I had wanted to catch a bunny so that I could write better. It was an old wives tale but I was sure of its meaning. And I had the bunny, sure enough, and was about to bury it before it became a scorpion when I was interrupted by mum and Elaine.
Read more‘You only have the top half of the bunny,’ Elaine announced. The bunny was missing its hind legs because of the nature of its death, but I’d determined that the hind legs were enough. And it still looked cute though the entrails showed up bright red at the point of the cut where I imagined the spade slid clean through its torso.
Before the others arrived I went to Elaine’s room and put the bunny into a small cardboard box that was shaped like a box of matches. I took the bunny and opened the bottom drawer of Elaine’s chest of drawers and I hid it in there.
Then I went to see what Elaine and mum were up to. When I got back, I took the box out from the chest and kneeling on the floor I cautiously opened the draw of the box. Out slipped a shriveled version of the bunny and though the white fur was still visible it was already taking on the characteristics of the scorpion—it having now a tail like body, albeit with the fur—a bulbous head that made it gave the overall shape of a sperm.
I put the animal back in the matchbox and hurried downstairs to bury it outside by the patio umbrella table. When I got to the back garden I realised that it was still transforming. I opened the box and the baby scorpion slid out and it scurried across the patio to another table where there sat a man. The scorpion was by his foot when he reached down to pick it up.
‘No! Pinch his claws,’ I shouted, ‘before he gets bigger.’
Sure enough the man pinched the scorpion’s front claws together even as the new found claws grew between his thumb and index finger. And by this time the whole body had lost its fur and had the black segments of a scorpion.
It even had the tail which curved up and across its back at the end of its body.
Photo by David Cook via Flickr.