I sit in the bathtub smoking a cigarette. Blinking against the sting of smoke as it licks my eyes, I breathe it in, let it coat the back of my throat, and take another drag. A flaking ember flashes hot on my arm as it burns off and falls into the lukewarm bath water. I found a bottle of bubble bath tucked behind old razors and shaving cream with a thick coat of dust clinging to its faded blue wrapping. I thought maybe I’d like to lick the bottle. I could already feel the dust on my tongue, could imagine choking on it.
          I don’t usually take baths. They’re much too visible. Forced to sit in water that’s too hot until you’re sitting in water that’s too cold and there’s a body, surely not your own body, but there’s a body and it’s naked and it’s hideous. See, right there, the stretch marks on the thighs, the stubble on the legs from not shaving—baths aren’t for shaving—and there are freckles where there shouldn’t be freckles and scars that if anyone saw them, they’d leave like a ghost in the middle of the night.
          I run my hand along the edge of the tub, over the thick foam, over my head, my shoulders, my mouth. Wrinkled hands glide over the wet skin, but the scars and bumps stick out like sharp stones on an otherwise smooth surface. My hair knots beneath my fingernails and my lips are raw from chewing on them so much. I let my arms fall back into the tub and the water splashes over the side, dampening the decayed grey bathmat. The ends of my hair are wet, almost black, where they stick to the pale pink acrylic of the tub. The top of my head is still dry, wispy bangs stabbing the sides of my face. 
          I finish the cigarette and pry open my index and middle finger like a pair of scissors, letting the butt of it plop into the water. I watch it sink beneath the foam down deep where it becomes something that does not exist. I sink lower into the water and scrape my chin against the top layer of foam. When I was little, I’d let my mother scoop it onto my face, like Santa Claus, she said, and the foam would crack when it touched my ears, but now I let it soak into my skin, let the bubbles creep up my nose, into my mouth, so that for a moment, I don’t breathe. I hold myself there, not breathing, curling my legs under me like a caged animal because I am too big for this tub. 
          I feel like the rabbit I saw at the vet when I was ten years old as we were led into the backroom by the veterinarian who was going to stick a needle into our dog. “To put her to sleep,” my mother cooed, but there was the rabbit in a stacked cage twice the size of its body, shivering in the corner on a frayed pink blanket. A handful of hay was pressed into the corner, but it smelled like urine and rotting vegetables. Its eyes fixed on me, wide and frightened, and I asked why it looked so scared.
           “Because it’s sick,” she said. “It doesn’t have enough room to move around. To feel free.”
        	I circle the drain with my right toe and wonder what would happen if it got stuck in there. I’ve heard wolves and foxes chew off their own limbs to escape a hunter’s trap. Would I do the same? I am not a fox or, at least, I don’t think I am. I am a girl, which is closer to a rabbit than a fox. I know this because my mother calls me a girl. My father calls me a girl. Everyone believes me to be a girl even if I wish I were not.
          I picture my dog laying limp on the table. Picture the man with the killing device in his hand and I wonder when you choose to become a killer.
          In my mind, I picture him standing in the front row of a surgical amphitheatre, his hand gripped tightly to the wooden railing in front of him, and the top half of his body tilting forward as he leers down at the cadaver sprawled out on the table. He listens to the instructor, an older man in a white lab coat, with thinning grey hair and a wispy moustache that gives him the confidence to spit on the same ground his students walk on. He listens to him with ears wide open. He listens as if he is God because, to him, he is. 
          The instructor speaks in intonations of thunder. “This,” he roars, “is the world’s greatest secret! This is the world’s greatest pest!” Suddenly, the truth! He has heard it uttered from God’s own lips, and now the world has entered focus. In this room, he is taught to hate, to carve, to examine minutely the details of another’s body laid bare.
          Now it is me on the floor, holding the scalpel. Feeling the weight of it, the cool metal against my skin. I was meant to hold it. I shrug on the lab coat, adjust the goggles that dig too deeply into my face, knowing they will leave a mark. I look down at the body on the table, but it is not like any body I’ve seen before. The chest curves differently and the hips are too wide to be natural and there is something missing between the legs. Peering at it more closely, I notice that there is dark hair under the arms and on the legs and below the waist and—is there supposed to be hair there? I’m not so sure anymore, but I twist the scalpel in my hand and walk closer.
          Beneath the collarbone, the skin glistens with either sweat or formaldehyde, and I press the metal against the sternum and begin carving it open. I watch the blood seep from beneath the skin. Watch it run red against my hands. The knife trails to the base of the stomach leaving scorch marks in its wake.
          “Cut deeper!” God’s voice rumbles behind me.
          I take the flaps of the stomach and tear them open on either side. The skin is soft, but not as soft as it should be, and much too thin. The blood stains my hands and I wipe them surreptitiously on my lab coat, trying not to breathe in the scent of decay. I peel back the flesh to reveal the organs and remove them one by one. I cup each one in my hand, squeezing it slightly, before weighing it. These organs are much too heavy.
          I rip out the liver and suddenly it is me lying on the table, cradling my organs, weighing them and hating them. I grip the bloodied scalpel, carving bits off the edges and putting them back in lighter. I throw the rest in the trash. When I reach my heart, I carve it up like a roast chicken and only keep the bones because that was the heaviest organ of all. I try to stitch myself together, but I remember that I don’t know how to do this. God is watching and he is laughing.
          The water is cold now. Colder, I think, because of the open window above the toilet. It’s high enough that I’m just able to make out bits of sky and snow that float in through the tear in the window screen. The snow mixes with condensation, creating dusty puddles on the mint green tile. As I tilt my head, letting water rush into my ears and cancel out the sound of screaming wind, there is movement on the windowsill. A rabbit has climbed in, presumably the same way the snow has taken shelter against the tile, and it stares at me with saucer eyes. I stare back, breathing in soap and ash. The rabbit opens its mouth as if to speak or bite, its teeth glistening in the dull light.
          Its teeth remind me of claws, the kind of claws that belong to frightened animals. After my dog died, my mother brought home a cat from the shelter as a replacement. Unlike the gentle nature of a dying dog, this cat had a set of claws that she used to attack, as if with knives, whenever I picked her up or touched her from behind. She left cuts on my neck and on my arms that faded into thin pink ribbons that people stared at when I passed them on the street. I always scoffed at that. As if I would damage myself so visibly. As if I would let them see.
          The rabbit hops from the windowsill onto the back of the toilet with a dull thump. Its tail twitches, as though it’s trying to say, I would wag my finger at you if I could.
          I stare at it.
          It stares back. Then hops.
          This rabbit is different from the one I remember. Its eyes are curious, not frightened, and it wanders in without reservation. It is used to being free. Its nose twitches, as though it smells something foul, but the only other thing in here is me. I stretch my legs out until the balls of my feet press up against the other end of the tub, making the foam bob like weightless buoys. I lift my arm from the water, reaching over the lip of the tub, and rub my fingers together to lure the rabbit closer. Its eyes bulge from its small head, ears pressed flat against its skull. The rabbit is grey, almost the same shade as my bathmat.
          I click my tongue against the roof of my mouth. “I won't hurt you,” I say. When it’s within arm’s reach, I open my hand and seize the scruff of its neck. My
nails dig into the skin and loose tufts of fur cling to my wet palm. The rabbit thrashes in my grip like a ceiling fan gone haywire and my knuckles are white as I swing the rabbit over the edge of the tub to grip its ears with my other hand. It squeals—a high pitched sound that reverberates across the damp tile of the bathroom. I grimace, itching to cover my ears. The longer I look at the flailing creature, the more guilt I feel. Its claws are out, glinting in the low light as they catch my forearm. Blood drips, but I don’t flinch. Its eyes are wide, too wide, and it looks at me as if it knows it will die.
          “But if it’s so frightened, why did they put it in a cage?” I asked my mother.
          “To keep it safe. The rabbit needs to recover, and if it had more room, it might hurt itself.”
          I plunge the rabbit beneath the water, beneath the foam and soap and ash that languishes on the surface. It thrashes harder now, cutting open old scars on my thighs as it whips its small body back and forth, fighting for breath. I tighten my grip, thinking maybe I can squeeze the life out of it—make it still. It’s more difficult to hold it underwater. Things become too slippery and I can’t remember how I got here.
          The rabbit is gone—maybe it was never here—and I am waving my limbs frantically, hoping to gain some purchase on the ceramic tub, but my fingers slip away like oil. My head, my arms, my legs, shake uncontrollably and my fist won’t close, but it won’t stop shaking, and the water is somehow colder than I thought it was. I try to scream, but I breathe in water instead. It tears my lungs.
          Waves lap over my head, and beneath the surface, shadows dance like marionettes across my vision. Beautiful, I think, how death becomes like dancing.
Bile swims in my throat along with the soap and ash I swallowed. I think of when I
went swimming in the lake and swam until I couldn’t touch. I let the waves drag me under, let the seaweed wrap around my ankles like they were pulling me home. When I resurfaced, just for a moment, I could only see sun and horizon, and I thought about how much bigger the world seems when you’re drowning in it.
          And how much smaller it seems now.
 

Erin Staley holds a BA in English and Creative Writing from Concordia University, during which she received the Gabriel Safdie Award in Creative Writing for her poem “The Fall”. Previously, she served as a Co-Editor-in-Chief of Soliloquies Anthology and Ivy Literary Magazine. She is currently a student in the Master of Publishing program at Simon Fraser University and Co-Editor-in-Chief of Bitter Magazine.