BLACK STATIC #41 by Andy Cox

crying again. She’d tied the mesh door closed. It was still tied closed now.
    Jess peered inside. She squatted and looked but she didn’t get too close. Maybe Harvey wasn’t in there, but it wasn’t empty either. Not quite.
    “Honey? You okay?”
    Mum was in the doorway, hugging herself.
    “Come on, it’s cold,” she said, and went inside.
    Jess was alone with the hutch. She didn’t like that, so she went inside as well.
    •••
    In bed, she could hear Mum and Mr Levis talking. She couldn’t hear their words, just the soft sounds of their voices rising and falling in conversation. Occasionally her mum laughed quietly.
    She got out of bed and went to the window. After putting Harvey in the hutch she’d pulled the ice-lolly sticks from the grave and tossed them over the fence. They were still missing, just as they should be. She looked at the hutch. It was still tied shut.
    She went to Harvey’s room. He was still there. He was sleeping, one leg kick-kick-kicking in a dream.
    “I hate you,” she said.
    •••
    Jess woke up in the middle of the night and someone was in her room.
    “Harvey?”
    She rubbed the sleep from her eyes.
    “ Harvey ?”
    It was Harvey, but it wasn’t. His pyjamas were almost black with grime and his skin was dirty and his hair looked wet. She could smell him. She could smell the damp furry smell of the hutch and the sharp wee smell as well. When he reached for her she saw he was wearing the gardening glove and it made his hand look really big. When he stepped into the light that came through her thin curtains she could see little red welts like freckles all over his face, as if he’d been bitten lots of times. His eyes were red in the middle.
    “Rabbit,” he said.
    But he wasn’t reaching for her. He was pointing.
    •••
    When she came home from school the next day the hutch was gone. Mr Levis was standing where it used to be. He took her bike when she tried to wheel it past him and leant it against the fence.
    “You can lock it here now, so it won’t get wet.”
    “Where’s the hutch?”
    Her mum came out from the kitchen saying, “Is she home?”
    “Here she is.”
    “Where’s the hutch?”
    “It’s gone,” said Mr Levis.
    “What about the other people?”
    “Glad to be rid of it. Sounded quite relieved, actually. Saved them doing it, I suppose.”
    Jess said nothing.
    “So anyway, now there’s room for your bike.”
    She locked her bike where the hutch used to be and saw the pieces of it stacked in the garden.
    “I made you some Nesquik,” said Mum.
    That was good and it was bad. It was good because Nesquik was delicious and normally she wasn’t allowed it but it was bad because it meant something.
    Jess tried to take the milk up to her room.
    “Hang on, sweetheart. Sit down.”
    Jess didn’t sit down but she compromised by staying in the kitchen to drink her milk.
    “Your mother and I have some news,” said Mr Levis.
    At first she just thought it meant Dad wasn’t coming again this weekend, but the way Mum and Mr Levis stood close to each other, and smiled at each other, and the way Mum put her hand on her stomach, and the way her smile faltered a little when she looked at Jess, told her something else. Told her everything before they could say it.
    “No.”
    “Sweetheart—”
    “No, no, no-no-no.”
    She dropped the glass of milk and covered her ears and went running through the kitchen and up the stairs. The glass probably smashed but she was humming and couldn’t hear anything else. She ran to her room which wasn’t as good as her old room but it was still her room. She barged the door open without taking her hands from her ears.
    The hutch was waiting for her. It was sitting in the middle of the room, in the spot where she danced in front of the mirror sometimes. The mesh door yawned open.
    Jess dropped to her knees sobbing. She began to crawl.
    “Sweetheart,” came her mother’s voice on the stairs. “Baby.”
    No.
    “ Jessica ,”