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He could see shadowed movement through the peephole of the door, accompanied with the shuffling of hesitant feet and mumbling. After a moment, the door creaked open and William’s head tilted down slightly and placed an adequate smile on his features as the young man who poked out nodded nervously.
“Uh, hey! Hello- I mean, sir! What can I.. do for you?” Jeremy Fitzgerald chirped, his smile stretched a little too far to be real. He ran his fingers through his unkempt hair –the blonde colour was new– and rocked on the balls of his feet, head tilted questioningly. Will’s eyebrows raised, disdain just barely concealed.
“Why don’t you, ah, run along and fetch your mother for me. I had an inquiry.” He kept solid eye contact with Jeremy, almost daring the boy to blink first. After a moment of pause, he relented and pulled a gently folded paper; A lovingly handwritten advertisement with the staple still in it, mentioning a wild rabbit in need of a home. Will pushed it further towards Jeremy, a fishhook in a shallow pond.
“Right! I’ll get ‘er for you, hold on -” The door slammed shut instantly and the shadow in the peephole quickly faded. William’s face quickly shed itself of the applied expression, and he began to file away the various details of the house. The welcome mat - “Come on in!”- was odd enough; why would you wish to have such an idea at the front of one’s house? Seems to be an invitation for unwelcome company. The doorbell was worn away, most likely from many such visitors. Surely, no one needs visitors as often as this. Before more information could be acquired, the door creaked open again and possibly the cheeriest woman in Hurricane bounced out. Will quickly re-applied the smile and nodded at her, head now tilted significantly down to make eye contact
“Oh! Well, hello! You’re Mikey’s father, right? Here for the rabbit?” A polite smile graced her round face as she absently reached for an auburn curl to tuck away from her face. Her eyes danced to William’s side, as if she expected to see someone else. Without waiting for a response, she nodded and took the paper from Will’s still-outstretched hand. “Let me fetch the sweet thing! Oh, I’m so happy someone’s giving it a home, I would if I could but, well, I just don’t have the time for another animal. Jer-Jer’s enough as it is.” She scurried away from the door, and a flash of blonde fluttered out from view as well, clearly from Jeremy listening in. Will’s eye twitched faintly, already quite fed up.
Moments waltzed by, the door left cracked open as gibberish floated from the TV set somewhere in the house. Will attempted to listen, but couldn’t interpret much - Oh, right. - He slowly fixed himself back in place from his position of leaning over into the doorway. Observation of this family may have to wait. Hands drifting to his perfectly coiffed hair, then to his tie, which he adjusted almost obsessively. Mrs. Fitzgerald shortly crossed the frame of the door, cradling a cardboard shoebox in the crook of one arm, the paper in the other.
“Here you go! Take care of the sweetie, will you? It’s just precious. Thanks for droppin’ by!” She smiled once more before placing it in William’s hands, and waved the hand with the ad in it before closing the door. He stayed transfixed on the porch for a second before slowly descending the small set of stairs in front and beginning the small trek back to the house. Every so often, the box would shift, or a gentle snuffling would emit from it. He resisted the urge to open the box and peer inside, instead keeping one hand firmly on the top to prevent the rabbit’s escape. Soon enough, he headed inside and straight to the basement, tugging the rusted chain on the ceiling so the familiar yellowed light buzzed through the bulb. Will shut the door and sat down, the electrical noise of the light doing little to muffle the faint thumping and ridiculous music pouring from Michael’s room. Massaging the bridge of his nose, Will placed the box on the desk, moving aside the stacks upon stacks of blueprints and document drafts that needed to be looked over and edited. He lifted the lid and a velvet nose poked out, twitching as it smelled the dank air. With a gentle hand, he lifted the small creature out of the box and observed it. It was a little thing, really, with tawny fur and deep black eyes that stared right back at him. One of its front legs was wrapped in a cloth, most likely from Mrs. Fitzgerald’s idea of “rehabilitating animals.” The idea was frivolous at best; humans are the most mortal of all. Attempting to prolong another’s life wasn’t the right of man, after all, as man cannot protect its own.
William shifted his grasp of the rabbit, cradling it like an infant with one hand holding its head and the other on its haunches. His touch was feather-light, fingers buried in the soft fur. When his hand twitched, it apparently spooked the thing, for it began to shriek. Will held the creature further away from him in a startle; it sounded human. A child’s howl for it’s mother, an infant’s sob for attention. It was so disturbingly humanoid that Will checked the thing once over for a zipper or button; was it a recording playing? The thing began to thrash in his hold, hind legs kicking the air in vain as it squealed more. The blasted thing fought to escape his hands, its small mouth curled back to expose teeth and head tilted back so that its eyes were gazing now up at him. They were no longer deep and warm as the comfort of the abyss but rather haunting, challenging his unblinking gaze. Was it trying to appear as a threat?
After a moment’s more of squealing and thrashing, Will’s gaze grew cold. This thing surely knew its fate. It fought to escape the most human thing of all; death. But, if escape was not an option for man, it surely would not be for this creature.
Snap.
In one, cruelly gentle move, the hand holding the rabbit’s head clamped down and twisted, cutting off the thing’s abhorrent shriek as its neck now laid at an impossible angle, mouth frozen in an open grimace. Its legs froze in their mad kicking, now thrusted stiffly out. Will continued to caress the soft fur, looking at the thing now contorted in a portrait of desperation. He set it down then, mourning how quick its death throes came and went; it never suffered, just squealed its way out of life in a fighting stance. No chance was there to see the eyes go glassy, to see the twitching and moaning that often went hand in hand with the melody of death. He sighed and cracked his knuckles before reaching for a low drawer in the desk. He tugged it open with some effort and blueprints spilled out from the yanking motion. Sifting through the drawer, he delicately moved the pair of cracked, round glasses in there before his hands wrapped around his goal.
The knife glinted wickedly in the low light, though starting to dull with age. Will licked a finger and wiped away the remnants of past escapades, before sticking the finger back in his mouth and cleaning it off. The metallic taste was so familiar, so natural, so real. The dim light reflected his now blown-out pupils as he got to work. A clean slice down the middle, really an elementary incision. Far more clean and precise than the shaky-handed cuts made in an embalmed pig in a science class, or something of that nature. Blood beaded at the surface of the cut and quickly soaked the delicate fur, leaving it a muddled brown in rough clumps. With an expert hand, he used the knife now as a cleaver and took off the thing’s head, as if it would wake up and start its infernal howling again. For a moment, Will sat and observed his work, his creation. It was more perfect, now that it was the way he wanted it to be. The grotesque picture was of his design, he pulled the strings. Playing god was such a high.
After a moment, he blinked himself back into focus and did the final step; reached his fingers in and delicately cut away the heart of the thing. He beheld the tiny thing for a moment, willing it to beat. Willing it to recognize him as its creator, as its destroyer, as its architect. As if the soft flesh and thickening blood would feel his touch and know his desire, as if the blood would pump only for him. Of course, the tiny organ laid still, slowly tinting his palm a deep crimson. He set it back down on top of the rabbit’s small body, and stood up to get a god’s bird’s-eye-view of his work. Satisfied after a moment, he gathered the fallen papers and set them back on the desk, routine as always. The clock mounted on the wall ticked with a rhythm now sounding more and more like a heartbeat, taunting the man for his sheer mortality, his feeble whims of godhood. The heart beats steady, the heart beats whether the body wants it to or not.
William storms out of the basement, wishing away the blasted tick-tick-ticking that now ran circles around his brain like a mockery of his own. After a moment of standing silently in the living room, he quickly grabbed the keys from the delicate dish near the door – a remnant of Francesca’s existence he couldn’t seem to get himself to clean away. The front door creaked open and slammed shut as he got into his car and on the road. The grumble of the engine and steady hum of tires on pavement would surely dim away the ticking.
~~~
The music pulsed and shook, the baseline pounding out a rhythm that quieted his mind. Mike sat on his bed and swayed his head to the steady noise, mouthing the lyrics that screamed out of the player. He flopped back down when he heard the familiar grumble of the car starting, and driving off. With a groan of his own, he lurched up and flicked off the music. Waking up angry, he wanted to blast music and cause noise; anything to defy his father’s rule. Though his brain chanted a steady mantra of the fear of punishment, the music drowned out the pathetic voice, the squeak of a little boy scared of the world. After a moment of lingering in the newly quiet space, he left the room with a scoff after Elizabeth’s chirp of “Finally!” drifted through the wall. He flipped off the door to her room where she was most likely reading or writing in her stupid little diary, and jogged down the stairs.
He barely got to the living room when his eye caught something; a door open so slightly, you wouldn’t even realize it. But for such a forbidden fruit as the basement, Michael’s eyes were drawn to it like a sinner’s to Hell. Such a sweet, sweet temptation but with such a risk threaded in. The exhilaration of this discovery sent blood roaring in his ears, and he stepped gingerly towards the door like a string was tugging him along. Too good to resist. He peered into the doorway, the darkness making him blink rapidly so his eyes could adjust. Mike took a deep breath and wiped his palms on his shorts – he didn’t even notice he was sweating.
One step. Another. Each footfall on stairs sent a new shoot of terror through him, but the steady promise of finally being down here was too good to lose. Finally he made it to the bottom, and flailed his arms out aimlessly until he made contact with the pull chain and tugged it.
The smell hit him before the sight. A metallic tang wafted through the damp air and flooded his senses, making him scrunch his nose and squint. A moment ticked by and his eyes caught it; a rabbit splayed out in a gruesome pose, gutted. A wave of nausea rolled through him as he saw the head was cleanly disconnected, and nearly doubled over at the sight of the tiny, bloodied heart resting neatly on top like the presentation of a Michelin-star meal. Mike backed away as his eyes frantically scanned the desk for something, anything that would explain away what he was looking at. No, it was real. The smell alone told him before he could pinch his scabbed arm for proof. The neatly folded glasses besides the rabbit weren’t his fathers; neither were half of those blueprints. He vaguely remembered seeing those thin, gold-framed glasses on the bridge of someone’s nose, leaning over blueprints and sketching away, detailing all of the intricate wires and mechanisms while Mike watched in fancy over that someone’s shoulder. It was so long ago, though.
He found after a moment he couldn’t back away any further; his back now flush against the wall. With a squeak, he pushed away and dashed up the stairs, barely able to turn off the light and close the door before he flung himself to the trashcan in the kitchen and heaved, bile forcing itself up. This reaction wasn’t normal; roadkill was a common occurrence in Hurricane. But the rabbit’s face, its pose, the horribly perfect cuts. It was so terribly real. Mike slid down to the floor and sat, gaze glassy as his father’s work branded itself in his thoughts.