Chapter 17

Darkness.

There was shouting, but he couldn’t understand it. The voices were just noise.

Darkness.

Sharp pain everywhere.

Darkness.

There was something soft and sticky in one hand. Darkness.

His other hand was nothing but pain. He couldn’t move it.

Darkness.

Flashing lights.

Darkness.

David woke up in a hospital. His right hand was in a splint. Both of his arms were wrapped in bandages. He could feel bandages on his face, too. He sort of remembered being surrounded by a lot of sharp bits of glass, so he was pretty sure there were more bandages elsewhere, but he didn’t want to look and find out.

Not long after David woke up, a couple of the scientists from Vyo-GenetiX entered his room. According to their ID badges, they were Dr. Barnes and Dr. Rice. There were a bunch of other letters on the badges, too, which might have been specialties, degrees, designations, or their first and middle initials; it’s hard to tell with scientists.

They told him that he hadn’t even been in the hospital 24 hours, most of the lacerations were superficial, and it was a beautiful day outside.

“What happened to Mano?”

“Well, between the large shards of glass on the floor and your weight, he was—Ow!”

Dr. Barnes rubbed the spot on his ribs where his colleague had elbowed him.

“He didn’t survive,” Dr. Rice finished.

David wasn’t sure what to feel, so he settled for feeling numb.

Later, Dr. Cooper arrived to ask David a few last questions.

“I want his body,” David said when Dr. Cooper had finished.

“Why?”

“He was my pet, and I want to bury him.”

Dr. Cooper nodded. It wasn’t as if they could do much with the body. They had already done an autopsy and taken samples. There wasn’t really anything else to do, considering the way the rabbit had been crushed into crunchy jam (most people would say jelly, but this is incorrect: jelly is made from fruit juice, so it’s smoother, whereas jam is made from pulp and bits of fruit, so it has a chunky texture that is a more apt description in this case). It’s probably better not to think in too much detail about what the deceased rabbit looked like, though, so forget that bit about the crunchy jam.

Before Dr. Cooper left, David had one very important question.

“Why a duck-cat?”

Dr. Cooper shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Do you think they’ll leave scars?”

David couldn’t tell if Amanda was hopeful or worried at the prospect. She probably didn’t know, either.

David was less worried about his face and more worried about his hand. He had to wear the splint at all times for five weeks. It would be eight weeks before he could even return to work. He had little exercises to do. The doctor stressed that any other use of his hand could re-fuck up his tendons.

David had been trying not to think about the damage the large glass shards had done to the flexor tendons. Every time he thought about it, his heart rate rose.

He was utterly alone on this. There was no one he could talk to about it. For about a quarter of a tenth of a hundredth of a second, David considered seeing a therapist. Then, he imagined the padded room they’d lock him in as soon as he mentioned the talking rabbit. Since he wasn’t actually crazy, being alone in a padded room all the time would probably be mind-numbingly boring. He could be mind-numbingly bored at work, and they paid him to be there.

The doctor released him, and Amanda took him back to the apartment. David didn’t know what to do, so he sat on the couch and watched TV.

David was bored. He used to jerk off when he was bored, but with his right hand out of commission, that meant he had to use his left hand, and his left hand had all the finesse of a mentally challenged person with paws for hands. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and he was really missing his right hand’s patented kung-fu grip.

It didn’t just affect his “me” time, either; with his right hand out of commission, David had to write with his left hand. Only about ten percent of the markings resembled letters. He also tried writing with the pen in his mouth to see if that would work any better; the results were about the same.

Amanda found the bandages sexy. It seems being horribly injured and possibly disfigured is a huge turn on for girls. He hoped she’d like the scars that would probably be left behind, too; those would be around a lot longer than the bandages.

David couldn’t tell anyone about what happened at Vyo-GenetiX. They covered his hospital bills (so he wouldn’t sue them), and they paid him for his sick days (so he wouldn’t sue them), and he signed a confidentiality agreement that said he wouldn’t talk about Subject 8-9 or anything he saw in the Vyo-GenetiX building (no one would believe his story, anyway). The agreed-upon story is that Mano was sick, the Vyo-GenetiX people were trying to help, and while holding the rabbit down David was accidentally stuck with the sedative and he crashed through the glass panel, and Mano died, anyway. It was such a ridiculous story that it had to be true, because if someone were going to lie they’d come up with a much better lie than that.

The next day, a messenger stopped by the apartment with a box. David opened it and then quickly closed it. The scientists had fixed Mano up a bit, but there was only so much anyone could do when the creature’s bones had all been shattered. At least the autopsy process meant the rabbit corpse wasn’t contaminating the entire apartment with a rotting roadkill smell.

David took Mano’s body to be cremated at Discount Pet Burning, and they told him the ashes would be ready to pick up in a couple weeks. They also offered him a great deal if he needed to cremate three or more pets at a time. They were very relentless about their package deals, no matter how many times David told them he only had the one pet. It worried him to think the employees there might work on commission.

“I need a drink,” David said.

Rodney looked at him. “You look like you need a brewery.”

David nodded. The waitress that had once given David her phone number walked by, and he felt something in him stir. He hoped his body didn’t react to every girl Mano ever fucked, because David seriously worried Mano had fucked most of the girls in the city (and possibly some who were only visiting).

“You know, if you need some more glass to crash through, we’ve got plenty at the station.”

“Maybe I will,” David said. “And then who’ll be the stupid one, huh?”

They laughed and drank and David hoped all the cuts looked less like clumsy oafishness and more like battle scars. He needed to come up with a good lie.

“You could say they’re from a shark attack,” Rodney suggested.

“How about I jumped through a window to save a burning baby?”

“That’s so plebby. Tell people you jumped through a window to save a burning baby from a mental rhinoceros.”

“Where was I? The zoo?”

“Zimbabwe?”

David thought about it. “Are there even rhinos in Zimbabwe?”

“How would I know? I don’t even know where that is.”

“I don’t think I should say these happened someplace where we don’t know where that place is.”

“Got it. It has to be within a two-kilometer radius.”

David smiled drunkenly. “Exactly.”

When he picked up Mano’s ashes, they also gave him a complementary Discount Pet Burning lighter. It was pretty cheap looking, but that was only to be expected.

That night, he took the little box of ashes to the park. He wasn’t sure this was legal, which was why he did it in the dark of night. That and he wanted to be alone. He wasn’t sure what he should say, so he decided speaking from the heart would be best.

“You could be a real dick sometimes. Most times. You did nothing but cause trouble.”

David sighed. “I let you cause trouble. I knew I wasn’t in any danger at the lab, but I knew they were never going to let me leave with you.” David looked at his splinted right hand and felt his eyes burn with unshed tears.

He straightened up and pushed the self-pity from his mind, reminding himself what a pain in the ass Mano was. “And dammit, what am I going to do with all that rabbit food? That stuff is expensive. And don’t think I’m ever buying another rabbit. Oh no, not ever. You taught me that much, Mano.”

It was a little difficult to open the urn without using his right hand, but David managed. He let the ashes scatter in the wind, trying to make sure they scattered away from him and not all over his clothes.

That was your eulogy? That was awful.

David froze, the empty urn falling from his hands.

What? Oh, no, brain. That’s not funny. Not at all. Don’t fuck with me like that.

No one’s fucking with you, David. Don’t be so paranoid.

David’s skin crawled with cold sweat. It was the rabbit’s voice. The dead rabbit’s voice.

Were you… are you in the ashes?

What? No. Don’t be stupid. No, I seem to be stuck in your head.

WHAT?!

When I died, I just got sucked into you like you were a black hole. I guess it’s because I borrowed your body so many times.

That’s—

By the way, THANKS so much for crushing me to death. Do you know how painful that was? All you had to do was get out of the building, but instead, you killed me. Fucking ridiculous. You turned a simple escape into a goddamn—

GET OUT OF MY HEAD!

I can’t. I have nowhere to go. If you haven’t noticed, my body is sort of nonfunctional.

Ugh. How long have you been here?

Oh, since I died.

But—

I wanted to see my funeral. Doesn’t everyone?

David tried to glare at the voice in his head, but it was a bit difficult.

I should’ve flushed your ashes down the toilet.