Jackalope

When I was in the seventh grade I found a scalpel after school. I think it belonged to my mom. There was nowhere else it could have come from. She was a surgeon, she worked a lot. Still, after I snatched it off the kitchen countertop, she never asked me about it, never even mentioned it. But I was a twitchy kid. Not quite ADHD, but I moved around a lot, mostly when things moved around me. A ball falling from a stray toss in the play yard or the random glint of a far-off keychain made me jump and straighten. And this scalpel almost glowed. The black, black, veiny marble counter it was sitting on reflected a kind of halo around the silver knife, anything but subtle. I halted as soon as I stepped through the door. And just as quickly I was across the room and the thing was in my hand, a dull ring echoing from where it had bumped the counter when I picked it up. It was exactly what I needed. 

I probably didn't need to bring it to my room, I didn't really need to wait either. It wasn't like my mom had been home, she wouldn't have been for awhile. But paranoia threaded hooks into my fingers and pulled me to leave the little scalpel under my pillow and shove my twitching backpack under the bed. Both stayed put until I heard the creak of the front door open. I had made myself dinner hours ago and sat waiting on the bed with my pajamas on, my feet dangling over the floor. She came up to see me after an hour of rustling and clanking in the kitchen, a kiss on the cheek, and it was to bed. It would be a while before I slept. 

I wiggled my way across the bed and grabbed around under the pillow until my hands closed around the little scalpel hidden beneath. Letting my feet fall to the floor, I padded across the room to stand in front of the mirror that was propped on my dresser. I jerked my shirt over my head and onto the ground, glancing up then halting under my own reflected gaze. The brightest thing in the room, the little mirror winked at me and I stood transfixed for a long moment. I watched the way my whole body seemed to move with my breaths, growing more and more rapid, stuttered. I finally began to lift the hand holding the scalpel, and that stuttered too. By now, all of me was shaking. Where the room had seemed to hang in the air moments before, now it was buzzing around me, through my skull. I had to force my breaths to slow, make my chest fall calm and flat, so I could raise the little knife to the smooth flesh. 

I cut in slow, deep lines. They weren't as straight as I would have liked, but they weren’t messy. The skin, muscle and fat parted as one. Until there was a crooked rectangle outlined in small wells of blood over the left side of my chest, where I knew my heart was. I pried gently at the shape with my fingernails, lifting and wiggling it out of place little bits at a time until it slid out, like a loose puzzle piece. The little knife cut its way through the ribs just the same, sliding through like wet clay and leaving me with small stretches of bone in a pile with the flesh. And all that remained was a rectangular hole in me, beating heart open to see, and I cut it out.
Like everything else, the scalpel sliced the arteries quietly, letting their ends dangle until the last cut was made and I could slip the little organ from my chest. I placed it down on a towel I had spread over my comforter, then folded onto my knees to pull the backpack from beneath my bed. It was still now as I eased it gently down on my mattress, pulling at the zipper slowly to dampen the noise. And with just as much care, I reached in and lifted out a small balled towel. I pulled back the folded corners to reveal the rabbit inside, pure black eyes looking up at me. 

I attended a public school; it didn't have a lot of money. No one really cared. It was obvious by the play yard, or the building itself. A cube of grey brownish stucco moored in the concrete of the parking lot, back facing the open desert. That's where they let us play. A chain-link fence stopped our progress into the parking lot but among the craggy rock and saguaros we had free rein. So the kids made a game. They gathered up whatever sticks they could find and filled their pockets with rocks and went rabbit hunting.
There were hundreds of them and I don't know why they stayed. But behind every boulder, under every bush, in every hole that cracked open under the heat, you could find them. They would hide until they couldn't deny they had been found any longer and then their little gray bodies would streak across the dry earth and they would find a new hole. They were so fast, the hunting parties almost never caught them, and never while I was around to see. But school was out, and mom wasn’t home today, she wouldn't be for a while. So I stayed late in the play yard and watched the other children. 

I let myself straggle around the back of their little pack, trying to inch in to join the fray, but I never said a word. When someone noticed my advance they would look me in the eye with a kind of question, and I would just stare back, pupils blown wide and black, unblinking. Someone would shrug, turn their back and lead the hunting party on, leaving me to fall back and watch, wait. Until they caught one. It was smaller than normal, a lot smaller, only about the size of my fist. That’s probably the only reason they were able to catch it. Weak, with legs too short to make the kind of escapes I'd seen other rabbits make in the past. It got stuck in its mad dash, back leg becoming hooked in a scrap of chain link fence half-buried in the ground. Just as quickly the pack of children descended on it, pulling the wire away from the creature and dangling it in the air by the same foot that had been stuck. A loud bunch of hoots and yells rose up, someone was chanting, but I didn't hear any of it.
I punched through the barricade of people that made up their little hunting party and pushed myself into a run to reach the middle of the group. I grabbed the rabbit with both hands and ducked under a swipe from the kid that had been holding it seconds before. Suddenly the yelling from earlier took on a much different tone, and it was all around me as I weaved between the people on my out and away. And then I ran. It felt like the fastest I had ever run in my life. Everything seemed to blur around me but the motion of the pack at my back and the shiny new metal of the chain link gate that opened to the parking lot. I got pretty close, but as everything blurred I lost my footing, my awareness. My leg was caught on a half buried rock and it sent me tumbling to the ground, rabbit clutched to my chest in a protective ball. The world was a different kind of blurred now, filled with pain from the impact and sharper pricks of cuts and skinned elbows.

It was nothing like when the pack finally caught up, the first to arrive stomping down on the leg that had become caught, pinning me to the ground. Another wave of jeers swelled in the kids as they made a new circle with me in the middle. And this time faster. All of them seemed to move so fast, every step forward to close the distance made with no visible movement, they were just suddenly there. Everything about them seemed to glint, by their movement and zippers and belt buckles shining in the setting sun. And I was moving fast too. My eyes bounced over and off of each of them in a way that seemed to layer them together into one looming thing. I could feel my heart in my chest like I could feel nothing else, just the sheer momentum of everything around me. I could move faster. I could race my own heart, I could protect this little rabbit that I felt vibrating at my chest. I could save both of our stumbling pulses if I made it through that gate. So I did. Now I didn't hear anything of the hunting pack behind me. Everything was silent to my ears but the rapid beating I could feel everywhere in me and it pushed me on and away. They couldn't touch me. I ran all the way home.

The little rabbit looked up at me and I looked at it in a way that I hadn't yet. I looked at it. I looked it in the eye and stood there in silence but for the sound of its heartbeat. I don't think it was scared, that's just the way we were. It wasn't even scared when I lifted it off the bed and brought it to stand with me in front of the mirror, and neither was I. It didn't squirm when I lifted it to the new cavity in my chest and gently fit it inside, it just looked at me and I looked at it, eyes flooded with black pupils, bodies twitching slightly. I slid the chunks of rib into their place between the wider stretches of bone, clicking and fastening. The little black eyes looked at me from between the bars, it still didn’t look scared, it didn’t feel scared. Just fast. It began to beat its little feet against the bars of my ribs in a steady rhythm and for the first time since I had severed the last artery, I felt the stir of movement in my body again, a beating heart. It was faster than the last. This little rabbit was safe behind the bars of bone. The patch of skin and muscle I placed over the open hole kept the beating thing warm. And this little rabbit was fast enough to keep up with me and my darting eyes and flinches and sprints. It kept me quick.

I've lost the scalpel. The organ too, though that was on purpose. I threw it away the very same night. Why should it stay when this little rabbit can keep up with me in a way the original organ never could. But its beats are hard, rapid and jarring. I can feel the ribs it kicks against crack and give a little more every day. More and more I wish I had kept my heart and the scalpel to put it back inside. I can feel myself slowing and settling, but the little rabbit is still afraid.