And here he was, again.
Holding the flaming red golden rabbit in his arms, "Olivia" he looks at the brown haired girl, wearing a blue and white polka dotted bra and panties, sleeping on the couch, smoke stinking in the air, Beethoven playing in the background, her clothes were carelessly opened, breasts half spilling out of the cups, he shakes his head and calls out louder, "Olivia."
Olivia squeaks and startles up, eyes wide, mouth pink and swollen from their last night romp, he remembers biting them hard between his teeth. "Oh god, it's you." She sighs, keeping her hand on her chest and then she smiles seductively, her hands reach out to pull her breasts free from the bra, pink hard nipples stand in attention, tongue sneaking out to lick her lips, "Did you miss me?" she asks breathing hard, her index finger and thumb pinching her nipples.
"Do you have a cardboard box?" he asks, frowning down at the rabbit that had closed its eyes again, he has to be fast, blood was still soaking his right hand fingers and the rabbit was still burning.
"What?" Olivia blinks.
"Cardboard box Olivia, fast." Irritation swamped him up, he did not have time for this, if he could have taken the rabbit as it was in his arms, straight to his and mom's home in the professor's quarters of the university campus, he would have. But his mom was still obsessed with him and beware of the animals they lie bullshit, and his special first aid kit box was lying under his bed. "Olivia?"
"Oh yes." She blinks and removes her hands from her breast, fumbling up, "Let me... I ordered something from Etsy" she looks around a little bit lost and starts to move around the room, loose hardwood floor crunching under her feet, she moves to an orange end table and bends down to pick up vases after vases that were glinting and cracking in old mud and ancient runes, they both were classmates as History majors and she was a history nerd like him, coming from old money by her dad she liked to collect ancient things that certainly belonged to museums and not a ratty old dorm room in the University of Cather dam.
"Here." She says turning and holding up a medium sized cardboard box, only then her eyes move to the rabbit in Arne's arms, she gasps, "Oh My god, is that?"
"A rabbit, yes, keep the cardboard box on the couch," he says, his hands urging to find his special kit and stop the blood flow.
She does, thankfully strapping her breasts back in her bra.
He carefully lowers down the rabbit in his arms and Olivia's hand moves to touch the rabbit and a reflexive stern order come out his mouth, "No."
She blushes and folds her hand back, "Sorry," She says.
Arne carefully places the rabbit above the thermocol inside the cardboard box, his hand covered in its blood, his heartbeat picks up a notch, he concentrates again but can't hear the rabbit's voice inside his head, he was not communicating with Arne, something was very, very, wrong. "Just two minutes," he whispers to the close eyed rabbit, "Please hold on." He says briefly touching its soft burning fur.
And then he runs out Olivia's door without looking back, as fast as he could.
******
When Arne reached their four bedroom and a large study room with a big living room quarters, to his luck, his mom was inside her study room, he carefully walked across the grey and white living room, all the cushions and furniture and walls grey and white except the glass table in front of the sofa from where he picked out the butter knife from the fruit bowl, and the massive black TV above the mantle on the opposite wall that was still mutely playing 'Discovery' proclaiming, his mom could come in the living room any second.
He stealthily closed his bed room door and walked to his ivory bed, placing the cardboard box on the grey comforter, the windows of his room were open as usual, letting in cool spring winds from the eucalyptus tree in the backyard, "Okay, let's nurse you back okay?"
He opens the cardboard box and takes out the silk soft rabbit, its eyes were closed, the most beautiful eyes Arne had ever seen, he thinks, his hand almost wraps protectively around the rabbit at the thought that anything could happen to those eyes, to this innocent creature whose right leg was severely injured, who was finding it difficult to breathe.
Arne releases a breath, and ducks under his bed with another hand fastly, he drags out the special kit, and cautiously puts the rabbit on the bed, before throwing in a towel above the comforter, his hands pick out the identical equipments one by one, a scissor, a bottle of alcohol, a splint, bandages, cotton wipes, "This will hurt a little." He says to the rabbit who he hoped was listening.
And then he starts to clean the wounds, the right leg, Arne noticed was slashed with something sharp, like a wire or something, was the rabbit trying to jump a fence or was it injured by another animal?
"Shit" he clenched his teeth when the rabbit made a gritting sound. He softly put the alcohol dipped cotton on the side of the rabbit's face, a slight cut there too and the rabbit flinched, its eyes opening suddenly, stopping everything for a moment.
Those yellow amber eyes were striking, it looked at Arne as if they could look inside him, what was he thinking? He shakes his head, the rabbit was in pain, he was staring at Arne in shock maybe, he could study its eyes later, when the rabbit was not injured and breathing normally.
He gingerly placed the bandage over the clean wound, then a square of gauze before gingerly placing the splint on its leg. "You leg is fine for now but we are taking you to the off campus hospital, mom will kill me if Dr. Sharma told her I brought you there, are you hurting somewhere else? Tell me I can hear you."
He focused his mind on the rabbit, his eyes falling to that sun yellow and brown chandelier eyes, seconds turned to minutes, no response came.
A frown settled between Arne's brows, the rabbit was fine right? Then why he was not communicating with Arne?
Arne had tended to another injured animals before, it happened when he was walking or sitting or even sleeping, at times he would be walking on a lane casually like any other normal person and then he would hear a howl or a whimper or a scream in different voices, and he wouldn't be able to help but run to that direction, he would find an injured cat sometimes hit over by a car, or a missing bird that lost its family in a fog, sometimes he would even find a hungry thin rat near the dumpster of his school parking and he would sit there later, when it was vacant and he would offer those hungry rats his leftover lunch, the worst thing was, he was even able to hear mosquitoes in his room, their urge for blood and the way they yelped and struggled when they died.
He was always able to communicate with them, or help them, some way or the other he couldn't ignore them, even when he pretended in front of his mom, to ignore them at all costs.
He couldn't shake the incident off when Arne was thirteen and he and his mom were crossing the Oprah street and he heard a bird's voice calling him out, something sharp had moved inside his stomach and his head had involuntarily turned to that grey bird's direction, it had red eyes, the bird. And it was calling him, come here, come here, come here.
And his mom had shaken him off, moved to his vision blocking the bird, her open white silver curls floundering around her face that was soft and golden, and Arne had stopped hearing the bird's voice, and his mom had said to him in a calm breezy voice, but her eyes, they were telling him something else, she was scared, Arne thinks now, and she had taught him, "Arne focus, you can stop when you want, just concentrate you can block it, you only hear it when you give it your focus, your attention, you just have to place your attention somewhere else."
And he had, he learned with time to block out the voices if it got too much, he had learned to look at them in the eye and not hear their thoughts if he didn't want, and when he had wanted to, it was like crossing a threshold, he had to focus on them, and then his brain would step into theirs, understanding all the intricacies.
It was not happening now, no matter how hard he focused.
"Are you not able to hear me?" Arne frowns and reaches out to rub the rabbit's fur for comfort, and the rabbit's sun brown eyes glares at him. "You don't want me touch you?"
And the rabbit shakes it little head.
Arne gasps, "You can hear me?"
The rabbit blinks, as if it didn't hear his question, totally feigning innocence, the rabbit definitely heard Arne but it was pretending to not.
He sighs and picks the rabbit in his palms again, the rabbit glares at him. "I am not taking you to a fricking ball dance, I am taking you to a hospital for god's sake, can't you be a little thankful? Don't make noise I am putting you inside the box okay?"
He puts the rabbit inside the box and make two big holes on the box with sharpies and markers to let air in.
The last thing that Arne sees before closing the cardboard box were those yellow sunburn eyes glinting at him like a sun peeking through the sky in dark night.
*****