Easter Surprise

Terry was walking past his parent's door when he heard his mothers frustrated exclamation.

“I can't believe I have to work all Easter weekend!” she had bemoaned, sitting on the bed as she tried to stop her tears. His father was shaving in the bathroom, and looked like he was only half listening. Terry thought she had probably gotten off easy, since now Dad would have to head the Easter Festivities. He would have to color the eggs, make the rice crispy bunnies, hide the eggs, sneak out the baskets at night, and generally take care of Terry and his sister. His parents would have likely been a little sad to know that at ten their son no longer believed in this things, had, in fact, peaked while his mother set the baskets up last year, but he hadn't breathed a word of it to Laura so she was still excited for the coming of the bunny.

“The kids will be sad not to see you Sunday morning.” his father commented, wincing as the razor nicked him.

One look at Mom told Terry that was the wrong thing to say.

“Thanks, Randy. Because I didn't feel shitty enough as it is. I'm looking at needing to work fifteen to sixteen hour days for the next three days and you throw something like that at me.”

His dad held toilet paper to the cut, but Terry thought the wound to his mother might be worse.

“I didn't mean anything by it,” he corrected, finishing up with the shaving cream left on his face, “It was just,”

“Well don't worry then,” she said, getting up as she turned for the door, “I'll just sleep in the guest room after I come dragging in tonight so I don't disturb you. I wouldn't want you to miss any sleep so your fresh to deal with the kids all weekend.”

When his dad commented that it wasn't fair, he set off a shouting match that lasted the better part of thirty minutes. Terry had seen his parents fight before. Their arguments were something that were starting to become more frequent as of late, and Terry thought it might be because they never saw each other. His mother worked long hours at her job, and his father worked opposite her hours making “more money than she could from breaking her back” as she often said. They tried to hide these fights from him and Laura, but both had heard them and knew better than to try to get involved.

So when his mother slapped his father hard enough to rock his head to the side, it surprised her as much as it did Terry.

She stood like a statue for a pregnant moment, the two of them caught in tableau, both too afraid to move lest their marriage just shatter like a soap bubble.

“I....I have to go to work.” she stuttered, grabbing her coat from the bed as she walked to the door. Terry scuttled away, but he saw her shadow as she stopped in the door like she meant to say something else. She left instead, her slip safe shoes making a little crink noise on the floor as she walked. Terry just stood there, unsure of what to do now, afraid to move lest she should hear him, but when the door closed in the living room, he knew she had gone. He still couldn't bring himself to move just yet, not sure what to make of this new development.

He had heard them fight, but never like this before.

He peeked back through the door and saw his father looking at the mark in the mirror.

He was trying to be stoic, but to Terry it looked like he was having trouble figuring out what that slap had meant too.

Terry trotted down the hall while his dad was distracted, wanting to be in the living room with Laura when he finally came to check on them. She was watching Paw Patrol on the couch, but it didn't really look like she was paying attention. She glanced up when Terry sat next to her, and he could tell she had been listening. She was four, but she already knew well enough to listen when her parents fought. It was how you could tell if mom was going to come into the living room and play with you, or if she was going to sit in her room and cry. It was how you could tell if Dad might throw the ball around with you, or if he was likely to growl at you to go play somewhere else.

“I'm tired of this.” Terry said turning to look at the TV as he watched the pups save a bunch of ducks.

“Me too,” Laura said, not even having to ask, “I don't want mommy or daddy to leave, but I hate when they fight.”

“Sometimes I wish they would leave,” Terry said, and Laura looked at him as she covered her mouth with her hands.

“Don't say that, Terry. Who would take care of us?”

“I don't know,” he growled, feeling her sweaty hand slip into his, “but anyone would be better than all the fighting.”

They sat in silence for a while as the show went off and something else came on. Terry wasn't really paying attention to it anymore. He had learned early in life that when you were watching TV, nothing else really seemed important. You could ignore your parents fighting, your sister crying as your mom cried from the next room, your dad as he tried to talk softly to Grandma on the phone about how bad that last fight had been, and how much he wondered how long they could go on. Dad wandered in somewhere between shows and told them lunch would be in a little while and asked if they would pick up their toys beforehand? Both went about it mechanically, throwing their toys into the box as they tidied up.

Terry thought a lot about that fight that day, and it followed him like a ghost as he tried his best to outrun it. He thought about the way she had accused his dad of not wanting the kids as he put his toys away. He thought about the way Dad had told her that all she did was work while he ate his PB&J. He thought about the sound of that slap as he tried to concentrate on a video game or a comic book, but they chased him like a dog chases its tail all day long.

He was still thinking about it when he went to bed that night, and when Dad turned out the lights and told him he loved him, he found that eyes weren't nearly tired enough to send him off to dreamless sleep. He lay there in the dark, letting it pool around him as the moon sent runners of light in through his window. He was still awake when his mother came home, and he heard her look in on his father before going to the guest room and closing herself in.

Terry closed his eyes, trying to seal in the hot tears that threatened to come leaking out. Ten was too young to realize that your comfortable life might be coming to an end. He shouldn't have such thoughts, but he had watched Bobby Fitsroy go through this the year before. Now Bobby lived with his Dad in New Mexico half the year and his mom down the street the other half of the year. Terry saw him at school still, most of the time, but he looked angry and confused most of the time. Bobby looked like he wasn't sure where he was a lot, and he'd started getting into fights more often.

Terry didn't want that for him, or Laura, and as he tried to stop the tears, he heard himself whisper the words of a prayer, or a curse.

“Take them away. Take them away before they can hurt us. I don't care whose going to care for us, but I don't want them to share us. Please please please don't make me choose between them. I just want the fighting to stop.”

He drifted off as a light rain began to fall outside, a soft sound beneath it that, to his ears, sounded like hopping.

* * * * *

Laura woke him up in the morning, shaking him so violently that he thought someone was attacking him.

“Terry! Wake up! Mommy and Daddy are gone!”

Terry came groggily awake, still half in the dream that had held him all night.

He'd been sitting in bed, watching the light stream under his bedroom door, broken only by something that came thumping up and down the hallway. It seemed to shake the house with each loud thump, and the longer he watched, the more curious he had become. He'd gotten out of bed, but each step towards the door seemed to stretch his room like a fun house. The door was suddenly miles away, and as he moved closer, he watched that thumping creature move back and forth in front of it. Just as he finally reached the door, it stopped in front of it and seemed to stare at him, as much as a shadow could stare. The long black shade of the creature fell over him, and as the door came open, he was blinded by the light on the other side. Just as something had begun to materialize, Laura had started shaking him and he'd never seen what it was.

“What did you say?” he said, rubbing at his eyes, not sure if he had heard her correctly.

“Mom and dad are gone. Their room is empty and I can't find them!”

She was still in her pj's and her hair was a puffy cloud hanging around her head. She was crying and Terry could tell she had been up for a little while. He wasn't too worried, though. Mom and dad sometimes left them alone, but they usually left a note or something to explain it. The more awake he came, the more Terry just assumed they had forgotten to get Easter stuff and just went out to pick some up while they were asleep. Maybe, he dared to think, they had gone to talk about what had happened yesterday too.

“Did they leave a note? They probably just went out to buy Easter stuff for us.”

“I don’t know,” she said, “I woke up and there was a noise in the living room. I’m really scared, Terry. Someone put decorations up in the hall and I could see something big moving around in the living room. Come with me to check, I don’t want to go alone.”

Terry sighed and climbed out of bed. Laura got like this sometimes and until he proved to her that there was no boogie man waiting to snatch her up, she wouldn’t leave him alone. Best thing to do was to get up and prove to her that there was nothing to be afraid of so he could go back to bed until his parents got back. They never went anywhere together, they never even seemed to be off at the same time until bedtime, so if they were both gone, he still held out hope that maybe they were talking things out.

When he stepped into the hallway, however, Terry thought something else might be going on.

The walls were covered in Easter decorations. Crate Paper yellow chicks, cotton ball bunnies, happy yellow suns, multicolored Easter eggs, they were all stuck up on every surface and seemed to glare down at him, even with the hall light off. The only light he could see, in fact, was the warm, welcoming glow of the living room. As he watched, something did seem to be moving around in there, and Terry felt cold dread with every step he took.

The sound of it moving reminded him of his dream.

It was like hearing an adult hop around on all fours, and it was not an all together comforting sound.

As they came into the living room, Terry saw that the decorations were in here as well. They made the living room look strange. The furniture looked similar, just like a lot of his friends living rooms looked similar to his, but the canary yellow walls had been completely covered in decorations. They covered the windows and the doors in the technicolor vibrance of a Lisa Frank notebook, and on the tv stand where the old thirty inch tv sat, were a pair of baskets and a note that looked like someone had written it in crayon across the virgin poster board.

“Happy Easter, Laura and Terry! We have a wonderful Easter egg hunt for you! Find five eggs and then come to the kitchen for a lovely Easter breakfast!” it said.

Terry was hesitant, if his parents had planned this then it was way out of left field, but Laura was delighted. Her earlier fear vanished, and she laughed as she grabbed the pink and green basket that was clearly meant for her. Terry reached for his own, and as he looked around, he could see plastic eggs hiding everywhere. Hiding was a bit of a stretch, he supposed. Some were hidden, but others were just tossed about helter skelter, as if a much younger child might be seeking them.

“Come on Terry!” Laura said, “we only need five eggs!”

They had their eggs quickly, the living room fairly bursting with them, and as they came to the kitchen, Terry found the source of the gollumping noise.

Seated at the table, its painted eyes smiling placidly, was someone who could only be his father in a large and intricate rabbit suit. The legs were so comically large that you would have to hop in order to move, and the body was clothed in a vest of many pastel colors. A pair of large buck teeth graced the face, and one ear hung cocked at a jaunty angle. At the stove was someone in a much more normal sized chicken suit, the dimensions more suited for moving. They were cooking and clucking happily, and Terry could smell pancakes and butter as he and his sister approached the rabbit man.

Laura was hesitant, but her smile made Terry think she was still enchanted by the whole thing.

“Congratulations, my little peeps!” the rabbit man said, throwing his arms wide in excitement, “You’ve passed my first test! I hope you’re ready for some breakfast!”

As he said it, a group of smaller chicks came bustling out, holding plates up so the mother chicken could put pancakes on them. They all seemed to bawk and cluck like real chickens as they bustled about, and as Terry and his sister sat down, they brought them large pancakes with jelly beans baked into them and glasses of soda and chocolate milk to wash it all down with. Both of the kids set to covering their cakes in syrup and laid in with relish as they scarfed down the tasty treat.

As they ate, the chicks left but the chicken and the rabbit seemed to watch them with interest. Terry found it a little off putting, but he supposed it was the idea of having someone in a costume that interested in you. He was still pretty sure that this was just his mom and dad putting on for them, maybe with some of their cousins to act as the chicks, and he felt only a little embarrassed by all of it. Terry was a little too old for all this, at least he felt he was, but he could appreciate the effort that had gone into it. Maybe this was their way of making up for all the fighting lately?

If so, Terry wasn’t about to ruin this for Laura, who was probably certain that this was the Easter Bunny and his helpers.

“So,” the bunny said, bringing his gloved hands together, “are you ready for the next egg hunt?”

“YEAH!” Laura said, practically vibrating after all the sugar.

“It’s very simple,” The rabbit man said, “Go collect ten eggs each and get a wonderful prize!”

Laura hooted and was off like a shot, but Terry stayed for a moment.

“So what the prize?” he asked, “Are you guys giving us our baskets early or something?”

The bunny man cocked his head a little, and the chicken made a low little cluck sound as she folded her hands in front of her.

“Why, you've already got your basket, silly. If you want your next surprise, you better go find those eggs before your sister gets them all!”

Terry rolled his eyes, “Whatever you say, Mr Easter Bunny,” and went off to find more eggs.

The second egg hunt took next to no time as well, but Terry discovered something strange when he left the living room to search a few of the other rooms. Their two bedroom/one bath house was full of plastic eggs! The bathroom, his sisters room, his parents rooms, the living room, the coat closet, and even his room had some eggs in it. He found five in the hallway and five more in the bathroom, but it appeared he had taken his time. His sister was already biting the head off a large chocolate bunny when he came back to the kitchen. The Easter Bunny was looking on with frozen joy, but the chicken was gone now. Terry figured his mother had needed to go to work and it would just be them and their father rabbit for a while.

Terry brought his eggs back and was presented with a large chocolate rabbit of his own.

He hardly needed the sugar, but he found he had been wrapped up in the spirit of the season so he sat to have a bite.

After that, the day progressed in much the same way.

They ate candy, they hunted eggs, when lunch rolled around, the chicken and her chicks served them lunch which turned out to be some kind of hamburger made of gummy bear material with circus peanut buns. They hunted eggs all afternoon, winning chocolate, stuffed animals, and other little trinkets. As they sat on the couch watching The Easter Bunny is Coming to Town, Laura snuggled against her older brother as she tried to stay awake. Terry was trying to concentrate on the TV, but he felt like something was watching him. The prickly hairs on the back of neck were tingling and as he glanced around, he saw something large lean back into the kitchen.

Their Dad hadn't broke character all day, Mom either, and though Terry applauded their efforts, he was ready for some normalcy. Surely they couldn't keep this up all weekend, could they? His mom would have to go back to work. Dad would have to go to work. This had been fun, the first day in a long time that his parents hadn't spent the day fighting, but Terry knew that tomorrow it would probably go back to business as usual.

As he drifted off, he felt the shadow of the rabbit fall over him again, and shuddered as he remembered the dream from the night before.

* * * * * *

He woke up in his bed the next day, Laura shaking him awake again.

“Terry, Terry!”

“What, Laura? I wanna sleep. I'm tired.”

He rolled over, pulling the covers over him as he slid his head under the pillow.

He felt something small and plastic press against his fingertips, and opened his eyes to find a florescent orange egg nestled beneath the pillow.

“Okay, but you'll miss the egg hunt for breakfast,” she said shyly, running out of the room as he sat up in bed.

He could already see a few of the eggs hidden in his room and a smile stretched his face as he grabbed for his basket.

It seemed they were having another day of egg hunts.

Their father was waiting for them in the kitchen, mom in her hen costume cooking at the stove, and when he held his hands out, Laura dumped five eggs into the floppy mittens that covered them.

“Great job, my dear!” he said, pulling a giggling Laura into a hug, “Mother Hen, Laura would like her breakfast now.”

The hen buckawked loudly and set a plate down in front of Laura with scrambled eggs and bacon. Laura looked a little disappointed, before biting into them and finding they were gummy bacon and eggs. The rabbit looked at Terry as he came stumbling into the kitchen, wiping sleep from his eyes and taking in the strange scene. His sister was laughing as she stretched the bacon like taffy, scarfing it down with gusto.

He started to sit, but the Rabbit Man opened his hands, flapping them a little as he expected his payment.

“Right,” Terry said, “How many is it this morning?”

“Only five,” the rabbit said cheerily and Terry put his head into the living room and quickly snapped up five of the plastic eggs.

After he handed them to his father, he was rewarded with his own plate of gummy breakfast.

“Not to ruin your theme here, Dad, but could I get some real eggs?”

He heard the pan crash against the stove, and turned to see Mother Hen glowering at him through the eyes of her mask. Even through those painted on, happy eyes, Terry felt like he could feel the coals of her rage. Was she that committed to the role?

“My bad, mom. Didn't mean to insult you.” he said, turning to eat.

The Easter Bunny was giving her an equally hollow look, but turned back to Terry with his frozen regard, “Eat up, children! We have another fun day of egg hunts ahead! We might even dye some eggs and make some crafts. Won’t that be fun?”

“YEAH!” Laura cried, gobbling the rest of her breakfast.

Terry agreed, silently wondering how long this would last?

* * * * * *

They sat on the couch again that night, watching something called The Easter Chick.

They had made masks after breakfast, both of them looking like chick faces made of easter grass and paper mache. Laura had worn hers all day, making little clucking noises as she went about her egg hunting. She punctuated each loud squawk with a giggle, and the Easter Bunny seemed to really like her enthusiasm.

Terry, on the other hand, was glad they would only really be able to do this for one more day.

Tomorrow would be Sunday, and Terry expected that after tomorrow, things would go back to normal. The egg hunts were fun, but they had needed thirty eggs each to get dinner. Terry had been afraid that they couldn't find sixty eggs between them, but they had managed it after he remembered the one under his pillow and found a few more in his room. They had been hunting eggs all day, and the longer it went on, the less certain Terry was that his father was in that costume.

He had felt the rabbit man watching them on multiple occasions, peeking from doorways and skulking in the shadows, and it just didn't seem like the kind of thing his father would do. Except for at meals, the chicken woman and her chicks were nowhere to be seen, and Terry wondered where they were going? They had to be disappearing through the back door, because they certainly weren't going out the front.

As Terry glanced at the window, still covered in decorations, and began to doubt that there was anything there but more wall.

There had always been a window there, he knew that, but he also doubted that there was a window or a door in the living room anymore.

The movie went off and the living room was bathed in the murky credit screen. Terry could feel the rabbit man watching him, the shadows from the kitchen not quite deep enough to hide him completely. He had been watching them for hours, and Terry prayed internally that he was dreaming. This wasn't real, his mind was playing tricks on him. He was being silly, of course it was his mom and dad. Who else would be doing this?

He yawned, but he shook his head.

He didn't want to fall asleep.

Then he'd wake up in his bed and this thing would go on and on forever.

No, no it would be over tomorrow.

His dad would wake them up monday morning and ask how they had liked having the Easter Bunny over all weekend?

He would wear that big ole grin he always wore when he asked what Santa had brought them, and Terry would know that it had been him the whole time.

As he tried to make his mind believe this, he must have dozed off, because the next thing he knew, it was morning.

* * * * * *

Terry woke up the next morning, but not with Laura shaking him awake.

He woke up to the sound of Laura's frantic footsteps as she ran around the house.

Terry's stomach grumbled, letting him know that it was later than he had thought as he rolled out of bed. His feet came down on plastic eggs galore, and he scooped a few of them up as he headed for the kitchen. As he came into the hallway, his sister nearly knocked him over as she hunted for eggs. She was wearing the mask still, her giggles gone as she moved about frantically. She was counting to herself, clearly thinking of eggs, and Terry shook his head as he moved towards the kitchen.

The Easter Bunny and Mother Hen were still there, and the Bunny spread his arms wide as he trumpeted, “Happy Easter!”

He was humming Here Comes Peter Cottontail as Terry put the ten eggs into his arms.

The Rabbit froze, seeming to count them with his skin, before dropping them onto the floor when some of them broke open and let their jelly beans spill out.

“Oh dear, someone didn't read the note. It's thirty eggs for your special Easter Breakfast, kiddo!”

Terry gasped, though it was twinged with cynicism.

“Come on, Dad. This has gone a little far. I'm hungry, I want food.”

The rabbit sat staring at him, his frozen face seeming more sinister now than jolly.

“Sorry, kiddo. I'm the Easter Bunny, not your Dad. If you want your breakfast, its thirty Easter Eggs. It's a good one too, you won't want to,”

“Enough! This was fun at first, but it's just becoming too much. I'm too old for this stuff, anyway. Laura may like this but I just want some,” but he had reached for the stuffed rabbit head, and the hand that grabbed him was strong and thick.

And painful.

“Oh dear, pal. Looks like someone wants to be a party pooper. No breakfast for you until you have thirty eggs. Now scoot, kiddo.”

His voice never rose, never became mean or monstrous, but when he flung Terry out of the kitchen, Terry realized that the guy in the suit couldn't possibly be his dad. He tossed him effortlessly with his one arm, and when Terry hit the wall outside the kitchen door, he saw stars. The Rabbit man just sat there after he'd returned his arm to the arm of the chair, his placid face grinning like a specter at the fallen boy.

Laura came bustling in then, the front of her easter dress stuffed with eggs. She upturned her bucket, spilling eggs across the floor and then dropped the front of her dress and let her bounty cascade into the Easter Bunnies lap. There must have been sixty eggs there, maybe more, and as the rabbit clapped his hands together, he reached behind the chair and took out a box that Terry was pretty sure hadn't been there before. Laura reached for it, her hands taking hold of the intricately wrapped paper, and Terry heard her squeal as she pulled out a pair of onesie pajamas that looked like a chicken's body, minus the head.

The shadow of Mother Hen fell over him and when she pushed the door closed, Terry was left hurting as he leaned against the wall.

For a split second, Terry thought about looking for some eggs.

His stomach was grumbling and he wanted something to eat, but he knew it would just be more candy and sugar. They had eaten nothing but sweets for two days, and Terry's stomach wasn't just grumbling from lack of food. He had felt ready to throw up after the dinner they had last night, Swedish fish the size of a carp in some kind of sweet sauce, and his body was crying out for real food. Instead of looking for eggs, Terry decided to limp back to his room and see if there was any food there. After a half hour of looking, he discovered that the beef jerky and the sunflower seeds and even the christmas popcorn bucket that his grandma had gotten him were gone. That seemed to lend more credence to the idea that this wasn't his house, but how could it be anything else?

Something bounced off his closed door then, hard enough to rattle it, and Terry had just enough time and energy to throw his body against it before something battered it like a cannon ball. It bounced into the frame, Terry being pushed continuously as whatever it was tried to get in. He yelled at it to go away, told it to stop, but it just kept pummeling his door until it finally dropped against the wood, panting heavily.

Terry wanted to see what it was, wanted to know what was happening out there, but instead he locked the door and shoved his desk against it.

A plastic egg fell out from behind the desk, and as it broke open, Terry saw the jelly beans glistening on the floor.

He was just hungry enough that even the sugary beans looked tasty and he wolfed them down greedily.

He laid eyes on another, and suddenly he could see the fluorescent colors everywhere in his small room.

He wanted gut them and devour every last morsel, but something told him not to.

They might have to last him for a little while, he reminded himself, taking them and dumping them on his desk, trying to see what kind of resources he had available.

* * * * * *

Turned out, the beans last for two days.

No new eggs appeared, and Terry ate the beans sparingly as he tried to devise some sort of plan to get out of here. If the front door was gone, he would only know after he tore down the decorations. What would the Easter Bunny and the Mother Hen do if he started doing that? Would they stop him? Would they hurt him? The bump on the back of his head proved that they would hurt him, but how much? And what was all this? Why was he here? How had he gotten here?

Surely this hadn't been because of his stupid Easter wish!

He worried about Laura too. God only knew what was happening to her. He still heard her running up and down the halls as she searched for eggs, and sometimes he wondered if she was the one banging on his door. It happened a few more times, the banging less frantic than the first time, and sometimes he imagined that he heard some weird clucking as whatever it was battered the door. Mother Hen maybe? Terry didn't know, but he knew one thing for sure.

Whether the food ran out or not, he would need water.

On the second day, he devised a plan to get to the bathroom and get back to his room. He would creep out after Laura went to sleep, something she seemed to do after a set amount of time. Whatever was going on out there, his sister still slept, and that would give him an opportunity to get water and maybe some food. He could check and see if the rabbit man slept too, and if he did, maybe he could sneak some food from the kitchen. It was a long shot, but it was all he had.

After he had heard nothing from the house for what he judged to be an hour, Terry shoved the desk out of his way and peeked into the hallway. It was dark, the only light coming from the living room as the tv showed nothing but snow. Whatever tonights feature presentation had been, it was over now. Terry crept like a ghost from his bedroom and made his way down the hallway. His throat was dry, his belly grumbling, but he made himself be quiet. If the rabbit man or the chicken woman or even Laura caught him, it could be very bad for him. Each step felt like a thousand miles, and each step made him expect to be devoured by a large angry beast as his foot came down on the carpet.

When his foot struck something, he jumped back in surprise, but when it groaned in pain, he looked down to see that he had stumbled over the last thing he expected to find.

It was one of the peeps, but it was laying on the floor, curled into a ball. It was shaking and groaning, and as he came close again, it turned its head and said his name. It lifted its wings and tried to touch its face, but it seemed to panic when it touched its throat and didn't find what it was expecting. It shook its head, saying his name again as it sobbed in pain and fear, and that's when Terry understood.

It was Laura.

They had turned his sister into one of them somehow.

Terry didn't remember crying, but when Laura listed a wing up to his face, he saw tears on her feathers. He pulled her to him, wanting to comfort her but unsure how to. This was all his fault. He had just wanted something better than his parents always fighting and his sister always scared. He just wanted a family that loved each other.

When he picked her up, he found her surprisingly light.

He took her to the living room, intent on discovering if there was a door or not.

He laid her on the couch, Laura seeming to bask in the glow of the TV, as he went to work.

The crate paper and construction paper came down with a harsh gasp as Terry tore it. The walls were covered in them, thick as spider web, and as they came down, Terry felt almost hopeless as only the wall greeted him. There was no door, no window, no escape from this place. Terry slammed his small fist against the wall in impotent rage. They were trapped, the only way out was through the damned rabbit and his clucking wife, and Terry doubted they could get past them if his sister was conscious, even less so while he carried her.

“Lose something, kiddo?”

Terry spun in a blind panic and there was the Easter Bunny. He looked different now, slightly smaller, and when he moved, Terry realized why. His legs moved like they should, galumphing along like a rabbit would. He was minus his vest, and his face was far too expressive for a normal creature. He looked like the costume he had worn, but he was just too real to be believed. He was like a prop in a movie, and the most genuine thing Terry had ever seen.

He held out his hand, and a delicate blue egg appeared. Even at ten, it was the most beautiful thing Terry had ever seen. It was faberge, looking painstakingly painted, and in the front was a little window. Inside the window, Terry could see a little house with little trees in the front yard. He didn’t need a closer look to see that it was his house and guess the eggs' purpose.

“I was worried you had died in there, kiddo, and now you're trying to leave before the games over. Not very sportsmanlike of you.”

Terry looked at the egg, wanting it more than anything in his entire life, but knowing he'd probably never have.

“Let's play a game then. You find just one more egg, and you can go free. Find this egg in twenty four hours, and you can go. Fail, and you come with me.”

Terry took a step towards him, wanting to simply snatch the egg, but as the rabbit closed his fist around it, Terry saw it was gone when he opened it again.

“Where is that? Where would you take me?” Terry asked, not trusting the rabbit man for a second.

“Same place I take all the kids who wish for something better. You head home with me, join the peeps, lay the eggs I leave for kids who've earned them, and serve me for all time.”

Terry wanted to deny him, wanted to yell some of the unique swears the older kids used at school, but he knew that this might be his only chance.

He was screwed either way, so what did it really matter?

“Deal,” Terry said, and suddenly every light in the house came on, bathing the space in light.

The Easter Bunny was gone, but Terry didn't need him anymore.

It took him two hours to destroy the living room, but he found no egg. He ripped the foam out of the couch, moving his sister to a pallet on the floor as he tore it to pieces. He smashed the TV, he tried to pull up the carpet before realizing the futility, and after two hours, he had nothing to show for it but a torn fingernail and a dull throbbing in his hand.

He went room to room, tearing everything to pieces as he looked for the egg. All the normal eggs were gone now, and Terry was glad that they weren't there to muddy the waters. He tore open his parents mattress, he pulled the drawers out of their dresser, he ripped his sisters stuffed animals open, he tore his clothes from his closet and pilled them on the floor, he smashed his fish tank and sifted through the rocks, he pulled everything out of both closets, but after hours of searching, he couldn't find it. He held back his tears with every room that passed, and as he looked into the bathroom, he knew it had to be here.

He had left the rest of the house in ruins, this was the last place it could be.

He tore every towel out of the towel closet, but no egg.

He emptied the hamper, but no egg.

He took the tank lid off the toilet and when he found no egg, he used it to break the toilet until it gushed water.

Terry looked everywhere, but as it came to pass that there was still no egg, he fell to his knees and cried amidst the seeping water. He had failed, he couldn't find it. Now he and Laura would be trapped in the service of this Easter Bunny, made to lay his eggs and serve his food forever. His hands bled, his knees hurt, and as he cried, the tears stung the cut on his cheek. Terry just wanted to go home, he just wanted this all to end, and when someone enveloped him in a hug, he flinched hard enough to knock himself into the wet floor.

He looked up to see Laura standing over him, tears streaming down her own eyes as she watched her big brother fall to pieces.

“I'm sorry, Laura. I'm sorry I couldn't save you. This is all my fault, I wished for this, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry, I'm,” but she put a wing against his mouth as she shook her head.

She reached out with her others, the wing still possessing some stubby fingers amidst the feathers and held out the egg he'd been searching for.

Terry's jaw fell open.

The bunny had hidden it in the one place he knew Terry would never look, with Laura.

The knowledge made him feel small, but as he shook the egg, he heard some rattling inside.

He turned it so the window was face down, and a large, old fashioned key fell into his bleeding palm.

He took it back to the living room, looking at the blank wall again until he found what he was looking for.

A keyhole in the perfectly flat wall.

He put it in and twisted, the door opening onto the mirror of the room he stood in, minus the utter ruin that Terry had created while on his last egg hunt.

He reached back for Laura, but she took a step away and shook her head.

“We can go,” he said, not understanding, “We don't have to stay.”

Laura didn't seem capable of real speech, but she took her wings and tapped them on her chest as if to emphasize that she couldn't go back like that.

“It won't matter,” Terry said, starting to cry again, “Mom and Dad will love you whatever you look like. Maybe you'll turn back if you come back. Come on, Laura, you've got to come back.”

Laura shook her strange head, still covered by the paper mache mask she had made. Terry wondered what she looked like beneath it, but having seen the peeps as they served them meals, he thought he might be able to guess. As she went back to the kitchen, he saw the Mother Hen put a protective arm around her, leading her into whatever lay beyond that room.

She only looked back once, and Terry only waited until she was out of sight to step through the door.

“I'll come back for you, somehow.” he whispered before falling into his own living room and passing out from exhaustion and malnutrition.

* * * * * *

That was where his parents found him when they came home an hour later.

They been searching for them for four days, and had just come from a press conference where they begged the kidnapper to bring their children back. His mother had screamed when she'd found him lying there, and they had rushed him to the ER. He had been unconscious for about a day, but when Terry came to, he had told them about what had happened. He could tell they didn't believe him, thinking he had been drugged or traumatized, but the search continued for Laura for the next two years. Terry told them who had taken her, but no one seemed to think that the actual Easter Bunny had kidnapped two kids and then just let one of them go.

Time went on, and after a dozen or so therapists and psychologists told Terry that his mind had misremembered a tragic childhood event, he started believing it himself. He tried his best to forget about Mother Hen, the Easter Bunny, and his poor lost sister, but his dreams brought him back to that weekend often. In the dreams, the Easter Bunny chased him through the house, a nightmarish maze of halls and corridors that only ended when the giant rabbit finally came down on top of him and crushed him flat.

His wife became fairly used to her husband waking up crying in the night, but she tried her best to help him through it.

Through it all, Terry kept the egg on his desk, a reminder of his lost sister.

Terry was thirty two the next time he thought of Laura.

His daughters were opening their Easter Baskets as Terry and Mary looked on with smiles. Terry had to bury a shudder as he watched them crack open the plastic eggs inside, and he reminded himself that all of that had been his mind trying to make a traumatic experience more palatable. Candace and Skyler were not he and Laura. They would never have to hunt eggs through a nightmare house as they slowly became chickens. That was a fantasy, and one that was over.

Skyler looked confused for a moment, holding up a very white egg as she read something printed on it.

“Daddy, whose Aunt Laura?”

Terry's breath hung in his throat, but Candace cut off any answer he might have given.

“I got one too. I don't think I've ever met her.”

Terry came slowly towards them, reaching out to Skyler as he asked to see.

Printed in black ink on the plastic egg, the inside full of technicolor jelly beans that spilled out when he gripped it too hard, was something that brought Terry to his knees.

He spent the rest of Easter in the ER after fainting over with the egg still in his hand, his girls all very worried about him.

On the egg were the words, “Happy Easter, from your Aunt Laura.”