Dark as the Night

63

"Hold its back legs, wrap your fingers around its neck, like you're making an 'OK' sign," the voice instructed, patiently.

"I don't want to," she whimpered. "I like it. I don't want to hurt it."

"It's just a rabbit," the voice calmly insisted. "It's nothing, just a small thing."

"But I like it."

The voice became just slightly harder, the man's posture just a little stiffer, and she knew that he was losing patience. "You need to learn that it's just a rabbit. In this world, it's such a small thing, and it means nothing. Hold its back legs..."

"No!" she cried out, pulling away from him, letting go of the small, furry animal. It was sweet and soft and she wanted to stroke it, not... not...

The man grabbed her wrists and put the rabbit back in her lap. It was quiet and still, the darting of its eyes the only sign that it was aware of the tension of the little girl on whose lap it lay prone. A heavy sedative was keeping it from thrashing with the instinctive need to run.

"Just do it," the man demanded, all patience gone from his voice and demeaner. "Everything dies, and you need to accept that. Some things will die at your hands, and you need to accept that too. Violence and death are part of life, and not all lives are important. It is just a rabbit."

"But it's cute!" she wailed, tears sliding down her small face.

"The world has no need for cute things," he growled. "Only the strong survive, and if you want to survive in the big, scary world, then you need to be strong. Are you stronger than a little rabbit?"

"I... I...." she choked out.

"Are you?" he demanded, a drop of spit flying from his mouth and hitting her hand.

"...yes." Her voice came out small and scared, even smaller and more scared than the sweet little animal in her lap.

"Then show me."

Slowly, so slowly, she wrapped her small thumb and forefinger around the bunny's neck, tucked in her other fingers, then squeezed and pulled upward. There was a small, crunching pop...

...and a boy slumped in front of her. Blood oozed from his abdomen as the echo of the shot rang through her ears, melding with the drumbeat of her heart, blocking all other sound. An inarticulate scream was ripped from her throat as she threw down the gun and ran to the boy, dropping down beside him. Her senses were going haywire – her arm ached from the gun recoil she'd been too shocked to brace against, her eyes were hot with the tears that clouded her vision, the smell of gun smoke and blood filled her nose and mouth, and she remained deaf to everything but the painful ringing in her ears.

And through it all, her throat burned with the wailing she could feel but not hear.

She reached for the boy, trying to catch him in her arms, but missed. Her hands grabbed only the sticky, slippery material of his shirt as he slid to the floor, his eyes wide and darting around in terror. Another set of eyes overlapped them in her memory, and her small body was wracked with a shudder of true horror. The roaring static in her ears changed, twisting and morphing into something louder, something harder. She realized it was the raw sound of her own sobbing.

Other sounds began to filter: a clattering noise as someone kicked her gun away, the pounding of footsteps rushing toward them, the gurgling, gasping noise the boy made as he tried to breathe. Adult voices demanded to know what had happened, and children's voices shrieked and cried in varying degrees of confusion, horror, and curiosity.

Strong hands dug into her armpits and dragged her roughly away from the boy, but she scrambled to stay by him, to keep her hand on his belly, to hold the blood in. Her feet and knees slipped and shifted on the slick floor and she nearly slid out of the hands holding her, but they tightened their grip.

"Let go of him," a harsh voice growled in her ear. "It's too late. Just leave him. You need to let go!"

She sobbed incoherently as she struggled against the man's hold. Her legs couldn't seem to decide if they were trying to get back to the boy or away from him. She gazed into his eyes. They were no longer darting.

They were staring right at her, terrified and pleading.

And dead.

Warm arms circled tightly around her, and Odessa continued to thrash, trying to throw them off her. She needed to get to the boy. She needed to stop the bleeding. Her heart pounded erratically as she shoved and slapped against the hard chest, but the hold was unrelenting. "Let me go, let me go!" she whimpered. "I have to stop it!" The arms holding her just tightened their grip, and finally, through her weeping, she heard her name.