Pitch

Magic was ordinary, and hypothetically, anyone could use it. Spell books were sold like cookbooks, after all. However, powerful spells always came with a bigger price tag.

My family didn’t have a grimoire full of extravagant spells. We hardly had enough to bind inside a hard cover. A few pages of simple things were the best we could do. It was nothing significant.

So how did I do it? How did I curse myself to live the rest of my life forever as Danger Rabbit? It started as a small thing. Had I let it go, had I been able to move on, maybe things would have been different. But I was a kid back then, and sometimes the only way kids learned was after screwing up.

I had lost my pet rabbit, Mr. Nickels, my first pet.

Ironically, because my pet had cost so much to buy, my dad couldn’t afford a spell to find him. At eleven years old, nothing and no one was going to tell me no. So when Dad couldn’t help, I helped myself.

I searched for magic words, and I used spells that I already knew to fill in the gaps.

It took a bit of time, but I wrote something worth giving a shot. In the middle of the night, I finally had the chance to perform my first self-crafted spell. I should have known something would go wrong since I had to wait hours for my dad to go to bed before I could do anything.

All I wanted to do was find Mr. Nickels, my first pet. But I didn’t know the reason my rabbit had cost so much was because he was magic. That night, I learned why ordinary people never wrote their own spells.

New magic was dangerous and unpredictable. Spells were like complex formulas. Sure, spell books dumbed things down enough for kids to use, but coming up with something original wasn’t safe for an 11-year-old boy to do on a school night.

Strangely enough, the spell could have worked had I known about Mr. Nickels’ unique abilities. But, like always, I was clueless. When I said the words of my spell out loud, my magic mixed with his in a disaster. The next thing I knew, I woke up with my dad standing over me.

Something was weird.

I wasn’t hurt, but there was definitely something off. Dad assisted me up from the floor, and that’s when everything became clear. I was covered in white fur. My ears were long, and I had rabbit feet. Although my thumbs remained intact, I mysteriously found myself with only four fingers on each hand. I had turned myself into a sort of half rabbit creature. My dad should have been livid, but he was distraught.

I forgot about Mr. Nickels after that. Finding my lost pet was a small challenge compared to my new appearance. Sadly, there was no undoing the spell because I had transformed myself. Even if we had the money, undoing my transformation would have been nearly impossible for a professional magician. I was stuck as a half-breed for the rest of my life or until I could come up with a solution.

Dad wouldn’t let me out of the house for nearly a month while we tried to undo my mistake. Honestly, I didn’t want to be seen either, so I would have avoided going outside, anyway.

Life never slowed down. Eventually, we started getting phone calls from my school. Teachers wondered where I was or if something had happened to me. Dad could only tell them I had a cold so many times before they grew more suspicious. When we got a letter warning that if I missed any more days of school, Dad would be fined, I had no other choice but to return.

There was nothing we could do with the short time that we had left, so I reluctantly caught a school bus the next day.

As expected, I was the center of attention from the moment I stepped foot on the bus. Magical creatures, or Fae, weren’t anything uncommon, but my middle school had very few. Moreover, I wasn’t simply a satyr or an elf, or anything along those lines. I might have been the first half-rabbit the town, and maybe even the world, had ever seen, aside from the Easter bunny. Kids could be assholes, but during that fifteen-minute bus ride, everyone was too taken aback to be dicks.

I placed too much importance on what other kids thought when I shouldn’t have. Upon our arrival at school, the principal was waiting. Ms. Harper wanted to discuss how my grades had fallen during my long absence. However, the moment she saw my fur, my tail, and my long ears, I’m sure my classes must have become a minor talking point. She escorted me straight from the bus to her office, and everyone inside the building had a front-row seat to the spectacle. On the bright side, no one recognized me unless I spoke or outright told them who I was, but that didn’t stop them from talking. With my oversized ears, I heard every word spoken as I walked by with my head down.

All I cared about then were the rumors I thought would spread fast. The main issue went completely over my head. Ms. Harper and I spoke at length about my transformation, and throughout the conversation, I was honest at every turn. I was too young, or maybe too naïve, to realize my dad could have gotten into serious trouble. Magic was easy enough for kids to use, but children weren’t allowed to use advanced spells on their own.

There was too much potential danger to chance the possibility of kids being careless. Anyone can use a knife or a lighter, but you wouldn’t let children go around starting fires in the woods or cutting things down on their own. Advanced magic was the same way. With that in mind, my transformation was less than ok. Despite my explanation, Ms. Harper continued to believe my dad was negligent. In her eyes, my father had allowed a preteen to conduct a self-crafted spell.

The moment Ms. Harper called my dad to come to my school was when I started to understand. We were both in trouble. I backtracked in our conversation, attempting to cover our asses, but it was too late. Ms. Harper wouldn’t listen to another word until my father arrived.

While my dad spoke with her and a couple of police officers, I was told to wait in the hallway. I could hear, with unease, every word spoken through the wooden door. I should have been in my English class. I would have killed to have been sitting at my desk reading some dead poet’s early work, but I couldn’t leave.

Maybe my fur was to blame, but I started sweating from an overwhelming heat. I couldn’t divert my attention from my dad’s attempts to salvage the situation.