The Rabbit
It came down again, harder than he had swung it before.
This time I could not feel the fingers fall away from my hand. That was the last two on my right hand, and if my blurred vision served me correctly, about a sixth of my palm and the two knuckles inside it went with them. But I still jerked and thrashed against the leather straps as if I were in pain.
Was I putting on a show?
He would like that, a show.
This has all been a sick show. Watching me afraid. Watching me froth. Like a caged animal.
No, this was not some cinematic performance for the dead eyes that had been on me for the last several hours, or days. The reaction to the separation was simply what my body expected to do. A natural wail of the personal cataclysm being thrust upon it, around it, inside it.
The lack of a shriek seemed to startle him.
His low humming stopped. It was the first time he had broken that tune since I first saw him. A hood shielded any expression, but even through my blurry vision I could tell he had expected me to scream as I had before.
A moment of silence settled, and for the first time I noticed the cellar smelled like manure and turpentine cleaner. As if someone had tried to scrub away the stains before I arrived.
The low watt fluorescent bulb swaying from its unmounted wiring above me seemed brighter today. The cracked leather under my arms chewed at what was left of them. In any other scenario, I might have thought this vintage barber chair was nostalgic, something from around 1960.
So rustic.
Such a thrift store buy.
The manure and turpentine stung my nostrils. My stomach lurched. Blood and bile slid down my chin and rolled across my bare chest and stomach like lava.
The silence broke with a sigh.
“You are messier than the last.”
I looked up through the haze at his silhouette and found whatever resolve I had left.
“Kill me. Please.”
Silence.
“Kill me, you piece of shit.”
More silence.
I began to weep.
“Please. God, please let this end. Please kill me.”
A raspy chuckle wheezed from his chest, just outside the reach of the light. In the dark, I watched his silhouette reach toward the old toolbench along the far right wall.
I leaned my head back and stared through my fogged vision at the rafters.
I hear steps above me, but when I scream they do not come help. Why.
His chuckle choked into a hysterical laugh as I looked up to witness the swing of something. Whatever it was, it blocked the light for just a moment.
And then I was gone.
