Horror Bunny

Kill Kill.

Mary Lou was frustrated with her coworkers at the rehab center and stabbed at huge chunks of lettuce for her rabbit Gremlin.

“All Nurse Jackie does is complain, change her mind, and send me to clean up the mess. I swear if Barbra makes me work with her one more time this week, I'll kill either one of them if they don't kill me first. Want some Ranch with dinner Gremlin? Of course not, you're a dumb rabbit." She tossed the chunks on the linoleum floor and sat on the couch with her feet up to watch Pet Cemetery with a glass of Chardonnay. As the first scene started, she submitted her essay for one of her online classes to become an RN, and chugged a glass, refilling to the brim.

After her high school sweetheart cheated on her with their 40 year old landlady, she found herself without a place to live, and house sitting for some guy she met on craigslist. Since her ex left her with 4 more months of their lease, to afford enough alcohol to blackout and forget about her stupid life to keep her job and buy groceries it was a win win situation to get paid to live in an old house 10 minutes from the rehab center. Near the climax of the movie there was a knock at the door a knock on the wall. She heard floorboards creaking in the dinning room seconds later.

Mary Lou slipped her toes into her bunny slippers and shimmied to the other room where the brown rabbit was sitting next to a stack of boxes. There was a humming in the air. She listened carefully and figured the distant sound meant an air vent had turned on somewhere.

Bing.

She checked the text message from her supervisor.

“Goddamnit Barbra! You’re really going to make me work with Jackie tomorrow? Lord give me the strength not to kill her.”

Too annoyed to finish rewatching the movie, she picked Gremlin up and cradled her like a baby to bed.

********************************************************************

The next day at work Mary Lou was trying not to stab her eyes out and stick them into Nurse Jackie’s lunch politely making a bed a resident peed in while laughing at his knock knock jokes.

She had gone to the bathroom to rinse everything and anything off her forearms when Nurse Jackie stopped at the sink next to her to powder her nose. Mary Lou rolled her eyes and dried her hands on her scrubs.

"You really need to pick up your pace Mary, I had to do your job for you while I was waiting for you in the next room. You're welcome. I'm sure you would be fired if you were paired with anyone else."

She contemplated what the worse option would be in this scenario. She could tell her to just fire her already, but it would be too much work to look for another job.

"Careful, there's no paper towels left."

"Well I'm not going to dry them on my clothes like a hobo."

Mary Lou squeezed her eyes shut then opened them dead inside calmer.

"Try some toilet paper then."

She smirked as she left Jackie gaping. With a bounce in her step she listened to the satisfying click click of her shoes on the tiles.

Click. Click.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Thud.

Mary Lou ran back into the bathroom and saw Jackie passed out on the floor. The closest bathroom stall bounced shut.

She froze where she stood. The satisfying clicking of other women's shoes stampede into the bathroom, followed by a man's voice.

"Is everyone decent? I'm coming in." A security guard turned nurse, named Colin, pushed through the crowd of women who were too scared to come all the way into the bathroom, and tended to Jackie like the world might not be better if she died.

She took several small steps to the stall and reached for the handle, and pulled it open. She wasn't sure if it was a dream or reality before she also hit the floor, but for a second she thought Barbra was dead.

*********************************************************************

Mary Lou sat in the passenger seat of her 20 year old Volkswagen bug with an ice pack held to her temple, all the way to the house. Her neck was aching because she couldn’t rest her head on the window, because without AC, it was too hot to drive with the windows up.

"Are you sure you'll be alright?" Colin asked, his left hand her steering wheel, the other on the stick shift. He shifted gears then, then lifted his hand up to push the radio back into the compartment her ex boyfriend had duct taped it into years ago.

"I'll be fine. I'm a big girl. Are you sure you're okay riding home?"

"Yeah, it’s only five or so minutes away. I'll just get my bike off of the back when I make sure you're sitting down with something to eat."

"If your bike's still there."

Colin laughed but she didn't. He looked at the radio he was still holding, up at the cracked rear view mirror, and quickly to the back window where his bike was sitting on a rack to make sure no windows spontaneously combusted or anything else resulting in the loss of his transportation.

"Are you sure your boyfriend will be home soon to look after you?"

"Sure," she lied. "I'll take a quick nap, and when I open my eyes he'll probably have a homemade lasagna in the oven."

A quick look told him he might not believe her, so she doubled down on her story.

“It’s my birthday in a couple of days. He said he would make me a cake.”

“Oh? What kind of cake?”

She wasn’t sure if he was calling her out on it or genuinely curious.

“Something with strawberries. I love strawberries.” that at least, wasn’t a lie.

When she got home and settled in there was no lasagna or cake waiting for her. Just a bowl of Cheerios and some more Chardonnay.

Mary Lou woke up on the couch when she heard nails on a chalkboard a branch scratch against the window. When she came back from checking she noticed a Snickers on the floor. She knelt down to pick it up and looked at Gremlin, who was asleep on her pink princess pillow. The rabbit must have found it in some nook and cranny when she was home alone. She shrugged and unwrapped it, popping it in her mouth. No use in letting it go to waste.

**********************************************************************

The next day at work, Mary Lou was sitting at a table in the cafeteria stealing tortellini from Colin's Tupperware container every time he checked his phone because there was no room in her budget to buy lunch this week. Stupid student loans.

She swallowed one quickly when he almost caught her and innocently shoved a twizzler in her face from a pile of old Halloween candy she had found in the house that morning. He raised an eyebrow.

"How are you okay? Did Barbra not scare you yesterday?" she asked him. She thought of the blood seeping out of her chest. Like she was slashed with a knife.

He shrugged.

"That was just sad. What's scary is back when I was a security guard at Graylen Mercy Hospital there was an emergency when two girls were wheeled in from a car crash and they had one big metal pole that skewered them together. The maintenance guy, Matt, was told to come up with a chop saw, but when he saw what he had to do he threw up and passed out, so I did it."

Mary Lou considered him as she chewed on the twizzler.

"That's hot. Tell that on your next date, you probably won't have to pay for dinner." He shoved her shoulder and it looked like he was blushing a little.

A few police officers and investigators walked into the cafeteria. The same ones who questioned her earlier about her supervisor. One had asked her out, which was just creepy.

“I’ve heard worse stories since I started working here.” Colin said.

“Oh?”

“Elizabeth said years ago that one of patients went berserk, escaped out of rehab and hid in nurse Jackie’s car. She didn’t know he was living in her house for a month.”

She felt a shiver down to her soul, when their resident golden retriever intern Elizabeth sat at their table with a bone to chew a story to tell.

"Did y’all hear?" she asked, golden pigtails bouncing above her shoulders as she stabbed her fork into a slice of Devil’s chocolate cake.

Mary Lou and Colin exchanged a look.

"No."

"There's been another murder. She was stabbed in some blind spot the security cameras didn’t pick up.”

"Who?"

"Nurse Jackie.”

**********************************************************************

Scared, Mary Lou stayed home for the next two days. She was already scheduled to have the first day off, but the recent events prompted the hospital to cut down on people to just the skeletal staff.

She stood at the kitchen counter again chopping lettuce thinking about what she saw. Stab wounds. She definitely saw stab wounds on Barbra in the bathroom.

Buzzzz. Buzzzz. Buzzzz.

Her phone vibrated, and she checked to see if it was her no good ex calling to try and take the rabbit back again. It was Colin.

"Hey Colin. Any more mystery murders this shift?" she asked, sticking the phone between her hear and her shoulder. She noticed Gremlin wasn’t in the kitchen.

"Only when you're here." Mary Lou laughed then got a sinking feeling in her stomach. She balanced the weight of the knife in her hand and imagined how it would move if she stabbed someone with it.

"Funny. You think it's an angle of revenge? Come to take out everyone who's wronged me?" she heard the floorboards creak in the dining room, causing her to hold the knife out in front of her as went to investigate.

"No, I think that list is too long." Gremlin was sitting by the boxes blocking the air vent. She stabbed the knife into the top box. “Anyway, there was a strawberry shortcake on clearance today, I remembered you had beer, and thought ‘is today Mary Lou’s birthday?’ and I-”

“I’ll call you later.”

She threw her phone on the ground and pushed the stack of boxes with all her strength. A large animal moved in the air vent. An animal that wore size 11 shoes.

Mary Lou screamed as he ran past her and out the front door. She clutched her chest and jumped up and down pulling her hair out. It wasn't fair! Why did these things keep happening to her?

She ran to the front door and locked everything, checking out the window to see if she could see that... that thing.

She ran up stairs and locked every window she could. Once she thought the area was secure she took several deep breaths, checked her pulse, and tried to stop shaking. Her legs gave out at the top of the stairs and she slid down them like a child.

The doorbell started ringing and there was a banging on the door. She screamed.

"Open the door! It's me! Colin!" As she ran past the dining room, on the table saw a single slice of chocolate cake with a lit orange candle in it.

Scared, she blew it out so at least the house wouldn't catch fire and opened the door.

"Are you okay?" he barely got the words out before she wrapped her arms around him. Red and blue lights were approaching in the distance and his bike was abandoned on the lawn. "You didn't turn your phone off and I heard you scream. I was so scared. Tell me you're okay."

Mary Lou turned around and saw the candle in the slice of chocolate cake was lit again.