Not Andersen Prunty

A boy with a boar’s head wanders into his kitchen and asks his father for a pet.

His father doesn’t hear him.

His father’s pills are scattered all over the kitchen table. He’s leaning back in the chair, his arms dangling at his sides. He says he takes the pills to keep his fingers from curling up.

The boy kicks his father in the shin.

The father snaps out of his coma and stares forward with bloodshot eyes, dragging a bony hand across his drool-slicked chin.

“I wanna pet.”

The father makes a great effort to reach out and grab one of the boy’s tusks. He gives it a weak shake and says, “Then we’ll go get you a pet.”

They leave the house and go to the pet store. The father walks very slowly and looks at his hands. He asks the boy if he notices his fingers curling up. The boy doesn’t answer.

They reach the pet store. It smells like a barn. The animals roam free. The menagerie runs the gamut from cute and cuddly to exotic and lethal. The father pokes the animals in the eyes and tells the boy he’s checking to make sure they’re ripe. The boy thinks maybe he’s confused. The boy falls in love with a two-headed rabbit. Luckily, it’s ripe. He takes it home and names it “Cobra.”

On the way home, the father says, “If you want we could stop at the hospital and get that cat sewed up in ya. Yeah, it’ll be a real fun surgery. We used to do shit like that all the time.”

The boy bites his father on the hand. The father slowly pulls his hand to his chest and stares at it, says now they’re gonna curl up for sure.

The next day, the boy takes Cobra to school, to the classroom filled with boar-headed children.

The class is taught by two men named Vern and Carl. Vern is stout and intense. He wears a tight button-down shirt stretched over his belly. He is the disciplinarian. Carl is taller with carefree, flowing hair. He wears a sweatsuit. He is the fun guy.

After about an hour of class, the teachers get bored. Vern tells the boy to hand over the rabbit. Carl assures him they’ll bring it back. The boy hands Vern the rabbit and the two men go outside.

The boy stands at the window and stares out at the green grass of the school grounds. Carl and Vern appear. They look very happy. They toss the rabbit back and forth. Back and forth. The boy thinks it looks like a lot of fun. So fun. He wants to be out there, tossing the rabbit with his teachers. Instead, he stays in the classroom and cries with the other students.

Later, he takes Cobra home.

He tells his father to come out to the yard, he’s discovered a new game. A half-hour later, his father makes it out. The boy tosses Cobra at his father. His father moves way too slow and the rabbit bounces off his chest. His father falls down. His fingers curl up, wildly extending from his hands and twisting into impossible shapes.

Cobra hops away.

The boy goes into the house and beats his fists on the couch. Tomorrow he will make his father take him back to the pet store and he will get a new pet. And then they will go to the hospital and he’ll have the pet sewn so deeply inside him it will never escape.