The Rabbit
To be perfectly honest, Tanner had never caught a rabbit before in his life. Not until he saw one delicately cleaning its velvet coat had he even before considered it. By some unseen luck he had managed to make himself just quiet enough to creep up behind the innocent creature and grab it by its ears.
Tanner’s hands and forearms were scratched and bloody from the frantic bunny’s hind legs by the time he got back to his playmates.
“Kill him, kill him, kill him!” they savagely chanted for 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.
Children can be their own worst enemy. As Tanner gripped the struggling rabbit he looked out at his friends faces. They were greedy for excitement. Some primitive force inside them all did not shy away from death of this 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 spring school ended and Tanner left his 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 all be attending the same elementary school. Since it was summer most of these children ended up getting shoed out of their houses and away from their TVs and Nintendo’s for some fresh air, which meant of course the park and surrounding forest.
The children thronged around Tanner. “No…” Tanner feebly tried to protest, but the rock was already in his empty hand. As his friend’s eyes looked into his Tanner felt a kind of powerful 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 cried. The rabbit was getting frantic, and it managed to hook one of its nails into its captors arm before it ripped it out. A thin line of blood leaked from his arm as Tanner watched it. 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!” Tanner protested, tightening his grip on the rabbit, his youthful fingers sweaty.
Another boy, Hans, kicked him in the shins. “Kill it Tanner!” he encouraged. The full attention was again on Tanner and his prey. Tanner held up his rock, his weapon, his worth in his hand, and held it up ready to strike the clawing rabbit. The rabbit’s eyes were wide, its whiskers twitching in fear so fast they were almost a blur. Every couple of seconds it let out a squeak of pure terror. It knew what was happening. What was being decided, what was at stake here. 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 rabbits head 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, they’re 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 thing 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 motionless swings and the rows of tidy, symmetrical houses in the distance.
Embarrassingly Tanner could feel his eyes start to wet in that familiar way and he knew tears were running down his face and his nose was running and his mouth turn reluctantly downwards and all he could think of was the comfort of his mothers 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.
They started shouting again, egging him on. They were telling him yes! Keep smashing, keep breaking, keep destroying, keep killing. Keep doing what you’re doing keep doing it and our eyes will be on what you do.
Tanner brought the rock down on the rabbit, hitting its skull and shoulders and right in between those two innocent eyes that looked up at him with such fright. 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 that rabbit right. He was a killer.
Tanner dealt his final blow swiftly, or as swift 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 still rabbit next to his feet. He couldn’t look at his comrades. But they didn’t notice. They were too busy thinking highly of themselves for being at something so exhilarating. Already comparing stories about what they saw and how cool it was. And boy, how much you shoulda been there to see it!
Jon offered up his worn and tattered shoelace. He was a big brute of a boy was the neighborhood child who had no father and 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 silent, drying the snot and tears from his face with his sleeve as they tied the bloody, almost unrecognizably lump of the rabbit’s hind leg to the other end of the rope. 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 few?
The brutal death of the rabbit was already a dim memory in many of their minds as they got distracted from the still swinging rabbit. Some of them had departed to play house with one another, while others were sword fighting.
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 Tanner found out 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.
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