All in short fiction

His most rational fear is that—despite all he has accomplished—future generations will only know of him as a paragraph in a history book. Perchance he’ll only fetch a mention, or there’s the possibility that they’ll never learn of him at all. There’s always the possibility that he’ll fade into the ether; another name proudly carved into stone, only to be eroded by the sands of time.

Derek nods as if he understands, but he’s quite disoriented. His mind is operating on a hundredth of its processing power, and he’s only now coming to the realization that this is a trial, let alone one in which he is the defendant. He realizes, too, that the prosecutors are rabbits, wearing grey suits and unpacking briefcases. And the bailiff is a dark brown rabbit in a sheriff’s uniform. And the stenographer is a rabbit with cat-eye glasses and curly red hair, and she waits to type something out, and she looks at him, and he briefly thinks he’d like to smell her hair.

He believed this was what he wanted: to drown himself in distraction. But as it is realized, it becomes too much to handle. It is like a storm being siphoned into a bottle.

He turns the volume back to low and he welcomes the silence as relief. In his mind, he replays the words she used against him.