Page 6

Like an answer, the rabbit hopped deeper into his hideaway and deeper into the darkness. The walls of the rabbit cave slanted into the ceiling to a single point. I didn’t think that the hole had been in the top of a hill, but with my shoulder the way it was, I wasn’t about to climb back the way I came. At the other end of the cavern, the rabbit was only slightly glowing, but I could still see it even in the darkest portion of the cave.

I dropped the story and headed towards the rabbit. Once I entered the darkness, the rabbit was sitting there, waiting for me. “Do you have a name little guy?” The rabbit didn’t talk again, and instead continued his hopping into the darkness. “What about Hopper?” The rabbit stopped, stood still as stone, and he pulled his ears close to his body. “Yeah. I guess that is more of a grasshopper’s name.” The rabbit continued forward, and I followed him. “Fuzzy?” The rabbit’s ears flicked up and done. “You liked that one?” Again, the ear flick.

I was having a conversation with a bunny. “I’m crazy,” I stated. The rabbit’s ears flicked up and down. “So, that it isn’t even a yes. It is just a natural reflex.” The ears flicked again. “Of course.” The rabbit stopped at the edge of the darkness and glanced up. His glow illuminated the feet of a statue. I scooped him up, so I could use him to look at the statue.

Fuzzy’s glow illuminated the entirety of a statue and the three directly behind the first statue. “What is this?” Of course, the bunny still didn’t talk, because he was a bunny. All four of the statues had looks of fear planted on their face like they had been caught whilst screaming. There were three statues of girls and one of a guy. The girl that Fuzzy had been looking at had a backpack on her back, I could see a set of stone headphones peeking from the flap. The guy had a crossbow mounted on his arm, and I didn’t have to look at the other two girls to know who they were, because of Dante’s book.

5 original Sentences from ROOT

1. After the octopus people took over the world, and humanities extinct, wayward buffalo could touch necks.

2. The psychic watermelon was able to harness the evil of cheese to stop the lime.

3. If you stare at stairs, will they eventually become Sara?

4. When watched a pot will not boil, because it as sage fright or something.

5. On the side of a can, you can see that t is a can, and you an read what is on the can.

Page 5

The rabbit zigzagged through the maze. We smashed into a clearing between the corn, and I could see the sore in the ground that the rabbit had come from. My last act of desperation was to dive for the little rabbit, but he had the same idea. My hands wrapped around him, and I felt my adrenaline surge through my chest. Our hearts were moving at the same pace as I slammed into the rabbit hole. The sore in the ground cracked around the edges as I fell through the ground an impossible distance. I landed shoulder first at the bottom of thirty foot high rabbit cave. The hole above was like a skylight out of my reach.

I rolled, trying not to feel my shoulder ache, while making sure I hadn’t crushed the rabbit to death. Luckily, the rabbit was still kicking, which meant I wasn’t alone at the very least, I pulled the wedge out of his mouth and let him go. Rather than run away, he just sat there and watched as I unfolded the pieces of notebook paper. It was four pieces of numbered paper. On first page the title was written in bold letters, The Magic Rabbit. According to the byline, someone name Jen wrote the story.

“Why would you have this?” I asked the bunny. His little nose twitched, and he scratched one of his ears with his huge back foot. “Hmm.” Even with the minimal light, I was able to ascertain that the story was about a magic rabbit, but nothing substantial happened in the story, and as far as I could tell it ended mid-sentence with the word ‘twisted’. On top of that, it was covered in tiny splotches of moldy grease. “What is this?” I asked again, but obviously the rabbit didn’t talk back. Rabbits couldn’t talk, but the more I thought that, the more I thought back to the book laying in my room. Could this be the fabled rabbit from Alice in Wonderland?

Poetic Review of Secret Life of Pets

The secret life is not what you'd expect

And is an interesting Concept

In the vein of finding Nemo 

This is a rescue mission kind of show 

Let's watch these pets relax

Let's go and rescue max

Then the quite life of a dog gets a nuke

In the form of a huge dog named Duke 

So as hijinks ensue 

You'll see what the pets will due

Interestingly like finding Dory 

I guess Marlin is in this story

In the form of a Hawk 

Plus theres a rabbit that picks locks

As dumb as this could have been 

It actually had depth interested end

It is surprising by at the least 

It is a 3 out of 5 piece 

Page 4

My father was out spraying the crops, and my mother was probably in town getting food, but I couldn’t directly see either one of them. That was good enough, I didn’t need to be hassled about how I mowed the lawn anyway.

I moved like a ribbon towards the barn, sighing at the sight of the riding lawnmower’s shredded frame. It was always ruined. It was finicky, and the slightest rock under the deck ripped the blades off of their support. Either I could attempt to fix it, or I could use the old push mower. One way would have me start mowing in a few hours and chewed out in the same set of hours. Or I could take a few hours to mow and still be chewed out, but it was my fault for not getting to it sooner.

The door seemed to pop open just before I touched it. Sitting in the center of the barn was the 100 year old push mower. It had a slight sheen to it, but there wasn’t any light pouring directly onto it. As I stepped towards it, trying to pinpoint the shimmer, I saw a baby white rabbit peek his head out from under the circular body of the lawn mower.

“What are you doing little guy? That isn’t really a good place to hide.” The rabbit scurried out from under the mower and paused in the center of the floor. I noticed that in the rabbit’s mouth was a folded wedge of lined notebook paper. “What is that?” His ears perked up, and he looked at me with his shimmering blue eyes. It was the same shimmer as the lawn mower. With a single step, I launched the rabbit forward. The white bundle of fluff pushed itself through a loose board in the barn and vanished back into the world.

As much as I didn’t want to be chewed out by my dad, I also wanted to learn more about the strange rabbit. It was so pure, like a white splotch on an otherwise burned piece of paper. Once I made it back through the door, the bunny was halfway across the field. “I shouldn’t,” I mumbled, but by mumbling it to myself, somehow I hadn’t even heard it. In a flash, I was running towards the rabbit, my ponytail was whipping behind me like an actual pony’s tail.

Page 3

I, personally had never been quite sure if Dante truly existed. It would be rather difficult to prove the existence of fictitious characters, when their remnants had long since passed. I glanced back out the window, watching the wheat flop around wildly in the breeze, reminding me oh so subtly that I would need to cut the grass.

Why someone hadn’t created a laser grid system to cut grass automatically was way beyond my comprehension. That was another aspect of Dante’s story that seemed entirely fabricated. For as much time that had gone by, no other examples of such adventures had ever been made apparent to the public. No one had found the Forbidden Library and absolutely no contact had ever been made with the actual lab where Vlad/Val/Maliki had created his serum. Nor had said serum been recreated. If such fantastical adventures had been had, how come they hadn’t happened again? Wasn’t history bound to repeat itself, or some similar sounding nonsense?

I lifted the book off of my nightstand and chucked it into the trash bin next to my bed. I no longer had any need for a children’s book. I stood, crossing my arms in defiance, and took one last longing glance at the book. It didn’t truly matter whether it had happened or not, and I left the room and the topic on that note.

I scampered down the hall and burst out the front door into the amazing bright light. The sun was warm on my face, the breeze flicked my hair around. As if saying, “Kylee, you don’t have to worry about the past, just enjoy the beautiful day. The amazing beautiful day. The wonderful beautiful day. The warmth of the amazing day.” I didn’t really imagine wind having a strong vocabulary.

Page 2

I lied on my back staring at the book, attempting to determine for myself whether or not Dante was real. It was one of life’s greatest mysteries, and there was no way I would ever know. At least that was what I had thought. I determined in that moment that Dracula couldn’t leave his novel, and that was impossible.

I set the book on my nightstand and glanced out the window. The light was pouring in through the clouds and splashing on the corn. I had chores to do in a few minutes, but I sat there a little longer. The book that I had obtained was handwritten, which wasn’t all that uncommon for Dante’s book in general.

Legend told that the original copy was handwritten, so lots of copies followed suit, attempting to replicate the original. Like the original was said to be, the one that was on my nightstand was caked in a stain that looked like long dried blood. Really good fakes would have brown blood like the one I had, and the crafter would be careful to make it look real.

Most people could spot an obvious fake easy enough by its bright red nature. No blood, vampire or human, was going to be red after 100 years. Typically, Dante’s handwriting was often the most creative aspect of the handwritten book. Some depicted Dante’s strokes as elegant, swift, and flourish ridden cursive. As beautiful as that often was, it was hardly likely for the vampire to have possessed such knowledge or precision, given his long stay inside the coffin. My copy was uniquely different, it attempted to express the handwriting of someone rushed, perhaps even frightened. It was choppy, sloppy, and looked as though it had been written by a pen long past its do not use date. There were even stains that recreated the drama of being left handed and smudging the pages of a notebook. Granted no historic record ever explicitly stated that Dante was left handed, nor did most historians believe he was. At the very least, the book seemed to be authentic in its recreation.