The Rabbit wants me dead. I know this from the wire scars that burn into the back of my neck, angry and itchy. I keep seeing his long ears, tufts of snow white fur. His heart ripped out with a knife. His heart ripped out with a knife. Ripped out with a knife. Blade hot and sticky and bloody.

Itchy-my neck was terribly itchy. My skin felt like the bars to a prison cell and my soul was the prisoner, begging to be let out. The screeching was drowning my ears. Who was screeching? What was lurching out my throat, raw and sore? Words etched into stone that scream LET ME OUT.

L E T M E O U T

Rabbits are not cuddly. They claw and bite and scratch. They have sickly eyes that cut through to your bones like razor blades. They trap you in the tunnels of your mind until you’re lost, stuck in a winding road where the men in cloaks and oversized trousers force powdery pills down your throat. Down, down, down the rabbit hole. _Rabbits_.

Holes. Holes had led me to the Queen's domain, to the Queen's Court. Splotches of crimson staining her pristine floors. Her walls. Her face. Her eyes. Her eyes only see the blood of her own bursted heart, and the blood of the Man. With the axe. Cutting and cutting and cutting and killing. A blade with a velvet handle, elegantly carved. Carving isn’t hard if you’re a wood cutter, but the Carpenter has long since gone crazy. In the deck of cards, he is the Cannibal. Twirling tendons on his fork. Some people are worse. They eat you in other ways, chew at your insides until you are a husk. A dirty rag, a toy. They take your innocence and then accuse you of branding EAT ME to your chest.

E A T M E

Rabbits are skittish, but not as much as little girls running from shadow puppets with fluffy tails and twitchy noses. A sheep with eyes like empty pill bottles comes into my castle and tells me that I'm hopeless. That I had let out the worst part of myself that night. The prisoner. I craved feeling the coppery taste between my fingernails, sinking them into my jail cell.

There's this girl. She looks just like me. Frayed blonde hair, broken eyes, freckles that scatter my face like sores. I see her sometimes, and I know she's trying to replace me. Trying to take my skin off my bones till they're as bare as a deer carcass melting into the moss. My arm itches. I'm pretty sure it's bleeding. I think I'm dying.