It Claws Its Way Back

sensitive content: animal death

Gravel scrunches under the tyre as the motorbike comes to a fast halt.

On a midnight road, its only two living creatures stare keenly at each other: a young man, who is flipping up the visor of his bulbous helmet, and the small rabbit with snow-white fur and bright red eyes.

The clang of the kickstand is followed by a quiet swoosh as the man swings his leg over the back of the bike and approaches. His hand is larger than the width of the rabbit’s back and for a second it tenses, eyes widening, the little nose wiggling at a speed that could power a miniature generator. But the human strokes the rabbit ever so gently, and it lets its ears relax.

‘What on Earth is a little guy like you doing here? I almost ran you over! Are you lost?’

There is a gentle pressure over the rabbit’s sides and stomach as the man picks him up; then the warm wall of a sternum, being firmly yet delicately held as one hand keeps caressing the rabbit’s silken ears. It has the softest fur, like submerging fingers into yoghurt, and it is light-weight as if hollow on the inside.

The rabbit’s ears perk up a second before the scream of a lorry interrupts the hanging quiet. Nothing to worry them – it is a block away on an intersecting street. It is a huge beast, too, two containers dragging behind, heavy with the cargo it would have picked up from the depot.

The man glances up absent-mindedly but the truck has already passed. He continues stroking the rabbit. He doesn’t see what the rabbit sees: mangled bone and cracked plastic, blood pooling in between debris.

None of that is going to be real now, anyway.

It shudders anyway, making the young man press it even closer to his chest. It can feel their heartbeats harmonising against each other. The urgent flutter of its own, and the heavy, steady beats of the human. Its so strong it tickles.

‘You must be someone’s pet, huh? Did you run away?’

The rabbit wiggles. It feels its lithe, sleek body running through the man’s hands like water, and his grip tightens slightly as he tries to hold on for a couple of seconds longer until he realises its discomfort and sets it gingerly back onto the asphalt. There the rabbit sits, its white whiskers twitching, those red eyes already looking out into the distance.

Then it pounces. With three quick hops, it reaches the shoulder, and the grass growing on the side tickles its whiskers as it pushes onto the unused plot. Faintly, it can hear the man calling: ‘Be careful, little guy!’

Yes, the night is long and full of horrors for a little white rabbit, whose snowdrop fur makes it stand out like a moonbeam among the darkness and whose whisker blades are no blades to cut at all. But there are yet many souls to save, and the rabbit has never let fear get in the way of its task.

It doesn’t start with a growling but a sniffing; a wet, insistent sound that seems to quiver the forest of grass. The rabbit freezes. All around it, the grass vibrates with the sound of the approaching predator, playing a concerto for the rabbit’s last moments.

When the dog explodes out of the grass, the rabbit does not manage to jump even once. The mutt snatches it mid-hop, canines piercing its paper-thin neck. Frantic pulsing right on its tongue excites the dog and it bites down with a crunch. Blood runs into the white coat and darkens the rabbit, finally granting the little thing some camouflage in the nocturnal darkness. But of course, it is too late.

After the stray mutt has finished his meal – a bit of white fur stuck to the side of his mouth like half a moustache – he lopes off, paws languidly hitting ground after such a large meal.

The rabbit was delicious. It has been a while since the dog has found such a catch. But oh, does it sit badly with him – he slows down, but his stomach seems to weigh him down even more. He whimpers and scratches at his belly with a back paw.

It is like a pressure building up inside him, and he whines and rolls into the grass. Yet, the feeling only gets more intense. He tries to take off but stumbles over his paws, and he howls, but it is a small, pitiful sound and only elicits one embarrassed glance from a cat perched nearby.

The mutt’s stomach is rumbling, turning, shrinking. It yips and nicks at its belly but its blood-soaked snout can’t reach that far anymore, so small has his belly suddenly become, like a ball instead of the globe it was before.

Something in its face snaps, and the dog feels pressure as its snout is sucked into its face. Panicked, it tries to bark, but only a wet snapping of teeth comes out as saliva runs out between its teeth in a rivulet, and then there are no more teeth to gnash.

Its spine cracks and makes it convulse. As if a string was pulling its face from its tail, the dog feels itself becoming an accordion, something much too big for the short space its new body wants it to accommodate. Then its legs start to shorten, but they are slurped into its body so fast that the dog almost feels vertigo as its body rushes towards the ground, and it closes its eyes. Not that there is much consciousness left at this point.

A small, white rabbit with blood-red eyes hunches in the middle of tousled, broken grass. Its little, pink nose is basically vibrating with the effort to smell, and when it notices the cat, it flattens itself into the ground, ears close to its body.

The cat grants it a lazy glance as if wondering if he should have been impressed or surprised, and not finding it in himself to feel either.

The little white rabbit hops out into the night.