the rabbit in limbo

by Sean Ennis

Dwayne appeared reanimated, or poorly xeroxed, a real mess of a rabbit. A bunny rictus with bent whiskers. A wet cough. When I approached him, Vivian said, “Just so you know, Dwayne is blind.”

The mad professors of Bramble County Community College were forced to update their Code of Research Ethics and would no longer be using rabbits in their experiments. FREE TO A GOOD HOME, so long as they weren’t radioactive.

I brought a single carrot for this meeting—firmly orange with feathery, green leaves—and held it out. But Vivian said, “This isn’t a cartoon.” She slid a syringe into the rabbit’s  mouth, and pressed the plunger. Dwayne moaned.

I understood I was also being experimented on. No disrespect to Dwayne, but his cause was lost. Vivian had even sent me a calendar invite for this meeting, and I knew what it meant when she was administrative. Thus, the pristine carrot and my shirt had a collar.

Vivian told a sad story. Dwayne and his ilk were used by laboratories because tissue irritation was easy to see in rabbits, but their suffering was mainly invisible and silent. The mad professors had spent a whole semester on creams, lotions, and ointments, most of which turned out to be toxic for people like Dwayne.

“What do you think?” Vivian said.

I thought that I could see how a wayward mind might worship this ruined rabbit. Dwayne had his paw in another realm. But he was unloveable. Just look at him. Vivian continued.

“You need to understand that Dwayne is a priority of mine. I know you’ve been married before, and you also occasionally dog sit, but this isn’t that. Dwayne has been a problem for some people in the past.”

Jealousy can be a moral failure, or just a relationship miscalculation. The prospect that I could handle a challenge that previous suitors could not was thrilling. 

I said, “I know who I am,” which was the first time I lied to Vivian.

She had one more disquieting and erotic thing to share before we went to see a controversial performance of Euripides' Medea put on by the Bramble High School Drama Club. Would you believe that the van carrying the radioactive rabbits to the facility to be euthanized crashed, and when the driver came to, the rabbits were gone? Many people do.

Photo of Sean Ennis

BIO: Sean Ennis is the Author of HOPE AND WILD PANIC (Malarkey Books), and the forthcoming chapbook, RAT AESTHETICS (Sand and Gravel Press). He lives in Mississippi.