Chapter 6: Bunnies and Cigars

 

I named the bunnies.

Humper, Thumper, Jumper, Dumper, Craphole Joe and St. Peter Cottontail.

They sit at the kitchen table while I sleep, kick their feet up. Play cards. Smoke cigars.

They know when I’m awake.

They say, “Hey Fred.”

“Welcome back to the world, Fred.”

“You suck.”

My nose will be stuffed full of cigar smoke — stale blue fumes that hang over my face like a pillow. Trying to suffocate me.

I don’t know how those damned bunnies manage to smoke their cigars; I don’t know how they manage to hold cans of spray paint or tubs of gasoline, either. They aren’t real bunnies. I mean, really. They change colors!

Today, for instance, they look like someone took a red marker and scribbled their faces on the air. Sometimes they are purple, though, or blue or black.

Yet no matter their color, they are always bastards.

“I hate you,” says Dumper. 

Sometimes I can get away from the bunnies. If I duck around a corner fast enough, I can usually shake them for a little while.

I used to do that when I was younger, but they’d always find me again.

“Where the fuck you been?” one of them would ask, and there would be paint on their fur or they’d smell like gasoline. That night on the news, I’d see some story about how vandals were out spray painting cars or starting fires in the Quik Mart around the corner.

I learned not to leave them alone.

Bad things happen when I leave the bunnies alone.