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could eat
without cooking it all of the way because that’s what my new stupid body
demanded.

Chapter
Seventeen: Daniel
     
    Violet carried me outside to sit
on a rock by the fire she’d made. I was so thankful when she told me that she
found some matches because I was terrified that she was going to ask me to make
a fire using the damp twigs from last night’s storm.
    She handed me the rabbit, “Okay,
I’m going to go inside while you do this, if that’s okay.”
    I chuckled, “Yes, that’s fine.”
    I didn’t have a knife on me, so I
had to resort to pushing the knee joints against the skin until it broke. The
rest was simple; all I had to do was separate the skin from the food
underneath.
    “I can hear that dreadful sound
that it’s making when you’re ripping it off!” she yelled from inside the house.
    “I’m almost done!” I yelled back.
“But you might want to stay in there until I get all of the guts out!”
    “Yuck!” she yelled playfully.
    I couldn’t believe that I was
staying in the middle of the woods with a girl who wanted to eat me but
couldn’t stand the thought of me skinning a rabbit for her.
    I held the rabbit up and examined
it. There was no sign of death anywhere on it, no puncture wounds of any kind.
    “How did you kill this rabbit?” I
yelled as the guts spilled on the ground.
    “None of your beeswax!” she
yelled. “Are you finished yet?”
    “Yes, I’m finished. Come on out!”
    She came out and sat on a rock
beside me, but as far away from the guts as possible.
    “Something smells really good and
really terrible,” she said.
    I laughed, “I’ll bet the rabbit
smells good, but those guts don’t smell good no matter how many animal
instincts you get. Poop is still poop.”
    “Charming,” she smiled. “How do
we cook it?”
    “I advise that you just hold it
over the fire by draping it over a stick. Just be careful not to hold it too
close so the stick doesn’t catch on fire. It’s too bad that we don’t have metal
rods, huh?”
    “Yes,” she agreed. She began to
cook the rabbit, and turned to me with a sheepish look on her face, “I
strangled it.”
    “What?” I asked. “You strangled
the rabbit? How on earth did you manage that?”
    “It wasn’t easy,” she admitted.
“The poor thing really fought hard for his life, but that’s the point, right? I
had to give him a fighting chance. It wouldn’t have been fair if I just stabbed
it, but I didn’t exactly have anything to stab it with so that was out of the
question anyway.”
    I imagined her wrestling with a
rabbit, and I couldn’t help it. I broke out in laughter, barely able to sit up
straight because it was so hilarious.
    “It’s not funny! The rabbit
died!” she yelled, but even she couldn’t help it. She began laughing too.
    We both sat there, holding our
sides while we cackled into the open night. The sun had finally sat and the
firelight was our only source of light.
    The laughter faded and I looked
up at her. I half-expected her to be more frightening in the dark, but she
wasn’t. Her green eyes were glowing in the firelight, and if you had asked me
to describe her at that moment, I would’ve said that she was beautiful.
    “So… I’m going to try to eat my
rabbit now,” she said, bringing it closer to her.
    I watched as she bit into the
flesh, “How is it?”
    She chewed for a few moments and
swallowed, “So much better than the clovers.”
    “Do you feel sick at all?” I
asked.
    “Maybe just a little, but I bet
it’s just from the human in me being completely revolted because I’m eating
something that isn’t entirely cooked.”
    I nodded, “That makes sense. It’s
hard to get past the things that are so harshly engrained into our heads.’
    “I agree,” she said. “All the
stuff that’s been drilled in, whether it’s right or wrong, is hard to escape.”
    I yawned, “Well, I hate to be a
party pooper, but would you carry me inside when you’re finished? I’m