The Constant Rabbit

‘Good man. We have some Hominid Supremacists doing time for some harmless high jinks that have been deemed illegal for some reason, and given your history you’d be wise to avoid them. We also have about six dozen rabbits,’ he added, ‘troublemakers, every one of them. I don’t want to see any cross-species fraternisation of any sort. The bunnies keep to themselves, and that’s the way we like it. Get it?’

‘Got it.’

‘Good.’

We stepped on to ‘D’ wing, where the central area was taken over by a seating arrangement, the kitchen and several ping-pong tables. There were two tiers of cells, and on the upper-tier balcony I could see prison guards leaning on the rail, twirling their keys and watching us carefully.

‘This is the first in an experimental Media Tropes prison,’ said the governor, ‘designed in order to make inmates feel that they are not being brutalised by a barbaric and outdated system of incarceration, but involved in something more along the lines of a reality TV show.’

‘I’ve heard of this,’ I said, looking around curiously.

‘The layout on the wings is just one of the many TV Prison Tropes that are promoted here at HMP Leominster,’ said the governor. ‘You’ll find the prison is pretty much as you’d expect: the guards are generally mean and unpleasant – except one who is meek and easy to manipulate. The prisoners, instead of being those with a shaky grasp on the notion of consequences, mental health issues or having the misfortune to belong to a marginalised minority, are mostly pastiches of socio-economic groups mixed with regional stereotypes. And rather than fume about the vagaries of providence that got them here before descending in a downward spiral of depression and drug addiction, they prefer to philosophise about life in an amusing and intelligent manner.’

‘Does it work?’

‘Recidivism has dropped eighty-six per cent,’ he said, ‘so yes, it seems so. It’s certainly a lot easier on the prisoners unless you get caught up in Gritty Realism Month when it all gets dark and dangerous and we have riots and people end up getting shivved. That’s just been, so you’re fairly safe for another ten months.’

‘That’s a relief.’

‘Don’t count your chickens. Understated violence that counterpoints a wider issue in society can break out at any time, and we have the biennial Prison Break Weekend in eight weeks, so if you want to be part of that, you have to prove yourself with the right crowd.’

‘Thanks for the tip.’

‘My pleasure. The rabbits are over in “R” wing and you’ll mix at outdoor break – mostly serial burrowers,⁶⁰ which offers us a unique set of challenges. They’ll probably want to make friends, but the rabbits in here are different to the rabbits out there. They’ll pretend to be your friend over the whole fox-killing issue, but don’t get mixed up with them and never accept any carrots. Once you owe them a carrot, you’re in their pocket, and you don’t want to be in a rabbit’s pocket. Well, cheerio.’

I had been carrying my things all this time – blanket, tin cup, roll of loo paper – and the prison guard who had been tailing us showed me into my cell.

I was relieved to find that I wouldn’t have to share it with anyone.

I arranged all my stuff, had a pee then lay down on my bunk, expecting to feel anxious. That I didn’t was probably due to my attendance at a terrible public school which I now realised had furnished me with useful transferable skills.

I ventured out of my cell an hour later for dinner, and after fetching my tray sat on my own. I was not alone for long, however, as two men approached my table. They looked utterly respectable and were chatting in educated accents about how they missed their Agas and their Volvos and badminton and the opera. They also had ‘shallow and extremely transparent’ tattooed on their forearms, which related to a much-repeated quote that Beatrix Potter had made about rabbits. It didn’t occur to them that it might have been self-referential. In any event, the tattoos marked them out as TwoLegsGood.

‘You’re Peter Knox, aren’t you?’ said the first as they sat down either side of me.

‘Nope.’

‘Sure you are. The one who killed Mr Ffoxe, right?’

‘Look, I don’t want any trouble.’

‘Understandable,’ he replied, leaning closer, ‘but we don’t like people who side with rabbits. Humans have been improving themselves in a continuously unbroken chain of evolutionary advancements from the moment life first flickered into being, and are now the high point of evolutionary perfection. That achievement was hard won, and we will defend that struggle against all comers.’

I didn’t think it was the right time to point out the fatal logistical flaw in his argument, but instead repeated something that Pippa’s friend Sally had once said:

‘All life is one, and there is no objective truth that suggests we have a greater right to life than a lichen.’

They both stared at me and blinked a couple of times.