I don’t have to look hard. The white silk bow tied around the foot of a cottontail sticks out among the littered ends of straw wrappers and cigarette filters.
My sight bends into an hourglass, my heart reaching up my neck.
Anyone could’ve dropped that… We have the fucking, uh…
“Shit,” I exhale, panning around the moving bodies, looking for… I don’t know, something that vibrates my intuition.
If I even have one anymore. Duse made it seem like I was one step away from falling into a trap. I mean, I sensed something was off, but I kept going. What if this is a similar trap? What if it’s that same guy from Odder Than an Oddity screwing with me?
I should go tell Razor.
No, you need to grow up and handle something on your own.
But I already have something I’m supposed to be handling. I’m supposed to be running and telling…
That’s notmehandling something, though. That’s me putting it in everyone else’s hands and getting shoved to a corner with a blindfold whiletheydeal with it.
You and I both know they’d find something else for me to do.
Okay, fucking focus! Goddamn it, Bunny!
People blur around me, moving in kaleidoscope lines each direction. I feel like I’m letting Razor down by squatting for the rabbit’s foot and standing back up with it. Just thinking about him being disappointed that I didn’t do a simple task, that I broke the sliver of trust he put in me, digs my grave a little deeper.
Sweating, the beads lifting on my face collect the torrid heat, rotating the cleanly amputated rabbit’s foot. It seems professionally done, not like some psycho killer just freshly did it and tossed it my way.
Unless they just went and stole it—then tossed it my way.
Mid-turn, I almost give up, almost jam it down into my pocket to go do what I’m supposed to be doing. But the black ink scribbled on the underside of the bow has me moving it around to read it.
Don’t forget your mask.
Don’t forget my… My mask is in my tent. Or is this some cheesy metaphor for something depressing?
Kind of getting a little irritated from how often I’m stuck on a hamster wheel, I lose all sense of rationality and start weaving through everyone, following the rope tugging me to my tent.
“BUNNY?!”
The hostile bark shatters my nerves, lurching to a stop and swiveling. Exceeding everyone’s height, standing alone in a dome people migrate around, Razor has his vicious stare locked on me, his jaw clenched, his head tilted.
Shit.
Fumbling to get the rabbit’s foot in my pocket, I don’t think about anything else—other than running.
Razor has an influence that convinces you it’s life or death. Despite knowing that he’d never kill me, he’s just too violently sharp and manic. He’s unpredictable. And yet, somehow, the doom of the unknown, the fear of a threatening predator, warms my pelvis just as intensely as it strangles my veins.
Kicking off the pavement in his direction, I veer more to the right, cutting it close to the trees that hide the chain-link fence.
He’s watching me. His predator drive ishuntingme, probably clicking his pulse higher and higher with the anticipation of knowing how easy I am to catch.
I’m running for the gate, blowing past the spot he’s standing in, and it’s like the environment favors my side. A rare gust of wind is rattling the trees, the whip of air scathing my pulsing face.
It’s my warning that he’s coming.
Scampering into the opening, my balloon heart lets a squeal up my throat, having to stop and flip over the latch of the gate. I yank it open, desperately fitting sideways through the gap and stomping over the dirt.
The clear path ahead tunnels, stretching farther and farther, increasing the angst of not making it out alive. I heave for stagnant air, swinging my arms and kicking off the ground as fast as I can, my thighs erupting in a distracting burn.
Everything blurs.
