Whisper Down the Lane, Clay Chapman [best short books to read txt] 📗

glistening crimson trigger hairs on a Venus flytrap, patiently waiting for its prey to wander inside its gaping maw. The entirety of his intestines, large and small, had been gingerly unspooled to the end of their connective tissues across the lawn in some sort of luminous pattern.

I say luminous because his guts looked like beams of wet sunlight radiating out from the rest of his hollow self.

Pattern because there seemed to be a particular—I don’t know—methodology to the placement of his organs. Someone arranged them to look this way. On purpose. To see.

For who, though?

It felt like he was meant to be revered. I say revered because, even to my eye, there was something beatific to the way his body was presented. Holy, almost. And trust me—this is coming from a completely nonreligious person. I’ve never even set foot inside a church.

That’s not entirely true. There were a few visits to Sunday school that I can barely recall at this point. Distant memories by now. I vaguely remember taking communion as a kid. Once.

Take and eat, the pastor said as he pressed a stale cracker past my lips, for this is my body. That dry sacramental wafer adhered itself to the roof of my mouth. I couldn’t wash out the pasty undertaste for the rest of the day, stuck with this phantom flavor on my tongue.

But that was years ago. A whole other lifetime ago.

All I’m trying to say is, even I could sense the awe of this grisly exhibition. Feel it, somehow. The downright ardor of it.

Professor Howdy’s lungs fanned out like angel wings flapping against the grass. The liver, the stomach, the spleen—that is the spleen, isn’t it?—placed with exacting precision. Each organ was its own celestial body orbiting the corpse it had erupted from.

His heart now rested in the patch of grass directly above his head.

A bleeding crown.

Dawn broke an hour or so before our school’s groundskeeper—Diego, I think his name is—discovered the poor professor. The morning sun found his body first, pelt glistening in dew. His blood had a crystalline sheen against the green, like red stained glass. Something you might see in Sunday services. Saint Howdy. Our school’s tragic rabbit, angelic white fur and glazed-over pink eyes, captured among all the other apostles.

Professor Howdy was always kept in Miss Castevet’s classroom. He belonged to the school, its students, but Miss Castevet was ultimately responsible for his upkeep. That meant cleaning out his cage. Feeding him. Picking up the poo pellets. The nitty-gritty stuff nobody else, particularly the kids, ever wanted to get their hands dirty doing.

Students were always welcome to stop by Miss Castevet’s room and pay Professor Howdy a visit. She set up designated feeding hours for anyone to swing by and offer up a handful of rabbit chow for him to nibble directly from their palm. And sometimes, on the specialest of occasions, as Miss Castevet liked to say, she would even pull Professor Howdy out from his cage and let him hop around the room. Door closed, of course. There had been one particular incident at the very beginning of the school year, when someone—I’m not naming any names here (cough, cough, Benjamin Pendleton, cough cough)—left the classroom door open and the professor broke free, hopping down the hall. The ensuing manhunt—bunnyhunt?—was a school-wide event. All the students got involved in the search party.

Eventually, he popped up in my classroom. I spotted him tucked behind the tempera paints, struggling to squirm further in. I was hailed as a hero for returning the professor to his cage unharmed, alive, and in one piece. The new art teacher saves the day! the students sang out. Yay, Mr. Bellamy!

Everybody loved Professor Howdy. He was, without a doubt, the Danvers School’s unofficial mascot. Who would think about doing something as awful as this? To a rabbit?

Our rabbit?

Teachers always arrive early to school to kick-start their day. Get those lesson plans prepped. Get their classrooms in order. Get ready for the oncoming onslaught of students.

Miss Castevet is always one of the very first teachers to arrive. You’ll find her Nova parked in one of the nearest spots to the main entrance. When she enters her classroom first thing in the morning, she’s greeted by the gentle sounds of Professor Howdy leaping about in his cage, his fur brushing up against the thin metal bars. The pads of his feet strum the spokes.

Not this morning. Miss Castevet sensed the silence coming from his corner of the room as soon as she called out to him. Good morning, Professor Howdy.

He wasn’t in his cage. The gate had been left wide open.

Once students started shuffling into class, they noticed his absence as well. Where’s Professor Howdy, Miss Castevet? they all asked. What happened to Professor Howdy?

Professor Howdy’s just feeling a little sick, she lied. She had no clue where he was. Not yet. Only the groundskeeper and our principal, Mrs. Condrey, were aware of the kindergarten crime scene on the soccer field. They were keeping this bit of grisly information to themselves for now.

Rumors quickly began working their way through the faculty. Condrey called Miss Castevet into her office to break the news about her beloved bunny. I wasn’t there to hear it myself, but several teachers whispered to one another in the lounge that they’d heard an audible sob escape from behind Condrey’s closed door. A moan. You would’ve thought a member of her family had passed away. In a sense, one had. Miss Castevet needed to take a moment before the bell for second period rang to collect herself. Even then, she broke down during class. Simply glancing at his empty cage, gate open, was enough to summon her tears.

Summon. I can’t stop myself. What other words were there to describe what happened?

Where’d you go? Tamara always asks me in moments like these, whenever she catches me drifting off into my thoughts. Lost you there for a second…

Sorry, I’d probably say, most likely smiling back. Just remembered something.

The