We Love You, Bunny - 2

“We’re so thankful you agreed to meet with us,” Elsinore said.

“So thankful,” I echoed.

“And can we also just say we’re such fans?”

“Such fans,” I echoed again. What the fuck was wrong with me, Bunny?

“Hardcore,” Vik said, offering her forearm tattoo to Ursula who looked at the Crystal Thief etched there and only slightly smiled.

“You’re the reason we came here,” Elsinore said.

“You’re why I want to be a writer,” Coraline added desperately.

“You’re why I’m alive at all,” Vik said.

Give me a fucking break , I thought, even though I was still nodding and smiling. Even though I was repeating, “Alive, writer, reason. Totally.”

Ursula smiled. “Well, I’m terribly flattered.” She did not look flattered. She looked like this was all par for the course. She looked in fact, a little bored, Bunny. Perhaps even impatient. This is my leave , I felt her soul roar behind her smiling eyes. What are you kids doing here? But maybe I was just seeing things, Bunny. Her husband appeared in the doorway just then. David Sylph, the poet who taught the Poetry Workshop and whom I strangely despised on sight. Something lizardy about his lips, too-shining about his eyes. He looked like he probably enjoyed a lot of appropriative world music. He handed out some ornate biscuits from a tray while looking subtly, almost eruditely, at all of our boobs.

“Now,” Ursula said when he had gone. And then she gazed down at her wrist as though there was a watch there (there wasn’t). No time piece anywhere apart from a sundial I glimpsed in her garden outside. “What can I do for you girls?”

“We’re very sorry to be bothering you,” Elsinore began.

“But this is an emergency,” Coraline said, tears in her eyes. Which I thought was a little fucking much, but I said nothing. Just smiled a smile that hurt my face. Nodded.

“Total emergency,” I added.

“Emergency? What sort of emergency?”

And then we told her about Allan.

“We hate him,” we all said. And at this point, it was true.

Ursula smiled. Stirred her tea. Sat back. “Hate,” she said dreamily. “Is a very strong word. Of course, I don’t have to tell you that, you’re writers.”

We all nodded as if we were many heads being controlled by a single string.

“But we have reason,” Coraline hissed. Lip twitching. Eyes welling up further at the recollection of her shame, poor Bunny.

“He assaulted us,” Elsinore said, taking Coraline’s hand.

“ All of us,” Vik added, taking Coraline’s other hand, which she gripped. Suddenly I felt sick. They’d been hanging around each other more and more lately.

“ Assaulted ? Oh my. May I ask how—”

“I don’t know if he assaulted exactly ,” I piped up. Couldn’t help but clarify, Bunny. They all looked at me, surprised. “Not physically anyway. He was just…mean. Extremely,” I added, glancing at Coraline who looked like she might want to kill me.

“He attacked our stories,” Coraline screamed. “He attacked us each personally.”

“Metaphorically,” I said.

“Which is basically literally,” Vik added like a smack.

Coraline was fully crying now. Elsinore and Vik were rubbing her back. As I watched this unfold, there was a part of me, a small part, that felt this was all very fucking ridiculous, Bunny.

“I see,” Ursula said. “Oh my. Well, I’m so sorry to hear this, truly.” She smiled sadly. Was she sorry? I couldn’t tell. She had a cryptic expression, quite like Elsinore’s, and those violet eyes gave nothing away. “Of course it’s a very vulnerable thing to enter the Cave for the first time. And to have one’s creative spirit crushed like that.” She shook her head. “Allan can be…so Allan . He has his ways just like I have mine. Would you like me to speak with him? It’s highly unusual of course but I suppose I—”

“No,” Coraline said. “We want you,” she whispered to the polished floor. With obscene intensity, Bunny. Tears still in her eyes.

“ Me ?” Ursula said.

“To be our workshop leader this fall. Instead of him.”

“Would you?” Vik said.

“Oh my god we’d be so grateful,” I heard myself add. Why, Bunny? Why was I saying these words? I looked at Ursula. There was panic on her face though she was still smiling. That little undercurrent of outrage there, behind her eyes.

But Coraline persisted. “It’s just we were so looking forward to—”

“Impossible,” she snapped. “Not that I wouldn’t love to, of course,” she added quickly. “I’m sure we’d all get along so very well and what a pleasure it would be for me to dive into your respective Word Journeyings. But as you know, I’m away this fall semester, sadly. I’ve received a fellowship to pursue my own creative research as I’m sure Allan shared. I’m working on a…project.” Her voice, I noticed, cracked on the word project.

“What sort of project?” Coraline asked hungrily through her tears.

Ursula’s face darkened then, Bunny. She glanced through the windows at that shed outside. For a moment she looked she might cry herself. At last she turned to us, smiling coldly. “It’s revealing itself to me, slowly,” she said. “One mustn’t tempt the muse into retreat by speaking its name after all.”

“Of course not,” Elsinore whispered.

“I’d rather cut out my tongue,” Vik agreed.

“Totally,” I said, even as I thought, you’re all fucking crazy .

“But my being away is good for all of us,” she added. “In order to be a good teacher, a sound mentor, one must separate oneself from time to time. By spring, I’ll surely be rejuvenated, in a place to better serve you all. Until then, you will have to weather this storm, I’m afraid. Tap the Wound, Cassandra,” she said to Coraline, who nodded, not correcting her. “Turn it into power. Think of this as an opportunity.”

“To have my soul obliterated?” Coraline cried.

Ursula smiled. “To form your own creative crucible, of course.”

We looked at one another. What?

“As a group of Five, you have your own power,” Ursula continued. “Where is the Fifth by the way?” she said.

“Sadly, Sam doesn’t appreciate the community aspect of Workshop,” Elsinore said. (Else, as we all came to call her.) And I suddenly envied you, Bunny. Wherever you were. Sucking off Allan probably. Picking at your own damage in the dark. Alone and free.

“What a shame,” Ursula smiled. “But four is still…formidable. Particularly as an all-female cohort. We’ve never had one of those before, you know.”

“I’m actually fluid,” Vik said, stiffening.

“And I’m nonconforming,” Elsinore said. “Beyond the binary.”

“Me too,” Coraline whispered, her hands folded primly in the lap of her bell dress. “Totally nonconforming.”

Liar , I thought. She fucking screamed conforming from every cell. But I mumbled “me too” also. “So nonconforming.” I felt her glare at me.

“Even better,” Ursula said, slightly impatient now. And perhaps slightly confused. She showed her age then. She glanced longingly again at the shed, then looked back at us. “The point is that you’re together . And what you make together cannot be made alone .”

Were we all then thinking of the bunny’s eyes going blue? Hard to say from our faces, so suddenly entranced by this idea of Together . Of Not Alone.

“Transformative power requires many streams of consciousness,” Ursula intoned, stirring her tea.

“So many streams,” we all agreed, nodding.

“The collective can be a powerful force. Perhaps together you’ll make the word flesh. Tap the Wound and bring it to vivid life. Making something beautiful is after all the best revenge.” She smiled. A stream of afternoon sun fell on her just then, making the giant crystal glow like a wondrous rainbow behind her. “And who knows? The things you make may change the nature of reality with their never-before-seen juxtapositions.”

I was going to ask, what the fuck? but everyone else seemed to understand. Elsinore stared at Ursula like she was an oracle, a tear in her cold blue eye. Coraline was bawling again, surprise surprise. Even Vik seemed to sniffle. And then the strangest thing: I was crying too, I realized. Yes, my face was wet, why? Maybe I understood on some implicit level that she was giving us something. Some creative code. Some cosmic permission.

“Don’t let this opportunity go hopping away into the dark,” she whispered.

We turned a bunny’s eyes blue , I almost told her then. But something stopped me, Bunny. Then Coraline jumped in. “Do you know of any rabbit experiments on campus?”

For a moment, Ursula just stared at us very strangely. “ Rabbit experiments? What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” I cut in. “She means nothing.” And I kicked Coraline under the table and she looked at me like what the fuck? Why do you silence me? I didn’t know why, Bunny. Just a feeling like the one I had on the porch.

Ursula stared at us, and then laughed. “Rabbit experiments. My, my. The Warren lore is alive and well, I see. Urban legend.”

“What urban legend?” I asked, though I could feel Vik glaring at me for what she called my clarifying impulse . But Ursula was looking at David now, lurking in the doorway, then at her bare wrist. Maybe she had an invisible watch there after all. She stood up, casting her shadow over us. Quite the considerable shadow she cast in her iridescent caftan-smock. She smiled. “Your own creative crucible, don’t forget.”

And then it was somehow goodbye.

And we were back outside in the golden afternoon again, just the four of us on her porch with the barking dog turning madly in the fire-colored leaves. “Our own creative crucible,” we all whispered at the same time.

Our many streams .

Afterwards, mini cupcakes in this cafe called Mini that Elsinore found just off campus. Where we might go, she said, to process all of this .

Process what exactly, I wondered.

But Coraline and Vik nodded like they understood, so I nodded too. Process. Absolutely.

Of course, you know Mini well, Bunny. We took you there many a time, remember? I’ll never forget your face when you saw that everything on the menu was in literal mini. I’ll admit it semi-horrified me too at first. The mini chicken wings especially—how small did these birds have to be? Naturally, Coraline was in heaven. If it was all in mini , she could get many , Bunny, so went her logic. I ordered a mini bubble tea and it came in so small a glass I almost laughed, but the waiter did not laugh when he sat the drink in front of me with its so small straw. So then I didn’t laugh either.

“This place is so amazing, Elsinore,” Coraline said, her eyes all dewy. I felt like I’d lost her to some grander force.

“Genius,” Vik said.

“So amazing,” I whispered, even though I wasn’t so sure it was. There was an odd sort of mood among us. I actually texted you then, Bunny, under the table, to see if you wanted to join. You didn’t answer me of course. Just a few fluttery grey dots in a grey bubble (you receiving the text probably) and then nothing. Fine. Fucking fine, bitch , I thought. We sipped our mini beverages. C reative crucible . The phrase was humming in all our minds, I knew. Making our auras vibrate, thrum with excitement. What do you suppose it even means? I wanted to ask, but then thought better of it. No one liked to contemplate this question, it seemed.

“Wasn’t that talk with Ursula so amazing?” I finally said.

They looked at me like I’d sullied something by speaking.

But I forged ahead: “What do you think she was suggesting? By making our own creative crucible? Changing the nature of reality.”

Silence. Just looking at their mini foods dreamily. Sipping from their mini straws. Vik belched.

“Well?” I said at last, pressing. I knew I was pressing.

“Um, pretty obvious, don’t you think, Bunny ?” Vik said, but she was looking at Elsinore, a question in her opium eyes.

“Is it?” I said. “Then maybe I’m too stupid to understand or something?”

No one contradicted this. The answer in the air seemed to be maybe . I looked at Coraline, but she was looking over at Elsinore too. Waiting like I once waited at the Delphi oracle when I travelled there with my parents. Waiting for I don’t know what, the air, the pillars, the dust, something to fucking speak . But Elsinore was sipping obliquely at her mini Kombucha and saying nothing. Light from the window was dancing on her beautifully cold, sharp face, illuminating the flowery spikes in her hair. I felt, by contrast, like such a silly creature. So terribly mortal and of the earth. Needing everything spelled out. Needing sign posts.

“We’ll have to find it of course,” Elsinore said at last, more to herself than to any of us.

“Find what?” Coraline said. And her voice betrayed her. I knew then she didn’t understand either. Neither did Vik. We were all in the exact same dark as to what Ursula’s words meant for us. As to what to do next. Except Elsinore apparently who seemed to understand all.

Elsinore smiled then, at all of us, mysterious as a crystal with many refracting sides.

“Follow me,” she said.

First Vik stood up, of course. Draining her mini lager. She had a braid in her hair, I saw now. Medieval-y and ornate. It had the mark of Coraline’s fingerprints all over it and I felt a sort of red rage ticking in my heart. Most nights this month I’d stayed at her place. I’d get a text late in the evening while I was lying alone in my red bed, my red cloak around my shoulders, whispering to ghosts. Or while I was in the attic, my hands poised over the keyboard of my typewriter waiting for an entity to inhabit me. Speak through me please , I whispered to it . One of my many incense sticks burning to help make it manifest. To help it fuck me. And then I’d hear a buzzing sound by my boob. Coraline texting me. Can’t sleep Come?

And I would not say, Busy, sorry

I would not say, I’m working on making word of the spirit

Instead, I would button up my cloak. Walk the dark streets full of shadows and screaming. Not even waiting for Safe Ryde, which, as you know, Bunny, is the complimentary university car service that everyone at Warren takes after dark so as not to get mugged or murdered. I would brave the night in all its unholy and unknowable dark like I was Little Red in the forest. Clip-clop to her much better neighborhood, which had brighter streetlights, bigger houses, leafier, more fragrant trees. And Coraline would be standing there in her front doorway between the two stone griffins that flanked the entrance, wearing one of her many celestial dresses with matching cardigan, she had one in every color of the rainbow, Bunny, in every shade under the sun. Her hand tugging on her cold white pearls like it was a noose she refused to remove. Her other hand in her pocket, ever gripping the razor. That pocket, I started to note, was always slightly spotted with brown or sometimes fresh red dots. She’d see me walking toward her, coming out of the dark like I was something she herself had conjured, and her eyes would light right up. Mine would too at the sight of her, I admit. Coraline, to whom my soul was already so strangely wed. But there was a darkness there too, I saw it.

Bunny , she’d whisper so tenderly to my face, but like the word also hurt her to speak. She’d given me her heart, I’d seen her at her most vulnerable, seen her vomit grief and rage about her oven story being destroyed by Allan. And she resented me a little for all that. Definitely. You’re here , she’d say and that was all she’d say. Letting go of her pearls to stroke my face, but never ever letting go of the razor. She would not say thank god you came . T hank you for braving the scary dark. She would not even say come in . She would never ever say I love you . Instead she would stroke my face so sadly, so tenderly, right there in the doorway like she fucking hated me. And then she would turn around and walk down her own high-ceilinged hallway, and I would follow her. Up the plushly carpeted stairs, yes, she lived in a better building than I did (but did she have a magic attic with a triangle window? No she did not.). I followed her bell-shaped silhouette into her rich girl apartment with its high ceilings and designer foliage. So very five star Alice in Wonderland. Brimming with flowers and furry furniture all of which you immediately wanted to pet or hug, all of it emitting a most dreamy perfume. She would not ask me if I was hungry or even thirsty, would you, Coraline? I wouldn’t even be offered a cup of water so that one time, desperate, I had to drink from her bathroom faucet, lapping at its tepid stream like a parched cat. Sometimes she’d braid my hair in the living room. She’d simply sit on her petal-patterned loveseat and pat the space in front of her like come . Not even fucking looking at me. Looking instead out her window with the billowy raw silk curtains, remember Coraline? Knowing I’d come. Knowing I’d sit there kneeling between your legs for however long while you’d braid my red hair, which you said you were so jealous of. It was so beautiful, did I know that? I didn’t, I lied. You pulled and pulled on my hairs until tears would fall from my eyes, Bunny, until I couldn’t even feel my hairs let alone my scalp anymore. There , you’d whisper into my neck, when you were done. And though I was curious about your braiding techniques, I didn’t dare look in the mirror, Bunny. Didn’t want to confront what I’d become in your presence, what you were turning me into, the tears in my eyes and the wide, strange smile on my face that I couldn’t seem to help. Instead, I avoided my reflection, followed you into your sky blue bedroom with the celestial sheets which were crinkled, always, by your so disturbed sleep. I saw an open notepad on the bed and a pen beside it, dripping its lavender ink onto the sheets like so much fairy blood. You’d written only one sentence on that white pearlescent page which you’d then scratched out, it seemed. Scratched out so violently you’d ripped the page a bit. A little blocked weren’t you, Bunny, on top of being lonely and afraid? There was your small pink pony sitting on the bed. Smiling at us both in a kind of pervy way, pink sparkles shimmering in its big, unseeing horse eyes. And that’s when you’d turn to me. Look at me, your face a question, but also a command. I nodded. Knew the drill after only a couple of night times. Knew my job. Which was to crawl into that bed. Watch you lower the unicorn light on your mushroom nightstand. Watch, by a sliver of slanting moonlight, as you stripped out of your sky dress into a pretty blue silk slip. Remove your white gloves in the dark finger by finger, revealing your dirty secret: cut-up finger pads, permanently scarred by the sharp glinty friend in your pocket. I wore my white gloves for fashion, for kitsch, but I alone knew that you wore yours for other reasons, Bunny. You didn’t take off your pearls, not ever, those stayed around your throat like that scary fairy tale about the girl who wears the green ribbon around her neck. If you take off the ribbon, off goes her head, so the story tells. Sometimes I pictured taking the pearls off your neck in the night and watching your head with its beautiful blond bob just roll away like a ball. Though it was a terrible image, once I pictured it, I couldn’t unpicture it, Bunny. You climbed into the cool blue bed after me and you opened your arms, waiting. Knowing I would climb into them like a cat, which I did. And then you embraced me. So tightly I felt strangled, like you were the pearls and I was the neck. Your perfume, though, was glorious. Wild bluebells swaying in the bluest of breezes. Sometimes a peppery freesia, its sweet pink note ending in a sharp black crackle. Your heart beat hard into my back like a scared-excited puppy’s. Your hot minty breath on my neck making the small red hairs there rise and fall. And you pet me, didn’t you, and I let you, didn’t I, until I felt your troubled eyes close. Until you began to snore. So prettily.

That was our ritual most nights that first September, since the very first day we’d met, wasn’t it? In the morning I’d wake up and you’d already be gone. No boa constricting arms around me. No bluebell or freesia scent. I’d stumble out of the bedroom, still in my red cloak, to find you doing barre in your sun-splashed living room. Or in your retro kitchen, already dressed in one of your sky dresses, making yourself a London Fog and humming along to Chappell Roan. Or perhaps sitting on your petal pouf, pretending to read beneath the framed print of Marilyn Monroe also pretending to read. The way you wouldn’t meet my eye at first. It was like we’d fucked or something, right in the hot cocoon of your nightly shame, and you just couldn’t face me now. To look at me would have been too much like seeing the mud brown roots of your lying golden hair. Your blank sky notebook filled with nothing but inky pools. The razor marks on your inner thighs and finger pads. There were words carved there between your legs, I knew. Some beautiful and some terrible. I was like that to you now, I guessed: the beautiful and terrible words. Shameful, true and hidden. A secret habit. A compulsion maybe even. You couldn’t live without me, already. But here was the thing: I couldn’t live without you. Still loved you in spite of myself. And I knew you loved me too.

“Hey, Bunny,” I’d say, coming to sit by you. As I always did.

“Hey, Bunny,” you’d say and smile. Like you were oh-so surprised to see me there.

And you’d stroke my sweaty braids away from my eyes.

And we were so happy we almost died, didn’t we?

Every fucking morning.

But then there was a night, a few weeks later, where you did not call. Where I sat in my attic communing with the spirit (or trying to get it to commune with me at least), one eye always on the phone by my crossed legs. Waiting for you to buzz the floorboards with the words that melted me. Come. I need you . No buzz came. I watched the sun set and the moon rise in my triangle window. At first I thought good . I thought fucking finally . I can work for once. Commune the way I would have every single night since I got here if you weren’t summoning me to play your evening doll (which I did happily, Bunny, is the sick thing). But these were lies. I missed you. I missed your tall cool blue rooms and I missed your beautiful cruelty. I missed your silk touch and I even missed how you braided my hair so tightly that I stopped feeling first my hair, and then my scalp and then even my fucking head, Bunny. I missed your perfumed strangling and the heat of your tortured face buried into my nape. I missed your heart pounding fiercely into my shoulder blades. I looked down at my silent phone and thought Who? Who is with you tonight in my stead? And I knew. Could see her in her gross plaid. Her balmy smirk and the hazy fuck you of her eyes. Reclined on your Wonderland furniture like she owned it all, making it dirty with her soiled clothes. I pictured the two of you in your sky bed. Were you holding her close? Would she even let you? Or was it she who was holding you? Were your eyes right now blissfully closed in her plaid arms? Were her hands, with their so dirty fingernails (which you yourself had reported to me) grazing the contours of you? God how I hated this image. It made me press deep into the typewriter so that all I typed that night was

Alsdjfk;dkjf;lsjsflda;sjfl;sajf;sajfa;fjjdkljflkdjlsdajfdkljfldkjfa;ljdf;

And that was the sum of my rage, Bunny. It was what I felt that afternoon at Mini, staring at the braid in Vik’s hair which you must have braided into it the night before. A fishtail like the mermaid you believed her to be. It swished behind her back as she now rose from her chair to follow Elsinore. And then you got up, following after Vik. Not even looking or waiting to see if I was getting up too. The two of you holding hands now. And me suddenly so alone at the mini table, with all the devoured mini foods. Nothing at all left but mini crumbs.

So what choice did I fucking have, Bunny?

I followed. Shouting “Hey! Wait! What are you—”

V I G N E T T E

Alright, alright. I think we’ve heard enough from her, haven’t we, Sam? I’ll take it from here. I think, yet again, someone’s getting just a tad off course, don’t you? Not even talking to you anymore, even though you’re like the guest of honor, Bunny. How rude, right? I mean, that’s what we’re here for. Not to give vent to private, petty grievances. (Jesus, save it for therapy, Kyra). So let’s move along. After all, Sam’s got people to see, places to go, don’t you, Bunny? Probably not going anywhere for a while though, are you? Not given how tightly Coraline tied you up. All that hair braiding taught her a thing or two, apparently, about knots. Now where were we? Oh yes. We’re supposed to be telling the story of how we made something beautiful, Bunny . By which we also mean Violent. By which we also mean True. I’ll just take that axe from you now, Kyra, thanks. Since it’s my turn and all. My turn to go sit by Samantha. My turn to chat, get close. You know, when we first talked about doing this whole kidnapping thing, I unlike Kyra, was all for it. Not that I had some grievance. I didn’t, Bunny. Didn’t fucking care really. When your novel or whatever came out, I heard about it, sure. Saw a review for it (mixed) by total accident in the local paper. I was turning the pages of the Arts section and there, toward the very back, was a black and white photo of your unsmiling face beside this picture of a pink book jacket, with a silhouette of a bunny. I stared at your “author photo” (it looked more like a mug shot, fyi) beside this alleged bunny book. And you know what I did then? Belched and turned the page. Did I read the book? I skimmed, Bunny. As you know, novels aren’t really my thing. More of a Vignette sort of girl myself, haha. But I read enough to get the gist, I did. Meh was my overall feeling. Do you know the reason I was game right away for this little set up? Not because I always disliked you, Bunny (though I did, I did). Not because you’re a traitor (though you are, you are). Not because I smelled, from the very fucking start, that you would one day wound us in your cowardly writer way. Alone, in the dark. Chuckling with your little rageful pencil. Turning us into that most tedious and limiting of forms, a novel . Only very thinly disguising us. I mean, yes, you gave me a different eye color and made me come from a different state, but I knew it was me. Of course I did, I’m not fucking stupid, Bunny. I did go to Barnard after all. Also you barely changed our names, hello? But did I care? Not a drop. When the others called me screaming-crying-throwing up into my ear, I rolled my eyes. Said fucking chill . But when this plan was hatched (and I won’t say by who, Bunny)—hatched like a swan’s egg, you might even say—I said sign me up . And the reason was so simple. Because I’ve always, always had a fondness for violence. It’s integral, after all, to the Work. My many years as a ballerina taught me that. My time at Barnard too. I had the bloody toe shoes, the stabby crinolyn to prove it. Burned them both in a staged bonfire in my junior year, did I ever tell you about that? Oh yes. Orgasmed while I watched it all crisp. Become sparks that looked, in the night, like so much strange orange snow. Looking back, that was probably when I turned what you called shock artist (still am, by the way). I had way more fun burning the crinolyn than I ever had fucking twirling in it for yawning audiences, Bunny. And that’s when I realized what art should be: a blow to the senses. A punch in the face, always. A fuck in the ass, definitely. The deepest dirtiest fuck of your life, Bunny. But also a wakeup call. A rousing call to Life and to the fact of imminent Death. Sort of like what we’re doing with you right now.

Speaking of which, we’re supposed to be telling you the story of how we made something beautiful. So let me get to the nitty gritty. Cover the dirty part for us, how’s that? For which I was responsible actually. So it seems almost fitting. Creation is dirty work, that’s what some of us, anyway, seem not to understand.

6

I’ll start where we left off, before we got tediously fucking sidetracked. When we were all sitting at Mini, processing Ursula’s witchery— our own creative crucible. Our many streams. Making the word flesh, etc. — and Elsinore suddenly rose from the table. I was the first to follow after her, of course I was. Elsinore and I, we had a thing. From the very beginning, that very first day when we met on the tented green, surrounded by so many assholes, we understood each other implicitly, as implicitly as I understood that violence and art are one. Elsinore didn’t speak much. Neither did I. Didn’t have to. We just looked at each other. Her aura spoke for her, I was into that. Felt its indigo reverberating in my own soul. Her cold face and colder eyes. Her sense of dress, sort of Manson girl meets Free People. How she just stood there in her suede boots, fucking emanating. She was all about other modes of expression. What were words anyway? we often asked each other with our eyes in the evenings. Lies. Lies is what. Words were the pretty lying gloves over the clawed dirty hands of our soul. Words were like a doily we placed over our seething hearts, a strand of pearls we wore on our neck to prettify the veins. Distractions. Cut the pearls off, I thought. Take a rusted pair of scissors to the limp string and snip. Let the pretty golden head roll.

I came to Warren to go Beyond. Beyond words as doilies and gloves and pearls. Beyond the sentence tinsel of semi colons and commas. Beyond fucking structure and time and plot. All shackles. I, more than any of us, wanted my hands in the raw clay, Bunny. To create new forms. So when we talk about who’s responsible for what happened next, let’s fucking remember that. Remember too, that I knew how to trust. I wasn’t scared of the unknown. I lived there. Rolled around in the worms and mud of it. I don’t ask questions like some people. About meaning ? About direction ? About intent ?

Fuck all that.

So at Mini when Elsinore said follow me , I fucking followed. Didn’t hesitate. Did I know where we were going? No idea, Bunny. Not at first, anyway. Then I guess I did. Else and I already had a mind-soul-body connection, like I said, and I started to see where she was heading with my third eye. Narrative Arts. The rose garden. Where we all first hugged and I felt the power of our locked arms.

The bunny’s eyes turned blue only after we all hugged, by the way.

Just want to clarify that.

Since there seem to be varying accounts.

Anyway, after Elsinore and I left Mini, Coraline followed us. Then Kyra followed Coraline, didn’t you, Bunny? Kyra was the last to follow of course. The first to ask where are we going? What we are doing? Why are we walking back to Narrative Arts? So many questions for a girl who claims to fornicate with entities. And to love fairy tales. In fairy tales, no one ever asks “why,” did you notice that, Bunny? Does Little Red ask the wolf Why are you talking to me ? Why are you fucking following me ?

No, she doesn’t. She just walks into the woods, swinging her basket and gathering her flowers, just traipses right into her own erotic demise. I respect that. Likewise, I just walk into the great unknown. Like a real artist. And yet I knew. I knew what we were looking for.

The bunny.

Our bunny. Covered in Coraline’s blood and all of our tears. The one whose eyes we turned blue. All of us.

The garden was empty when we got to it. Twilight time. Nothing but flowers shivering in the blue night. No creatures anywhere. Huh. Disappointing , we thought. Funny how I could feel all of us thinking the word in our minds. I saw Coraline was shivering, holding herself lamely in her own arms. I offered her my plaid shirt underneath which I had only a wife beater on. Kyra, at the same time, offered her little red fairy cloak. Offered it even though I knew she was cold, was clearly shivering in her evil kitten dress or whatever. Funny I could even feel Kyra’s cold though I myself was hot. What is happening , I thought.

Coraline looked at both offerings, then took my shirt almost immediately.

Which was funny, Bunny. But not at all surprising. I knew the two of them were close just like Elsinore and I were close, in a kind of soul-speak way. But I’d noted that whenever I chose to talk to or even look at Coraline, she immediately seemed to forget Kyra even existed. And to be honest with you, Bunny? Since this is a night of Truth? I rather enjoyed my effect.

So when Coraline took my shirt instead of Kyra’s cloak, I should have been happy about that, Bunny. I should have been smug. And I was, I was. But I also felt Kyra die inside, inwardly curse my name, call us both a bitch in her mind. Felt it so keenly it was almost like it was me dying inside, me cursing my own name, me hurling the word bitch in my head. Strange. I looked at Kyra, still holding her fairy cloak out to Coraline, her smile twitchy with murder thoughts. Thoughts I was hearing in my own mind like they were my own thoughts.

How could you fucking humiliate me like this, Bunny?

I hate that I love you.

“You sure you don’t want the cloak too?” Kyra asked, almost like a threat. “I don’t need it at all, Bunny,” she lied, even though she obviously did. She was shivering like crazy at this point. And, somewhere inside myself, I was weirdly shivering too.

“Oh this’ll be plenty, I’m sure,” Coraline said, looking only at me like I choose you . She put my shirt on and I helped her do that. Meanwhile, Kyra watched us, hated us. And I pretended not to feel her hurt and confusion coursing through my own blood.

“Thank you,” Coraline said to me, blushing. I loved to make her blush, it was so easy and gratifying.

Elsinore, meanwhile, was turning circles in the center of the garden like her slim body was a divining rod.

“What is she looking for?” Kyra asked me, staring at Elsinore. Not deigning to ask Elsinore directly. A little too awed by her, both Kyra and Coraline. Her willowy frame and her long silver hair that made her look not old but otherworldly-sexy, like a Tolkien elf. Her prolonged silences, the way she’d look at you with her cold blue gaze seeing all the things you didn’t want seen, until you felt physically flayed by her eyes. The dagger around her neck always eerily catching the light, no matter where she stood. I was often tasked with being her translator. Even though I often had no idea myself what was going on in her scary-sexy-mysterious mind.

“Shhhhh,” I said to Kyra. “Isn’t it fucking obvious by now?”

It was then I saw the rabbit hole.

Yes. I was the first one to see it. Me. My eyes seeing it. My hand pointing to it. There, in the very far corner of the garden. The muddy hole in the grass. Freshly dug up. Fit for a bunny.

“Bunny,” we all whispered.

So then?

We walked over to the hole, following my pointing finger. Walked as one body with many feet, our steps in perfect tandem. All of our shadows seeming to suddenly be in sync as we cut across the grass. Our hearts beating more quickly now, I could feel them all beating in my body.

We stood around the hole’s circumference for a while, waiting. For what? We knew and didn’t know. Coraline kept licking the sweat beads off her balmy lip. Kyra was looking down into the hole like it was a questionable wishing well.

“Maybe we should build a trap for it or something?” Coraline said at last. “To lure it out of the hole?”

“A trap ?” Kyra said.

“It’s an animal, isn’t it? Doesn’t one of us hunt? Or know someone who hunts?”

We shook our heads though I noticed that they were all suddenly looking at me now like surely I hunted or knew a hunter. I did not hunt. I did not know anyone who hunted. My father, as you may or may not recall, Bunny, basically invented virtual reality. My mother’s a former model turned Pilates guru who invented a diet prosecco. She’d been the one to send me in for ballet at a young age. My world is as rarified as Swiss thermal spring water. Far more rarified than the world of these girls. Only Elsinore, perhaps, could come close.

“How hard can it be?” I said. “Probably just a stick with a leaf attached.”

“Or a carrot maybe?” Kyra offered.

“I don’t think so,” I said with certitude. I had no idea.

I looked to Elsinore but her aura had gone puce.

“Last time he just jumped into my arms,” Coraline wailed.

“Into my arms, actually,” Kyra countered.

“Into our arms,” I said. Because, excuse me? “Anyway, that was just a fluke probably.” I looked over at Elsinore whose face said there are no fucking accidents .

“Well, Coraline said, “maybe if we just wait it will come out.” And then she sat down on the grass. Right by the hole, like she was waiting for someone to serve her a London Fog. She slipped her hand into one of her dress pockets and pulled out a red velvet mini cupcake. Dropped it into the hole. The white icing top, I noted, was speckled with red dots. I’d only been to Coraline’s house a couple of times. Recently she’d invited me over, mainly to complain that she thought Kyra was suffocating her and so she was trying to branch out socially. Do you ever have people who become just too attached? she asked, clutching my forearm so fiercely that there were marks on it the next day, little pink crescent moons.

“What did you do that for?” Kyra asked, her voice sounding hysterical. She was asking about the cupcake.

Coraline shrugged. “Maybe he likes red velvet.”

“I can’t imagine that. A rabbit liking red velvet.”

“Well I fucking can,” Coraline said. And she sat there peering into the hole into which she’d tipped her cupcake. What a sad, sort of hot picture she made, Bunny.

“Bunny,” she whispered into the dirt hole softly. Like she was Alice in Wonderland or whatever. Gripping its edges with her white gloved fingers. “Hello, hello?” she whispered. “Bonsoir. It’s me,” she whispered, “Coraline.” Like that might mean something.

Then Kyra dropped down beside her. Put her hands in the dirt by the hole’s edge like she was trying to receive and dictate a message from the mud. She tilted her head back as though she were being fucked by the grass. Closed her eyes while Coraline glared at her. “I think he was here,” she murmured at last. Like the rabbit’s ghost had spoken to her.

“Of course he was here, Bunny ,” Coraline snapped. “ That’s obvious.” And she pet the hole’s edge possessively. “The question is where is he now? When is he coming back ?”

We looked back at Elsinore, standing in the corner of the garden, communing with the moon. Her eyes were rolling closed and open. I noticed the dagger shaped diamond around her neck glinting strangely. Kyra put her ear down to the grass, listening. She frowned, shook her head. “He’s not saying. Probably because there are so many of us. He’s probably scared of crowds or something,” she said, looking from me to Coraline. Like go .

“I’m not leaving,” she said.

“Me neither,” I said.

Elsinore was now staring from the hole to the moon back to the hole like she was awaiting cosmic instructions. Fuck instructions, I thought. What were we going to do, just stand here all night, staring and waiting? Sure sometimes you had to learn to let Art come to you, but sometimes, sometimes, Bunny , you had to go to It, didn’t you? Get dirty and grab it by the cottony tail. Don’t let this opportunity go hopping away into the dark , isn’t that what Ursula said? So I got down on my hands and knees.

“Um, what are you doing, Bunny?”

The ground was so cool and soft beneath me, the grass like a wet shag carpet, twitching with bugs. And then much to the horror of Coraline and Kyra, I started to dig in the hole.

Can I tell you how good it felt? Like fucking. Better than fucking. Like creating something. With the mud in my fingers and the moon on my back, I fell into a kind of trance almost. Coraline and Kyra both stood up, whisper-screaming What are you doing? What are you fucking doing, Bunny?

I ignored them of course. What did they think I was fucking doing? Being action is what. Being the verb and the noun rather than the adjective, the useless adverb. And in my trance, I dug deep. So deep the mud started to feel very cold. Probably you know all about mud, Bunny, living as you did, beneath the poverty line? I chanted softly to myself. One of Ursula’s soul arias. I was face down in the hole, digging myself into a kind of ecstasy, when I felt a soft something brush against me. A rat? A fucking rat, I thought. I screamed. Pulled my head out of the hole.

And then a noise like a grunt in stereo.

Behind us.

We all turned and saw four mangy young men standing by the flying hare statue. All wearing army trench coats, though none of them, I was quite sure, had ever been to war. Hair sprouting like chaotically cultivated foliage. Very pale, even the nonwhite ones, like they’d never seen the sun.

The Poets, we knew instantly.

We looked at each other then. Like fuck . We had already discussed how we felt about poetry. About poets in general. Always so smirking and tortured. Reeking of cigarettes and bruised pride. You remember the Poets, don’t you, Bunny? They didn’t get much real estate in your book, I noticed, except for the one. Allow me to refresh your memory as I recount.

“Well, well,” one of them said, and I immediately pegged him as the leader. “If it isn’t the Fictions.” Latin looking. Black hair with enviable slick, remember him? Eyewear that said I’m quietly judging you all the time . A necklace of bright feathers and bone, like he might have dismembered a Muppet in his free time. I imagined his poems made manspreading use of white space.

Coraline looked afraid. Gripped the hole. She’d told us already about how hideously they’d ignored her at the Welcome Party. She’d made a comment about the cheese selection pairing nicely with the cracker selection and they’d all stared at her like she’d farted with her mouth.

“What might you be doing here on this fall evening, Fictions ?” another prodded. Gunnar. Second in command, clearly. Pyramidal facial hair. He looked like the blondest, most evil Jesus. Probably he wrote odes, I thought.

“Some digging, looks like?” Another. Red headed and terribly pale. Cunning fucking face, like a wily sprite or an Irish butcher specializing in offal. He had a single pearl in his ear, probably pillaged from an unsuspecting grandmother. Ballads, I assumed and shivered.

“Finding inspiration for your… stories ? Fodder for your Oprah picks?” asked the Muppet Dismemberer. They all looked like they might laugh.

“Some of us don’t write stories ,” I spat.

“Is that so? Well, what do you write then, Fiction ?” asked evil Jesus.

“We could ask you the same thing, Ode Boy ,” Coraline spat.

“Hey, hey,” another said. Black with pale blue hair that matched his eyes. Hot, honestly, if he weren’t a Poet. A tattoo of three sinuous tears under his right eye which I remember being mildly impressed by at the time. Perhaps he had murdered or was in a prison gang or had known great sorrow and loss. Later we found out, of course, that the closest he’d come to prison was Princeton, and that the only gang he’d ever been in was at Exeter, for birdwatching. He patted the red-headed butcher boy’s shoulder. Like easy. We’re all friends here. Except we weren’t. Would never be, not with Poets.

It was then I noticed a fifth boy hanging back from their cauldron of four. Now I know you know him, Bunny. Soup bowl haircut. An open parka (in October, Bunny) over a t-shirt of a smiling sloth. He was smiling just like the sloth, gazing at the clouds above all our heads, like he was enjoying a laugh (perhaps at our expense) with some obscure sky god. Jonah you called him in your novel. Because um, that’s his actual fucking name. Quite the Fiction you are, Bunny. But I agree, it suits him. What else could a boy like him possibly be called?

“What are you all doing out here?” Kyra asked them. She was still semi-fucking the grass, by the way. “Ooh let me guess, k? Looking for inspiration for your chapbooks that no one will ever read? That maybe the local bookstore will sell on their consignment shelf out of pity if at all?” She asked this very sweetly, in her baby voice. It was like suddenly inside the baby there was this roaring bitch. I had a touch more respect for her then.

The Poets paled further, perhaps picturing the very consignment shelf on which their future chapbooks would soon sit. Their eyes narrowed collectively.

“We just got out of David’s workshop,” Jonah offered happily. The others all looked at him and seemed to hiss.

“Oh really? How was it?” I asked.

“Edifying,” they all said. “Unlike some people we enjoy hearing critique.” Noble nostril flair followed by noble grunt.

“And what is that supposed to mean?” This from Elsinore. In a low voice from the corner of the garden. Though she spoke quietly, they all heard her. Heard the dagger in her voice, as plainly as they saw it glinting on her neck.

The Muppet Dismemberer smiled. “Oh nothing, nothing. Just we heard from a little bird that someone got so very upset about their feedback in The Cave the first day.” They all made fake sad faces.

“WHO TOLD YOU?” Coraline screamed, going red. Fucking losing her shit. And the Poets just stared at her, smiling broadly now. A reaction. That’s all poets want. To fuck with you immediately and irreversibly. Forget plot. No journey or catharsis through narrative, no no. They go for the right for the jugular with their word art and leave you bleeding. I kind of have to admire them for this.

“The Cave speaks,” said the sprite.

“Also, good luck being a graduate student,” evil Jesus sneered, his vaguely Scandi accent mocking us. “I mean if you’re all going to freak out over a little criticism, what hope do you really have , Fictions?”

“Go back to your zine reading, Ode Boy!” Kyra roared.

“You go back to digging in the mud for your book club plots!” the sprite cried, his pearl earring quivering ragefully. “No doubt you’ll find them there.”

“What are you looking for in the mud there, by the way, Fictions?” said the hot one, tattoo’d tears shining on his high cheek.

We looked at each other. And it was extraordinary, what happened then. Suddenly I felt like I could hear all four of our minds in my own mind. Talking to each other in whispers, aligning like migratory birds in the sky. Should we ask them if they’ve seen our bunny? Should we? We pictured posing the question. Pictured them laughing at us with all their pale lizardy mouths.

A bunny huh? they would say to us, once they’d gathered themselves.

Sure we saw him, we think he went to the ale house.

Or didn’t we see him first at the Athenaeum? another might say.

Oh yes! Brushing up on his, you know, Poe, and what not. More sniggering.

They would laugh even louder about it later, we knew, in whatever dark Marxist hole they congregated in. They would laugh until they cried, their pale faces going pink.

And then just like that we decided.

“Nothing,” we told them as one voice. My voice. My mouth that spoke for all of us. “Looking for nothing. Just digging for our book club plots like you said. You’re right. We Fictions. So stupid.”

And it was funny, but suddenly they seemed somewhat suspicious of us. No more laughing at us now. Not even sniggering. Another sort of sound came from their closed mouths. A sound of interest piqued. They stared at the hole we surrounded. A bit of longing in their slitty eyes. A bit of curious.

“ Fine ,” they spat at last. “Have fun playing in your mud , Fictions.”

A wind came then and their black army coats blew open all at once, like a flock of vampire bats spreading their wings. And then just like that they started to turn away.

“Go write a sestina about the sunset that no one will fucking ever read ever!” we roared after them. But they were already gone. Only the boy in the sloth t-shirt waved at us while walking backwards, “Goodbye! Hey if you see Sam, say I said hi?”

Ugh. He even rhymed, Bunny.

We looked at each other. Close one . That was a close one , I felt them all say in my mind. Our mind I guess it was.

Very close, Bunny, we all thought together. Smiling now.

The wind blew softly through the roses then and the clouds seemed to move more quickly in the sky. The sun sank behind the Warren towers, the dying light of it turning us pink. So we were pink and smiling at each other, Bunny, suddenly a plural consciousness so deeply joined that tears shone in all our eyes at the exact same time. It was beautiful. It felt like nothing could touch us. Ever ever again.

And then? There he was. The Bunny. Sitting behind us like he’d always been there. Staring at us with his so blue eyes. Eyes which we’d made blue. Not someone else’s experiment. No, it was ours. He was ours, this fuzzy bunny. Possibly even mine for did I not dig the hole? Coraline’s blood had dried on his furry shoulder, in the form of a warped heart. He was watching us argue. Long ears twitching. Sort of smiling, just like we were.

“My bunny,” I whispered, we all whispered this. Opening all eight of our arms. He looked at all these arms or seemed to. So that he didn’t know where to go.

So that he hopped away.

And we all followed.

7

How did we end up in a circle surrounding the bunny in Kyra’s attic? Well, Bunny led us there, if you can believe it. Hopped all the way from the garden to her place. He even looked over his bloody shoulder to see were we following? Fuck yes, Bunny. Following with no idea at all where he was leading us. It was sort of erotic. I was feeling, I’ll admit, sexual about it. Which was weird. And yes, I know what you’re thinking: Surprise, surprise, Vik’s feeling sexual about something fucked up . Well, fuck you, Bunny. It was weird, okay? Yes, I’ve been turned on by some bizarre shit, but I don’t fuck bunnies, Bunny. Just not a freak that way, sorry. And yet? I can’t deny there was something arousing about all of us together in the cool of night, following this furry creature with its sly eyes that seemed to glow an even brighter blue in the dark. That seemed to almost smile at us over its shoulder. Like come on. Let’s go .

All the way there we didn’t fucking speak. Couldn’t. Didn’t want to spook him first of all. Didn’t want him to run away, don’t run away, Bunny! We would fucking die if you ran away now. We all held our breaths as we made our way through the dark, winding streets. Kyra was so happy when Bunny suddenly stopped in front of her house. We felt her joy inside of us, leaping and clapping its small animal hands, and it was awful. Yet we were so mesmerized by the fact of Bunny in our midst, we didn’t pay it much mind. He hopped up her stone steps. Like here. Here is where I’d like to go, ladies, okay? Okay, Bunny. Sure. We’re not loving this choice but what choice have we? Bunny waited patiently while Kyra opened her front door, he just sort of sat there on the stoop, looking up. Watched her turn the key in the lock with the shakiest fucking hand, a smile on his face. And we waited with Bunny, small smiles on our own faces also. And we knew we would lose our soul to this, whatever it was. It was already happening. It had already begun.

Bunny went right in when Kyra opened the door. Hopped his way through the living room and right up her rickety staircase to the attic. Almost like it was Bunny’s place now, not hers anymore. He was the one who had collected all the typewriters and dumb knickknacks and fairy posters. Bunny was the one who owned two copies of the Writing Diaries of Virginia Woolf. It was Bunny who’d dog-eared the pages, thrice underlined the line: “I am I. I must not follow that furrow, copy another.”

And then?

We were in the attic with Bunny. Dark. So dark but for a splash of moon in the triangle window that made everything a little silvery. And what happened was like a kind of dream. All of us suddenly in a circle. A circle around Bunny glowing whitely in the moonlight. One of us had lit candles, when and why did we even light candles? Don’t know. Yet one of us had done it. Knew to do it. Knew also to play music from her iphone. Something haunting and harpy with reverb. To burn an incense stick, four incense sticks in fact, each embodying a different element, earth air water fire going all at once. To set a bundle of sage ablaze in an abalone shell, it was Kyra who did this.

“Why are you doing that, Bunny?” I asked her, watching her small heart-shaped face lit orange from the many flames.

“Bunny wants me to,” she whispered, staring at the creature. Who was simply sitting there in the pool of moonlight. Sitting in the center of us like our furry sun. Kyra’s eyes, when she looked at me, looked lost in the most terrible beautiful dream. I was lost there too, I knew. We all were. Someone had also put on an old black and white film, it looked like, using Kyra’s projector. It played silently, hugely on the attic wall. It looked foreign but familiar. A new wave I didn’t recognize but felt I knew by heart all the same. A masked couple walking arm in arm, around and around a fountain. What movie was this, I wondered, and who had put it on? But I didn’t have the mind frame to ask more questions just now. Could only swim in this moment. And all while Bunny sat there in our midst like literal magic. The moon making him glow whiter and brighter. None of us dared make even a breath of a sound. Or move closer. Even though, god, I wanted to, Bunny. Looking at Bunny. And Bunny looking at me, I felt. Making me want. So much. Want what exactly? Didn’t even know. But my body hummed with it. Dripped with it. Bunny was emanating an energy. A magnetic force, like he was the moon and we were the tide.

“Hot,” I heard myself say. And it felt as though Bunny’s eyes had pulled the word out of me. Like a magician, really.

“Pretty,” someone else’s mouth said. Or maybe all of our mouths said. Said it at the exact same time. The incenses were twisting in the air, the different smokes braiding themselves like hair in Coraline’s gloved fingers. Music played from all four of our phones now. My atmospheric bitch rock. Coraline’s poppy swells and power ballads. Else’s oblique ambient punctuated with her Kate Bush and Heart. Those dark fucking fairy harps, which must have been Kyra’s. And Bunny seemed to be swaying now slightly to our various musics. Like he was dancing almost. Was he? Or was he just sitting there, munching the little mound of grass one of us must have plucked along the way, and provided to him?

“Amazing,” we all whispered. And then we began to sway with Bunny. Like we were all of us dancing too suddenly. The blue of Bunny’s eyes became a kind of indigo then. Suddenly I was moving closer, my feet moving closer, inching toward this magic. Toward Bunny who was drawing me near with his magnetism, his magnetic eyes and smile. We were all of us moving closer, I saw. Making a tight circle around Bunny, who was still swaying as we were swaying. Occasionally munching the grass.

“There’s a fairy tale about a girl who marries a rabbit,” Kyra said softly, swaying. “But the rabbit turns out to be an abusive asshole. So she runs away.”

“What are you saying, girl?” Coraline asked.

“Nothing. Just that in fairy tales, people have relations with animals like rabbits is all. Girls are always marrying beasts in fairy tales. And…” she trailed off, staring into Bunny’s eyes.

“ And ?” I asked.

“And then they turn human and hot when you kiss them. Or something.” There was an intensity to her face now when she was looking at Bunny. A trembling to her lips.

“Are you saying you want to kiss the bunny, girl?”

“ No. ”

But in our minds we heard her say fuck yes .

“Look, we’re not in fairy tale times, Bunny,” Coraline snapped.

“Easy,” Elsinore murmured. She too was staring intensely at Bunny, swaying very close to him. I noticed a thin blue vein throbbing in her forehead. “Easy now,” she whispered. It was unclear if she was talking to Coraline or to herself or to Bunny.

“I know we’re not in fairy tale times,” Kyra hissed to Coraline. “Obviously, Bunny. I know this is…reality or whatever.”

“Well then you know that in reality , if you kissed a rabbit, that would be fucking…bestiality, girl.”

“Yes. This is true,” I whispered to Kyra. “It would be gross of you,” I said. Even though I too wanted to make out with Bunny.

“All I’m saying is that when we hugged the bunny, its eyes changed color,” Kyra said. “So just imagine…”

Yes , we all thought in our minds. Imagine.

“All the dates I’ve ever had are so dull,” Coraline sighed.

And in the hive of our mind, we could suddenly picture her bobbed and bored in various prep school dance and college party contexts. Waltzing with rich, pimpled boys with greaser hair like something out of a 1950s film. Twirling her pearls above her sweetheart neckline. Yawning into her gloved hand. Gazing out the windshield while whatever bow-tied asshole talked about their post graduate career plans. Dreaming herself elsewhere.

“Sorry, Bunny,” I said. “You’ve been so unfulfilled.”

And her eyes filled with tears. “Not that I’m even thinking about that,” she said, shaking her head. “Romance? I mean, I’m here to write. I’m here for myself.”

“We all are,” Kyra said, her eyes on Bunny.

“I’m not even here to meet anyone,” Coraline insisted. And she wasn’t even really telling us this, she was telling Bunny. Sort of laughing crazily. Sort of blushing.

“Though I suppose if someone came along, it might be nice,” she added. She looked at Bunny’s twitching ears. Their slick pink insides. “Of course, they’d have to be my intellectual equal.”

“Of course.”

And then in the hive, in the hot pink mists of our collective mind, a figure appeared. A pretty blond man with a twitchy pink nose. He wore a pale blue shirt and an apron that said I Will Cut a Bitch (And A Cake ). He had a girlish smile and wore a pinkish lipstick whose very shade we had once seen her point to and say for whores . He was nodding at everything she fucking said, she was so endlessly fascinating. He was saying Of course. Absolutely. Tell me.

“It might be very nice,” I said.

“Yes,” she said, flushed now, not looking at me. “But I’m really just here to make.”

“Me too.”

“Totally.”

“All the humans I meet are boring,” Kyra whispered to Bunny. “Period.” And then in our collective mind, we saw her footloose and red-cloaked in her fairy tale world, fornicating with mists. Wandering among the half-naked nymphs and leering wolfmen and buff mermen poking their lovely wet heads out of glassy forest pools, their eyes dark with wanting to drag her down to oblivion. She was prancing through this forest world to the music of Enya, holding the hand of a giant creature in a rabbit mask. The rabbit was extremely long eared and he wore a very smart black tux and in his other hand, he held an axe, which he was swinging wildly. Jesus Christ.

“I just want something hot,” I whispered. “And surprising. It has to take me by surprise,” I said. “To be provocative.” And I felt them see my own dream in all its nakedness, which I won’t share with you, Bunny, sorry. Except to say how strange it was to feel them seeing my insides like that. Fantasies that, despite my well-known boldness, I would never fucking speak, never write. In all their raw, pulsing ooze. How they spoke a nonverbal language of mostly grunts. And of course the hot little tail, a small white puff. I don’t embarrass easily, Bunny, but I’ll admit I blushed then.

“What about you Elsinore?” I asked her. Mainly to get their eyes out of my soul.

Elsinore shook her head. Watched Bunny like he was a fire. “Desire,” she whispered, “is so elusive, isn’t it?”

“So elusive,” we agreed.

“Amorphous and complex. To give language to it is a tricky thing.” There were tears in her eyes when she said this. In the hive, we suddenly saw crashing sea waves. Sharp rock and white foam, so much foam. And superimposed over these waves, like a film, a white antique chest of drawers. In the top middle drawer, an ornate lock. A very large golden key in the lock. The key suddenly turning slowly in this lock all by itself. We looked at Elsinore. She was very red in the face, staring hard at Bunny, almost like she was masturbating with her mind. There was a blue vein in her pale temple that was throbbing slightly. The dagger around her neck was glowing iridescently in the dark. Its point, we saw now, was very sharp indeed.

More images began to appear and disappear in the hive, Bunny. Quickly they arose and dissolved like some rapidly moving dream. Not just in our collective mind, but on the attic wall too, projected like a film. The fastest moving movie or something, Bunny, it was crazy. Actors and musicians appeared and disappeared, dissolving into one another. Falling cherry blossoms and our mouths opening to catch the petals. A hand held aloft in a rain storm, the skin ecstatic with cold drips. That crashing sea, the shoreline jagged with black rock. The Poets smirking at us in the garden, their coats blowing open like bat wings. Allan in the Cave, looking even taller than he actually was, stirring his tea and insulting us in his Scottish accent. Telling us we were fucking terrible, sorry-not-sorry. A red nailed hand holding an axe. And then? So funny to say but we saw ourselves. Me handing Coraline my plaid shirt with my so dirty fingernails and Coraline taking her sky dress off in blue silhouette. Elsinore in her drapey linens talking to Ursula under the tented green, staring into me with her cold jewel eyes, and Kyra applying Cherries in Winter thickly to her pouting lips, waiting for ghosts to fuck. The four of us in the rose garden holding each other so tightly, Bunny, that we truly did not know where we began and ended. Holding each other until we were one incredibly fragrant hot body, pulsing with want.

And then the screen went black.

The moonlight was now a deep silver pool in which Bunny floated. We stared at him, all of us red faced, and the music played on, such violent harps and strings. Almost like we, with our minds, were making the harpist’s fingers drag across the strings with more and more violence. The black and white film was playing on the wall again, the masked couple walking more quickly, backwards now around the fountain, something diabolical in their smiles. Like they knew what we were up to in the attic, they were watching. And the rabbit in the moonlight pool was trembling, trembling. And what were we doing?

Oh god we didn’t know.

But it was hot, Bunny.

All of our eyes on Bunny and all of our hearts beating in time together like a bass to the song of this and it was too much. Stop , we thought, but we couldn’t seem to stop now, it was too late. Because Bunny was trembling as we were trembling and were we making him tremble with the force of our eyes and minds?

“Stop, stop,” Kyra whispered, “we’re hurting it, I think.”

And Coraline was crying and shaking her head, her mind screaming Joy, Joy, Joy , and Elsinore ’s eyes were rolled back into her head, deep in her dark pink fantasy world of keys and locks.

And I? I don’t know where I was.

Lost.

Lost in the moonlight pool with Bunny. Lost in the dreaming. Lost in the trembling of my own body, trembling like Bunny’s body. Lost in our mind frequency which hummed loud now like a drone.

And then suddenly the frequency stopped, the world became terribly still. I looked at Bunny and Bunny looked at me, right into my eyes alone.

And he fucking exploded.

T H E D U C H E S S

Hello there, Samantha. You remember me, of course you do. Viktoria, thank you so much for sharing your …experience. Alas, I think it’s time for me to step in and speak, don’t you? Particularly as we’re approaching this most tender moment in our story. I hope that you (like me) have enjoyed the re-countings so far, Samantha, warped though they all were by the prism of Ego. For instance, I was especially amused by how Vik seemed to suggest that it was she alone who caused the rabbit explosion. Amused, Samantha, but not at all surprised. Ego is a terrible thing for the Artist’s soul, as you well know. But we must remember that what we’ve been hearing tonight are the narratives of wounded souls (and who wounded them, Samantha?). That they all seem to be losing their way in the labyrinth of this story, getting caught up in the “I” of it all, is to be expected.

Allow me then, at this crucial juncture, to humbly pick up the thread.

You’re looking a bit pale, Samantha, I must say. Are you not at all happy to see me? Well, that’s fine, I understand. You and I have had some… differences …in the past, haven’t we? Differences in understanding. For instance, you probably think we’re such villains for gagging you. Such Cuntsacapades. (When I saw that you’d actually called us that in print, I thought, Wow . What literature you’ve made .) A misunderstanding there, of intent. Really Vik stuffed my unwashed sock in your mouth out of loving kindness. As a helpful little reminder of Workshop. The gag rule, remember that? Your turn to shhhhh , our turn to speak. We’re just making the metaphor literal is all, which we know you know all about. Just like this axe, which yes, it’s my turn to take, my turn to hang onto, thanks, Vik. My turn to bring the blade right up to Samantha’s neck, so like a swan’s, I quite agree. You hit the nail right on the head there, Bunny. Oh don’t worry Samantha, I’m not going to decapitate you, we’ve already said. I’m not a psychopath, I’m a fiction writer. I’m just making you feel the metaphor is all. Bringing you into the visceral experience of it, shall we say. Making you smell the room , remember when our writing teachers would say that? I want to smell the room . Do you smell it now, Sam? It smells, thanks to you, of stale blood and dead dreams.

It was my idea to bring us all altogether like this, hope you don’t mind. Not because I despise you, of course not. Not because when I read your book, I pictured killing you slowly and excruciatingly and inventively, no, no. I, unlike my former peers, actually found reading your little novel to be quite illuminating. A learning experience. What an astonishingly convoluted document, I thought, of mental illness! A perfect example of what happens when a less evolved being seeks to articulate their petty feelings in story form. In fact, I often share it with my students. Oh yes, I’m a teacher now, Samantha. Not at a university, don’t be silly. I went screaming from the Academy after graduating from Warren. No, I run my own online story/drum circle now. Oh it’s wonderful. Unlike Workshop, it’s filled with such loving kindness. And it’s in the spirit of loving kindness, absolutely, that we come to you tonight. Yes, believe it or not, we want to help you, quite like our brilliant therapist is helping us. Sometimes we really do think we conjured him, it’s true. Maybe we did. He’s so very good. Too good, really, for this world. He listens to us and almost no one listens anymore, don’t you find that? That almost no one looks deep into the heart of you and wants to know: who the hell are you in there? He’s the one who told me, Help her. Take pity on her as you did before. He was right, Sam. I did pity you before, we all did. I mean you were terribly alone, weren’t you, at the time? Except for some very sad…I mean, can we even call them friends ? And you still are alone it seems. I mean look at your phone, the phone of the famous authoress. We’ve had you with us for a few hours now, and nothing but a few calls from an unknown number. A text that’s just four question marks. Maybe your publicist or something checking in. Doing due diligence. But does she really care, Samantha? Probably not. No one cares where the hell you are. But we care, Sam, oh yes. Which is why we’re all here, aren’t we? Because we love you, Bunny. Now you may be wondering is it worth the toil? The personal sacrifice on our part? The risk we’re all taking? That reminds me, can one of you please go downstairs and make sure the doors are locked and all the window shades are drawn? We don’t want a neighbor glimpsing something they shouldn’t, getting the wrong idea and calling the police and such. (Though of course if they knew what you’d done, they’d probably applaud us.) But I don’t really think that’s going to happen, Samantha. In our two years of Workshop, which did involve some screaming, some botched swings of the axe, we were never once bothered, were we? It’s almost as if no one cares what we writers do up here in the dark! But you never know. We don’t want to be interrupted, not at this tender juncture in our narrative. In fact, I think you’d all better go downstairs now if you don’t mind, Bunny. Leave Sam and me alone for this part, okay? Yes, I do think it’s necessary. Yes, all of you. Even you, Vik.

Thank you so much.

Now that we’re alone, Samantha, I really want you to understand some things, okay? Because, having read your “book,” it’s clear you really don’t understand anything at all. Not to get into the I of it all myself, but you were especially, especially misguided about me. The Duchess , as you called me, which honestly was sort of flattering. You recognized something, didn’t you, in your cruel, warped way, about power. But the one thing you didn’t understand? The most crucial thing, perhaps? Is that all of this, the whole fucking thing, was me. And this isn’t Ego talking, Samantha. It’s Truth. The actual, literal Thread.

You’ll see.

8

Now where were we in our little telling? Oh yes. The attic. The rabbit. The happy accident of its explosion. Well, now, before we venture any further into the dark wood of this story, Bunny, let’s please remember that Creation is an elusive Process. Its ways are deeply Mysterious, as I know you know. Ultimately unknowable, even to its practitioners. Perhaps especially to its practitioners. Outcomes are at best Unpredictable. Often they are Regrettable. Often, they disappoint. Deeply.

Was I at first disappointed that the rabbit fulminated? Of course I was, Samantha. My Aura instantly turned Ochre with Regret. And, if I’m being truthful—and I really do want to be truthful here—perhaps I also felt a small sense of responsibility. I had attempted to introduce my fellow peers—by way of my charged silences, my cryptic words—to the elusive ways of Creation. I had attempted to lead by example. I had attempted to put the tenets in the Arias of the Solar Plexus into practice.

And to what End?

Sitting in my cashmere lap now was a severed rabbit’s ear, leaking its dark blood onto my griege fringe. I stared down into it, enchanted, attempting to divine meaning in the entrails. All around me, the air smelled vital, of blood and burst animal. It was a scent that reminded me, strangely, of Mother when she came home from hunting pheasant, the wild mixing wonderfully, profoundly with her Opium. As if from a distance, I heard my peers calling my name repeatedly, pitifully. Screaming WHAT HAVE WE DONE, WHAT HAVE WE DONE? OH MY GOD WE KILLED THE BUNNY WITH OUR MINDS AND EYES, DID WE FUCKING KILL THE BUNNY WITH OUR MINDS AND EYES? ARE WE MURDERERS?

They are so crude , I whispered with my own mind to the severed ear. I was mesmerized by the shapes the pooling blood was making on my nude cashmere, like ever shifting clouds. The ear, hearing my words perhaps, almost seemed to twitch. Yes. They are so crude. Had it been you alone, Elsinore, something else might very well have happened here.

What? I asked. What might have happened? Tell me what the meaning of this is, please.

But the severed ear fell silent then. Or is it that I was drawn back into the Vulgar World of the attic by the screaming and crying all around me, rising in volume? Coraline, I saw, was weeping insanely, clutching at her boob like someone stabbed her there. Between you and me, I would have told her to shut the fuck up (much as I love her) but I could not waste precious breath at the moment. Not when I was Processing. Kyra of course was hugging her semi-violently in an attempt, I suppose, to console. Vik meanwhile, my dear Vik, perhaps the closest to me in intuitive gifts, stared at me and I stared at her. She was covered in guts and blood just like I was. Guts in her auburn curls and blood splatter on her blue-white face, which brought out all of its lovely bones and veins almost too well. She was smiling as I was smiling. She had an ear in her lap too, I saw.

This is when I knew.

There are no accidents, Samantha.

I looked around the attic, at my bloody peers, and I laughed. Look at what we had done, I thought, taking in the entrails scattered across the floor. Wasn’t it so terribly beautiful?

I walked over to Coraline, still screaming bloody murder, and I knelt down before her puffy body, her prettily crying face. I stared at that blond bob so perfectly, painfully under-tucked. I pictured the curling iron in her bathroom, the roll brush filled with dyed blonde hairs. Imagined the smoke rising from her hair as she twisted and twisted the hot rod. Every fucking morning she probably cooked her hair this way, lock by lock. I stared into her bright blue eyes bloodshot from crying into her white gloved hands.

“Murderers we’re murderers,” she sobbed and Kyra said shhhhh, it’s okay Bunny , enabling her terribly. I looked at Kyra, and she abruptly stopped. Let go of Coraline like she was a doll I was asking her to drop. I’ve always had the power to do this, Samantha (more on that later). Still Coraline cried and so I smacked her. Hard across the face. Violence, as you know, Samantha, is sometimes sadly necessary. She appeared shocked by this, my sudden tough love. So unschooled in the ways of Creation. I cupped her apple cheeks in my hands. That I had a mesmeric effect on her was obvious. Her crying stopped instantly.

“Do you realize,” I whispered into her face, “what we’ve done?”

Coraline shook her head. Stared at me with her child’s eyes, with a kind of piercing quality that made me uneasy. I wondered for a moment if she could see me as a child in Mother’s rose garden, so many years ago, turning all the flowers black with my rage. Could she see me outside on the cliffs in my conjuring nightgown, clutching Mother’s diamond (my first dagger) in my fist, asking the sky to bleed along with my tears? Surely not.

“We murdered,” she whispered. “We murdered we murdered we murdered—” until sadly, I had to smack her again.

“We exploded the bunny,” Kyra whispered, beside her.

And I smiled condescendingly. “That’s one way of looking at things,” I said.

“How else is there to look, Bunny?”

The insolence, the back talk, took my breath away. But I held it together. “Your problem, Bunny, is that you’re thinking far too literally. You’re not reading the larger meaning. You’re not thinking about the implications.”

“What is the larger meaning?” Kyra and Coraline asked in the same voice, at the very same time. They looked both moved and disgusted by their synchronicity.

That you’re a fucking psycho , my sister Jane would say to me. That you’re a megalomaniacal monster. Like Mother. Worse.

“That we can destroy,” Vik said, grinning. “That we’re basically God. Right, Else?”

I smiled. Vik was laughing now, sort of crazily, rolling on the floor in the blood and entrails. Kyra and Coraline were dead silent, watching me, my smilingly serene, blood-splotched face. I could feel their minds roving wildly. Contemplating the mutinous possibilities. Wondering if they should perhaps call the police. Wondering who they should tell. I took the blood from my finger and gently, gently put a dot of it on each of their noses.

“Ponder it,” I told them.

And with that I took my severed ear and left.

I walked home that night along the river, a most circuitous route. My body was covered in rabbit guts and blood, but I wouldn’t wash it away tonight, Samantha. Because I knew even then it was evidence. Of what? Something. We did something but what? ( What , I asked the moon—she only smiled coldly.)

As I was leaving, Vik said I’ll come with you. Should I come with you, Else? Please let me come with you.

Like so many neophytes I’ve encountered before, Vik wanted to be around my Aura. She wanted to be around my Light. But I needed solitude, Samantha. I had things to contemplate after all. Perhaps it truly was happening again. My Gift as I liked to call it. Though my sister Jane calls it something else. I even thought of calling Jane and telling her: Jane, I think it’s happening again . I have fulminated a rabbit with the sheer power of my eyes . But what would Jane do? Laugh. Light a cigarette. Oh Elsinore. Or perhaps she’d call my parents and have them lock me up. Jane, cold surgeon, smirking master (or so she thought) of all things brain. Yet the mind, the soul, remained a mystery to her. That was my domain and she knew it. How many times had I stood on the cliff’s edge at our Cumberland beach house, admiring a sunset, thanking the various entities responsible in my preverbal language, my eyes closed in the pinkening light, when I heard an ahem . And there was Jane in her khakis and mariniere, watching me with equal parts derision and fascination. Me in my long white nightdress, my crystal dagger in my fist. And yes, for a moment in her surgical gaze I felt five years old, but only for a moment. I said, Can I help you? And she looked at me and said What fucking world do you live in ?

Mine , I whispered. The truth of it never failed to bring me to tears right there in front of her. I let them fall, catching the dying pink light of day. And Jane rolled her eyes like various others have done in my life. I watched her crunch away in her horsebit loafers. Ten years behind the fashion in her Timeless Classics, but you’d never guess it from her attitude. Thinking she knew everything about everything. About the Cosmos. About Creation. Just because she took a scalpel to a skull a few times a week and played gleefully with the goo inside. And yet, when inexplicable things happened, who did she come to? Like that day all the roses in our Mother’s garden died while I was just standing there, very upset about something. What, I can’t even remember, isn’t that funny? I recall only the pain coursing through me and the sky darkening above me and the roses curling into themselves like they were afraid.

W hat the fuck are you doing? Jane whispered behind me.

Grieving , I whispered back.

Or the time our Nana died quite suddenly at dinner. She was laughing at a proem I’d been reading aloud at the table when she’d started to choke on a quail bone, poor thing. A quail I myself had abstained from eating, weeping quietly for those flightless birds. My sister and then my mother attempted the Heimlich to no end, while I watched, the proem shaking in my hand, hoping for the best. Alas, quail bones can be quite tricky.

You killed Nana , Jane hissed at me, many days later. I was in my room reading tea leaves, staring deep into my cup of stars as was my wont.

That is absurd , I told my sister, though inwardly I was delighted at this long awaited recognition of my powers. She choked on a quail bone, I said. And her own cruel laughter, I thought. And perhaps the gods, my gods that I prayed to, had been watching. I smiled into my cup of stars, which was really quite like staring into an entire universe, Samantha.

No, it was that proem, my sister spat. Your fucking dumb proem killed her. Even though I could see she knew the truth. Could tell by the way she fearfully whispered, Bitch , as she shut the door.

Why am I telling you this, Samantha? So that you understand my history, I suppose. The larger context from which I came that really informed us all. My context is especially significant.

I probably shouldn’t call Jane in this instance, I reflected. I’d keep the rabbit fulmination story to myself for now. Sometimes it is really best for me if I am left alone to ponder the Magnitudes, the larger meaning of Events. But I found when I walked outside into the New England night, the moon still high above me, anointing my very bloody body with its silvery glow, the severed rabbit ear in my satchel, I could not ponder. I felt only a strange kind of giddiness. The moon was smiling at me (she knew what I had done, yes). Saying wait. Fear not. We’re not done here yet, dear.

We’re not? What next?

But then she fell silent.

Really , Vik said to me once, the moon is the ultimate bitch . Just look at her.

At the time I remember I thought what a terrible, unlearned thing to say about a celestial body. But now, looking at her up there in the black sky, so cold and bright and tantalizing, I sort of understood. The moon was being a bitch, Bunny.

A fitful night of sleep. I dreamed on ergonomic sheets the color of the highest Chakra, yet I remained in the spiritual Dark. In my dream, I was in Costa Rica, lying on a beach in a long white dress frothy as the sea itself. Cold, primordial waves crashed again and again over my trembling body. I was clutching broken shells in my fists so very tightly that they chafed and bled. Let go and all will be revealed , the waves whispered into my frozen ears. In my dreams, you see, I understood the language of Water, Samantha, I understood the language of everything. And so in the dream, I opened my hands. I woke to find myself flanked by Borges and Cixous, my golden retrievers. They had found the rabbit’s ear in my satchel and were making of it a plaything. I recalled the explosion in the attic. Coraline crying, Kyra consoling her. Both of them looking at me like I was responsible for murder. Which, probably I was though I swear it had not been my intention, Samantha. Outcome and Intent are two very different countries, aren’t they? And I had intended… something else. Not merely blood and torn flesh. Not merely destruction. No, something wondrous, generative. At this, I suppose I’d failed. In the bright light of day, I watched my golden dogs tug mercilessly, playfully, at the ear of the exploded wretch. I screamed at Borges to stop, stop it ! Yes, I kicked at my own dogs, who instantly cowered and ran away to their steel bowls of filtered water. I took the torn rabbit’s ear into my hands, licked clean by these uncomprehending hounds. The sunshine stung my eyes then. Burned them with its Cruel Light. I wept, Bunny. Not only because had I been profoundly fucking misunderstood by my peers, a cross that any artist worth their salt must bear, but because I truly began to believe myself a failure.

Which is so fucking funny when you think about it now.

9

Serendipity, Bunny. Its power, particularly for Creators, is infinitely illuminating if one only Taps In. As I made my way to campus that following morning, I was still ignorant of its full Magick, but not for long. Now as it happens, I was up for Workshop that day. Cruel fate, I probably thought at the time, Bunny. That the day after my alleged Failure, it was my turn to face the firing squad of Allan’s word arrows, flaccid yet painful. As I drove to campus ( not in a Mercedes despite the gauche suggestion in your novel), the New England sunshine turning the world the color of hell fire, I vowed that I would not allow him to see me Bleed.

When I entered the Cave, its Darkness seemed to press on my Heart. So that I felt compelled to say: “Might we have Workshop in another room today, please, Allan?”

There were many other rooms in Narrative Arts beyond the Cave, after all, Samantha. There was the infamous Hall of Reflection, for instance, apparently a mirror mindfuck. There was a Metaphorical Chamber which, by a trick of lights, allegedly cast the most existentially devastating yet generative shadows. Were you aware of these rooms? They didn’t come up in your little novel, I noticed. Of course, you didn’t do much in the way of World Building, did you? Difficult, perhaps, for you to see anything of the World beyond your own Rat’s Maze of concerns. But I am not so small-minded in my Perception, Samantha, and on this day, I wished to venture beyond the Cave. Because I don’t feel like being in the literal Dark when I am also in a Dark of the Heart. If it’s at all possible.

I didn’t say this exactly. I said it in the worldly words that Allan might understand. I insinuated (with my tone alone) menstrual issues. And I looked right at our Nightmare Man, his green tea steaming in a Yeti mug today—never once breaking eye contact, this is the secret to everything, Samantha—until he shrugged. “Sure. It’s your workshop. We can be in the poetry library today, if you’d like?”

“The poetry library,” I repeated, nodding. How perfectly vile. But it overlooked the garden at least.

I had the rabbit ear in my satchel and yes, it was beginning to smell at this point. I had my dagger diamond on my neck and it gleamed there, its point hovering over my heart, Sharp and Always. As we filed into the library, I looked at my fellow peers. Coraline still had blood on her face but her hair was freshly flat ironed, lips glossed. She’d found a way, even in her emotional turmoil, to continue her mortification of the flesh via grooming. Her gloved hand was in her spotted pocket as per usual. Kyra, her hair half-braided, looked at me and her bright mutinous eyes were full of We should call the police, please . Yet she also looked afraid, in awe of me, perhaps. I have often assumed this role of power among our Peers. It is easily done if one is Unwavering, Samantha. One must simply stare directly into the eye of one’s enemy (or friend), q uite like I’m staring at you now. One must never blink first and look away, but look deep into the iris and attempt with one’s mind to see into the black. To find the Shadow Self shivering there, homely and afraid. Once one sees the Shadow Self, one must smile. As if to say, I see you in there . And the enemy (or friend) will instantly deflate. I have always been able to do this, which is perhaps why the roses have always seen me coming, Bunny.

The Poetry Library, as you know, is a bright room with windows full of bitchy New England light, overlooking the rose garden with its many, many flowers. I took a seat on one side of the table, facing the wall of windows so as to be smitten with the light. I assumed my peers would join me there, of course, that we would sit as One as we had done for weeks now, in solidarity against the psychic tyranny of Allan. So it was funny, Bunny, it was so serendipitous that I found myself sitting there alone. Because no one wanted to sit with me today, apparently. My fellow bunnies— traitors , I should say—sat on the opposite side of the square from me, their backs to the windows. They sat beside you, actually, Samantha, do you not recall that day? Of course not. You were deep in the Rat’s Maze, weren’t you, and probably didn’t even notice the shift at all. Your head down, dark hair in your face covering one death-black eye. Wearing some sort of anti-social t-shirt, a wolverine bearing its bloody jaws, perhaps. But I remember that day. My peers avoiding my gaze, not even Vik wouldn’t meet my eye. She picked at her bloody nails, her face slightly pink. There was still rabbit effluvium in her auburn curls, I noted.

Allan smiled. “Better?”

“Much,” I lied.

“Alright then,” he smiled. “Let’s begin.” And he looked down at a copy of my proem and sighed with the pleasure of the torturer about to wield the whip.

Was I surprised when Allan proceeded to eviscerate me? Of course not. I was ready for it, Samantha. Had even prepared myself psychically for the assault.

“The first issue I’m having, Elsinore,” he began, “is that I’m not quite sure what this…” and he held up my pane of glass, “ is exactly.” He shook the pane at me, Samantha, perhaps you recall. I think you smiled at that, didn’t you?

“It’s called a proem,” I said. “I find form limiting,” I told him. “In general.” I find you limiting in general. I wish for you to die, I thought.

Yet Allan remained standing. He had taken to the white board, in fact. He was diagramming one of my sacred sentences on its surface. He was saying, in his horribly logical voice, that part of the problem was that my sentences simply didn’t make sense, you see? Was there a reason , for instance, that I was always capitalizing my Nouns? Was I German? Not even consistently German, but randomly German?

I did not respond. Allan knew, of course, that I was not randomly German. He confessed that he also found my relationship with the em dash and the semi-colon equally perplexing. Is that so, Allan? Oh yes, a real struggle to grasp my syntax, he insisted.

Though I could feel my Aura darkening at his words, I held it together. I was not Coraline, you see. I was not five years old emotionally. I looked at him coolly, evenly, through my bespoke eyewear, which wasn’t necessary for seeing, I just enjoy fashion, Samantha.

“May I ask how you struggled?” I asked. Like I was actually interested in Allan’s struggle and not, at this moment, quietly wishing Death upon his Body. Unlike you, I didn’t apply to Warren to work with this horror hack, Samantha, who dressed up his disturbingly violent streak in philosophical musings. I’ve never been one to rely on the cheap tricks and tropes of genre , as you know. I’m all about conjuring Atmospheres of the Heart. Soul States in all their wondrous color and fragility. Something Allan, with his unsubtle use of chainsaws, didn’t seem to understand.

“The overabundant use of metaphor and simile for one,” he said now, “really obscures meaning. One risks becoming… overwrought .” He smiled at the dagger dangling from my neck, swinging lightly over my solar plexus.

“I wonder too about the stakes in this story….”

And this, Samantha, is when I confess that inside, I cracked. Stakes? I mind-screamed. UM. AM I FUCKING WRITING A BOOK CLUB PICK, YOU BOOR? DO I LOOK FUCKING OPRAH-FRIENDLY TO YOU? But outwardly, I merely smiled. Pretended to make a note of his commentary with my feather pen. Instead I wrote the word s Kill Allan multiple times in my elegant scroll, relishing in my calligraphy skills.

“Stakes,” I said. “Absolutely, Allan. Please do elaborate.”

And of course Allan did elaborate. There was an obliqueness —he might even go as far as to say an opaqueness —to my narrative style. He wished I would be a little more direct. He suggested reading some minimalists , some realists (ha!), who approach storytelling more straightforwardly. He suggested sign posting a little more too. “Help us know where you’re going, Elsinore.”

“Where I’m going,” I repeated, darkly amused. What if I myself don’t fucking know? Do we not create in a holy state of un-knowing?

Allan drank in my shame. I felt him espy the Shadow Self ever so briefly, in the black of my iris. He saw her, dangerously thin and crying over her panes of glass, the ghost of her dead grandmother’s laughter, her sister’s scorn. Then, smiling, he looked away. “Other thoughts here?”

“I have to say I agree,” you said. You, Samantha. Cousin Itt. Which was no fucking surprise. But then? They all agreed. They meaning of course my peers. They with whom I had already shared so much of Myself. Bunny and Bunny and Bunny all looking at me like I was a fucking stranger. As if we hadn’t all held each other just last night in a fierce psychic embrace, hadn’t exposed our darkest and deepest desires in the pink fog of the hive mind. Hadn’t seen our souls flash on the attic wall like the strangest, most intimate movie montage. They nodded along with you and with this man demon. Imperceptibly, in some cases. But I glimpsed it with my third eye. Felt the diamond dagger grow hot and pointed between my breasts. Were they relishing my demise?

“A bit less style a bit more… substance ,” Kyra murmured.

My Aura blackened. I looked out to the sky for support. Yet it did not storm with my anger. The clouds did not gather, did not brew with my sense of injustice. The world stayed blandly, impossibly bright, almost like it was willfully indifferent to my pain. I looked back at Allan smiling at me. Still talking, unbelievably. But I couldn’t even hear his words anymore, Samantha. I could only see his smug mouth movements. Forming terrible words about me that were Lies, lies, lies —or were they true?

It was then I saw something in the window. In the rose garden. Flashing in my field of perception while I was staring murder at Allan. In the very periphery of the field. For a mere second, Bunny.

A figure. Standing in the far corner of the rose garden, watching me.

A Man.

I don’t normally notice men, married as I am to the Sea. But this man I noticed. He was too far away for me to see his face. But something about his silhouette, his way of standing among the tall flowers, tugged at my third Chakra. His hair was a mess of auburn waves catching the light.

“Elsinore, did you hear Sam’s suggestion?”

And the only answer to that was yes. Of course I did, I murmured, glancing at you, though my gaze quickly returned to the man in the garden. He appeared to be jumping now. Up and down lightly in the mud. Though I still couldn’t see his face, I felt the smiling on it. The smile was on my face too.

“Not visceral enough,” Allan was saying, still fondling my proem. “Perhaps the thing is to anchor us in some concrete, scene-specific details. Without forgetting forward action, of course.”

“Of course,” I murmured.

“Certainly, there’s room to feel the reality a little more.”

“The Reality. Absolutely.”

“Elsinore, are you crying?”

Was I? Yes. I could feel the tears dribbling down my cheeks as I watched the strange young man jumping all around the garden now. Quite ecstatically, Bunny.

“Elsinore, may I ask what’s—”

“Allergies,” I whispered, transfixed. A lie. I felt the jumping man laugh at this, like he’d heard me.

“Allergies,” Allan repeated. “Really.”

The laughter bubbled dangerously now in my own throat. I bit my lower lip, felt its soft fullness between my teeth. Felt the fact of my youth, of Allan’s inevitable, impending death.

“Yes. I’ve long been plagued by them.”

Allan smiled at me in a hard way. Barely sympathetic on the surface, annoyed very visibly beneath. “It seems as if we have a number of allergy sufferers in this cohort,” he said softly, his voice rife with cold derision. Coraline went red in the face. But I didn’t fucking care, Bunny. Not anymore. In this moment, nothing could touch me. Behind Allan, the man was waving wildly at me now.

“Will you excuse me, please?” I asked.

“But this is your workshop—”

“Sometimes air helps,” I said, rising from my chair. “With the allergies.”

“But wouldn’t going outside make it worse ?” you offered. You again, Samantha, yes. Smirking in your bleak t-shirt. Wanting me to be caught out. It was gross of you, can I just say? Utterly fucking un-feminist. I forgive you now of course, I do. You were speaking, as you always spoke, from a place of Petty Envy and Darkness.

I didn’t answer your catty comment dressed up as a question of course. Didn’t wait for Allan to give permission either. Whether he said no or yes, I had no fucking idea, Bunny. Left the library, the useless Workshop. Left everyone’s staring, treacherous face behind and walked out into the cold light of Day.

10

As I made my way toward the rose garden, my heart pounded inside me. My skin felt hot then cold then hot again. I was dizzy, practically sick in a way I’d never been before. With what? Fear perhaps. That he wouldn’t be there. That what I’d felt looking through the library windows locking eyes with him was a lie. What had I felt exactly? Don’t know. But it was visceral, Bunny. When I thought of him being gone, a dark Chasm opened in me. Bottomless. I quickened my steps.

Nothing in the garden. Just flowers at first, that’s all I saw. Bright shades blinding my eyes and the grass soft and green beneath my feet. There was the dirt hole Vik had dug with her bare hands only last night, into which Coraline had thrown her pastry. There was the sky above me, its brightness mocking me. Look, the sky is the color of us , that’s what Coraline would say tilting her head toward the heavens. Blues and pinks that swirled into each other dreamily. But I was in no mood to dream, Samantha. The emptiness of the garden made me feel alone, terribly. The swells of the song “Alone” rose in my memory. Once, long ago, it had been my favorite, a private shame I’ll share with you, Samantha, because I know you too have a fondness for the power ballad. Failure, I was a Failure, this is what I felt. I’ll share that with you too since I know you know the feeling well.

It was when I was in the grips of Failure’s unrelenting Blackness that I saw him. The jumping man I’d espied through the windows. Standing in the tall flower beds, his back to me. Those auburn waves shining in the sun. Like he’d always been there. Right in plain sight and to notice him was just an act of seeing what was always there.

He was standing perfectly still now. Wearing a deep blue blazer over what looked like a long white night gown. Beneath the hem, I glimpsed his bare feet, mud-covered and wiggling in the grass. When I saw those bare feet, my heart sank. Oh. A Homeless , I thought. Likely come into the garden to forage for sustenance among the shrubs, how sad. How unsurprising too. The campus was rife with homeless, this city being a hellscape and our trash so rich. I’d often seen them ambling across the green in dumpster-scavenged Polo shirts, eating discarded cafeteria fois gras by the tin. Coraline gripped my hand whenever we passed them, saying they hurt her heart and eyes far too much. I told her that was absurd, how privileged she was, etc. Not everyone has BMWs, okay, Bunny? I stared at the man’s blazered back, his soiled feet. How could I have gotten it so wrong? Go , I told myself. Leave this man before he notices you and rapes you and tries to steal or eat your crystal s. I felt them shimmering on my wrists and in my bra, beating violently along with my own heart—a warning. But for some reason I found I could not leave this particular Homeless, Bunny. In fact, my feet began to move forward. Toward and not away from this man in a dress standing in the flower beds. The dress, I couldn’t help but note, looked oddly familiar.

He turned to me then. Smiled. “Sad?” he said.

He was tall, very. Pale with a sharp, pink-cheeked face. Bright blue eyes that seemed to laugh at me, at everything.

I found myself nodding. “Yes.” Even though I was not sad, not anymore. I felt a strange sunlight in my soul, Samantha. Coursing through my insides like fire. The man nodded like he understood.

“Because they don’t understand the nuances of you,” he offered, staring into my eyes. I detected a vaguely British accent. He was holding a limp dandelion in his fist.

“They don’t,” I agreed. That is it precisely , I thought. How did this man in the nightgown know? Perhaps he was an artist too. It was often difficult, due to the bohemian leanings of the faculty and student body, to tell who was actually a Homeless and who wasn’t. “Are you an artist?” I asked.

“Artist?” His face darkened suddenly. “No.”

“Do you go to Warren?”

But he was distracted now by the weed in his hand. He turned it around and around between his slim fingers, seeming to lose himself in its revolutions. Then suddenly, he held it out to me. “For you, Mother,” he said.

Mother? So maybe a Homeless after all, I thought. Possibly an insane or drugged kind. I stared down at the tiny yellow petals he cupped in his large hand, the weedy face like a small sun. I stared at his naked fist. Five fingered, full of veins pulsing with blood. Nodding, I was nodding. My trembling hand reaching out, ready to accept the limp weed. Ready to accept anything. Instead the man appeared to change his mind at the last minute. Ate the dandelion. Smiled at me as he chewed. “Who are you?” I whispered.

“Who?” Like he hadn’t understood.

“What is your… name ?” And I felt stupid. Alice trying to converse with the caterpillar who only gazes at her curiously through the mist. He smiled a funny smile.

“Name?” He patted his blazer pockets, like he was looking for a business card perhaps. “Name, name, name,” he whispered. He had quite a chiseled pectoral and abdominal area, I couldn’t help but notice, thanks to the very lowcut nature of the nightgown, its buttons torn and open down to the navel. The sight of all that sculpted flesh embarrassed me profoundly. As if he belonged on the cover of those romance novels Mother and Jane sometimes read and which, yes, I’d sometimes read too. (I enjoy the low work at times , Samantha. It all feeds.) This man, however, was covered in tattoos. A ring of arrows on his chest, I saw. Right around his left pec, doubling as the spokes of a fiery sun, the orb grinning over his heart. Ocean waves crashing on his boulder-like shoulder. Foresty mountains spreading across his steely abdominals, flowery flames all along the obliques. “Name, name,” he was still muttering, patting his pockets. At last he pulled something from inside his jacket. Offered it to me with triumph. An empty box. Of what looked like allergy medication. Aerius it read on the box.

“Your name is Aerius?”

He smiled. “Aerius.” Like it pleased him to say. He reached down and picked up another dandelion from the grass. Started to hand it to me, then seemed to think better of it. Ate it. He smiled at the blue and pink swirling sky. “Aerius!” he shouted and laughed. Jumped up and down like he was moshing. “AERIUS AERIUS AERIUS!”

As I watched him hop before me, screaming his alleged name, it occurred to me of course, Bunny, that he might very well be an escaped mental patient. But then why, when I watched his lithe, leaping body, did I feel so strange? Ashamed, deeply. Prideful, terribly. Above all, vaguely responsible. And my body, Samantha. On literal fire. Teary and smiley and barely able to breathe all at once.

“Aerius,” I whispered. Think I whispered. It was very hard to speak just then. “What are you doing in the garden? Why were you jumping and waving at me just now?”

Like I didn’t fucking know. And just like that, he stopped jumping. Snatched the allergy medication from my hands and tucked it back in his pocket like he might need it later. He stared at me and the fearful symmetry of his face, an animal symmetry I saw now, arrested me. “ Why ?” he repeated, in a low voice. Like W hat sort of question is this, Mother? He smiled a smile of not such innocence then. Moved in closer to me. Hopped closer, you could almost say. His scent, it intoxicated me, Samantha. Grasses and so many fucking wild flowers, more flowers than I’d ever breathed in all at once. He smelled also, disconcertingly, like Coraline’s cupcakes, vaguely too like attic incense. He touched my face with his very large, bare hands. They felt terribly warm and soft. Like they were covered finely in fur, even though they were entirely human flesh. Grazing my skin so softly, I died and died. His fingernails, I saw, were painted yellow as suns, each one with its own smiling face. Smiling just like he was.

“Relieves eyes,” he whispered, pointing gently to my eyes. And just like that, tears fell from them.

“Relieves nose,” he said and poked my nose with a finger.

“Throatandears,” he said, stroking my earlobe now softly. Marveling at the feather earring that hung there. So pretty and shiny , I could feel him thinking while I stared at the blue of his eyes. Hour between the dog and wolf in summer. Me lying in the tall grass as a child, staring up and losing myself in the deepening sky. Me staring into the dark eyes of a rabbit, watching them brighten into precisely this cerulean shade.

“What else,” I asked when I had voice to speak. “Does it relieve?”

“Relieves…,” he began but then became distracted by something on my head. Pulled one of the birds of paradise I’d tucked into my hair. “Pretty,” he whispered. “Is it mine?”

“Yes. Everything,” I might have said then. Everything yours. Forever and ever. I watched him tuck the flower in the breast pocket of his dress, my heart on fire.

And then it was obvious, like a new kind of seeing, Samantha. His long white dress, why it looked so terribly familiar. It was my fucking dress. The one I’d bought last year from Free People for a Beltane bonfire ritual. “That’s my dress,” I said.

He shook his head. “M y dress,” he whispered. Fingered the frothy collar. The rip I recognized by the left shoulder, caused by my own deep conjuring work.

“Oh my god,” I whispered, falling to my knees. He did the same. Like falling to the ground was a new game we were now playing and how fun. I noticed the string of cold pearls on his neck, definitely Coraline’s. His lips, I saw now, were tinged with Kyra’s Cherries in Winter . There was Vik’s tattoo of the crystal thief on his forearm, which I shuddered to see, did not like to see, a painful reminder that he was not mine alone. And above all his face, so like the furry one we had surrounded only last night in the attic. Jesus fucking Christ. “Are you? Could you be—”

“Shhhh,” he said. Like no more questions. “Still sad?” Wiping the tears from my eyes with his pelt-soft hands.

“No,” I shook my head, staring into his eyes. “Happy,” I whispered, looking into the blue. “So happy I’m sad again.”

“Sappy,” he whispered back, nodding as if he knew. “Joy tears.”

“Yes,” I laughed. And he laughed with me, Bunny. The way you laugh along with someone even though you don’t know why. We were laughing wildly together in the grass, the sunlight shining on us, rainbows breaking through the clouds as they broke through my soul. Workshop and Allan seemed so far away. Wanting to kill him seemed hilarious. “In fact, I don’t even think I want to kill Allan anymore,” I said through my tears and laughter.

“Kill Allan?” he repeated. And suddenly he grew serious. Sat up. Looked around the rose garden. “I could kill Allan,” he offered.

“What?”

But he’d let go of me now. Was rifling through his pockets again, smiling. This time, he pulled out a razor. I knew the implement well of course. Coraline’s. Its blunt and sharpened edge, forever speckled with her blood. Grinning, he held it up to the sunlight, turning it round just like he’d turned the dandelion. Looking with such wonder at how the blade caught the light.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Kill Allan,” he said softly, beautifully. With such a smile on his face, Bunny. So that for a moment I was entranced. So that I might have even said yes, please do go ahead. Then I caught myself. “No,” I said quickly. “No, no. Not literally kill,” I said. “We just hate him is all.”

“We hate him,” he said dreamily, smiling at the rusted blade. “Literally Kill Allan is all.”

“No!”

“Kill Allan, Kill Allan, Kill Allan.” And he jumped up, quite sprightly. It was at this moment, perhaps, that his full height truly impressed itself upon me, Bunny. He was, I saw, about 6’4, his hopping shadow veritably swallowing me, the whole garden, in darkness. I watched him skip now toward the Narrative Arts building with his big bare feet, clutching the razor which flashed so beautifully in his fist. There was a beauty to the movement, Samantha, can I simply observe that? Does that really make me a monster to say? I could not deny the Beauty, even as I registered that yes, I was witnessing Violence. A potential homicide. It was the skipping that arrested me, paralyzed me, with its wild limbic perfection. The way the sunlight loved him. Caught the light in his waves, you should have seen it. The way the grass knew his lithe feet. The lightness of the hop and the predatorial gleam in his blue eye.

And then in the near distance, beyond the garden, I saw Allan in the street. Walking toward his grey Subaru, he must have ended Workshop early. His vile messenger bag, full of whatever obscure theory texts, slung across his chest. Ready to do some Whole Foods shopping perhaps. And Aerius making his skipping way down the garden path toward him, fist raised.

“Kill Allan! Kill Allan!” he sang softly.

I ran then. Ran after him with all my might, Bunny, but he was skipping so fast now, the razor swinging wildly in his fist, that I could not catch up, sadly. I ran faster and faster, even reaching my hand out to hold him back, muttering “Stop please stop oh god.” And then he did stop suddenly. So suddenly that I actually crashed into his back, clutched his arm. What had made him stop? Had he come to his senses perhaps? Was this whole thing just some hideous-wonderful dream? I looked up and there, blocking his path, were my peers. Standing in an intense and colorful huddle. Coraline, Kyra, Vik. All staring at him, at me, the razor in his fist, like hello, what the fuck is this please? They looked at my hand gripping his arm, trying to hold him back from killing Allan who was now safely in his car, it seemed, driving smugly away, oblivious. And Aerius was staring at them curiously, the razor still in his raised fist. How embarrassed I felt suddenly. Caught in the strangest game.

Not wanting to startle anyone, least of all the boy with the razor, I attempted telepathy.

Listen , I said to them with my mind, we have to bring him back to Kyra’s. I’ll explain —

But there was no need at all to explain, Bunny.

Their eyes, staring at him, suddenly brightened.

Perhaps Coraline saw her own pearls on his throat, recognized her razor in his fist. I saw her reflexively check her dress pocket: empty, Bunny, and her jaw just dropped. Probably Kyra discerned her Cherries in Winter staining his lips. And Vik? Maybe she noted the crystal thief on his arm, the way his bare feet were reveling in the mud. Or perhaps it was simply the electric blue of his eyes they were all swimming in like such endless sky. They seemed sort of drugged by his physicality, the fact of him standing there in the sunlight. In any case, they all knew what to do. Each of them picked a dandelion from the grass. Held it up to him, twirling it round and round as if to hypnotize. Said “For you, if you come with us.”

He smiled then. And he followed us, Bunny. Out of the rose garden.

Toward where we knew not.

One step at a time , we told ourselves.

As we walked, we made a kind of ring around him, Bunny. Each of us twirling a dandelion. Holding them like candles that might lead us through the dark, even though it was still the bright of day. That way, everywhere he looked there was a dandelion to dazzle him, to keep him with us. There were moments when he wanted to jump or skip and so we had to skip too, to keep up. We made quite a picture, Bunny, skipping down the sidewalk of this hideous town. He was still holding the razor in his fist, swinging it wildly, and that kept us a little on edge. But no one stopped us or anything. In fact, most passersby didn’t even seem to notice or turn to look, was the funny thing. It was almost like we were alone in the World. Coraline kept trying to take his other hand, which was fucking annoying. Kyra was looking at him worriedly like any minute she might whip out her phone and call the police. And Vik, she was just ogling him openly. “I like your dress,” she said, staring at his exposed torso, his man hands, his shapely calves. If cars passed, he stopped. Grew rigid. Wanted to run away, but we said, “No, it’s okay.” We held the spinning dandelions up higher. Tried to give him an education along the way. “Oh, those are poor people cars,” we said pointing at the various Subarus and Priuses speeding past.

“Poor,” he nodded.

“And that is a bus. A mode of public transportation, quite smelly and sad, which one should never take.”

“Never take bus,” he said.

“And those are Homeless. Lots around here, so sad. What we thought you were at first, isn’t that funny?”

“Funny,” he nodded. “And this?” he said, pointing to a gnome statue on a front lawn.

“That? Is tacky.”

“ Tacky .” And he reached out to stroke the gnome’s face tenderly until we lured him away.

It was for the most part, an uneventful walk home, Bunny. I say for the most part because we did have a most unfortunate run in with a Poet along the way. Jonah as a matter of fact. Your dear friend with whom you used to smoke cigarettes and talk shit about us in the rancid alleys that are your sad stomping grounds? No use denying it, Sam. It’s well documented in the screed you wrote which, as we said, we won’t deign to discuss. It’s lovely that we’re all friends again now, of course. Speaks to our ability to put such things behind us. Forgive even while we never ever Forget.

Anyway, when Jonah appeared in our path, we all drew breath, Bunny. We never like to run into Poets period, but this was an especially precarious moment for us. Those with any kind of mental acuity would intuit that and leave us be. Not Jonah of course. When he saw us, he immediately waved and ran over. “Oh hey!” this clueless boy said. “You’re the Fictions, right?”

“Yes.” We nodded, immediately hiding the dandelions behind our backs. Drawing our bodies closer to Aerius.

“Cool. So great to see you guys again.”

“So great,” we said. Smiling pleasantly, Bunny. Like fuck off. Can’t you see we’re busy? We formed a tighter ring around Aerius’s body, trying to hide him from Jonah’s view, but this was impossible due to his incredible height. Jonah spotted him easily in our midst, a massive tree growing out of the small garden of us.

“Hey,” this Poet said to him. “I don’t think we’ve met before. I’m Jonah.”

Aerius, who’d been looking longingly at another garden gnome, turned now to face him. His gaze brightened. “Jonah,” he said.

“And you are?”

But Aerius merely stared at him like he’d never seen anything like Jonah before. Like Jonah was a dandelion but better. Better, perhaps, than all of our dandelions put together. “I am—” he began.

“A foreign exchange student actually,” Coraline piped up, gripping his arm. “We’re just showing him around right now. Giving him a tour and things. Orienting him.” She smiled. She looked fucking psychotic, Bunny. Her smile twitching like mad with her lies. But Jonah was thankfully oblivious.

“A foreign exchange student?” he said. “How cool! From where?”

“Argentina,” I offered just as Kyra said “Japan” just as Vik said “Morocco” just as Coraline said “the Isle of Man.”

“Wow!” Jonah said. “So like, from everywhere. That’s so incredible.”

“It is,” we murmured. “So incredible.”

“Incredible,” Aerius whispered, smiling at Jonah now. In a way I wasn’t so sure I liked at all. I gripped his arm tighter. Drew closer to him.

“Well, cool,” Jonah said. “Maybe I can have you all over sometime for tea or something. And I can learn more about Argentina. And Japan. And Morocco. And the Isle of Man,” he laughed. “I’ll be worldly as fuck.”

“As fuck,” Aerius agreed. Smiling more broadly now.

“Yes,” I lied, raising my voice. “How lovely that would be for us all. We’ll definitely take you up on that. Perhaps in a few—”

“Can I come now?” Aerius cut in in a low voice, still staring at Jonah.

“ Now ?” Jonah repeated, surprised. “Oh I didn’t realize you guys were free now but—”

“Free,” Aerius repeated, a little longingly.

“NO,” Coraline screamed, tugging on his jacket sleeve. “Not free. Very busy just now, aren’t we? So much to do and see.”

“So much,” we all agreed.

“Oh too bad,” Jonah said. “Some other time then.”

“Too bad,” Aerius repeated sadly, watching him go.

And in this way, we averted what we must admit was immediate disaster. Not that disaster didn’t come, Bunny.

Of course it fucking did.

He came with us to the house quite willingly the rest of the way. Okay, perhaps not entirely willingly. Did we have some small trouble getting him into the house? Depends on how you define trouble . It’s true that when we got very near Kyra’s house, and he looked up and saw the attic, he screamed a little. Whether at the sight of the inverted triangle window specifically or the attic itself, we weren’t sure. Not wanting to return to the Womb, perhaps. Anyway, his arms suddenly went rigid in our hands. He began to resist us as we attempted to escort him so lovingly up the steps. We knew then that there was no amount of dandelions we could bribe him with, Bunny. Very clearly all the dandelions in the world wouldn’t bring him back up there of his own Accord. And so, yes, in the end, we had to drag him a little. Just those final few feet. Just to get up those last steps, that’s all. And into the house. Back up to the attic.

Were we actually shocked at how physically strong and capable we were? Yes, a little, ha ha. But then I had always been a deeply devoted Pilates practitioner, not to mention an avid Peleton user. Vik of course was a trained dancer, still strong as fuck, even if she had willfully neglected her Body. And Coraline and Kyra, well, I honestly don’t know where they got their respective strengths from, Bunny, but my, my, how they had it. In droves. Maybe just from being raging Type As, who knows? In any case, you should have seen them walking backward up the front steps and then the attic steps, gripping the boy’s limbs with all their might as they did so, their straining faces turning all the shades of Love.

For it was Love that drove us ultimately, Bunny, yes.

Love of Creation. Love of Wonder. Love of the Unknown.

Love of Art.

Please as we tell you this story, fucking remember that.

11

In Kyra’s witchy living room, we sat equidistant from one another, listening, listening to each other’s panicked thoughts. They rang in our collective mind forming a darkening pink cloud that hovered above our heads. Oh my god oh my god oh my god. Is he ours? What have we done and what do we do now? I stared down at the rose petals floating in my tea cup. Such strange shapes they made, Samantha. Perplexing. I could not intuit their meaning.

The boy had screamed for a good hour and then quieted down and then screamed again. Now all was dead silent. Kyra had put various treats up there, so lovingly and thoughtfully. A plate filled with various Trader Joe confections (Coraline’s idea). Some herbal fairy tea in case he was cold. Electrolyte water in case he needed to hydrate. A tumbler of absinthe in case he wanted something a little stronger, Bunny. All the dandelions, of course. But though we strained our ears, we never once heard him partake.

“What are we doing?” Kyra said out loud at last. “What have we done?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Coraline said. “We conjured a man from a bunny. Just like fairy tales. We’re fairy tales now.” She took a sip of her London Fog that was mostly vodka. “We’re legends,” she whispered.

“Did we really though?” Kyra said. “I mean, what if he is just a homeless? Or an escaped mental patient or something? Or just like…a weird fucking Warren person? And we’re holding him hostage?”

“That would be hot,” Vik said, winking at me. “I’m into that. Aren’t you, Bunny?” she looked at me.

I smiled thinly.

“You’re into committing crimes ?” Kyra repeated.

“Everything is a crime, hello. Every step you take on this earth is murder of one kind or another, Bunny. Open your eyes to the…fucking world.”

“But we could be arrested,” Kyra said softly to the window. “We could be tried for kidnapping. And I haven’t even started writing my novel yet, not really. I can’t write in prison. I need to work on a very specific typewriter.” She cried softly for herself. Looked accusingly at us.

“We’re not going to be arrested, okay?” This from Vik. “He’s ours, like Coraline said. We made him.”

“ Made him . Do you know how insane that sounds, Bunny?” Kyra said.

“Insane? You’re the one who talked all that crap about bunnies turning human or whatever.”

“Yeah, in fairy tales but—”

“WE ARE FAIRY TALES!” Coraline screamed. “And artists,” she added in a low voice.

“Our medium is paper, not—”

“Well sometimes the medium chooses you right, Bunny?” And Vik looked to me. Wanting me to validate all this, please.

“He’s ours,” I confirmed. I almost said mine , thinking of him grinning at me in my own torn dress. “Undoubtedly.” Was there a wavering in my voice? Oh yes. I heard it but did they?

“Exactly,” Vik said. But her voice also sounded uncertain.

The minute we’d put him in the attic, you see, the minute we’d closed the door on his uncomprehending face that screamed Betrayal! Betrayal!, I was no longer sure of anything. Now that he was outside my field of perception, I wondered, Bunny. Doubted even. Was he ours? Had I dreamed those twilight eyes that laughed at me? Those fur-soft hands? Was I fucking kidding myself? Perhaps, I pondered, he had been a Homeless all along, like Kyra said. Or an escaped mental patient as I myself had surmised. So he was wearing a long white dress—was it really my dress? Perhaps it only resembled my dress. My style did skew nineteenth century insane asylum, I knew that. Jane had even pointed that out to me numerous times. You’re fucking psychotic and you dress fucking psychotic , she had said, only a few Yuletides ago. As for the other accessories, well, razors and pearl necklaces are a dime a dozen, are they not? Especially around Warren. And everyone is tattooed these days. Everyone’s body boasts an inky Boschian universe. Maybe when I beheld the man in the garden holding out the box of allergy medication, I was only seeing what I wanted to see. Maybe I was delusional after all, just like Jane had always said. It’s good you’re going to Warren , Elsinore , she’d said when I got my acceptance letter. Your particular psychosis will blend right in over there. You’ll finally meet your Kind.

I looked around the living room at my peers, surrounded by shelves upon shelves of the books that had warped our souls. Coraline in her sky dress and gloves staring out the window with tears in her eyes. Kyra attempting to light sage with very trembling hands. Vik brazenly masturbating with her mind. You know the type , my sister had said. Thinking the sky is changing with your moods, the tide is rising with your breath, that everything is a god damned Sign about you and your proem project. Let me tell you something Elsinore. Let me tell you a secret that’s no secret at all. The Universe is indifferent to you . And she smiled with such joy as she beheld my obvious pain.

The more time I spent away from him, the more it was beginning to feel entirely possible, likely even, Bunny, that we had indeed deluded ourselves.

I could feel my fellow peers beginning to think so too.

Did we or didn’t we?

Is he or isn’t he?

The Doubt, Bunny, was growing like a Weed in all our minds.

Suddenly Kyra stood up, swaying on her feet, and said “I’m just going to check on something.”

Coraline grabbed her hand. “ What are you going to go check on exactly, Bunny?”

“Just. That he has enough electrolytes and mini peanut butter cups and things. That we’re not starving him or something. That we’re not adding murder to our many crimes for today.” She smiled sweetly. “That’s all.”

“That’s all ?”

“Well, I guess I do want to see if he’s ours. Make sure. Because I don’t want to go to prison, okay, Bunny? I worked very fucking hard to get into this program.”

“ How are you going make sure though?”

“I don’t know yet. But if he’s ours , then I can just relax.” She’d never relax. “Anyway, it’s my apartment, my attic, isn’t it?” And she walked up the stairs with small, sure-footed steps.

While she was gone, we watched sky darken through the windows, saying no words. Listening with our collective ears, straining to hear any sound above our heads. Nothing. Not even a fucking whisper, Bunny.

“I’m going up there,” Coraline whispered at last, her eyes on the ceiling.

“No,” Vik and I whispered back.

“What if she let him go? It would be just like her to let something go that’s MINE.”

“Ours,” we both corrected, even as I thought fucking mine .

“ Ours ,” Coraline repeated, sort of snort-laughing to herself. “Right.”

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