Honey Bunny by Ash Lohmann

Danny routinely turned into the 7/11 lot in his beat up blue pickup on his way home from work. He left the truck running, Metallica muted by the engine, as he headed straight to the back of the convenience store, hoping his dusty work boots wouldn’t attract Carl the clerk’s attention away from his Sudoku just yet. Though just as he opened the cooler door and gripped the 12 pack of Coors, Carl’s voice halted Danny for a second, as if he were a kid getting caught by a teacher just as he was jumping the chain link fence off school property at noon.             “Welcome back Mr. Webber,” Carl’s nasally voice sent a chill down Danny’s spine.             “What’s up Carl,” Danny exhaled, lugging the 12 pack in the direction of the check-out counter. “How’s convenience store clerking treating you?”             “It’s convenience store managing, Danny,” Carl set aside his Sudoku booklet to ring up Danny’s beer. “I told you this yesterday. ID?”             “I showed you it yesterday.”             “It’s policy, got to see your lovely card telling me you’re 38 years young every time,” Clark took the card from Danny and inspected it before handing it back to him, “Even if it is the sixth time this week and its only Thursday.”             “Fuck off.” Danny tossed 12 bucks on the counter and told Carl to keep the change, all twelve cents of it, leaving the store before his temper would start to get the better of him. By eight that evening, Danny was sitting in the tiny living room of his empty two-bedroom townhouse fisting the rest of a box of Cap ‘N Crunch into his mouth and crushing the can of his ninth beer. When a commercial for some new migraine medication interrupted his rerun of The Walking Dead for what seemed like the millionth time, he shut the TV off in frustration and poured himself a glass of scotch, which the then and there finished. So why not pour another, he thought. And once Danny licked the rest of the bottle clean, he realized that living alone can’t be too bad if it means he doesn’t have to wash his glass right away. So drunkenly, Danny proudly settled his cup on the counter where he resolved it would reside for at least the next week, just because it could. Danny stumbled up the stairs and spilled himself into a lukewarm shower. He rinsed away the dirt and sweat and sawdust his body had accumulated throughout the day then stood there absentmindedly for god knows how long, just as he had done every single night for the past two months. When he finally snapped back to it, Danny shut the shower off and accidentally kicked the bottle of watermelon Suave Kids, his toilet time reading material, off its spot in the bathtub, sending out a thunderous roar. He was angry with the bottle for being so loud and all-knowing, with its fun facts about how a person could swim through a whale’s arteries. Just having the bottle brought to his attention sent him into a fit of frustration. It reminded Danny of how little Madison’s curly blonde hair would smell unmistakably of watermelon and chlorine in the summertime. That was once the most comfortable scent to Danny but now it made him sick. “Stop taunting me!” Danny yelled at the bottle, “Stop it right now.” Tears streamed down his face contorted with pain and frustration. The last thing Danny remembered from that evening was throwing the Suave Kids across the bathtub and watching it bounce back towards him, throwing the second punch in the fight.  Danny woke up the sound of his alarm clock from the bedroom. He was asleep half sitting half lying on the bathroom floor and he’s immediately embarrassed at how the last thing he remembered from the night before is how he cried over a shampoo bottle. At work that day, Danny’s boss Ron was finally back from some sort of extended vacation he was dubbing off as a networking trip for the construction company. Danny hadn’t seen or talked to Ron in almost five months but the two were teammates and buddies since high school. Sure, they had grown apart since they graduated and went their separate ways but when Danny dropped out of college, Ron had been there for him with a job as soon as he got back to Phoenix. The dynamic was obviously different and the conversations were more forced than they had been since high school, but Danny had considered Ron to be one of his only friends, so he was happy to see him back after so long. “Danny-O!” Ron patted his back, “Listen buddy, I’ve got an idea. Let’s move this business, leave this god forsaken hellhole and set up camp in Indonesia.” He rainbowed his arm as if signaling a shitty movie transition. “Indonesia?” Danny was only half listening. Ron always had these glorious fantasies that never panned out. “The cost of living is microscopic, the climate is tropical paradise, the women—don’t even get me started,” he was a walking timeshare infomercial. “I mean, you could bring the wife and kiddo of course, but even if you wanted a little getaway, man, In-do-ne-sia. It’s heaven on earth my dude.”             “I’m glad you had fun on your little company marketing trip,” Danny sighed, putting on his tool belt.             “How are the wife and kid anyway?” Ron asked, shifting the subject away from his obvious recent escapade away from responsibility. “Abby still working at that children’s hospital?”             “Yeah, yeah,” Danny coughed. “She is. They’re good, they’re both good.”             “Good, good. Now get to work, make me some money,” Ron laughed through his perfect smiling teeth.             While working, Danny was distracted thinking about how he didn’t tell Ron about Abby and Madison. How when another nurse came to his door concerned after a week of Abby not showing up, he had to tell her that one day, she just packed their bags and left, no goodbye, no note. How he had to call Madison’s second grade teacher, who already knew Madison wouldn’t be finishing off the school year at Rover Elementary. How Abby was kind enough to leave behind all the family photos and most of Madison’s toys for Danny to remember them by.             Though Danny wished he hadn’t been so distracted working, especially since he had been nailing a piece of plywood to the framed structure they set up yesterday… with a nail gun. His recollection of his hallway lined with his grinning family was cut off by a searing pain that shot all the way up his arm. When Danny looked down, his blood had already stained much of the wood his hand was joined to, like a chameleon assimilating to the color of the new hole in his body.             “Well, shit.” Danny would’ve expected himself to let out some great cry, but it was as if his body wasn’t even that surprised that he did this much damage to it.             Stuck to the wall, Danny looked around for someone to help him, someone who wouldn’t freak out too much. Someone who would actually have the stomach enough to take the backside of a hammer to his hand to set him free. Ron would do it, he thought. So Danny asked an apprentice close his eyes, he knew this kid would flip his shit if he saw his hand. The apprentice closed his eyes, though unwilling at first—the boys at the jobsite weren’t strangers to hazing—and agreed to go get the boss man.             It felt like ages for Ron to get to Danny, but for the few minutes the apprentice was actually retrieving him, Danny looked up at the clouds to try to distract himself from the pain. Though, he would often naturally sway one direction or another, tugging his hand with him and reminding him that there was a nail where the center of his palm should be.             “Holy fuck Danno, how’d you manage to do this to yourself?” Ron grinned as he saw Danny’s hand.             “I need you to get it out.”             “Yup, yup.” Ron inspected the gash and sighed as he poked his finger into the pool of blood. “I’m afraid the nail head is more than halfway into your hand, we’d have to dig your hand open to get to it. We’re going to have to pull your arm off it instead. You better bite down on something amigo.”             The apprentice winced the entire time, from Ron inspecting the wound to him using one foot against the plywood to get more force when pulling Danny’s arm away from it to seeing the blood splatter and gush during and after the painful process. Meanwhile, Ron looked overjoyed to be untethering Danny’s arm, like a boy scout gleeful to finally have a use for his fire building knowledge. But instead of building a fire, Ron shredded an even wider hole out of Danny's hand and now at the center of his palm, Danny had a fresh blood sputtering peep hole.             Ron offered to call Abby to take Danny to the hospital, but Danny was dead set on driving himself. After all, the throbbing wasn’t too distracting, as Danny insisted. Ron didn’t pester him too much more, he just fixed Danny up with a glove of toilet paper and duct tape and sent him on his way.             After dealing with test after test even though Danny was all stitched up, the hospital finally released him, with resistance for not having anyone take him home, of course. Danny lied and insisted to the nurses that he would take a cab home. When getting into his car in the hospital parking garage, though, Danny thought he was hallucinating. He saw a small tawny bunny perched behind his driver side tire.             Danny concluded he was in fact hallucinating. There was no reason for a bunny to be hiding out in a hospital parking garage in the middle of Tempe. So, Danny started his car, but just as he began pulling out of the parking spot, his tire thumped over something. Regretful, Danny peered out his window, still hoping there really wasn’t a rabbit there at all. He was wrong.             It looked as though the bunny tried to make a run for it just a second too late, and Danny only rolled over the animal’s back legs. She was still trying to make an escape, using her front paws to drag her limp body forward inch by inch. Danny couldn’t watch it any longer. He stepped out of the car and the bunny began to whine.             “Shhh, shhh, it’s okay,” He whispered. “You’re going to be okay.”             Danny picked her up, almost dropping her as he forgot how the medication made his left hand feel like it wasn’t even there, and set her down gently on his passenger seat. He had planned to take her home and put her out of her misery as soon as he could. He resolved to use the shotgun tucked away in his garage. He could try to do it now, with his car again. But there was no guarantee he would get it just right.             Danny passed by the 7/11 on his way home and almost turned into the parking lot in habit, but as soon as he thought about beer it made him feel sick. The medication must’ve been messing with his stomach, Danny thought. Though maybe it was the thought of dealing with Clark on this already shitty day that made him sick.             Danny got home and immediately headed into the garage with the bunny. He and Abby had used the space as an oversized storage closet for the past five years but the middle section was mostly clear and easy to move around. The shotgun was pretty accessible. He sat the bunny down on the garage floor and pointed his gun towards her. He imagined himself doing it quickly. One and done. He didn’t want to look at the creature and feel sorry for it, he wanted to be strong and know what he was doing was the best thing he could be doing. But when Danny pointed his gun at the bunny, he realized something. She looked a whole awful lot like Honey Bunny.             Honey Bunny was Danny’s toy bunny from when he was a young boy. She slept in his arms every night and played with him every day. Honey Bunny was one of those stuffed animals that just had her head and arms stuffed and the rest of her body, if it could be called that, was a little blanket. She was the kind of toy you give really little babies, but she stuck by Danny’s side for much longer than normal. He felt bad when he realized that he recognized the resemblance because this rabbit’s back legs had become limp, but the more he looked at her, the more she looked like his childhood best bud.             Danny passed Honey Bunny on to Madison when she was born, and she quickly became her favorite toy too. So looking down at this bunny, pointing a gun at her, only made Danny think of his daughter, which only made killing the animal more difficult.             Danny realized that Madison must’ve taken Honey Bunny with her when she and Abby left and that comforted Danny a bit. But Danny, in the face of this shivering injured bunny, decided to be selfish. He set his shotgun down and picked her up and brought her into the house. Danny took a cardboard box and some of the softer towels he had and made the bunny a bed. He gave her water and crushed up a few Ibuprophen pills and mixed it with water to feed to the bunny, hoping her pain would at least be muted by it.             The bunny seemed to not trust Danny much, for good reason. He did almost kill her twice. But she didn’t fight him when he nursed her and she didn’t try to run when Danny’s medications decided it was time for him to go to bed.             Sometime during the night, Danny woke with a horribly dry throat so he went to the kitchen to get some water. He was surprised to see the bunny. He completely forgot she was in there. She was wide awake, and watched his every move. Danny felt like the bunny was examining him, her expression seemed inquisitive, that is if she even had expressions.             “Goodnight,” Danny was ready to be alone again and it was the first time he felt that way in a while.             “Not yet,” a small voice that sounded like every mock toy voice a parent has made when tucking their kid in at night and animating their stuffed animals.             Danny turned around and examined the bunny all tucked in and watching him.             “No?”             “No,” the bunny said. “don’t go back to bed just yet.”             Danny wondered how strong his medications actually were now and even though he knew it was crazy, continued on talking to the animal.             “Why not?”             “I’ve missed you,” she said. “I’ve seen you every single day since you were as small as me and then, suddenly, I can’t see you anymore.”             “Honey Bunny?”             “I don’t know why you tried to kill me,” she said. “I was your best friend. That’s not what friends do to each other.”             “I wasn’t—I only tried to kill you because—”             “No excuses. You know you’ve been a bad friend lately.”             “I couldn’t have helped it.”             “You could have. I never had to end up alone.”             “You seem angry with me,” Danny said. “But you still miss me?”                 “I’m not angry I’m disappointed in you,” she echoed. “That’s what you used to say to Madison right? When she wouldn’t play nice on the playground or get in trouble at school. I watched you grow into a great man, a great father. Then, you go and mess it all up. I’m disappointed Danny.”             “I couldn’t have helped it,” Danny had become furious. “They chose to leave me. I didn’t want them to go. I’ve had enough. Goodnight.”             Danny woke up the next morning with a massive headache and prayed what he remembered from the night before was just a dream. He groggily got out of bed and resolved to feed the bunny and take it to a shelter or a vet or something. He just wanted to get her out of his house so he could go back to being miserable in peace, not with a rabbit taunting him in his sleep. Though low and behold, the bunny, as he made his way into the kitchen was waiting for him as menacingly as she was last night—all bright eyed and bushy tailed.             “Morning”             “No no no no no,” Danny couldn’t believe his ears. “You can’t talk, you’re not Honey Bunny.”             “Except I am.”             “No, you’re not!” Danny yelled. “You’re just a bunny, not Honey Bunny, just a bunny that I ran over yesterday. Madison has Honey Bunny, you’re just a bunny.”             “No, Danny,” She looked annoyed. “I can’t believe you after all this time. It’s me, the bunny who was there for you when you broke your arm as a kid, the bunny who was there for you during every fly and every cold growing up. The bunny who was there for your daughter when her daddy was drunk and yelling at her mommy. The bunny who didn’t make her feel safe because she reminded her of you, but simply because it’s me. I was a friend to you and you cast me aside. I was a friend to your daughter and then you took her away from me, and I just wanted to come back to say I’m disappointed in you.”             “I didn’t take her away from you, Abby did,” Danny was afraid of the bunny laying before him, the powerless creature still managed to wound him. “I only did what I did because of Abby.”             “And what did you do?” She knew. She knew what Danny was trying to forget and she would stop at nothing to bring shame to him and make him feel for her loss. “We were a family, and you destroyed that.”             “Abby destroyed our family, she’s the one who was going to take Madison and leave!”             “You made her want to leave, but you stopped her from saving herself and Madison from what you became.”             Danny always said he would do anything to keep his family together after he and Abby started arguing. He remembered the feeling when he saw Abby frantically digging for items of hers in the garage, things she wanted to pack up in a suitcase. Danny was betrayed and broken.             “I wasn’t about to let us be apart,” Danny cried.             “You are apart! Just because they are here doesn’t mean they are with you,” she said. “They’re not your family anymore, and that’s your doing.”             It wasn’t that Danny didn’t feel the loss and embarrassment before Honey Bunny came back. He just didn’t feel the guilt until now. Danny went to the garage and opened the water heater closet to find his wife and daughter sitting just as he left them, as if they fell asleep playing hide and go seek with Danny. They each sported now browning mounds around still blood crusted holes on their foreheads, a kiss from Danny goodnight. Danny unwrapped the bandages around his hand and brought his own hole to his lips, feeling connected to his wife and daughter as if they all had gotten matching tattoos. The smell didn’t hit Danny like he imagined it would, but what smacked him right across the face was seeing Madison’s frail, discolored hands still gripping onto the real Honey Bunny, who stared back at Danny unblinking.