We Love You, Bunny, page 1
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For Michael
And for you, Reader
Love you, Bunny.
Part One
Prologue
Hi, Bunny.
It’s been a little while, hasn’t it?
We missed you, we really did. So much.
And look at you now, wow. All gothed out again. Back to wearing your scary-bleak clothes and your dark hair still hanging in front of your eye, how funny. You’ve been busy since we last saw you, haven’t you? Very busy, apparently, scribble-scribbling in the dark. Publishing your little novel. About us, so fun. And it’s enjoyed a somewhat moderate success. Good for you! Amazing, really, what people will read nowadays. That’s why we brought you up here, in fact, to Kyra’s attic (remember this attic?) for a little congratulatory toast among old friends. A cozy reunion of sorts with your former MFA cohort, those you’ve left in the literary dust, so to speak, ha ha ha. Not that we’re bitter, Bunny, oh my god, not at all. We’re raising our glasses to you, aren’t we?
What’s that, Bunny? You can’t raise your glass?
Oh, because of the restraints, that’s right.
Sorry about those.
Well, we’ll toast for you, how’s that? We could use a bit of a tipple, frankly, under the circumstances. A little Light and Sunny, remember those?
Oh, we wouldn’t squirm in that chair so much, Bunny, not if we were you. It’s just going to cause more bruises on those wrists, that neck, so like a swan’s….
But we digress.
Sorry again we had to tie you up a little. But it’s just so very lovely to catch up like this, isn’t it, just the five of us here in the dark? You all cozy in your chair, and the four of us standing close and adorable in our rabbit masks, making a semicircle of such love and understanding all around you, our dresses shining prettily by the light of the hunter’s moon. It’s a hunter’s moon tonight, Bunny, oh yes. Look at it full and glowing through the window (on All Hallows’ Eve, no less!), and the night so beautifully full of screaming. Your screaming included. Probably you’ve dreamed of this moment, haven’t you? We have too, trust. And when we saw on the Warren student listserv that our very own former peer was coming back to town, on tour for her debut novel, the first among our cohort to publish, we thought, Why not make those dreams a reality? Why not support our old friend Sam Mackey? Or Samantha Heather Mackey, as you so very inventively called yourself in your little novel (going for autofiction, were you?). We did enjoy that wink to the ’80s film, by the way, that softening touch to a name otherwise so evocative of your own boyish will. Despite the way you left things, Samantha, despite the unpleasantness, we really felt support was the grown-up thing to do. Our therapist even said it might be good for our Healing Journeys. Put the past behind us and such. Be a good literary citizen and such. Buy a copy of her book and read it, very adultlike, not at all screaming bitch, not at all vomiting. Fly back to this New England town, the town of our old alma mater, and attend her reading at the Warren University Bookstore, we all had this idea, it seems! The hive mind is not entirely dead, it seems. Awakened, perhaps, by your betrayal.
So funny, your face, when you saw us in the audience, by the way. How we were applauding you, not with our hands so much, but with our eyes. You sort of froze for a minute, didn’t you, at your podium, at the sight of us sitting there in the very back row, each of us in a different colored dress so that together we made such a happy rainbow, we embodied the holy elements of earth, air, water, and fire. So smiling at you. So supporting. You sort of cried a little when you first made eye contact, didn’t you? We did too, Bunny.
They were joy tears, promise.
Your reading was so amazing, we meant to tell you. And funny! So funny how you made us into ax-wielding monsters. So very hilarious how you divulged our most tender secrets. We laughed until we cried, we really did. What’s that you’re saying, Bunny? We’re having just a little bit of a hard time understanding you through the gag we put in your mouth. Or maybe it’s the drugs making you drool like that. We mixed just a sprinkling into your bookstore wine earlier, which we bought you out of mercy, really (you were so nervous!). And though you accepted with some hesitancy, Bunny, you did drink. Drank it all down, in fact, didn’t you? Perhaps out of the stress of the situation, which we totally get. Sometimes it’s stressful to see old friends, we agree. Or maybe it’s being back here in the attic, where it all began. Workshop. The bunnies, the boys, the blood, so much blood. The beautiful, sacred thing we allowed you to be a part of, out of the kindness of our fucking hearts. The ax is still here too, look at that. Right here in the corner where we last left it, how serendipitous. Even a few flecks of blood on the blade still. Are they fresh flecks? Oh, we don’t know, Bunny. Maybe they are. God knows what we’ve been up to here, right? Only two springs ago, but it feels like an eternity now, doesn’t it? Since we all graduated from this hell place and went our separate, lonely ways into the cold, wide world?
Feels good in our hands now, though, the ax. Feels like old times. We still know how to strike and to grip, it looks like. Like riding a bicycle, really.
Funny how it all comes back.
What have we been up to? Oh, busy. Very busy, just like you, Bunny. Reading your book and screaming, ha ha ha. Dreaming of revenge scenarios, ha ha ha. Sharing these scenarios during therapy, getting carried away sometimes in the color and wonder of them, until our killjoy therapist says, That’s enough for today. No but seriously, we really do love our therapist; he’s a wonderfully kind and thoughtful human. How he just sits there in his leather chair on Zoom and stares so compassionately at the squares of us, saying, Tell me, tell me. He’s helping us, so much, to reconnect with our creativity. Since you destroyed our souls, we sort of lost our way, sad to say. But we’re working to get it back, working on our own stuff right now, actually. It’s going so well. Tonight’s really a big part of our Creative Journey, believe it or not.
And you, you’re a big part of it too.
Oh, don’t cry, Bunny! We’re not going to kill you, don’t be silly! This isn’t your novel, this is reality, remember? We’re not murderers IRL, despite the very ick brush with which you chose to paint us. No, no, we’re just going to have a little chat, is all, one by one by one by one. Taking turns with you in our telling, doesn’t that sound fun? Sort of like the ultimate Smut Salon. (You remember Smut Salon, don’t you?) As for your novel, well, we have no intention of commenting, don’t worry. About all of that: no comment, as they say. Except that you got it wrong. So fucking wrong. About us.
Ax murderers? Please.
(Oh, best not to struggle, Bunny, it will only make the restraints more ouch.)
So what are we going to say? Oh how we’ve thought and thought about this! Our therapist recently put us through something like a writing exercise, remember those? Imagine, he said softly, if you could sit Samantha down and say one thing, what would it be? And he looked at us with his too-blue gaze, which eerily recalled all we had made and lost, and we knew exactly. What we would fucking say. Not that you were a liar. Not that you were a treacherous psychotic whore, no, no. Fuck talking about you.
Instead we thought we’d tell you the story, the lovely little story, Bunny, of us.
How we came together that first year.
How, together, we broke reality and basically reinvented the laws of the natural world.
How we, too, made something beautiful once, oh yes. More beautiful than anything you could ever dream in your small, small mind. And real, too. Before. Long before you ever walked into the picture. When you were nothing, in fact, but a small, dark speck in the corner of our minds and eyes.
What’s that you’re trying to say, Bunny? Your publicist is expecting you at your hotel tonight, is she? You have a train to catch in the morning, do you? You have another city, another bookstore to visit on your tour of lies? Oh, we don’t know if you’re going to make that train tomorrow, Bunny. Maybe, maybe not. Depends on a lot. We’ll see how you do as an audience, how’s that? Coraline wants to start, don’t you, Bunny? Cupcake, we believe you called her in your telling.
But your telling is over now.
So sit back, relax, and listen, k?
Because here tonight in the moon-splashed dark, it really is high time for us to make something beautiful again.
Cupcake
Hi there, Bunny. Remember me? So clever of you, truly, to reduce me to a baked good. So funny that you described me as a maniacal hair braider or… what was it again? A child of the corn going to prom? I’m not going to comment further on your novel (we agreed to not) except to say that when I perused it during a rehearsal break (I’m back in theater now, by the way, oh it’s very lucrative!), I laughed until I cried blood. So funny, how you let your imagination just run away with you like that. How you really don’t know anything at all. About me or us or even like reality, really. I’ll just hang on to the ax while we talk, is that okay with you? I’ll just get a bit closer to you physically also. So you can see my dress up close, the color of dreamy skyscapes tonight. Smell my lemony-sugar smell, which I know turns you on a little, Bunny, don’t deny it. In your novel (which I won’t mention
Let me get even closer to you now, so we can whisper, just you and me, if need be. So you can look right into my anime eyes while I set some things straight, as it were. About how it all started, Bunny. Before the boys, before the ax. Before the magic of this attic was made known to us. Before we were even made known to one another. I actually fought to be the first one to tell, because believe it or not (and on this point we sometimes disagree), it all began with me, actually. Yes, me, Caroline. I mean Coraline.
It began with me, Coraline.
What a Herculean effort you made to disguise my real name, by the way.
1
Before we were One, we were four, weren’t we? Oh so very long ago. The beginning, really. To go back there, we have to go all the way back to that first year, that first fall, don’t we? A most strange and beautiful fall it was, remember, Bunny? Of course, you weren’t Bunny then, and neither was I. I was Coraline from Virginia. My very first time in New England. I remember the golden light of September still. How it shone so prettily, all over this creepy-lovely town named after God and fate. How it shone on the illustrious campus of Warren, most Ivy of schools, which was my campus now. How it shone down on me that late afternoon as I made my way to the Demitasse a.k.a Welcome Party for the new MFAs. An exclusive group, I was told. Best of the very fucking best. A smile wavering on my face as I thought of how I was one of them now. An honest-to-god graduate student in one of the most cutthroat, hard-to-get-into programs in the country, Bunny. The highly experimental Narrative Arts program, which Mother hissingly called Fiction.
The Demitasse, as I’m sure you recall Bunny, was in a very white tent on the prettily manicured green among the hundreds-of-years-old trees. You didn’t go that first year, though, did you? Too afraid to go alone perhaps? Well, I went alone, Bunny. Walked in my sky-blue Mary Janes from my new apartment just blocks away from campus. Even though I had a really lovely car, Mother’s old BMW, I walked. Alone, did I mention that already? Scary. First day of school is what it felt like. Five years old all over again, that’s how it felt. I remember the lone click of my footsteps in the golden evening, among the lengthening shadows. Crows cawing all around me, making the air sound like death. Sure, I was afraid despite my smiling.
Don’t be afraid, Mother had laughed when she said goodbye earlier. It’s only an art degree, for god’s sake, Button. Just writing stories, isn’t it?
Yes, Mother, I’d said, not wanting to get into it. That it was my actual fucking soul in those stories.
Well, then, Mother had said, what’s there to be afraid of?
Nothing, I’d said. Nothing at all. And I’d gripped my razor blade, hidden in my dress pocket, where I liked to keep it, Bunny. (I still do keep it there, in fact.) You’re absolutely right as usual, Mother, I’d said. And Mother had smiled. Don’t disappoint us, please.
The party was hell at first, of course it was. So many poets. So many old people, probably professors. All of them as pale as vampires, wearing gradations of black that hurt my eyes. Talking softly to one another in small clusters, smirking like they thought they were so, so smart, and probably they were so smart was the awful thing. The frames of their eyeglasses were very conceptual. Everyone’s hair was so intimidatingly feathered and asymmetrical, such artful chaos everywhere you looked, that for the first time in my life, Bunny, I became self-conscious of my perfectly tucked-under bob. And then the conversations all around me, Bunny. About the Process, and “death of the author” or whatever, and obscure French writers I’d never heard of, and me trying so hard to smile politely at everyone, and everyone looking at me, Bunny, at my oh-so-polite smiling, like I was insane. I suffered. So much social agony. (You’re not the only one who knows social agony, fyi.) Alone, I leaned against a white Doric pillar bedecked with billowing tulle for what felt like forever, clutching the razor in my pocket between my so-sweating fingers, and there I almost died a thousand deaths. Yet I was still smiling stupidly.
What do we do with a frown, Button? Mother always said.
We turn it upside down, Mother.
I remember I was wearing this sky dress, which, as you can see, Bunny, has an actual blue sky on it complete with billowy white clouds. My hair was freshly bobbed into Louise Brooks and dyed what Mother called frigid blond but I called Grace Kelly. I remember the tulle floating around me, grazing my bare shoulders like it was saying, Hi, hi, you’re not alone. I closed my eyes each time it did. I remember the trays of hors d’oeuvres and chilled champagne and how I was holding a flute, drinking the sparkly bubbles far too fast, nearly crushing the glass in my white-gloved hand. I remember rabbits hopping on the distant green, in and out of my field of perception, and how I thought nothing at all of it then. What I thought was, I hate it here. What I thought was, This is all so fucking embarrassing. Not just this party, but coming here at all. To New England. To Warren. To be a writer. Not at all what Mother, probably halfway back to Virginia by now, wanted for me. Mother’s dreams for me were so very big, much bigger than the Academy. She’d said as much over the moules frites we had at a nearby French bistro earlier that day. The Bistro was painted all red inside like maybe it was hell. There was a giant stone rabbit’s head on the wall right beside our table, mouth open like it was roaring. It was backlit by a red light like it was the animal god of the place. I was aroused by it slightly, I didn’t know why. But at least it’s Ivy League, Coraline, Mother was saying. There is that. And she took a very long sip of her sauvignon blanc, which is the Episcopalian way of thanking God. Mother reminded me that I could always return to theater, be onstage like I wanted, even on-screen like I wanted, right alongside Ryan Gosling like I wanted, if only I would throw up more and learn to memorize better. I looked down at my side green salad, its shavings of pecorino and smattering of lardons, which I had asked them to take off, please but which they’d put on anyway. Inside, I started to cry. But I said, Thank you so much for the feedback, Mother, I’ll give that some thought.
Now, looking around this tent at these tables full of writers, I sort of wished I had. Learned to throw up more. I was ready to leave. To burn my own notebook even though it held my heart’s blood, to fuck my own small dreams. Some people were sort of smirking at my sky dress, I saw, and I started to feel stupid in it. It’s the world that is stupid, Mother always said, and I clutched that idea like I clutched the razor. Thinking how nice the blade would feel against my inner-thigh flesh, Bunny. I should go to the bathroom, get in a locked stall, and maybe do that for a little while. Nick at my soft skin. Watch the blood bloom there in the prettiest red dots, like tiny roses. I was about to go looking when I saw something that made me stay.
Someone, Bunny.
A girl. Standing so petite and alone by a tulle-bedecked pillar like I was, eating a small plate of pastries very quickly. She was wearing a dress patterned with the greenest grass—it was the grass that caught my eye. There were strange-looking flowers growing in that grass, I didn’t know their names. She looked very lost, like maybe she was in a fairy-tale wood, at least metaphorically speaking. She kept glancing over her shoulder for the proverbial wolf or the witch, the thing that might gobble her up. It was there, her eyes said, oh yes. It would show up any minute. She had the shiniest red hair, and her face was like a small, scared heart. Like a doll, Bunny, yes. One I might have clutched in my own bedroom dark. One that was so pretty, I might have hated her a little, even as I loved her so much. But pretty as this girl was, she was also sort of hunched over her pastries like she wanted to disappear. Funny she was wearing gloves too, white like mine. Seeing those gloves and that grass dress, seeing her scared-heart face, made me smile for the first time since I’d gotten to this hell place. Yes, Bunny, like you, I thought this town was a hell place too at first. A violence in the air that was almost crackling.
