A STORY by RUBY DAVIS
Eleanor salts the door because she doesn’t want men in the house.
We have a pile of rabbits living underneath our swingset. Eleanor, who is the coolest person ever, says it’s a sign we have a ghost problem, since ghosts can talk to animals better than the living can. Sometimes pet rabbits get loose, breed in the backyard, and die. After that, even their great-grand-kits have a muscle memory of what it felt like to be held, so they need it, though they don’t realize. Human hands, Eleanor tells me, are too rough, so the rabbits are a lot more comfortable with ghost hands.
Eleanor is California sober. She has blue hair and perfect teeth. When we were fourteen, she taught me to use a tampon. According to her, our swingset ghost is named Ethan. She thinks he used to work in the closed-for-renovations-a-century-ago factory downtown, since he’s missing a finger. He swings at night, and she watches through her window. I can’t see him, not yet at least, because I haven’t done half as many guided meditations as Eleanor.
Last night, I saw one of the rabbits hovering above the swing. Its ears kept moving back and forth. Even though I couldn't see him, I pictured Ethan holding it in his lap and stroking its head, the fur collecting in the gap where his ring finger should be. That’s the closest I’ve come to seeing him, aside from picturing the freckles and wavy hair Eleanor tells me about.
Sometimes, I push the swing and look for him. The rabbits don’t notice. They’re either burrowing or I’ve brought them enough carrot stubs that they aren’t afraid of me anymore. Once, a half eaten carrot flew out of my palm and crashed on the picket fence, shattering into little orange bits. I think Ethan threw it. I’m not sure if he’s angry with me or if he knows I can’t see him and just wants me to know he’s there.
Eleanor says most ghosts have unfinished business. If she died right now, she tells me, she’d deal with her unfinished business by haunting the percolator at work and making sure the hot water burns her douchebag coworker’s hand every time he tries to use it.
I want to ask Ethan what his unfinished business is; I think about writing him letters, but I’m not sure he can be corporeal long enough to hold a pen, and I’m less sure he can read or write. Besides, what would I say? Hey, what’s making you haunt me and Eleanor’s backyard? What unfinished business do you have with our swingset? is much too forward. Please take good care of the rabbits is too close to asking for a favor, and asking an ex-factory-worker-ghost-boy for a favor feels insensitive.
When I feed the rabbits their scraps, letterless, I look too long at the carrots. Most of them are short, skinny, half peeled. But one is almost whole, just partially rotted. With a knife from our sink-full of dirty dishes, I carve into it. At the top, I draw a semi-circle nail, then wrinkles at the imaginary joints. I take the basket out back, dump the scraps near the burrow, and place the carrot-finger on top of the swingset where the rabbits can’t get to it.
The next time I look out the window, the carrot is gone. I figure a bird must’ve eaten it, or the wind knocked it off. But then I see it. Floating, pressed against the chain. It swings back and forth, back and forth. Me and Eleanor watch him swing from the kitchen window. She tells me that, for the first time, it looks like Ethan has ten fingers. Maybe, she says, he’s a step closer to getting over haunting us.
As the sun sets, the rabbits emerge from their burrow. One floats up to the swing, the carrot pressed against its ribs. Its ears twitch as Ethan holds it. It nibbles, slow, at the carrot-finger. Ethan pulls his invisible hand away. He keeps swinging.
Ruby Davis is an undergraduate student in creative writing and anthropology. You can find their poems and short stories published or upcoming in Same Faces Collective, Angel Food, Ninth Heaven, and others, or subscribe to their Substack @evenmolluskshaveweddings.