An Easter Feast

Once upon a time there was a large, bipedal bunny. I wouldn't say he was "giant", in that he couldn't knock down skyscrapers, or even houses, really. Even a small cottage would have given him trouble. He was as tall as a man, so we can safely say he was giant for a rabbit.

He hatched from a large pink egg at the bottom of Susie's and Tilly's garden. It had pale spots on it, and splashy freckly bits.

It was a late Spring day, the weather was fine, and their mother had arranged for some friends and family to join them for a barbeque.

She had dressed the girls in cotton summer dresses (Susie in yellow, Tilly in pink), and neither girl had protested or rolled her eyes. This was partly because they weren't quite old enough for that, and partly because this is an idyllic English garden setting, and that sort of thing would be quite out of place.

Mummy sent them out to play in the garden, reminding them (with undue optimism) not to get their dresses mucky. Then she went back to clattering about in the kitchen. Making a coleslaw, or slicing strawberries, or fussing that there wouldn't be enough gin. One of those things.

Daddy was, of course, manning the grill, with a beer in one hand, and a sausage-prodding device in the other.

Cut grass mingled with woodsmoke and rendering fat. Birds twitted. The sun was just pleasantly warm. It was the sort of day not even a Brit could complain about.

The guests would be here any minute.

The sound of sisterly bickering carried on the genteel breeze. It wafted past Daddy's ears, where it was swiftly ignored. He was Busy. These sausages couldn't poke themselves. The girls' voices didn't quite reach the kitchen, so Mummy didn't hear the following exchange...

"Of course it's ours," Susie measured Bossy and Reasonable as carefully as Mummy was pouring out Lemonade and Pimm's. "There's going to be an Easter Egg Hunt for the children, Mummy said so. And that's us."

Tilly scrunched up her nose. "Those eggs are inna fridge. I seened them."

"It's definitly ours," Susie said again, but she didn't sound very definite at all.

Tilly shook her head. "It's the Easter Bunny's."

Susie laughed, because patronising a sister who is only a tiny bit younger than you is why those sisters are put there. "That's right," she said, nodding, "That's where Easter eggs come from. The Easter Bunny leaves them. For us. See?"

"The Bunny laid it like a chicken," Tilly said, with the authority of small kids everywhere who know precisely jackshit, "and he's gonna come back furrit."

Susie took a deep breath, presumably to begin a lecture on where eggs come from, (ie. not rabbits, and not boys) when the egg cracked.

It made a sound like a leg breaking, and despite not having heard a leg break, both girls were alive to the fact this was a very ominous noise indeed. They stared at the egg in stunned silence.

The Egg was large, but the Bunny was larger, and he really ought not to have fitted in there. He unrolled himself, one vertebrae at a time, his ghastly head coming up last, quite as if he were a pantomime demon. In a yoga class. And the lycra-clad instructor didn't want any fainters.

The Bunny towered over them both, a red gleam in his eyes, his buck teeth knife-sharp and arranged in a leer. Have you ever seen a rabbit leer? It's not a pleasant sight.

Goop snarled and darkened his pale fur. His little white tail was robed with what looked like strings of bloody snot. Once dry, his coat would be irresistably soft, and his tail would look like candyfloss. Adorable! For now at least, he looked 100% gruesome.

He made short work of the girls, crunching through their necks and, fox-like in his wastefulness, leaving them to bleed out on the neatly mown grass. Perhaps he intended to circle back and eat them later, or maybe he was just a six foot murderous lagomorph intent on bloody carnage.

He was still licking their blood from his distinctive teeth when he came up behind Daddy and took him by surprise. Daddy startled to hear the footstep, because he expected the guests to come from the other direction. He turned, with a friendly greeting ready on his lips. Equally prepared, if you must know, to tell the girls to bugger off and not sneak up on him mid-grill.

These phrases were stopped from leaving his mouth by a large aggressive paw, wielded like a fist. The punch had plenty of weight behind it, because the newborn Bunny was built like a brick shithouse. He smashed lips against teeth, felt them smush and crush into a bloody mess, and watched the man's head jerk back from the force of the blow. The rest of his body followed, and he toppled backwards to lie spreadeagled on top of his sausages and chicken drumsticks.

His shrieks were cut blessedly short and transformed into a squelchy sort of gurgle.

The hiss and sizzle continued though.

The bunny was lucky, probably due to having four rabbit feet and a rabbit tail, snotty and bloodied as they were. He wasn't experienced with doors, and if they'd been closed, Mummy would have lived to discover that the delicious smell wasn't actually those wagu burgers she'd picked up on special offer in Aldi after all.

But no: it was a fine day, and the doors had been left wide open. Not least to facilitate frustrated instructions from one exasperated parent to the other, each imagining that he or she had the most important and demanding job, and that their beloved spouse was surely lounging on his or her arse.

Bunny made his way indoors, in a manner most unbecoming of a rabbit, and cornered Mummy by the sink. His ears brushed the ceiling, and he treated her to his customary toothy leer. Mummy had, unfortunately, long since finished slicing cabbage, and didn't have the knife handy. She was armed only with a spatula, which turned out to be no use at all. Bunny advanced on her, and she seemed to shrink, even her frizzy halo of hair vibrating in fear. Those weird slit like nostrils flared, drinking in the stench of her terror the way a grossly rich man might breathe in the heady aroma of an expensive cigar.

This time, Bunny lingered to feast on his kill, his second course gently charring outside. More courses were arriving even now, balancing packets of steaks, and trays of corn on the cob, or else carrying platters of scones and bottles of crisp rosé wine.

He is going to be one stuffed bunny.

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Thank you for reading! See you tomorrow!