the government he opened the mail which had accumulated during his adventures and, to his amazement found he'd been called for jury duty. "Me? a renegade rabbit summoned, stripped of my civil liberties and made to listen to lawyers. Take me back to the closet."
The men without an acronym were not sympathetic - it is a duty and aprivilege, cabbage breath," one said. And it might do you good.
Rasputin looked around at the other jurors and decided he wouldnt want them deciding his fate. Then again he was of the school of making your own destiny. It was the tv in the corner that made it an official circle of hell
The case you will be hearing involves four brothers and a sister whoinherited a sewage treatment business and who are allegingmismanagement, fraud, collusion regarding the running of this business.you will hear from four ex wives two of whom are married to differentbrothers, four accountants, three of whom are in jail, and theweatherman from channel 4.
After listening to six hours of opening statements from the attorneys of two of the brothers involved in the lawsuit about the control and management of the sewage treatment company, and learning that the widow, a trophy wife not the mother of the plaintiffs, would be added to the case, Rasputin was reconsidering the option to become stew.
When the third attorney, representing the youngest son, began hisstatement he said dna evidence would show that two of the otherpurported sons and the daughter were not progeny of the father and weretherefore ineligible to profit from t...hewill and that the mother would testify she was not the only one in themarriage who strayed that she suspected there were dozens of bastards,big and little, who were eligible to enter into the case. As theswooning began, the judge got up and adjourned the case "to the dayafter I retire." But before the courtroom could clear, Mitch Caldwellrestored order and offered the participants contracts on a reality showtentatively called "stab your brother"
When he returned home that night Rasputin was told it was no accident he was on that jury. "this is your first assignment it makes sense when you realize that sewage treatment is Americas vulnerable under belly. We have calculated that attacking this system would be the easiest way for Al-Qaeda to disable our country.... We also have information that one of the players in this case has terrorist leanings."
When he tried to log into Facebook Rasputin found his password had been changed. Furious, he tried all three of his back-up identities (which he sometimes referred to as his invisible friends) and discovered they too had been hijacked.Forcing his way into the command module he discovered agents working his personas.... "Hey," he shouted, " I thought we had a deal."
The lead agent turned to him and said, "the deal is we don't eat you for dinner. The deal is you will go to court like a good little jury bunny and in the meantime we will grow your farmville empire beyond your wildest dreams. When the tr...ial is over you will return to farmville in triumph and splendor." He paused, "now go into the dining room Agent Kiefer will explain some of the accounting tricks the various players in the case used to siphon off assets. Who knows? this might be useful to you later." With that he turned back to his monitor.Now, Rasputin had never been called a mental giant, but he was hardly a dumb bunny, and what he'd seen on the monitors assured him his holdings in farmville were being tended to, so he turned and went out to further his education.
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