Free To Probe A Beating Heart by John B Wren Page B

going to pay for Averell’s latest punishment. He used his new probes, first pinning the rabbit with the movable partition, then aligning the first of his probes, he slowly pushed it into the rabbits abdomen . The second, third and fourth probes were similarly inserted into the rabbit’s body and sometimes through the it’s flesh and out the other side. He stared at the rabbits eyes, the rabbit stared back. Averell inserted the remaining probes one at a time and watched his victim’s eyes. Each probe caused pain, that pain was registered in the rabbit’s eyes. After inserting all six probes in the rabbit over about twenty minutes and moving them in different directions, the rabbit stopped moving.
                  “Do you hate me now?”
                  Later that night while sitting alone in his room, Averell took out his bag of probes and looked at them. He went into the bathroom and got a wet paper towel and a dry one. He cleaned each of the probes carefully then laid them on the floor and arranged them from longest to shortest. He sat up straight and smiled looking at them. These were his special probes, he made them, he sharpened them, he used them and he was going to use them again. The next day Averell walked out of the house and started toward the woods with his bag of probes.
                  “Where are you going?,” demanded Ellie.
                  “Outside,” and he continued to walk without pausing.
                  “Where are you going? I don’t like her,” said Stelian.
                  “Neither do I,” said Averell.
                  Ellie stood in the doorway and glared at him, but he did not see her staring, he walked down the street toward the woods. Ellie watched for a minute, then turned back into the kitchen mumbling, “I hate that little bastard.” Sarah was standing behind Ellie and heard the words, bastard, hate.
                  When Averell arrived at the little campsite and saw the four boys sitting around the fire pit talking. He hid himself and listened. The boys talked about different things, baseball, vacations, girls, school and parents.
                  “I hate my dad, he hits me a lot and makes me clean my room or the garage or the basement or sweep the porch or cut the grass. Always something for me to do, he don’t give me no breaks” said George.
                  “Yeah, my dad does the same thing, always wants me to do work,
    we’re supposed to be on summer vacation, and I want to have fun,” said Tom. “Don, what about you, is your dad nasty?”
                  “Nope.” That was the first time that Averell heard Don talk.
                  “Nope,” repeated Stelian.
                  “You guys complain too much, don’t let ‘em get to ya,” said Frank. “You should get up in the morning and do one of the jobs that you know he’s gonna’ dump on ya, the one that he would want you to do first. Then say you’re gonna’ meet with the guys and be back later. It works fer me. I cut the grass yesterday first thing, and knew today he would bitch about my room, so I cleaned it up before he said anything. See, I do one job and split, he’s happy that I did something and forgets ‘bout the other things, right Don?”
                  “Yep,” said Don.
                  “Yep,” repeated Stelian.
                  Averell thought about that. It could work. Do a little something and Ellie would get off his back, “It’s worth a try.”
                  “You never know, could work,” agreed Stelian.
                  The next morning Averell got up and went down to the kitchen. He set the table for breakfast and swept the floor. It was still early and he went into the living room and straightened up, picking up the newspapers and putting several books back