[Easter morning, March 31, 2013, right after the first cup of coffee.]
He was always terrified of this day. Probably performance anxiety, nothing more. But still, he worried. Some of those upright creatures were entirely uncontrollable, and you never knew what the big clumsy galoots might do.
Such a horrible gig. If he had known it would be this bad, he would not in a million years have agreed to it. But it had seemed like such a deal at the time!
A few publicity shots, an appearance or two at a charity event, one major show every year, just one day of work, and eternal life!
What rabbit could say 'no' to that?
Oh, and colouring things that came out of chicken bottoms. He always farmed that out to the weasels and stoats, as they were adept at such tasks, and full of energy. Plus they also liked blood, the evil little carnivores.
Once he found that source of cheap labour, he ignored the eggs.
It was the blood that was slightly disconcerting.
Rabbits are vegetarians, usually.
But vampires aren't.
He supposed he was the only immortal rabbit on the planet. He had been tempted in the early years -- centuries -- to bring someone else over, but whenever he thought he'd found a likely candidate, they always turned out to be harebrained. And even the most anti-social of rabbits always has enormous numbers of relatives, so it would be impossible to do just one; the entire family would be in on it, and demand the same.
Imagine several thousand vampire bunnies!
No, that would be quite impossible.
Constant twitching.
Red eyes.
That really would be his worst nightmare. And they'd probably never shut up, but talk incessantly about carrots!
He had no desire whatsoever to spend all the centuries listening to immortal rabbits whining about no longer eating the fresh green grass, the crunchy orange things, crisp CRISP lettuce leaves........
So instead, once in a blue moon, he'd bring over a ferret or two. They were loads of fun, being small and wrigglesome, and they would eventually forget about sunlight. He enjoyed watching from a dark burrow as they dashed out into the brightness and exploded. Larger animals, like sheep, smoldered and ran around panicking while the sunlight gradually killed them, but ferrets (and field mice) were small enough that their entire bodies caught fire immediately and they disappeared in a beautiful puff of smoke.
Once or twice he'd brought over a human.
Not very often, because children were emotionally off kilter, and it was unpredictable what they would do with 'the gift'. There had been that freaky French girl who went bonkers, starting riots all over Lorraine and Orleans, nearly undermining the legitimate government at the time. That had created all kinds of problems! She'd even been called a witch, and accused of a deal with the devil. Finally she too self-immolated, and the French had invented one hell of a story just to account for that!
Then they spent the next several hundred years pissing at the English.
What was her name again? Jeannie? Joan? Joan something.
He could not remember, it had been so long ago.
Fourteen hundreds - nearly six centuries!
Thousands of rabbit life times.
Occasionally the Greek fellow checked up on him, to see how he was doing. Nearly two thousand years ago he had met the undead magician, who had told him a fantastic tale about escaping from a sealed cave.
It was supposed to be his greatest illusion, but the ignorant bumpkins had gone wild. Whenever he appeared after that, instead of letting him do his act -- water into wine, segue into loaves, fishes, and leprosy, and gradually build up to a grand finale -- they'd demand something bigger and better, right now! The eggs had originally been an ironic comment, but even that spiralled out of control.
The Greek had suggested that if he got tired, he could always appoint a substitute. Turn some other creature into a blood-sucking immortal with candy.
He'd thought about it. A large vampire grizzly bear, storming through the night throwing eggs and scaring the bejayzus out of everyone.
As well as draining several kiddies dry.
With strap-on rabbit ears.
For verisimilitude.
Even bears look cute with floppy strap-on ears.
For some reason he was also thinking fishnets and a giant cotton ball, but there probably wasn't a bear alive that would do that, though. They didn't really have a sense of humour.
Oh well. It was dark. Time to start distributing painted eggs and chocolate.
For the first several million tykes he went down chimneys and dropped a basket near the fireplace. By the end of the night he was tired, and simply wanted to get it all over with. He'd chuck loot at random, and those kids would have to search in the shrubbery around the house. Sometimes even in the garbage dump or on the freeway. Let them struggle for the lousy sweets!
The very last child on the list probably wouldn't get any at all.
Or maybe just stale Hersheys with the ears bitten off.
Sorry, kid. It's late, and I might burn up.
Gotta get back before daylight.
Crap I need a cocktail.
Eggs smell bad.
Worse than blood.
He was sick of them.
Yeah.
Happy Easter.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
