SOFTctrl – Billie Adele

It’s just a little pet shop mismatched bunny. 

Just a bunny with a white underbelly, black-tipped ears and too-lovely, too-long legs. 

Perhaps she escaped a chain pet shop where she was doted over by a well-intentioned and underpaid young adult. Who broke all the rules, often taking her out of the enclosure and plonking her on the countertop. With a rush of anxiety, bunny loses the run of her breathing and shits herself. 

The manager detests this one especially. Snap it already.
                                                                             

                   Snap. Crunch. Squelch. Round and Round and Round again. Possibly even a pop.

Fearing she’ll witness yet another monetarily induced mercy killing, the shop assistant smuggles you out the back of the industrial estate pet shop. You emerge out of rolls of jumper fabric into the grey hellscape. Everywhere to turn and all out of options. Wanting to head back inside again to be called a retched half breed mongrel, only to be run down countless times on the edge of the main road. 

Maybe it’ll be an 18-wheeler. An ambulance. A hybrid. A girlie on her way to town who really didn’t mean it, but just didn’t see you. An E-scooter. A Tesla. Another 18-wheeler. A Nissan Micra.          Another hybrid. 

The whack kills you instantly. You poor thing. Going right over the middle of you, like it would in a cartoon, except it doesn’t leave a neat tyre mark up your middle. You’re hit first, crushed second, thrown third and dragged across tarmac last.

By this stage, your ribs are shattered, you’ve lost an eye, and your russet brown fur is stained in a strawberry-coloured syrup-thick liquid. There is an amber colour to it, though. Like your missing left eye.  

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This bunny’s moaning like an accordion! Air wheezing out between breaches in the pelt, changing pitch and rolling over notes as she’s jostled around. 

Rump. Hide. Tuft of hair. Saliva production has gone into overdrive, slobbering over gashes. Only sweet kisses, please. Fingertips dance across the underside of skin. Bringing this bunny’s coat to a point five times. Opening and closing into a fist, gliding over greasy fats that keep the skin in place. 

There’s no squelching of any kind. That would require the road water to have soaked into the fur. It’s more of a slop and muffled fuzz emitted like from a wet carpet dripping murky grey water everywhere.  

The scene is euphoric. It looks like evidence of a party popper having gone off. Was all this forced out of you? Or did it just fall out as you tumbled out of the bin bag? No crunch, no snap, no break. Just a slopping out of the bag all over her hands. 

Identify the oesophagus and hold it with bold hands. Massage ridges starting from the stomach all the way up. Begin to suck. Chew if required. Swallow once satisfied. If still hungry, keep going. Slip your hands farther down, around the stomach. Massage all the way up again, suctioning your mouth around the tube emerging from the throat. 

Wiggly lines stain the bedsheet. Worsened by fidgety fingers digging in and a meandering tongue lapping up the bile that’s leaked out. Mismatched mush bunny can’t tell herself apart anymore. Where does bunny begin and end once shovelled off the side of the road? Left in the boot and sloshing around for a while won’t make identification any easier. Bunny. Hare. Rabid rabbit. It’s all the same bile-soaked slurry after days of fermenting in the back seat of a car. 

Just a puddle body of fresh sedges and heather. 

Pet shop pellets and hay are found only in trace amounts. 

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Pointer Queen, follow your fingertips in and around. All the way round and round. Spin. 

Finger first, tongue follows. Excavating this cave system for the very first time. 

It’s impossibly hot, hot, hot in here. Engines roar, and steam erupts out of any and all breaks in the line. The pressure is just all too much. Working too fast. Moving too quickly. 

Extending way past safety regulations, her tongue has gone miles in and around, up and down.

Pushed forward by this rhinestone girl boss crew in sequin workwear. 

Pedals pushed. Levers cranked. Gaskets blown. These girls love the thrill of drilling to destruction. 

Their mother ship moans with pleasure, making the pressure all the more worthwhile. 

The lingual papillae push down a pus-filled bunny canal. As if a mechanical serpent slithering out of her mouth. Well-oiled and squishy. Filiform read bunny breakdown materials rubbing up against the front of the tongue while fungiform relish in sticky fluids along the side.

It’s a dance revolution in here. Dance! Move! Shake! 

Sweat pumps while the engines’ gears shift only ever up, up, up. Pushing to new heights of frenzy. 

Instructions flying in from dance floor press panels.

The machine’s worn out and giving off a horrid smell.

All the readings scream red under blinding flashing lights.

The alarms are drowned out by the dance fever disco diva playlist.

But insatiable and drenched in sweat, no one’s noticed.

Maitiú Mac Cárthaigh