Easter Eggs and Bunny Boilers: A Horror Anthology

by Matt Shaw

  On any ordinary night when Fantasy Dress was down on numbers it was something bordering on a nightmare; on a short-staffed Easter night, it was astronomically catastrophic. If it weren’t for the fact that she was legitimately owed breaks, she’d have been surprised if Mara would have granted her the opportunity to take one.

  There were a handful of milk crates and other assorted things various members of staff, and even patrons who wandered into the alley for a smoke or other activities, had assembled to sit on and Bunny gratefully made her way to a crate now, keen to get off her feet and out of the heels. She hadn’t given it too much thought about being barefoot out here, but now she did. Though it was kept as clean as a city alley outside a popular alcohol serving establishment could be, there was still an accumulation of all kind of perilous shit out here. Potentially discarded needles, empty beer bottles, cigarette butts, condoms and a vast assortment of things Bunny didn’t really want to entertain thoughts about or to put her feet down on.

  As luck would have it, there was a whole newspaper, sitting folded atop a dumpster as if somebody had stepped out to have a cigarette and peruse the sports section or the funny papers, and then just left the item behind. Bunny didn’t waste time grabbing that and spreading it open in front of the crate, before kicking off her shoes, digging her smokes out of a jacket pocket and sitting back to relax. Or at least as much as this tiny window of opportunity for some semblance of relaxation offered.

  It didn’t last long.

  “So, that’s where you got to.” A new voice intruded on her thoughts, cutting brusquely through them with a low-pitched, unwelcome timbre. “Was wondering where my favourite Fantasy bunny had taken her fine ass off to.”

  Bunny must have been in some kind of reverie, or hardly paying attention at all, for she hadn’t seen the newcomer exit Fantasy Dress, though quite obviously, that’s precisely where he’d been.

  Standing a few feet away from here, dressed as usual as though he’d just come from a business meeting was Josiah Christian, wealthy married businessman, habitual barfly and frequent Fantasy Dress patron. Especially on special events and holidays.

  “Hey Josiah,” she answered shortly, eyeing him warily as he fumbled around to obtain himself a cigarette. He was weaving a fraction unsteadily in his wingtips and she could tell he’d already had plenty to drink. Funnily enough she hadn’t yet encountered him inside tonight.

  Maybe she’d been too preoccupied by all the other sleazy, degenerate fuckwits to notice the regular customer sleazy, degenerate fuckwit. Didn’t seem likely though. If he’d been around, he’d have been all over her like a rash, as usual.

  “You know Bunny, I’ve been thinking. Been giving it some serious thought. I’ve slid a whole pile of money your way haven’t I? A right fuckload in fact. Daresay enough to put your baby bunnies through college if you ever decide to pop some out. That’d be a shame though, subjecting that tight, hot body to the ravages of pregnancy, but I digress. As I was saying, I’m pretty generous with my tips aren’t I? Pretty free and forthcoming, right?”

  “Yes, you are,” she answered cautiously. “That’s your prerogative. I don’t ask for it. I’m just doing my job. And I guess I must be doing it well if you feel so inclined to give me handsome tips.”

  “Oh come now Bunny.” Christian laughed and it was an ugly sound, free of mirth and loaded with something far more unpleasant. “You and I both know, it isn’t because your abilities to dispense drinks and plates of food, and peel off brainless banter to packs of equally brainless gawkers, is superior to any of the other pieces of costumed trim shaking their asses to and fro in there.”

  “Nice talking to you Josiah,” Bunny said, quickly extinguishing her half-finished cigarette. “Break time is over. I’ve got to get back to it.”

  “Hold on a second. Wasn’t done talking to you, was I?” He was right in front of her before she’d acknowledged he’d moved, temporarily glancing away from him towards her heels.

  In the grand scheme of things, he wasn’t a big man; certainly not a seven foot behemoth or anything of that nature, but when he was abruptly that close to her, his bulk seemed far greater than hers. She could barely see anything beyond it; his frame blotted out most of the light filtering in from the alleys on each side of the establishment and the so-called security lights out here were acting up once again.

  “Yeah. Not done saying my piece, am I? Like I said, I’ve shelled out something of a small fortune to you and it’s sure as hell not because you can carry out menial tasks any better than any other undressed waitress wench. So, with that said, how about a little appreciation, you feel me?”

  “I appreciate what you do. I appreciate all my customers. Especially the regulars,” Bunny kept her eyes on him now, feeling around with her toes for her shoes. Even though his form blocked out much of the light, making him mostly a silhouette, enough of it spilled over his shoulders to display his face. That visage was flushed, both with the effects of the apparently large quantity of alcohol he’d consumed and something else. Something ugly. Something foreboding. Something she’d seen many times before. Right before things went to hell in a hand-basket for her.

  “See, I don’t really think you do. A vapid smile, an autopilot response and a tuck the cash away without a second thought for where it came from doesn’t exactly scream appreciation to me,” Christian said. He was smiling now, but there was nothing affable in that expression. Beads of perspiration formed on the glistening pane of his forehead, rolling in lazy trickles along the curves of his eyebrows. A sweat moustache adorned his upper lip and as he leaned in closer to Bunny, he poked out his tongue which crawled like a fat pink slug from one corner of his mouth to the other. “You pop on your cute little rabbit ears, slap a fluffy little tail on your ass and gallivant around playing the bunny. Fancy that. Bunny playing a bunny. And that’s your shtick, and it works for you. Shit, you don’t even need to go to any real trouble with your costume, do you? I mean some of those bitches in there must spend hours getting their ensemble together, but you…well, it’s all too easy for you. You know this Easter gig is your gig, it’s going to pay off no matter what little effort you put into it. But here’s the thing I really want to know. Do you fuck like a bunny? Because that would be something else.”

  “I need to get back inside…”

  “Correction,” Christian loomed over her, an ugly chuckle bubbling out of him. “I’m the one needing to get inside. Inside you. Come on, it’s Easter, Bunny. And you know what I want for Easter, Bunny? I’ve got some real swollen cream eggs, if you catch my drift. And what I want is to unload some of that cream in a sexy Fantasy Dress Easter Bunny. Paint her eggs white. Fill her basket. Easter bonnet facial.”

  “Go home Josiah. Go home to your wife. Unload your cream eggs with her. I’m sure that would make her Easter.”

  “You kidding? If I want to fuck a cold fish, I’ll…well, fuck a cold fish! Not happening Bunny. I’m after a hot piece of tail and yours is it!”

  She’d already known how this was going to play out, so why she’d let him manage to spew out as much as he had already, she’d no idea, but now she made her move to run. She only had one shoe on, but fuck it, she could come back for the other or finish the shift in bare feet, or fuck knows…

  Right now, escaping this situation was imperative.

  She lunged to the right, trying to hook her toes in that errant shoe as she did. He socked her right in the midriff with a short, sharp punch from the hip and the impact was immediately devastating. She crumpled, the breath and the desire to scream-along with the ability to do so-smacked out of her in a shocking, brutal blow. Spreading the newspaper out in a bid to keep her feet from coming into contact with whatever unsightly substances stained the alley was all to no avail, since she landed on her rump on the solid questionable surface anyway.

  Christian didn’t let her slump all the way down though. Painfully winded, shocked and attempting without a great measure of success to suck air back into her lu
ngs, Bunny probably would have collapsed if he hadn’t hooked his arms under hers and hauled her upright. For a guy who’d seemed pissed out of his gourd, he was remarkably quick, adept and light on his feet. Maybe that was all a charade, to suck her into thinking he was a little more harmless than he was. It didn’t matter; she could barely breathe, she was hanging limp in a powerful grip and a melange of heady cologne, rum, tobacco smoke and sweat was infiltrating her nostrils. The swirl of odours was a nausea-inducing one, making it just as hard to breathe as the solar plexus punch had.

  “Come on Bunny, see what you made me do?” Christian grunted in her ear as he hefted her clear of the milk crates and beyond. “I didn’t want to do that, no, but you made me, didn’t you? That one’s on you. Here I am talking about appreciation and you doing something like that just shows me you don’t appreciate one goddamned thing I do for you.”

  Gasping and choking on what felt like great clouds of that hideous marriage of smells emanating from Christian, Bunny’s thoughts were swimming in an illogical mire. She should have been a jumble of panic and desperation; instead she was mulling over the stupid vain effort to get her feet back in her high heels. How the fuck was she going to run in high heels anyway?

  Not that the couple of seconds expended on trying to get her foot inside the shoe would have amounted to jack shit, had she tried the bolt earlier.

  Now she was being hauled bodily away from the brighter area of the alley, back into darkness beyond the erratic spread of dumpsters, her feet dragging along the rough terrain. Vaguely, she felt pinpricks of what could have been busted shards of glass or jagged pebbles scraping at her unclad foot, and the notion that a discarded needle might be down there somewhere just waiting to spike into the bare skin fought with the other ridiculous notions clamouring in her head.

  “This didn’t have to be hard Bunny,” Christian said, his voice grating in her ear, little more than a hoarse whisper. The cloying sweet scent of his cologne, swimming amidst that waft of alcohol and smoke was overpowering. It was nullifying her ability to get her breath back at all. He must have bathed in the stuff, on all counts.

  As she realised she was so far back beyond the scatter of bulky dumpsters that she could no longer see the door back in to Fantasy Dream, or any other avenue of escape, Bunny’s random procession of irrational cogitations and vagaries fled. Cold, hard terror rushed in. True fear. The acknowledgement of what was about to happen to her. The same as it had before on so many more occasions than she cared to count.

  Now she started kicking and struggling, flailing like a wild animal. Legs flew out in desperate bids to strike anything, as did hands. Christian might have been with it enough to move fast, punch the wind out of her and ensnare her, but his relocating of her further in the shadowy climes of the alley wasn’t without its flaws. Hooking his hands under her armpits left her hands free and she struck with them now, clawing with her ruby red nails, trying to scratch and gouge at any flesh she could find. She was aiming for eyes, but for the most part was getting tangled in the slicked down, product-laden mess that was his hair.

  Christian slapped her. For some reason it was more of a shocking blow than the brutal midriff punch. He slipped his right hand out from under her arm and slugged her square across the face with an open palm that didn’t skimp any on the force. It knocked her head sideways, rattled her brains and blasted a savage sting throughout her whole cranium. Teeth cracked together, biting the inside of her cheek with a ferocity that must have ripped skin away. She felt the coppery taste of blood immediately fill her mouth.

  “You don’t touch the hair! You never touch the fucking hair! You can’t afford this damn hair, not even with the amount of dollars I habitually stuff into your tiny little G-string,” Christian growled. “And let me tell you Miss Flopsy Mopsy Fucking Cottontail, you might think you’re a cut above other whores shaking their ass in less savoury establishments here because it’s some kind of costumed eatery or what-have-you, but I can assure you, you’re no better than any common stripper. You’re not. I tried to be nice about this Bunny, but you were having none of that, so now it’s got to be the hard way.”

  He delivered another slap, this time with the other hand. Doing so meant she was completely freed from his grip, but forced back against the wall of the alley as she was, she was in no real position to be doing much about that. Even less so when the second slap connected and left a stinging imprint on her left cheek, twin to the one on her right.

  Before she could collect any thoughts-most of which were now piecemeal snatches of fear and helplessness anyway-Christian had her in his hands again, spinning her around, yanking both arms back behind her. Her face ended up jammed against the hard, unrelenting rough texture of the wall, as Christian ripped her jacket from her and hurled it away behind him.

  “Come on Bunny, it’s not even cold. Why are you hiding all the good stuff under this? Shit, nobody’s out here to see you. Nobody’s going to come out and see you either. I mean you’ve still got those bunny ears on, your fluffy little tail sitting on this perky Bunny ass…”

  Now the slap he gave her bounced right across her exposed ass, from one buttock to the other and the force he delivered it with, combined with the unexpected shock of it happening, jarred her face hard against the wall again.

  “I was thinking I’d love to just leave that tail on there while I fill your basket, but I’ve a better idea. Bite down on it. A little deterrent from opening your trap.”

  Bunny felt his hand at the small of her back and then slide down to rest where the prop rabbit tail was affixed to her thong. A split second later, it was gone, yanked away, and the waistband of her thong was snapping against her skin with another unwelcome sting. Then Christian was forcing the fluffy item against her lips, fingers probing to prise her mouth open. While below, the fingers on his other hand started to probe, fondle and grope elsewhere.

  The brutal invasions threw her right back into the deepest, darkest corners of her mind. The ugly, fearful shadow realms where she tried to kept horrible past events buried and locked away. Now they came free, digging their way up out of their mental imprisonments, clawing, revealing hideous faces and hideous truths. So many prior assaults of this nature. So many others who’d taken what they wanted with impunity and callous force.

  Bunny snapped.

  As Christian’s face loomed in close to hers to whisper some further demeaning remark or crude riposte, she twisted her head to face him and promptly kissed him. It was enough to stupefy him and he temporarily ceased his ministrations, taken off guard. She launched with her mouth again, but this time was no kiss. Her teeth, already awash with her own blood, clenched onto his cheek and sheared into the flesh. Tasting a great mouthful of that less than fragrant odour brew he exuded almost quelled her fervour for the attack, or would have done on any other occasion. Not this time. Bunny had lost it. There was no stopping her now.

  At the same time, she bent her leg, the one with a foot successfully encased in a six inch stiletto and then thrust it back down with a stabbing momentum. The heel punched into Christian’s foot, the downward impetus driving the stiletto point in to his wingtips. Those fancy intricate detailed markings on the toe cap might have been nice to look at, but they weren’t much defence against the furious attack.

  Christian reeled away with a series of agonised sounds that bred shocked curses with hoarse screams, and only then, when he’d released her, did she unclamp her teeth from his ruined cheek. He clapped a hand up against the rend in his face and blood spilled from between his fingers. His eyes were wide and stupefied, the former glaze of lust and inebriation abdicating to pain and utter shock.

  It wasn’t enough to keep him from charging back towards her, but she wasn’t blithely sitting by waiting for him. She’d bent her leg up again and this time the high heeled shoe was clasped in her hand. As he came into her orbit, she swung it and popped him right in the corner of the eye with the wicked heel point. It punched in under the eyelid and the intr
usion of the foreign object in the eye socket was enough to dislodge the eyeball, pushing it out in a grotesque protrusion. As blood welled out in tandem with this aberrant sight, Christian released a thin ululation of noise that was anything but manly. On any other occasion, the mere vision would have been enough to bend Bunny double and have her retching and hurling up her guts, but now she just viewed it with a cold, detached satisfaction, inwardly thinking she should probably do something more to shut up that ridiculous noise he was making.

  So with that in mind, she took another swing with the stiletto. This blow was less of a direct hit and far less satisfying than the first lucky strike. It glanced off his nose and raked a thin red line along it. Hardly the impactful violence she’d been hoping for. She fared better with the next one. Christian’s gaping mouth, issuing that air raid siren of astonished agony was a prime location to park her stiletto, so she did just that, thrusting the heel over the flapping meat of his tongue and into his throat. She tried to stuff the rest of the shoe right into his mouth, albeit with little measure of success. Clawing hands were abandoning the flap of bloody skin hanging off his cheek and the freaky protuberance that was his eye and grabbing at the shoe instead.

  Bunny wasn’t done. Bunny wasn’t anywhere near done. This alley, which up until very recently had been a source of sanctuary and solitude for the most part, and then turned brutal traitor to play host to a forceful violation, now became her friend again.

  Those errant beer bottles, even the milk crates, those cast off hypodermic needles…

  They weren’t items of refuse to avoid with extreme prejudice anymore. They were handy pieces of weaponry, implements to add suffering, agents of vengeance. And that wasn’t all.

  She didn’t just carry her cigarettes, essential items of make-up and other paraphernalia in the pockets of that jacket when she ducked out for a break.

  The scum of the earth, the sleazes, the degenerates, the Josiah Christians of this world had taught her plenty of harsh, degrading life lessons. She toted a knife inside that jacket. Not just any simple knife, but one procured from an unsavoury face from her past. An SOG Flash II folding knife.