“The Rabbit Game” by S.E. Salvidge

‘I am the hunter, you are the rabbit and I will get you. So scream!’

This was The Rabbit Game, the make –pretend game I would play with my classmates at recess and lunchtime whenever I could get my way. There were other games my friends liked to play more; murder in the dark, duck, duck, goose, hair braiding or my personal least favourite, skipping. When Carrie got her way we’d always end up outside the canteen area skipping. They would skip while I swung the long rope with the other big girl Elisa. I couldn’t participate in the skipping because they’d laugh at me if I tried; I was too big, too clumsy, too much.

There were a few moments as we spilled out of the classroom into the grassed where we would decide what game we would play next. If I got the chance to do it before anyone mentioned skipping I would shout ‘I am the hunter, you are the rabbit and I will get you. So scream!’ I would chase the closest girl to me with an imaginary axe and pretend to cut off her head and sit on her. As she would squirm and giggle beneath me I would yell “Are you a rabbit. Are you a rabbit?” When they submitted and agreed that they were rabbits I’d leave them on the ground to find another rabbit girl to add to my pile. I wasn’t as fast as most of the girls but they would let me catch them after a few minutes of chase because getting caught was the point of The Rabbit Game. My goal was to cut off the head of all the rabbits and create a pile of giggling dead rabbits that I would sit on and take my rightful place at the top of and there I was, the hunter with my prey. The girls would laugh and kick and scream and I would sit on them, panting and sweating, as proud as I could be.

S.E Salvidge lives and works in Sydney, Australia working and writing little stories here and there. More of her writing can be found at samsalvidge.wordpress.com.