Three baby rabbits lay dead in the corner of the hutch Casey had built for them. Bitten to death, all three.
Their parents - one mom and one dad rabbit, gray and black - hopped around in the other corner. Happily and freely. Just the two of them.
Casey watched from above, holding the lid of the hutch open. Only just now, seeing the way the adult rabbits moved, had he realized this cage was too small for five.
He closed the lid, placed both paws on his eyes. He'd taken a couple hits from a joint just before this because he hadn't thought he'd need to be awake. Now he did and, like, he needed a second.
Their backyard was maybe three feet by five - only room for a short apple tree with a small fort up top, his dad's aluminum rowboat, and the hutch - but it was big enough for him to pull back a step from the hutch and kick the boat as hard as he fucking could.
"Ow. Shit."
It hurt. Woke him up, though.
Of course there was no room for five in that tiny hutch. He'd never raised animals of any kind before but Casey wasn't stupid. He should have seen it before now. And now that he did there was no time to bury dead baby bunnies. He had places to be.
An old possum lady at church had given the two rabbits to his mom back at Easter. "They're both girls," she'd said, "and Sandy down the street told me about Casey's emotional problems and Lucy on Applewood Lane said that having something to be responsible for can help little boys adjust in hard times and we can give him a cage to keep them in too." Casey hadn't been in church when this all went down, he'd stopped the minute his mom stopped making him go, but it didn't take much to imagine, because similar speeches were the exact reason he'd stopped going.
His mom had taken them from the possum lady, brought them home after church, plopped them both in Casey's lap without a word, and she'd gone right back to her shows and her booze. Without a word. With barely a glance.
Like always.
And of course the possum lady forgot about it too, such good intentions aimed only at making her feel better about the unkempt house at the end of the block with "those poor Hartleys," forgotten the second the nice church lady handed off little helpless live rabbits, just like his mom forgot the second she handed them off to him. But they'd been small and soft and had squirmed in his paws. He wasn't capable of forgetting the same way, no matter how much he smoked or drank or did stupid shit. The feeling of something helpless that he was in charge of - he couldn't shrug it off so easy.
So he'd decided to accept that particular mission once it was literally dropped in his lap. Casey had scrounged up two by fours and chicken wire from an old building the next block over and built his own damn hutch for them, here in the backyard where there was no room.
That'd been six months ago at Easter and three months ago, these two "girl" "therapy" rabbits had screwed, as rabbits do, because no one in this town ever bothered to check if they were girl/girl or girl/boy. Casey had barely figured out how to take care of rabbits, let alone to check for this stuff, and no one else was ever going to. It'd just happened - one day last week, near Harfest now, he came out to feed them and there were three little babies wrapped up in the hay on the corner, softer than their parents, their eyes tight shut. They'd been cute. Adorable. He'd never seen babies like that before and the feeling of seeing something helpless that needed his help had only grown stronger at the sight of them.
Maybe, he'd thought then, we could make a whole bunch of them. A whole rabbit army. Casey's Rabbit Army.
And he'd left to go jump of bridges with Germ Warfare. And now it was too damn late. Now he had to meet Gregg across town, he was supposed to be there already, and instead of doing that he had baby bunnies to bury in the ground.
He kicked the boat again, hurting his foot even more. He hopped around and swore. There was only maybe three feet to do this in between their back porch and the hutch, but he needed some kind of fucking release right now, and the satisfaction of kicking something overrode the stupidity of hurting himself.
One more hop and he was against the apple tree. He held his foot with his free paw. So small, this yard, this house. The grass overgrown around the boat. Rusted car parts on the ground between the treehouse and the boat.
Country trash, all of them. Casey, his dad, his mom. In this tiny little house on this little block in the rotting town that was Possum Springs. Every day a reminder that things had once been golden and were now just dead. Were dead long before he was born. No golden years for his whole generation. No boom times. Just grand old buildings falling to rot and a lawn his dad never felt like mowing.
He didn't have a desire to kick anything else.
He lifted the hutch lid and scooped out the dead babies one by one, lying them on the grass side by side. As he did, the dad rabbit - he was pretty sure the black one was the dad - stopped hopping and watched with dark unblinking eyes. Casey was pretty sure that if rabbits could smile with satisfaction, this one was doing it.
Casey stared back, willing his thoughts to go into the stupid animal's brain. You do not kill your babies to make yourself feel better, asshole, he thought at the rabbit. Do it again and I'll stop feeding you and leave YOU to die.
The rabbit blinked back, unafraid.
Casey hissed at him, willing the thought at the rabbit: I could eat you in one bite. Don't forget it.
The dad rabbit flinched.
Casey grinned, showing fangs, and shut the hutch door.
All three babies now lay on the ground. These babies deserved some indication that they'd meant something. That they'd lived and died and been in his care. A ceremony. A funeral. Something.
He stepped into the garage, pulled out a shoebox, and lowered the three dead bodies into it. He took some of the hay he'd been using as bedding for the rabbits and layered it into the shoebox. Comfort for whatever bunny afterlife they'd get. If there even was one. Which ... probably not.
He then put the shoebox to the side of the house. When he got back. When he got back he'd do this right.
He headed into the house, passing his mom with her wine and phone as she sat at the kitchen table, heading into the back hallway.
He entered his room, shut the door tight, and instantly felt safer. He headed toward the half-smoked joint on the table by his bed, going so fast he kicked something in his path, a sickening crunch. He stopped, picked it up - it was Shred of the Gnar 3 - but it didn't look broken. He then grabbed the joint and lit up.
One, two, three breaths and he felt better. The urge to kick something came back, though. But it was milder. And he didn't want to kick the game again.
He stared out blankly, enjoying the blankness. Then he set the joint down and sat on his bed.
By the joint, there was an old shaggy notebook he'd scribbled some lyrics in this morning. His brain was chilling out and this was welcome. It'd felt good to write those lyrics down. Were they still any good?
He picked the notebook up and read them. Not yet - but they could be.
The band had been Casey's idea, and the music nearly always came from Casey. When he felt confident and calm and safe like this, the music always came. And he'd woken up from a dream this morning with another tune in his head. Usually he just spat the tune and some lyrics out on paper and was done, handed it to Gregg and they jammed and that was it, the way rock and roll should be made, but this one had a Hey Jude round-and-round vibe to it and he'd sat with it for a while, smoking and then eventually searching for words to fit the feeling. And now, reading the words, it came back to him again, that circling tune. The lyrics weren't right yet but that tune, happy but sad...
He crossed out a few words. Wrote in a few different ones. Held the notebook at arm's length.
He grinned. It still wasn't right yet - the chorus needed work, it rhymed and needed repetition instead - but it was closer to the vibe that tune made him feel, and that was a satisfying feeling, always. Reliable.
Always better to take the anger and use it to make good shit, instead.
He dug up a black hoodie and put it on. Tossed his sleep pants and grabbed some day-old jeans. Grabbed his skateboard. And left the safety of his room.
"Casey," his dad shouted when Casey popped his door open. Which: fuck.
Casey went through the hall, through the kitchen - his mom didn't look up - and into the living room where his dad sat on the couch, not looking at him. Which was typical: if they talked at all, it was always like this.
His dad was watching conservative commentary with the volume way loud. Smoking something. Casey's dad had been smoking this whatever it was for months now. It left a vinegar smell, something like window cleaner, and turned the walls yellow. It also aged his dad up two decades. Gave him sores. Casey knew what it was, and he knew where his dad had gotten it from.
His dad had started smoking it after the last factory closed down. He'd always ranted about college and libtards and gays and Hollywood but now he was worse. Always angry and never anything else. Working in the grocery store for minimum wage. And smoking more and more.
"Yeah."
"Don't take that tone, kid." Barely hearable over the angry shouting on TV. Still not bothering to look at him as he talked. "Put that thing down."
Casey put the skateboard down.
"The front yard needs to be mowed."
"Okay."
"Today."
"Okay."
"No 'okay.' What do you say?"
"Yes, Dad."
Casey headed toward the front door, making a big show of putting his shoes on.
"If it's not clean today there's no dinner."
"Okay."
"Make it look nice."
"Okay."
"What did I tell you?"
"Yes Dad."
"And there'll be no more swearing in this house. I heard you outside earlier. Knock it off. I taught you proper manners, use em."
Casey said nothing. His dad still didn't look away from the TV.
Casey stood up, pulled open the door. His dad was now fully absorbed in the TV again. "Can you believe those snowflakes? What do you think about your buddies behaving this way, huh?"
His dad didn't even notice when Casey closed the door - which meant he didn't notice that Casey had grabbed his skateboard again.
Casey stood on the front porch, staring out, just breathing.
Then he slammed his paw on the porch railing, startling himself.
It was time to go where he'd agreed to go.
He was total trash, yeah, and so were his parents, and everyone and everything he'd come from had made him what he was, yeah, but fuck it.
Because no matter where he came from, Gregg made him happy and Mae made him laugh and right now he wanted both and with them he would find it.
Fuck it. They were all trash mammals. And he liked grabbing that with both hands and holding it up and screaming it. Being proud of what he was. The biggest middle finger to the world he could think to give. And the two who understood that the most were waiting for him.
Casey put his skateboard on the ground and took off as fast as he could.
High time for some crimes.