The Grief Gerbil

Think Build-A-Bear, but it’s Build-A-Disorder. How wild things get depend on you.

I’m next to reveal mine. I step before the transforming tapestry where the town gathers in front of. The ancient tapestry flits between a hue of colors and waves of topography. No one knows where it came from, it just unfurled after The Great Happening.

A gerbil appears.

Shrieks. Gasps. Hands fly to mouths.

The press takes a timid photo. The Mayor clears his throat, outstretching his arm to calm his people; his hand trembles just enough that only those of us up front can see. “Now, Garret the Grief Gerbil has not been seen in decades, but we know what he leaves in his wake.”

“Shun him!” Someone calls.

“Now, Derek, you live in the first official utopia. Sadness shouldn’t exist here.” The Mayor says. The weight of everyone’s judgement presses in. He inhales, “As with any of our creatures, we study them to better understand our fellow comrade.”

Garret materializes and scampers off into the forest. Bewildered, I look at The Mayor. No one had ever left to the forest beyond town. “You must go…” He whispers. The town gasps.

The Mayor pulls me aside, asking:

“Are you not satisfied in my utopia?”

My mouth bobs open and closed. “I’m fine.” Why would I have grief? For starters, utopia. “What’s out there?” I’ve never tasted a bad question, but that one nails it.

A long, pregnant pause. “I don’t know.” The Mayor swallows, eyes flicking to the tapestry as if it might correct him. “On the maps, it is still considered utopia.” He offers, hollow.

Stepping outside the town gate is sickening. If I were truly “fine,” my legs wouldn’t be shaking. Satisfaction shouldn’t feel like nausea.

At the crest of a hill, I turn around at the copse of trees, facing town. Much of the crowd has thinned. The fewer eyes give my mind room to wander again.

A funny thought: house design. I remember The Mayor sitting down, talking as if it were my own unique design. Up here, everyone’s house is the same. How had I not noticed it before? All I had to do was look up.

I turn around and there, at the foot of the trail, is Garret. His beady little eyes blink a few times. He has a robe like a king and what appears to be a little staff. A snarky comment almost escapes, but he scampers off.

I take off, calling after him. The underbrush and trees grabbing my legs, shirt, and whipping my face and hair. Their stings matching the burning questions I have. I’ve lost Garret. But somehow, I feel him. Looming. His absence is electric, but hollow. I scan the foliage. I don’t come across Garret, but a fawn by a very still mother. From her lack of maternal guard, I knew the mother was lost. The fawn nudges its lifeless mother.

This is the closest I’ve been to actual death minus the readings from The Great Happening. Intellectually I know about death, but we never speak of it.

The fawn notices me and sadly bleats in my direction. It staggers up and wobbles to me, all legs, no grace. This fawn is barely older than the day is young and already, she’s lost her only solace in the world.

I reach my hand out and she lays the weight of her head in it, accepting the warmth, unquestioning of this odd being offering it. Maybe she can come with me. It’d be better than being alone like we both are now. Two creatures without mothers, walking toward something we don’t understand.

I take a few steps and she follows me. Few steps more and she continues the path. Only once did she look back at her mother. A long moment passes before the fawn turns back and joins me. Our eyes were both misty, but I nod and we carry on.

“I’m en route to find a gerbil, not a deer.” I warn. Finding Garret already proved more interesting than I thought. We walk without purpose, but I feel guided, somehow. My eyes keep sweeping the area, even as my mind starts to wander.

I suppose it would’ve been nice to choose my career. Or clothes. Or vehicle. Or dinner. Or what I watched, Or… the list goes on I see. No, I had choices. I distinctly remember The Mayor giving me that paper on my sixteenth birthday. A list of things I was qualified for. None of the jobs were things I’d dreamed about before that moment, but I nodded anyway. He’d brought my favorite cake. I’d do anything for that cake.

Remembering choosing isn’t the same as choosing.

“It’s all been set up.” I look at the fawn, who nudges my hand. “The choices were vetted.” A suffocating terror latches itself to the back of my neck, tracing my rib cage with its bony fingers. That terror coursed through my legs. “The Mayor is scared because he didn’t make the choice, no one knows what’s out here.”

I really need to find Garret.

A flash of robe behind a stump! I creep up to it, a rush of adrenaline from being so close. But no Garret. Instead, I am greeted with a nest built in the hollowed out center. A mother bird is perched, singing to her two babies. She eyes me with caution before proceeding to explain, I assume, what to do. The babies go to the edge of the trunk and take to the sky. One immediately drops to the ground, but runs, hops, and joins its sibling in the air. The mother bird spreads her wings in the hollow trunk. Her two babies, now equipped with all she can teach them, twirl above our heads before taking off on their own path.

I look at the mother bird. Her head flicks between the directions her babies went. She sighs heavily. She bows her head and flutters her wings. She’s alone. No more kids to take care of. She lets out a quiet song. To me, it felt like a song of remembrance. She looks at me and takes to the sky, continuing her own journey.

I lose her in the trees, trying to think of when my own mother sent me off. But the memory dissolves before it forms. Albeit everything I remember is positive, but before town, everything is hazy. I try to think of who came and went and I can’t. I look in the direction of town.

Is utopia the trap?

I rub the fawn’s head as we continue our search for Garret. It always feels like he’s watching, just out of periphery. My mind starts to wander again.

A scamper! Garret bounds out into our path. He cocks his head and looks at me with his dark eyes. His cape and staff on full display, if there was wind it’d look very majestic. “What have you learned?”

It talks. I mean, he talks. He talks! No one has ever mentioned them talking. I try to act nonchalant. “That you are quite hard to pin down. You’re elusive.”

“Why do you think that is?”

I sigh, shifting uneasy, petting my fawn. “Well, it’s all a spectrum. Hard to pinpoint. I think you showed up because I finally stopped pretending nothing is wrong.”

“Rightly so. Come, let’s head back.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah, you found me, that’s it. We’re done.” He climbs up my legs, bops me on the head with his staff, then somersaults off. He uses his rope as a parachute. Now it makes sense. “No, you have to go back and do the whole media blitz while telling everyone what you learned about me. We’ll chat as we walk back.”

Upon returning, The Mayor and other town’s folk come rushing. Prattling wildly about believing I was gone forever. Mere hours in the woods, yet my absence caused an uproar. Someone clutched a framed photo of me I’d never posed for. In the corner, a makeshift memorial: candles, flowers, my name scrawled on a banner.

Everyone looks expectant. “This is all a lie.”

Gasps. Shrieks. More yelling.

“Only now do we see that The Mayor has blinded us. Cultivated choices are not choices.”

“Now just wait a minute—” The Mayor interjects, a few in the crowd agree with him.

“What I’m saying is,” I say, speaking over the commotion, “that The Mayor did what any sane person would do after The Great Happening: protect his people. We are the first official utopia.”

Cheers. “But why’d you get Garret the Giblet?” Someone calls. Laughter. Much needed laughter. Even from Garret.

“Simple as choices. I’ve been grieving a life I never got to choose. Who knows, maybe I’d’ve made the same choices, but it would have been all me. There’s beauty in imperfection.” The Mayor looks like he’s about to cry. “You’re celebrating because it happened, you were lucky enough to experience it. Taking that away, though…”

“Again, I was trying to protect everyone. Please…” The Mayor begs.

“Absolutely.” I clap my hands. “Moving on. Now for my surprise for you all.” I rub my hands together. People are unsure.

“This is from before The Great Happening, so our great-great grandparents used to do this. I am going to give you grief.”

Everyone shudders and takes a collective step back. I can’t help but laugh at the spectacle. “No, no. It’s a way of joking. You give someone a hard time, you joke on them, you give them grief. Like Garret, I think your robe makes you look like a curtain with legs.”

The crowd laughs. Stops. Garret laughs and shoots back, “And then I’d say, well your limbs would make you look like a poorly constructed marionette.” Laughter.

Someone yells about The Mayor’s bicycle moustache. Susan had beehive hair. The tension around town before I left swept away with laughter. The Mayor shakes my hand, looks into my eyes with regret but a silent understanding.

“If anything, your version is now a more textured utopia,” I say. He nods and goes back to insulting the town’s people with a big smile on his face. For once, no one’s smiles are forced.

Garret retreats to the tapestry, saluting me with his staff. I wave. He slips away.

Utopia didn’t break today. It finally told the truth.