Bunny (Bunny, #1)

by Mona Awad

bearing witness to four grown women—​my academic peers—​cooingly strangle each other hello. Or good-​bye.

That their ardent squeezing might cause the flesh to ooze from the sleeves, neckholes, and A-line hems of their cupcake dresses like so much inane frosting.

I think they are depressed

Completely immune to the disdain of their fellow graduate student. Me. Samantha Heather Mackey. Who is not a Bunny. Who will never be a Bunny.

Their skins glowing with health insurance as they all crouch down in unison to collectively coo at a professor’s ever jumping shih tzu.

Trust, Sasha. Patience, Sarah. Sometimes you have to walk away, Serena. Sometimes, Stephanie, you have to seize the bull by the horns.

and I can taste the hate in their hearts like iron on my tongue.

The Duchess, in turning toward us, causes a ripple effect of turning among the other Bunnies. First Cupcake looks over. Then Creepy Doll with her tiger eyes. Then Vignette with her lovely Victorian skull face, her stoner mouth wide open.

When at last I lower my hand, I turn to her. She’s looking at me like I’m something worse than a stranger.

a one-​woman play about the town being The Body and The Body being the town.

SMUT SALON

What.

“Jonah, you scared me.” “Sorry, Sam.”

They refer to each other by name a LOT

I keep thinking when will I wake up, you know? Like maybe I should ask someone to punch me. You mean pinch you? A pinch wouldn’t wake me up from this. And if it did, I’d be back in Fairbanks, living in my dad’s basement. Where would you be if I punched you, Samantha?

That I’m running from him like a scared little bitch. What’s the prey of a lion again?

She is so real

And then Jonah waves and waves and waves at me and I’m reminded of myself, last night, waving, my hand high over my head.

It’s that time of evening she calls the hour between the dog and the wolf. A time that actually makes this sorry swath of New England beautiful, the sky ablaze with a sunset the color of flamingos.

She looks so much like a cupcake that when I first met her at orientation, I had a very real desire to eat her. Bite deeply into her white shoulder. Dig a fork in her cheek.

Normally when I enter Workshop, they give me tightfisted Hi’s, little upward jerks of their lips, making me feel, as I take my seat, like a portentous fog has somehow settled into the room. But this time they’re all looking at me and smiling like I’m the actual sun.

“No, Samantha, sit on the couch,” Cupcake says. “You absolutely should. You’re so tall.”

Biiiiitch.

Could it be for me? They all nod. Yes, Samantha. For you.

“I could sweeten it a little, maybe? Maybe that’s all it really needs.” They look so genuinely concerned.

Sometimes when I tell myself or Ava the story, it grows teeth and it’s something. Definitely something. Other times, it comes apart in my hands like air. But if I remember all the right details. If I tell them in the right order. If I pause in the right places, trail off in the right places . . .

“Come on, Samantha.” Their eyes become slits. Their smiles tighten. They look at me like they know I have a burning slutty secret I am willfully withholding.

“It was like fucking,” I say, taking a sip of my drink. “But way more intense, you know? Cosmic.”

“After that, what?” Cupcake prompts, breathless. “After that, we were simply past language,” I say.

Why do you lie so much? And about the weirdest little things? my mother always asked me. I don’t know, I always said. But I did know. It was very simple. Because it was a better story.

Me too

But I figured with a few well-​placed posters, I might mute the sound of my own future death cry that would sometimes flood my ears upon entering this single room with galley kitchen.

Think Great Thoughts, Dream Big Dreams like full worlds you could wander.

I couldn’t tell if they were joking. Were they joking? We never joke about bunnies, Bunny. Bunny, did they just call me Bunny? Yes, Bunny.

Do not judge a woman by her red cloak soft as tiger pelt. There is nothing in these pockets but lint.

Her sky is full of lightning. Her sun has teeth. She gives all the spoiled Warren girls gills, fangs, wings. She sets the frat boys on fire.

This place is so beautiful you find it hard to believe that it’s overrun with the insane and the desperate and the lonely.

Everyone on the street suddenly goes from looking like an extra in a zombie movie to the star of a French New Wave film.

and a sudden, violent urge to hug her briefly courses down my arms, making my fingers twitch. She’s never stood up for me before.

Brainwash

I record the number 1098 in my notebook. Which is the number of times I’ve heard “the Body” mentioned since being at Warren. Because at Warren, the Body is all the rage. As though everyone in the academic world has just now discovered that they are vesseled in precarious, fastly decaying houses of bone and flesh and my god, what material. What a wealth of themes and plot! I still don’t quite understand what it means to write about The Body with title caps but I always nod like I do. Oh yes, The Body, of course.

“We want more, I guess is what we’re saying, Samantha,” the Duchess says. Hands braided over my pages, looking not at me but at Fosco, who nods with motherly gravitas. “Does that make sense?”

No

Each time I see one, I feel a little lash of fear and excitement in my gut. I recall the soft but heavy magic of the animal in my lap that night. Me drunkenly staring down into its twitching, leporine face. An upstairs window turning on, then off. Their little-​girl voices warm and peltlike in my ears. See how easy, Samantha? We told you.

We should do it again sometime, Creepy Doll says shyly, like they’re asking me on a second date.

But I doubt you did any of those things unless you have a mullet or a deep sense of irony.

I’ve never really not written, never not had another world of my own making to escape to, never known how to be in this world without most of my soul dreaming up and living in another. Until I came here.

Can we dress you? they ask me, leading me by the hand into the bedroom. Also, there’s this hair we saw on the internet that would look so good with your face oh my god. Do you mind? Don’t kill us.

Then, Beowulf says wistfully, “Your beauty is nuanced and labyrinthine like a sentence by Proust.”

“Melanie Shingler is a whore compared to you,” says the boy next to him. Blake. “Pigeon-​toed. Bad eyeliner. I couldn’t see it then because I was a fool but I have since developed my perception.”

“Samantha,” Beowulf says. “Tell us about you, Samantha.” “Samantha, tell us everything, Samantha.” “Samantha, we want to listen.” “Samantha,” says Blake, taking my hands in his hands, “we’re dying to know.”

What the hell

A knock, knock at the door.

Its the guy she lied about

“I came right over, Samantha,” he says, squeezing my hand. Rob Valencia is squeezing my hand. This is on a giant marquee in my mind. Flashing and flashing and flashing.

What the hell is going on

She fails to understand the depths of our heart. Our heart our heart our heart! We’ve read Jane Eyre too, you cunt, and we’ve read The Waves, and when we read it, you know, we wept for minutes.” Then he starts weeping.

I try to think of something I have to do. Something I could say that wouldn’t be a lie. Some essential person I have to see. But I can’t find her in my brain now. Every shape in there is dark, indiscernible.

They call me Bunny. I’ve forgotten all their names, but they help me remember. The edible-​looking girl with the golden bob is Caroline. The blunt, veiny, pretty one who looks like another century is Victoria. And then the one who is their queen, who resembles evil Icelandic royalty but who is gazing at me so very kindly today, is Eleanor.

“Clear.” I nod. “I’m so glad.” I bite into the mini cupcake Caroline offered me at the start of class. For the hangover, she said, shyly offering up the ornate confection in the cupped bowl of her small, pink hands.

Wth is going on

“No, no, no. Not a novel, Bunny.” “Which is no longer novel, you know.” “Such a tired form.” “Flaccid. Limp.” “What we’re doing is far more . . .” “Innovative.” “Experimental.” “Performance based.” “Intertextual.” “So intertextual.” “Basically: a hybrid.”