Bunny's eyes gleamed with a black malice from beneath the flame-red mask. He had left his legacy of quivering bobtails and chasing clocks and nibbling leaves in a cage behind. Somewhere at the back of his head the faint, faltering memories floated in a grey mist.
He remembered one thing clearly right now: a crunchy wet carrot in between his small hard teeth. Possibly the only thing he missed about captivity. That was what Missy had fed into the hatch of his cage, which he had escaped yesterday. He longed for that crunchy carrot again. She had been screaming when he leapt out of the cage, wailing something awful. Then Moira, Missy’s sensible elder sister, had beat him with a hairbrush for some reason his quick rabbit mind could not comprehend. Moira was not cruel. Her eyes had been filled with fear more than anger as she hit him.
He didn’t mean to leave dear Missy behind. It was just that…
…he had recalled, with sudden alacrity one fine morning, chasing time through a dark tunnel and landing right at the sword of a blood-lusting queen. He had recalled a fawn leaping through the woods as he bounded right behind and stopped to woo a bashful female rabbit. His name had been Thum…Thom-something. And he recalled an eternity of nosy loud children with intrusive fingers poking and prying at his soft skin as he crouched hapless behind cheap abrasive wire grilles…
Then one Halloween they had put the mask on him. Just for kicks. A bunch of teenagers full of beer and laughter, dressed in various ghoulish shades – purple, green, corpse-grey. Missy had had more liquor than her age legally allowed and was all giggles when Rodney insisted Bunny be part of the fun.
“Bunny don’t have a costume, Missy,” he had said, his breath warm and bitter. “Should we take ol’ Bunny trick-or-treatin’? Stuff him full o’ candy; he’d like that. Wouldn’t have to feed ‘im carrots fer a week.” And then the papier-mâché mask that smelt of cheap glue swallowed his twitching face as the kids laughed.
The panic faded after a moment: the mask settled on his face as if it had been made for him. He watched Missy and Moira and their friends from behind his plastic child-friendly cage. The eyeholes of the mask framed everything he saw in a dark halo. He felt both isolated and powerful. Cut off from the house he had grew up in, his docile mind began to unfold with tales of his countless incarnations. Some were so vivid he could hardly believe them; others were dull and mundane; yet others were surreal and vague and ancient.
The streets were cold on his pampered fur, ruffling through his ears and stirring up even more memories. A couple walked past him whispering sweet nothings to each other. They smelt warm and sweet. A young girl ran past on deer-light feet; she looked like Missy. An old man peered curiously at him through rheumy eyes, wondering what a soft white rabbit like him was doing on a filthy street. Or perhaps why it was wearing a mask.
After all, he should be behind the bars of his clean plastic cage.
Or in a dark tunnel rushing toward a deck of knaves and blood-red roses.
Or chasing a fawn pointlessly through a sunlit forest.
Or being poked by hard candy-coated little fingers.
Bunny looked at the old man’s graceful, papery fingers and licked his lips. He was hungry for something wet and crunchy.
He thought of Missy’s white face, the last he had seen of her before fleeing the warm cosy house. And he knew, with sudden sharpness, that it was not a carrot he had bit into.
He saw the hot gushing blood as clearly as he heard her cries. He heard it right now in his head. It roared like thunder, trapped close to his quivering ears by the papier-mâché mask.
Bunny's eyes gleamed with a black malice from beneath the flame-red mask. Fading memories were swept clean by the wet wind of the neon night. He had left behind his legacy of quivering bobtails and chasing clocks and nibbling leaves in a cage. And all he wanted now was a nice, wet, crunchy bite.
It didn’t always have to be carrots.
