The Rabbit
To be perfectly honest, Tanner had never caught a rabbit before. Not until he saw one delicately cleaning its velvet coat had he even considered it. But by some unseen luck he had managed to make himself just quiet enough to creep up behind the innocent creature and grab it by the ears.
Tanner’s hands and forearms were scratched and bloody from the frantic animals clawing by the time he got back to his playmates.
“Kill it, kill it, kill it!” they savagely chanted for its death. They already sought out to kill even though they still ran to the safety of their parent’s bed in the night after a terrible dream. They still craved the safety of their nightlight to assure them they were safe from the horrible monsters lurking in the darkness, safe from their imaginations most horrifying creations.
As Tanner gripped the struggling rabbit he looked out at his friends faces. They were greedy with anticipation. Some primitive force inside them all did not shy away from death of their prey. A red-headed, rosy-cheeked boy whose name Tanner thought might be Jared picked up a stone, “kill it with this rock!” he shouted, emerald eyes jumping with excitement.
Tanner knew less than half of the children’s names that crowded around him that day. Earlier that year he had left his old friends for new ones in a new town, in a new state, in a new life. Most of the children lived within a block away from Tanner, and that fall they would be attending the same elementary school.
Since it was summer most of these children ended up getting shoed out of their houses by their parents and away from their TVs and Nintendo’s for some fresh air, which of course meant the park and surrounding forest.
The children thronged around Tanner. “No…” Tanner feebly tried to protest, but he had already taken the stone. As his friends watched him, Tanner felt a kind of powerful that he’d never felt before. A kind of hunger lingered in the depths of their eyes, as they watched Tanner.
“I killed a wolf with a rock before!” gloated Jared.
“Oh yeah? Well I killed a bear once when I was really little!” Declared another. Of course none of this was true, as you may have gathered.
“Oh yeah? Well I killed a dinosaur once!” exclaimed another.
“Ouch!” Tanner suddenly cried out. The rabbit was becoming frantic, and it managed to hook one of its nails into its captors arm before ripping it out. A thin line of blood leaked from his arm as Tanner stared, fascinated. Then he had finally had enough. He began to bend down to drop the rabbit onto the forest floor but angry shouts came from his companions.
“Baby!” Sheila taunted from the side of him. “Wah wah wah! I’m a little baby! Wah wah wah!”
Everyone laughed at baby Tanner. “I am not a baby!” He protested, tightening his grip on the rabbit.
Another boy, Hans, kicked him in the shins. “Kill it, Tanner!” he encouraged.
Tanner raised his rock, his weapon, ready to strike the hysterical rabbit. Its eyes were wide; it’s whiskers twitching in fear so fast they were almost a blur. Every several seconds it let out a squeak of fear. It knew what was happening. What was being decided, what was at stake. It was completely defenseless, at the mercy of a group of trigger-hungry children.
Time slowed for Tanner as he brought his hand down on the rabbit’s head for the first time. Even though his eyes were intent upon his prey he could clearly see all of his new friends looking at him with so much admiration, their mouths each etched in a perfect “o”. Each child seemed to glow in the heat of the moment.
The rock struck the rabbit’s skull and he saw the little being flinch away from the impact, its eyes close and its face scrunch up. Time sped up again, and all that met Tanner was silence. All of the children who had been watching him no longer knew how to react.
Tanner looked at everything but the rabbit. He looked at the moss beneath his feet, the mud stained sneakers, the roots sticking out of the ground. He looked at the stick forts his friends had previously been playing in before emerging from the woods with the rabbit. He looked and he saw the end of Neverland and the beginning of civilization, the abandoned swings and the rows of orderly houses in the distance.
Embarrassingly, Tanner could feel his eyes start to wet in that familiar way and he knew tears were streaming down his face. His nose began to run and his mouth turned reluctantly downward. All he could think of was the comfort of his mother’s arms holding him. Safety.
Finally Tanner let his eyes rest on the pitiful creature in his hand, held out away from him as if it were diseased. Anger and embarrassment started to form. Starting from beneath him, emerging from somewhere deep down beneath his feet, entering through his toenails.
It moved up quickly, filling his ankles and lighting his kneecaps on fire. Then deep inside his belly an ice-cold feeling caught fire and shot up through his lungs, to the tips of his fingers and up his throat and finally resting right in between his ears. He was angry at the rabbit, the rabbit made him, he told himself.
Then they started shouting again, egging him on. They were telling him yes! Keep crushing, keep breaking, keep destroying, keep killing. Keep doing what you’re doing, keep doing it and our eyes will be on you.
Tanner brought the rock down on the rabbit over and over again. He was striking its skull and shoulders and right in between those two innocent eyes that looked up at him with such fear. Each time the rock impacted with its body Tanner could feel it grow weaker, less struggle, less fight. Less life.
The rabbit knew it was dead as soon as Tanner grabbed it earlier that afternoon. It knew it but it kept on fighting. The rabbit knew Tanner was a killer. Tanner hated with all his heart that he proved the rabbit right. He was a killer.
Tanner dealt his final blow swiftly, or as quickly as a child of his age and practice could. His chest heaved up and down, as if he had just competed in some exhausting activity.
He dropped the motionless rabbit next to his brand new action figure sneakers. He couldn’t bear to look into his friend’s faces, but they didn’t notice. They were too busy thinking highly of themselves for being at something of such importance. They were already comparing stories about what they saw and how “cool it was and boy, you shoulda been there to see it!”
Jon offered up his worn and tattered shoelace. He was a big brute of a boy whose mother was never home and always seemed to be on your front lawn or being fed breakfast by your mother.
“Lets hang it from a tree!” He suggested. No one stopped him. Tanner let himself get swallowed up by the others as they watched Jon clumsily tie his shoelace to a low branch in the tree.
Tanner watched silently, wiping away the snot and tears from his face with his sleeve while they tied the bloody, almost unrecognizable lump of the rabbit to the other end of the rope.
When they finished, the children watched in awe as it swung side-to-side rhythmically. Did the rabbit know this morning what it would be doing this afternoon? Did it know that its minutes on the ground were numbered?
The brutal death of the rabbit was soon a dim memory in many of their minds as they gradually became distracted. Some of them had departed to play house with each other, while some others began to sword fight with sticks.
In the distance the church bell stroke six o’clock. It was time for dinner and their mothers would expect them home soon.
That night, as Tanner was trying to force down homemade chicken casserole he discovered that food doesn’t taste nearly as good after a day like that. It tastes like ash in your mouth and even though you’re ravenous your stomach still resents you.
