Bunny (Bunny, #1)

by Mona Awad

each other’s arms with their small, small hands. “I miss you, Bunny,” they say to each other in their fake little girl voices, even though they are standing right fucking next to each other, and I can taste the hate in their hearts like iron on my tongue.

Her perfume smells like rain and smoke and her eye makeup scares small children

It was soothing. But sexy too. Like a tongue was being dragged up your inner thigh every time he said hi.”

Sometimes we’d fall a few feet apart from each other and he would be close but so far away.

He was in love with Alyssa Fisher, who played Véronique, his French mistress. He took her to prom. Waved at me from the dance floor. Hey, Samantha.

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.

Go outside and bring us a bunny, Samantha.

I did love the quiet. How there was never anyone here. Except the swan, of course. Turning and turning its lonely circles. Or else just drifting there. And then, one morning, one terrible-wonderful morning, there was Ava. Sitting on the bench like she’d always been there. Asking me for a light I didn’t know I had. But now, there’s no swan on the water. No Ava either.

They are fucking staring at me.

never known how to be in this world without most of my soul dreaming up and living in another.

You could use a few rips in your soul’s kimono. Seriously. A little fall never hurt anyone, you know? Also, you need to learn to kill your own spiders.

You two, pair up! Take turns leading. Are you leading or am I? I asked Ava. Whatever, she said. We can both lead.

A lazy-eyed goth girl with whom I used to skip school to go read horror novels at the library.

“The prematurely balding one?”

LOL

From upstairs, I hear more screams. “Don’t you guys hear that?” They look at one another. Genuine confusion troubles their brows. “Hear?”

girl run.

“Your beauty is like screaming, Samantha,” says Beowulf, touching my face.

bro wtf stfu

Her skin has a pink glow, as though she’s just been masturbating.

what HSGAAGHAHAHAGAAG

“Rob Valencia.”

What the faq

And at six foot four he is the only man in the universe who ever made me feel short.

hehe

“Believe, Samantha,” he says. “Please. It makes sex faster.”

wait what the faq

That’s when Rob Valencia’s head explodes. Literally explodes. Blood and brains all over me, the walls. Blood all over the Bunnies and their whimpering boys. Bits of skull falling on the hardwood floor like hail. His headless, suited body remains standing before me. Then it collapses to the floor.

Goldilocks could set up shop here forever. Masturbate. I picture Goldilocks brazenly masturbating in this bed while the Three Bears watch. She is daring them with her slitty eyes to tell her to stop. The Bears are too polite to say anything.

no but wtf

Instead, they put on rabbit-head masks just like the one they slipped on my face.

run.

Then the light goes out. A wind comes. The curtains catch fire. The bunny explodes.

It’s sweet, I think. They’re nice people.

the mc CANNOT be mentally stable

Because it is that time of day where we thank each other for breathing.

He is saying we are so beautiful and wild like the black moors of the Brontës, he is saying our talents are as deep as the North Sea.

Suddenly it is very hard to recall any other animal besides Bunny. When we look around in our minds all we see are floppy ears, puffy tails.

We miss something somehow. Like we could hug and hug and hug until our ribs crack and our hearts burst and our lungs collapse and our arms break off and still. We’d still be hugging air. No body.

We look down at our dress. It is covered with kittens who are wearing crowns because they are the kings and queens of this world.

“You do realize you’re in a cult, don’t you? You’re in a fucking cult.”

that explains it

“I hope you don’t mind this music,” he says. “No.” I want to take the CD and throw it out the window, possibly setting it on fire first.

Their cheeks are plump and pink and shining like they’ve been eating too much sugar, but actually it’s Gossip Glow, the flushed look that comes from throwing another woman under the bus.

What’s home to you, Samantha? I wonder what’s home to you. Ava. Ava’s home.

Leave it be. Leave her be. You don’t deserve her.

Then she’s air. She becomes air and I scream.

“Loser. Didn’t I give you a key ages ago?”

Ava looks at me a long time. She kisses me on the forehead. “Don’t worry, Smackie. I still love you most of all.”

Anyway, he left the door open. Sort of. Not locked, anyway. Basically inviting me.

cum over

Lol

That’s when I see the words EAT ME carved all over her chest and arms with a razor.

wtf

But he plays along. “What am I, Samantha? A monster?” Yes. And I’ve unleashed you upon the world.

I’m looking at him from across the dinner table. Max. Tristan. Byron. Hud. Icarus. Whatever the fuck his name is.

No one loves you like me.” She smiles at me. She means it. With her whole soul.

tell her he loves her because I love her. But I tell her he’s also fucking with the Bunnies. To get back at them. Not because he loves them or anything. He hates them. Because I hate them.

“You’ll still be here?” I ask. “When I come back?” She smiles. “Of course I’ll still be here. Where would I go?”

Focusfocusfocusfocusfocus.

You’ve read books that say things like “Time stood still”? I always thought it was bullshit. But it does. It can. It can stand as still as I am standing, here in the kicked-down doorway. It can stand as still as the blood-spattered walls and the broken window. It can be as still as the giant dead swan with the ax in its back lying in the middle of the room, its white wings extended as though poised for flight, a pool of dark blood oozing from its giant body.

More blood than is possible to come out of a bird.

She gives me the full hate bouquet of her smile. Every fuck you flower.