Bunny, p.24
Bunny, page 24
He finally recognises the third voice making the alien scream. It is his own.
He stops screaming and scrambles onto the floor, searching for the matchbox. A low growl emanates from high up in the chimney. It begins slowly descending towards them again. He redoubles his efforts, sweeping his hands across the floor as he replays the last moment of light in his mind’s eye. Where was the box? In Rose’s hand as she was pulled into the fireplace. He scuttles on all fours into the fireplace. The growling from the tall void above him is creeping closer. His hands plunge into aged ash and soot as he slides them to the back, running his fingers along the bottom edges until he hears wooden matches jangling in their box. He grabs the box and ducks out of the hearth as the growling vibrates the hairs on his neck. His hands shake mercilessly as he strikes a match and a chance to reclaim the situation.
He glimpses white fingers creep-curling over the lip of the chimney. Bunny’s eyes peer over the edge at him – one now gone, ruined by him. And yet, in the depths of the hollow, wet socket, rises another pupil from within her skull – its colour a grey shade of eternity.
A thin, clear stream of fluid sprays into the fireplace from behind him.
‘Throw the match!’ Rose screams.
Silas follows the instruction without thinking. The match lands in the wet spray and takes off with an airy whoosh. The hidden eye recedes from Bunny’s socket as she flees up the chimney with a brittle howl. Rose throws the now empty bottle of lighter fluid into the flames, feeding the fire with pinecones from a basket next to the hearth. When those are gone, she finds the cones littered over the shelves and throws them in too.
Clots of chimney debris rain down onto the infant flames, almost extinguishing them as Bunny scrambles up and away. Her feet pound over the roof, sending loose shingles down. Rose follows the sound as it weaves back and forth before reaching the edge of the roof and disappearing.
Silas tends the flames, ensuring they’re well fed before leaving them and laying a hand on Rose’s shoulder. She jumps at the touch and turns to him.
Her face, shoulders and neck are lacerated with crescent-shaped nail marks and long scratches.
The shoulder he first saw Bunny peering over now has a red, wet crescent of missing skin with scalloped edges.
‘Jesus! She bit you?’
Rose looks at her shoulder in a daze. ‘I don’t know,’ she murmurs as she brushes her hand across it and flinches as the pain ignites. ‘Ah!’ Her voice is weary, scared and filled with sobs. ‘Ow, ow, ow, ow . . .’
Silas holds her. He tries to melt courage back into her broken body.
‘It’s okay. She can’t get in again.’ He means the words to calm her but they sound hollow.
New footsteps pass over the roof, jolting Rose out of the embrace. They weave up towards the chimney and stop.
Silas cradles Rose in his arms as they listen in silence.
Bunny looses a dog-like bark as something clatters down the chimney. They hear it bounce against the walls as it tumbles down and lands, sending sparks into the room. Something metallic glints in the flames. Rose rushes towards it and looks into the hearth.
‘It’s Goober! It’s Goober! Oh God, no!’ she shrieks as she plunges her hands into the fire, ignoring the flames. She holds it in her hands and brings it to her face to be sure, before cradling it as if it were a baby ready to be christened.
The room fills with the smell of Rose’s scalding flesh as Silas looks down into her arms. Goober’s skull sits nestled in her raw pink palms.
His leather collar and tag bind his lower jaw to his upper. Bunny’s gold crucifix wraps around the crown of his skull like a Christian wreath.
Outside, Bunny laughs; great guffaws that only stop long enough for her to bark again maliciously.
‘Oh, baba. Oh, no, no.’ Rose sways back and forth. A deep, low wail washes out of her, child-like and wretched. Silas slowly reaches a hand towards it. His other is clapped across his mouth. His fingers brush over bone as gently as if it were skin and fur. Giant, heaving breaths fill his lungs. They rock together on the floor, skull between them, holding on to each other as if to steady themselves in a small boat caught in a storm. Tendrils of salty tears and snot hang from Rose’s face. Her mouth hangs open and her shoulders heave and collapse rhythmically as she weeps from the depths of her being.
Silas can’t cry. Murder has disconnected something in him and turned his mind and body to cool bronze.
‘I’m going to kill her now.’ He speaks with a neutral inflection of the sort used to discuss the weather with a vague acquaintance. He stands up stiffly, knowing that he will kill her. Rose, dissolved in her own small corner of hell, does not hear him.
He calmly walks to the door. Above them, Bunny stops laughing. He twists the key and the door unlocks, then he turns the handle with a hand steadied by a singular purpose, flings the door open to let the fire’s fading light spill out and steps onto the porch.
I will kill you now. I will kill you now. His mind calmly repeats the mantra, and it will, until he does.
Ting! A sound like a thin metal frisbee bouncing off steel scaffolding seems to come from somewhere inside him. He stops, unsure of what the sound is.
There’s a glinting just above eye level in the darkness beside him – the broadside of a cut-throat razor as it catches the meagre firelight. He follows the hand holding it and sees her standing not two feet from him. Fists are too impersonal for this.
His hands clap onto the sides of her head. For a moment it appears as if he’s going to kiss her. She looks surprised. He sinks his chin into his chest, showing her the top of his forehead, before leaning back and slamming it into her face with the entire force of his body. He feels the crunching of bones vibrating through the top of his head. Bunny sails through the air, landing on the wooden porch and bowling over old wicker chairs.
He stands, not sure what to do next. His body feels light, like it’s a spacesuit depressurising. He hears the light drumming sound of liquid dripping onto the floor below him. Have I pissed myself again? He takes a step towards her and the light from the open doorway catches the liquid just right. He sees that it’s red and wonders why he’s pissing blood. His foot drags, then falters as he attempts to take another step . . . And then it makes sense. The sound. The bright metallic sound he heard when he opened the door.
The razor blade in her hands . . . was that the sound it made as it bounced off my bones? He brings his hands up to his stomach. They feel heavy and light at the same time as they slide over his insides hanging from the pristine cut. His hands travel further up, brushing over exposed ribs, then whisk around his upper chest to discover a piece of exposed clavicle. He finds it is much wetter at the clavicle. Far worse.
His hands discover what feels like a pleasantly warm, burbling stream that’s sprung up in the soft flesh just below his jaw. He realises that at some point the severed artery would have sprayed instead of burbled, but he was busy attempting to kill his aunt and must have missed that.
I’m cold, he thinks, as he vaguely registers that the side of the house is freshly painted in red spray. His gaze, now fuzzing around the edges, finds her in the spot where she landed. Don’t be alive.
She lifts her face to him like a lover waking from sleep.
Her face is a ruin: a ragged, deflated mush of gristle and skin now resides where her nose once was, haywire cheekbones no longer sit like a Sharon Tate lookalike, and above her remaining eye is a small crater where there shouldn’t be. But still she smiles a toothy grin full of joy and blood.
‘It’s time,’ she whispers tenderly to him as she stands.
He watches her stand, he hears her whisper and still he thinks, Just don’t be alive. But then he sees her new eye and in it the flashes of a brilliant glow and he remembers the time that he and Aunt Bunny escaped from the endless circling, the land of dead trees and a cave that shook their world with madness. He feels it and for the first time, he sees it how it sees him, and now he understands. The Little King.
Bunny clasps her hand over her heart and he knows that she has heard his thought, and is glad.
Before he dies, he sees; he sees what is in the cave, what is beyond the smooth, inward stone. It falls away, and before him lies an eternal sky, streaked with magenta rays and a drowning sun. A lake that drifts in impossible directions simultaneously and a whirlwind of dying stars beneath. Pillars of rock jut upwards in ancient jest, piercing the dancing millennia above. He glances at dead trees and notes every type of animal that has been born behind them, and now him. He searches further beyond the pillars, beyond the trees and sees the peaks of endless black ranges and a roiling, stupid violence that splinters galaxies. He glances back down at his feet and sees a welcome mat, his welcome mat. He steps onto its prickly bristle and as he does so, a silver flash and a silent howl hurtle towards him.
The commotion out on the porch slowly roused Rose from her state of mournful delirium. She heard a sound like a meat tenderiser flattening out cheap steak and then something slid across the porch, bowling over the outdoor furniture. There was a momentary silence and then a resounding THUD. The silence that follows wafts into the house along with the soft, cold breeze that flows in from the open door.
‘Silas?’ she calls in a half-whisper.
‘It’s tiiimmme!’ Bunny howls from outside, her dry, raked voice consumed with blind wonder and joy. It’s the voice of the zealot at church, singing in tongues, dancing as souls are promised safe passage by a thin-eyed preacher in cheap shoes, under a rented tent that’s paid for in cash.
‘It’s time, child! Praise!’ Bunny screams as she bursts through the doorway, arms waving above her head in exaltation as her bare, bloody feet slap across the timber floor towards Rose.
Rose doesn’t have time to react. She’s so fast, she thinks as Bunny’s razor neatly severs her windpipe and the arteries in her neck.
Where is Silas? she wonders as Bunny’s mangled face comes close to kiss her forehead. The smell is what does it – that ripe smell of tobacco and ethanolic sweat and madness; a rotten air that seems to ooze out of Bunny’s pores like they’re the tiny mouths of so many dead and decaying things.
With the last of her strength Rose reaches up to Bunny’s face and claws at her remaining eye. The cornea peels back under her fingernail. Bunny doesn’t seem to notice, or mind.
Rose is already turning numb, but down below, a prick of pain sears through the numbness like a lightning bolt through fog. She looks down and sees a straight red line where the razor has cut her open in a hillbilly caesarean. Bunny’s hand is already inside her stomach, darting this way and that, searching. Rose tries to fight her off, but all she can manage is a shudder from her shoulders as her hands inertly flop against Bunny’s chest like dying fish. Bunny’s hand ceases moving as her face peels into an enraptured smile. She withdraws, holding her bloody hand up to the blind, empty sockets of her face, as if she still can see. Pinched between her thumb and forefinger she holds a minute red grain, no larger than that of a single sesame seed. The last thing Rose sees is Bunny squatting in front of her, pushing the red seed up and into herself.
CHAMPAGNE BREAKFAST
The morning sun makes dust motes dance sleepily as it warms the air, which feels fresh and new. There’s a crisp, cold tang around the edges of the day that make it perfect weather for early-morning walks or large mugs of strong, sweet English tea. It’s a morning where one can listen to the world waking up and see fall massaging summer away in a great, pleasant sigh.
The flies wake with the warming sunlight and find the riches that await them in and around the house – cold, clotted, stiff, but still good for a fly. The doors are open, making it particularly easy to follow the blood inside, as they, one by one, enter the house to discover bloody treasures.
Rose and Silas are seated at the table, facing each other as if in pleasant conversation.
They are naked and their eyes are gone, young green pinecones pushed into their place. This, coupled with their hung-open mouths, gives them an uncanny resemblance to surprised cartoon characters, pinecone eyes bulging in fright and frustration as if Tom has caught Jerry but then stood on a nail.
Brave flies trundle in and out of their mouths, testing how far down their throats they can travel.
Upon Rose and Silas’s heads rest adornments resembling two crowns. Rose wears one of pinecones, held together by an aged yellow cord. It was made by a little boy in a ducky hood a long time ago, and left in a place it should never have been left, and in that place, it was found and kept for a very special day. Silas wears a woven wreath of spinach leaves picked fresh, made by hands covered in his and Rose’s dry blood. They were Bunny’s hands, but she is now so deeply enjoined that they’re no longer really hers; she’s simply a half-awake backseat driver in a vehicle she no longer recognises, having strange visions that are more like dreams as parts of her mind and soul are examined and repurposed while the rest is discarded and slowly digested.
Bunny brings in Silas’s phone from outside and it lies on the counter with a voice note blinking on it. She turns her eyeless face towards him, perhaps seeking permission – it is, after all, his phone. She presses the playback button with a finger that leaves flakes of blood on the screen:
Si, it’s Jerry. I tried calling a bunch of times. Now, I understand why you didn’t pick up but I hope you listen to this before you delete it. Look, I know a guy who owed me a favour from way back when this town was a little more . . . ah, never mind. Anyway, he’s a Ray Donovan kinda guy. Bottom line is, we got the rights back – and also that advance-that-wasn’t-an- advance. It’s more than we talked about so . . . Call when you can. Love ta Rosie, kid. You’re both gonna be fine. I promise. Okay, bye now.
Bunny’s ruined face slowly starts to beam as she listens to the recording. Her cracked lips part, showing the yellowing teeth behind them. She walks over to Silas and affectionately rests her head against his. Her hand curls into a fist on the table top. Knock. Knock. Knock.
The turntable now stands righted. It was in pieces and the Geoffrey Clare record was cracked, so it should not work, but it does. ‘Night Walk’ flutters out of the speakers, once more filling the house with music.
Bunny’s hands plug in the old Mr. Coffee with the nuclear warming plate. The empty glass decanter makes a brittle dink! sound as it heats up. She lifts a bowl from the counter nearby and half a dozen flies take off from its rim in a disturbed huff. Most of the blood from her guests paints the walls and floors, but she worked fast last night collecting enough to fill the large bowl. She tips it into an even larger bowl, where it lands with a heavy, half-coagulated plop. She opens a bottle of gin, dusty and scuffed from an old outside cache, and pours half of its clear contents into the bowl. She gives the mixture a dozen quick stirs with her bare hand, before licking her fingers clean like a child enjoying a mixing spoon with remnants of cookie dough still on it. She pours the liquid into the coffee urn and a cloud of rancid steam puffs up as the mixture hits the hot glass. So pungent are its contents, even the flies shy away.
Her hand rips open a kitchen drawer to discover a potato peeler. She presses it into the soft inside of her forearm and drags it upwards. A long curl of skin lifts obediently. She pulls it off and drops it onto the counter.
She works quickly, first pressing the peeler against Silas’s forehead, just below where the wreath rests, then scuttles over to the opposite side of the table to perform the same diligent action on Rose.
Three strips of flesh lie neatly on the counter. She stands over them in reverie before dropping the peeler and walking over to where Rose bled out on the living-room floor. Goober’s skull stares up at her as if he is still fighting. She stomps on it, shattering it into pieces, and picks up a small shard of bone. She returns to the counter, gathers up the three strips, and promptly tosses them and the bone shard into the bubbling coffee urn. Then she sits down to wait.
All this she does without the assistance of her eyes, for they are now gone, but what she possesses now is an intuition and force that gives her one profound sight. She does not need her eyes; none of them do, not now.
She sits so still that the flies occasionally crawl into her empty sockets. But they do not stay long, for they sense a corruption there, much deeper than the usual corporeal one they do their trade in.
SHE’S FIXING IT
Lou Lou is hungover and tired as she drives back home.
She had cursed herself for forgetting her purse, but she was a past regular at Surley’s, and so (to her surprise) still had a tab at the bar. She’d wrangled a bottle off the bartender before retiring to the Hotel Motel. The night manager remembered her well from years past, so she got by, much like a beloved character from Cheers. She had stayed in the room before, but couldn’t remember when, or with whom.
Hours were whiled away staring at late-night hosts making political jokes that she didn’t understand, while sipping from the bottle of cheap whatever-it-was she was drinking. Bunny won’t hurt them. It’s all fine. She’s fixing it. The thought orbited in the background of her mind, making it impossible to think otherwise.
It had started the day she and Bunny had sat for lunch, waiting for the van to take her away. The van that Silas had made come and take her away. They had been alone, whispering, or rather Bunny had whispered in her soft, loving voice and Lou Lou had listened obediently. It’s all fine. She’s fixing it.
Bunny had always fixed it before. Silas didn’t know about the many times Bunny had fixed it . . . Like when the trucker man who Lou Lou liked had started pushing and shoving her during late nights at the Hotel Motel. She still had a small scar just under her jawline from him. Bunny had fixed it and he went away . . . Or the other man who had somehow found out that Lou Lou had some money, and invited himself to live with them for a time. She had been silly when she’d allowed him to stay. And once or twice she had found him, late at night when he thought they were asleep, rummaging around in desk drawers and filing cabinets – especially interested, it seemed, in the letters to do with bank accounts and insurance policies. He hadn’t known, though, that Bunny was more of a night owl than he would ever be. So, she had fixed it and he had also . . . gone away.
