To Lie with a Living Thing
by Zoe Sunn
[Trigger warning: References to violence.]
The rabbit appeared before her, soft and delicate in its deep black fur, retreating from the darkness of the crawl space. Christine crouched in the snow beside it, gripping the metal exterior of her trailer home for support. Her gloveless hand—ice cold and cracking from the dryness—held a small, premature bell pepper with a yellowish hue. She’d much prefer if the rabbit nibbled on the pepper, rather than the insulation underneath her home. The creature took shelter there, burrowing in the fluffy pink fiberglass mats like cotton candy, costing Christine over $2500 in damages. She grabbed the rabbit’s small body roughly, absorbing its comforting warmth.
The animal squirmed and wriggled under pressure, making her cringe. She cupped it between her ribs and forearm, cradling it like a baby. She put the baby in a cage; handmade and thought-out when she first discovered the rabbit about a week ago. The rancid stench of its droppings and urine had begun to leak through the floorboards. Random scrapes and scratches followed her every step; chewing noises and little chittering sounds kept her awake at night. She would’ve stayed in the city if it weren’t for the pay cuts, and more importantly, the layoff.
The trailer home was purchased for two grand off an ad online. It was humid and musty; not restored nor revived since the late eighties. Moisture seeped through the cracks and fractures of the aged wood, lining up in constellations of mold across the walls and ceiling. All the taps were rusted, making the water taste like old metal. A thick build-up of crystalized crust encapsulated the stained toilet, imprisoning it to the tiled floor, soiled with gunk. The air reeked of dirty laundry, curdled milk, and an overall lack of hope. A badly dealt hand. How to make something out of nothing, she simply didn’t know.
She poked breathing holes in a clear plastic bin from the nearest grocery store, 15.4 kilometers away. The top of the cage was secured with leftover chicken wire from her greenhouse, pulled from the failed lettuce cultivation: rotten, dank, and mushy. The rest of the bell pepper was placed in the cage as well; juice collecting at the jagged edges where Christine last gained the rabbit’s trust. She studied its movement as it hopped lightly and sniffed the acrylic walls of its new captivity. A part of her wished she felt bad. The other part of her wished she didn’t have to completely reinsulate the one thing she had left.
***
“I caught the rabbit, Mom,” Christine said, placing the call on speakerphone. She stared out the window, past the frosted fog collecting along the bottom of the frame, and watched the greenhouse from afar, anxiously tapping her coffee mug with a nervous finger.
Her mother replied through static, sharp and grainy like sawdust. The cell phone service out in Kawartha Lake was extremely poor. “Oh, that poor thing,” she said. “Will you release it soon?”
Christine considered her options for a moment. If she released the rabbit out into the wild— which, she argued, would be the sane thing to do—there would always be a possibility of its coming back. It would get cold, or hungry, or lonely even. Maybe it would go out and start a rabbit family, and bring its whole clan back to taunt her, scratching beneath the floorboards. Her money, her home. So why not just get rid of it? Deep into her thoughts, she forgot her mother was on the line.
“Christine?” Mom said, breaking the silence, “Promise me you won’t kill it, please.”
A brief silence hung between them once more; suspended in the air by fragile strings of familiar hesitance. “I don’t think I will,” Christine stated.
Her mother let out a small sigh—just loud enough that Christine could hear it, yet just quiet enough to imply that she wasn’t supposed to.
“How are you doing lately?” she interrupted, “—with the farm and everything.”
“I’ve been better but I’m fine.”
“Are you eating well? How’s your greenhouse?”
“Fine,” Christine replied dully, thinking the nagging would never stop. She paced around in what little kitchen space she had, waiting for her mother to hang up.
“Do you…” her mother paused—a tint of fear quivering about her manner, “do you need money?”
Christine immediately hung up the phone.
Sipping the last bits of her black coffee, she cupped the mug warmly in her palms, breathing deeply in, and out. She let her pulse slow down, she let the drink take her. She pulled on her thick winter coat, the feathers peeking out of slight rips along the seams, and slipped her cotton sock feet into a muddied pair of military grade snow boots. Her face deadpan, her actions routine, she loaded the chamber of a BB gun with four lead pellets.
***
The rabbit's fur reminded her of the mittens Mom used to make as Christmas gifts. She felt again the warmth of the tree, the crackling of the fire. The excitement of waking up to find that Santa had put her on the nice list. She fought voices in her head which told her she didn’t deserve it.
“What are you doing Christine?” asked her little brother through hiccuped sniffles. His small face, at four years old, displayed pink cheeks and red eyes from sobbing deeply. His little body, tucked away in a full snowsuit, was not yet complete without his mittens.
Christine only smirked, and laughed, and shrugged her eight-year-old shoulders with a mocking grin spread wide across her face. She held her brother’s precious mitts, cutting them up into tiny, fuzzy pieces; satisfied by the crunch of the blade against the wool.
She laid the disfigured remnants upon his bed like a knitted crime scene, red and white stripes and broken strings, scattered across a baby blue duvet. His round, worried eyes lit up in horror and disappointment as he wailed and cried.
“Tell Mom about this and it will be you I chop up next,” she told him. A subtle wave of regret then tapped her on the shoulder, causing her voice to shake.
***
The rabbit felt soft in her hands again, lifting it out of the plastic bin with care. Its tiny heartbeat pulsed against her fingertips: thump, thump, thump. She was unsure now of how delicate to be with this fuzzy black sphere of life in her arms. Perhaps she lacked the delicacy and cautiousness. Perhaps she played too rough as a child. Could she blame her mother for that, too? Could the animal sense her inexperience? Could it smell the tension that lined her body like a sausage casing, even through her winter coat? How delicate should I be with something I intend to harm? she thought. She wondered if the rabbit could hear the war in her mind.
Never before had she been so close to such a small life. Her mother refused to introduce an animal into the family as she thought they were too much work. Not that Christine nor her brother ever wanted a pet, but it was a thought that followed her into adulthood like growing wisdom teeth: a silent, slow pain. A lack of knowing and understanding.
The pets over at friends’ houses seemed to be wary of Christine, always inching away as if they knew something about her that she didn’t yet know herself. Maybe it was the tip of a dog’s tail that sat in a jar under her bed. Maybe it was the whiskers of her best friend’s cat—individually plucked—concealed in her back pocket. Maybe it was because she had the urge to cut up her little brother’s mittens—the satisfaction from the crunch of the blade against the wool.
Its body plopped down like a pillow of innocence, nestled amongst bushes of kale and tomato plants in the greenhouse. Beads of sweat began to collect on her forehead, threatening to drip down through her eyelashes. The rabbit stood still, enjoying the corner of a low-hanging kale leaf. Christine took aim.
Three: Don’t think about it.
Two: It’s just a rabbit.
One: It’s just a rabbit.
Bang.
The pellet hit the rabbit just above its right eye, blood pooling slightly around the edges. It sat stunned, unmoving and shocked, yet somehow still alive, taunting her with its heartbeat. Christine paused for a moment, her pointer finger hovering above the trigger, weakly resisting the temptation to pull it again. The feeling engulfed her. The familiar one. The one she felt with the tip of the dog’s tail. The one with the cat whiskers. The mittens. The crunch.
She shot the rabbit once more. This time, directly in the eye. She could see the pellet as it made impact; the way it struck the animal’s small obsidian orb; the way it broke its thin, delicate barrier of sight, gushing velvet red. Something in the speed of the thing, the swiftness in its movement, was hypnotizing. Its round black eyes stared straight through Christine, to the core of her, as if she were made of glass; fragile and fracturable. A droplet of blood collected down the rabbit’s soft pudgy cheek, falling to the soil beside the pellet. A red tear.
The rabbit yelped and screamed in obtuse pain, a high-pitched squeal resonating in the frosted air, forever imprinted at the front of Christine’s mind. It was sharp aluminum nails dragging against a dry chalkboard. It was the whistle of an angry tea kettle. It was a baby’s injured cry; weeping, wanting, begging, for its mother. She heard her little brother in its wails. She saw his bawling face at Christmas. She had no idea rabbits could scream like that.
***
Bright red and bloodshot eyes stared at an array of blank ceiling panels that night. She’d stare at them until dawn, studying the curves and bumps in the off-white plaster, counting the cracks along the edges. Dark circles inflamed beneath her lower lashes, nearly touching them from the puffiness. The rabbit's screams rang in her head: tantalizing, pinching, paralyzing her with fear and exhaustion. How almost-human it sounded was truly, deeply disturbing. The thought of it gnawed away at her like its teeth to her house.
Her heart rate skyrocketed, pulsing through her veins so profusely that she thought they would burst. Put it out if its misery, put it out of its misery, Christine’s thoughts echoed loudly. Her whole body was shaking. The pre-collected beads of sweat fell down through her eyelashes as she wiped her forehead with a nervous hand. The cracked skin of her knuckles felt abrasive and rough against the softness of the comforter. Put it out of its misery, she repeated, almost religiously, over and over, even muttering the words to herself. Put it out of its misery. Think, think, think.
Her cotton sock feet in snow boots again, just outside of the trailer, she lifted a medium-sized stone from the ground, tracing its rough, jagged edges with a careful finger. The wind howled as flurries of white engulfed her, pulling her small body back and forth as she stepped. Snowflakes melted upon impact with her long, deep black hair. Something in the tall silhouette of the evergreens made her feel caged in, surrounded by nothing but her shallow plot of land, hidden in the unknown depth of the forest. Put it out of its misery.
She pulled open the plastic door of the greenhouse, humidity fighting the frosty bellows of the chilled breeze around her. Cracked fairy lights strung across the plastic framework guided her way to the broken animal. An unusual silence and sweatiness hung in the space, stifling her slow, careful breaths. Stone in hand, she took heedful steps, slightly trembling, only to discover the rabbit completely still under a low-hanging kale leaf, dead of shock.
Christine dropped the stone and fell to her knees with it, pulled to the softness of the dark soiled ground. The adrenaline, the anxiety, the allure of it all separated from her body and evaporated into the suffocating greenhouse air. She could do nothing but stare as the feeling faded away. Its limp, lifeless body. The way the black fur sank faintly, awaiting its future decay, the dull, dented right eye of her doing; the maroon evidence splattered across dying leaves. The modern renaissance of the scene appealed to her cruelly, like the paintings of slain lions and Greek gods she once admired at prestigious art galleries in the city. Look how far you’ve come, she dared to say aloud.
Taking a spot on the ground beside the rabbit, she made her bed amongst the dirt and the bugs; allowing them to crawl up into her tangled hair as she lay down. She gave the plants permission to tickle her forehead with the feathered edges of their leaves. She let the smell of the confined earth waft across her senses, the rot of the lettuce cultivation contrasting the freshness of the tomatoes. The rabbit looked so serene in its unfortunate fate as she came to meet its eyes. Its thoughts were silent. Its home was made. Perhaps, just for the night, she too would sleep, holding the rabbit tight in her arms like the pieces of a loved one’s mitten she once destroyed.