The rabbit lurched once, violently, and then went still on Christiana’s lap. It felt no different than it had a moment before, except that its quick, metronome-like breathing had stopped.
“There,” Randy said, neither grinning nor frowning. “Now Percy doesn’t care what the fuck we do tonight. Go put on your dress. Our reservation’s at seven.”
Three minutes later, Christiana had been in her bedroom, standing in front of the cheval mirror, half-dressed and shuddering violently. From the hall, Randy’s voice came. “Maybe we can make Percy into a really little bitty fur stole for you to wear with that dress. Would you like that? Will that help you to remember to listen?” And he’d laughed, delighted with his wit.
Shane stared at the white of the canvas, stewing, thinking of Randy and Percy. Thinking of his friend Desmond, the writer.
“If you really want to make the reader hate someone,” Desmond had said, leaning forward and smiling thinly, “Make him kill an animal. Something cute. A kitten. You have your villain do that—easily and with no remorse—and they will
despise
him. They’ll want his head on a pike. No death will be too gruesome for that guy.”
Back then, Shane had thought that that was some pretty screwed up logic. Why would people feel a greater sense of vengeance for a man who killed an animal than somebody who murdered his fellow human beings? Now, however, it made an eerie kind of sense.
Murder is heinous, Shane thought, but it is rarely, except in the most deranged cases, committed lightly. If someone can kill an animal, though, without the slightest compunction, something inside them is truly dead. Whatever invisible thread exists that connects people to the brotherhood of humanity, it does not embrace the person who destroys life lightly. For that individual, the only difference between murdering an animal and murdering another human being is one of personal consequences, not morality. One can get away with killing a rabbit. It is much harder to get away with the casual murder of one’s fellow man. This is the only real barrier preventing such a person from becoming a serial killer, and it isn’t much. Shane had read enough to know that.
Ask any police profiler. Almost without exception, mass murderers begin with torturing and killing animals, usually while they're still children.
The average person doesn’t need to be told that, however. People understand a lot of things instinctively, whether they know it or not. People understand that a man who can easily kill a rabbit can just as easily kill his girlfriend, if the mood strikes him and he thinks he can get away with it. That’s what Desmond, the crime fiction writer, had meant when he’d said that the best way to make readers hate a villain is to have him kill an animal.
“But is that enough?” Shane had protested. “Doesn’t he have to follow it up with an actual murder of another person?”
Desmond had shrugged, as if the answer didn’t really matter. “What are you more afraid of, Shane?” he said in reply. “The poisonous spider that’s already bitten you, or the one up in the corner of your bedroom, hanging over your bed, watching you, pondering, deciding whether or not it wants to strike?”
Shane hated spiders. He’d shuddered at the mere thought. Desmond nodded wisely, not needing to elaborate.
Christiana had told Shane the story of her previous few days, not because he’d asked, but because she seemed to need to. Keeping Randy’s violence a secret had apparently become a deeply rooted habit. Breaking that habit was an important, if symbolic, act. Shane was secretly gratified that Christiana had chosen to break her silence with him, instead of with Greenfeld or her parents, but he didn’t think too much of it.
“After Randy killed Percy, he was in a sort of weird, giddy good mood for the whole rest of the night,” Christiana had told him, her voice strangely flat and expressionless. “It was like someone had given him a shot of B-12 or something. He joked with the waitress at the restaurant and ate like he hadn’t had a meal in weeks.
“I wasn’t hungry in the least, but I made myself eat, because I knew he’d get angry again if I didn’t. When we got back to my apartment, I wanted to throw up. That would have been the worst of all. I sat as still as I could and just willed myself to keep it down. Percy was dead in her hutch out back—Randy had put her body there. He was whistling when we got back, and he just walked through the apartment and out the back door. He didn’t change his clothes or anything. He dug a little hole in the back yard and buried Percy back there. I almost expected him to call me out there, to try to have a little funeral, like I was a kid whose goldfish had died. He didn’t.
“I went to my room and locked the door, glad to finally be out of his presence. I thought he’d try to come in when he was done. I just sat on my bed, staring. I was stunned. I didn’t know what I’d do when he came back. I just kept thinking about how it had felt, when he’d been petting Percy one moment, and then snapping her neck in the next, without even blinking. I kept thinking about how she’d died on my lap, as I was stroking her fur. I hadn’t been able to protect her.
“And I thought
who will protect me? Who will stop him from doing the same thing to me if he wants to? Would my neck sound the same as Percy’s? Would he bury me in the back yard?
“He did come back, when he was done burying Percy. I heard him come in and close the back door. He wasn’t whistling anymore. After a minute, I heard him come down the hall toward my bedroom. The doorknob rattled, but just a little, like he was just resting his hand on it. He didn’t try to come in, and that was good. He wouldn’t have liked that I’d locked the door.
“He just stood there for a minute, and then I heard him let out a big sigh. ‘Happy birthday, Chris,’ he said. ‘I’m willing to put all this ugliness behind us. I know you’re tired. Sleep tight. See you tomorrow.’ And then I heard him walk away. A minute later, his car started out front, and he was gone.
“I went to work the next day. It was my half day. I had plans for that second half of the day. I was going to come home after lunch, and I was going to break things off with Randy.
“He’d still be at class until four, so I’d have plenty of time to make arrangements. Some of his stuff was at my place, some clothes, a few books, that kind of thing. I was going to pack them up in a box and drop them off at his apartment, along with a note. I suppose that seems pretty weak, but there it is. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him in person. I could hardly bring myself to think about even being in his presence again. It was like…” She shook her head, then looked up at Shane, her coffee cup long forgotten on the stone wall of the patio.
“Did you ever hear that if you try to poison someone by giving them arsenic, if you give them a little too much, the body will sense it and just throw it all up? A small amount, built up bit by bit over time, that’ll kill somebody, but if you give them just a tiny bit too much, the body’s alarms all go off. After that, you can bet your life that that person won’t ever trust you to get them a smoothie again. Right?
“When I finally made my decision about Randy, that's what it was like. He had been spoon-feeding me abuse for almost two years, and I'd swallowed it all, even as he ramped it up, even as it got worse and worse. But when he killed Percy, that did the trick. It set off all my internal alarms. It took off my blinders. It’s stupid, really, that that’s what did it, but it did.
“It was just like with the arsenic story. I wanted to vomit all of it out, every night I’d ever spent with him, every moment, every word and look and touch. Not just the bad stuff, either;
everything
. It was like taking a breath of fresh air for the first time in years.
“I couldn’t bear to think of seeing him again. I thought I really would puke if I did, or I’d lash out at him, or worst of all, lose what resolve I’d mustered and never find it again.
“My plan was just to pack up his stuff, write a short note telling him it was over and that I never wanted to see him again, plop it all on his doorstep, and then go away for a few days until it all blew over. My parents have a little vacation place up in the Ozarks. It isn’t much, just a little cabin with no heat or electricity, but it’s quiet and peaceful. I have a key, even though I haven’t been there for years. None of us have. I was going to pack up a few things and head there, spend a few days alone. I’d be there now, if things had gone a little differently.
“When I got back to my apartment, I went straight to the living room and started pulling Randy’s books off the bookshelves. They were all legal stuff, textbooks and law books, things he’d left at my place over the last few years. Nothing good. Nothing readable. I started getting angry as I pulled them off the shelves, intending to stack them all in a box I’d found in the basement, but missing it mostly, just tossing them on the floor, not caring if they got damaged, hoping they would.
“I got madder and madder, baring my teeth and throwing those stupid damn books over my shoulder, taking my anger out on them. The last one was big. It was some encyclopedia of legal precedents for the state of Missouri. I picked it up with both hands and spun around, heaving it across the living room and letting out a little scream of rage.
“Randy was standing there in the hallway, watching me. His face was blank, completely dead, like he’d been switched off. He just stared at me, his eyes on mine. I was panting and sweating and suddenly completely terrified.
“I knew he had a key, but he’d never come in before without my knowing it. At least, that’s what I thought. Very slowly, he looked down at the books on the living room floor. I had time to notice that there was a big paintbrush in his right hand. The tip was black and wet. He looked back up at me, still real slow, and finally he opened his mouth.
“‘Bad day at the office dear?’ he asked me, completely deadpan. I was shaking, partly from the rage, partly from the fear. I couldn’t bring myself to respond, not even to shake my head or nod.
“The books all over the floor said everything. He just stared at me, and then, after almost a minute, he smiled. ‘I’m guessing you meant to put those in that box. A lot of guys would get mad about seeing their stuff thrown around, but lucky for you, I’m the understanding sort. I don’t care about any of those, anyway. That’s why I left them here. They’ve served their purpose. What do you say we box them up and stick them in storage? I’ll wait while you pack them up. Fair enough?’
“He came into the living room then and stood there, right in front of the pile of books, and just smiled at me. The smile was the worst part. No matter what he said, he knew exactly what was going on. He knew why his books were all over the floor.
“Suddenly, I was aware of how many heavy, blunt things there were in the living room: the lamp on the side table, a little bronze sculpture on top of the bookcase, a pair of pewter candlesticks, a lump of volcanic rock from Hawaii that I used as a bookend. I wasn’t thinking of these things because I was worried Randy might use them to hurt me—his abuse was usually very personal, using only his hands. I was thinking of them because of what I wanted to do to
him
with them.
“I was afraid, because in that moment I was still so very, very angry. I wanted to kill him. Not a figure of speech. I wanted to see his blood on my living room floor. I was afraid, because I knew if I lashed out at him, if I gave voice to the rage I was feeling, he’d come for me. And if he did that, I’d grab whichever one of those big heavy objects was closest and I’d use it on him. He’d never expect that, and I can be fast when I want to be.
“I wasn’t afraid that he might stop me and overpower me. I was afraid that he wouldn’t. Once I started hitting him, I didn’t think I’d be able to stop. And in my mind, I wouldn’t be paying him back for all the times he’d hit me. In my mind, I was thinking only of Percy; poor, defenseless Percy, who had been too timid and scared to even try to jump off my lap when I held her, whose only defense was trust—the hope and belief that the people holding her wouldn’t try to hurt her. Randy had taken advantage of that trust, had violated it in the most basic, permanent way. And I knew that if he ever wanted to, he’d do it again.
“I had a sense that the rabbit’s only chance was to bite, and to bite so hard that there was never any going back.
“I was wavering between two decisions—reaching for the hunk of volcanic rock on the bookshelf, or squatting down to stack Randy’s books in the box—when I heard a sound.
“It was a sort of scratching. It was coming from the back door. I looked in that direction, and Randy moved. He was so fast, so… cunning… that I barely knew what he was doing.
“He grabbed me by my hair, right at the top of my head, and shoved me in the stomach with his other hand, forcing me to bend over, driving me down to my knees.
“‘Isn’t this what you
mean
to be doing right now?’ he said through his teeth. He was panting all of a sudden, almost like he was turned on, like this was some kind of twisted foreplay. His voice went low, distracted, and he said, ‘In the box, Chris. Put them in the box,’ but underneath the actual words, what he really seemed to be saying was,
I
dare you not to, Chris. Please, make me
make
you do it. I
want
to make you do it
.
“I think he knew. I think he saw that I was on the edge of fighting back. And you know what’s really sick? I think he liked it. I think he thought it gave him the excuse he needed to really let himself go. Does that make sense? He wanted me to push him. Later, then, maybe he could say he hadn’t meant for things to turn out the way they did, that it had all happened so fast, that I’d pushed him and pushed him, that a man can only take so much. Maybe he’d call it temporary insanity. And the crazy thing was, most people would probably believe it. After all, how could the guy in the Alex P. Keaton sweater vest really be a premeditated murderer?
“And then I heard it again—that scratching, coming from just outside the back door—and it all made sense. I almost laughed out loud.
“He’d bought me a new rabbit. He had come over while he thought I was at work, put the new rabbit in Percy’s old hutch, and was repainting the name over the door. He thought he was doing something sweet. He really and truly did. I wondered for a moment what name he had chosen for the new rabbit. He’d never liked the name ‘Percy’ anyway. Apparently, he’d decided naming duties were best left to him from now on.