I love my son. I whisper this affirmation every morning. I have to say it because it reminds me that I have to. Love my son, that is. I have to. Because I don’t want to experience what will happen to me if I don’t love him. Not after what happened this past Easter. Not after I met the Bunny Man.
You see, I never wanted children – not even my own. It’s not that I hate them or find them off-putting or too expensive or whatever the other millennials like me have declared to be their reasons for not making their own. It’s that I don’t trust them: They’re not rational. They just do whatever they want whenever they want, no matter how dangerous it is to them or to those around them. They don’t understand the world and how busy we all are in it – I mean, how could they, right?
It’s just Jimmy and I. He’s six. His father left before he was born and none of us miss that asshole, but I sure resent not having someone else in Jimmy’s life to share the daily, morning-to-evening burden of raising a kid. My sister helps, but she and her daughter are such a handful on their own, sometimes it’s not even worth asking them.
I’m a busy professional woman, which is what I always wanted to be. I’m a lawyer at a small practice in town. Staying here and working at a small firm wasn’t my preference, but I couldn’t make the move to the Big City to make a proper go of it with a baby in tow. God, it was just one stupid night with too many celebratory drinks at the bar, and nine months later I’m dealing with the consequences day-in and day-out for the rest of my life. Now I know how some of my clients feel when they come to me lamenting the one mistake that ruined their lives. Anyway, though I’m not religious in any way, my family would have completely disowned me if I had…you know… chosen to ‘take care of it’. I did the hard math and weighed my options. At least if I kept the pregnancy, my generous-to-a-fault family would help raise it, no matter how annoying it be to have them involved. I made the compromise and added ‘single mother’ to my resume.
I know you must think I’m a monster for referring to my young son in such unmotherly terms, but I can’t apologize for that. I’m a cold, calculating adult. I never said I was good at this. But look, I am trying. I am trying to grow some motherly feelings. I love my son, and will do anything for him. Now I would, at any rate.
I should just tell you what happened. This past Easter weekend my sister, Elizabeth, and her daughter, Jennifer, came to stay with us. She is the complete opposite of me in every way. Elizabeth is the pinnacle of the stay-at-home-doting-mother. The stress of having her around aside, Jennifer happens to be about the same age as Jimmy, so I thought it would be a relief to have them here to do all the eggs and chocolate nonsense with Jimmy so that I could just focus on some me time. I even relented a little bit this year and agreed that he could have some of that diabetes-inducing candy the stores in town overflow with each Spring. I had been working so many long hours since Christmas on a complicated case that had just closed and I was exhausted so I was relieved to have others to manage Jimmy. My only task was to go to the store and stock up however much of the candy was required, and of course, to get some treats for myself.
When I returned from shopping and pulled into the driveway of my little bungalow in the woods at the end of Aldwych Village, the kids were playing in the front yard, shouting continuously as they chased each other with sticks. With sticks? I thought, bemused. They were laughing, and clearly enjoying themselves, which I suppose was nice to see. Jimmy doesn’t really have many friends – I don’t think – and I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen him so…happy. But just watching them reminded me how exhausted I really was.
“Hey mommy! Mommy,” Jimmy hollered, waving his arms and stick to get my attention. I sighed and turned to him as I locked the car. “I’m winning!” he continued. I sighed again, not bothering to ask how they were keeping score, feeling a headache mounting.
I forced a weak smile across my face and hollered back, “That’s great,” and then, a moment later added, “honey”. I walked quickly into the house, clutching the small bag of discount candy in one hand, while I tried to keep the two bottles of white wine from clanking too loudly in my oversized purse in the other.
“Hey sweetheart! How was the store? Busy I bet, yeah?” Elizabeth sat at the table cutting up construction paper bunny rabbits, hearts, and eggs. She had already made a mess of my newspapers which had been shredded to fill several baskets.
I plopped the meager bag of candy into the middle of the arts and crafts table in my kitchen. “I’ll be downstairs,” I declared and strode quickly to the door now clutching my purse of wine to my chest like the life preserver that it truly was. I think she said something or other in reply, but I didn’t care. I had a date with a dark basement, a couch, and a bottle.
My date must have gone well because the next thing I remember I was sat in the middle of the couch, my arms splayed out to my sides, my legs stretched out in front of me. My mind was in a fog. I felt loopy, but not drunk. It was dark. Had I slept the whole afternoon? I tried to look around the exceptionally dark, furnished basement, but saw absolutely nothing. I also realized then that I couldn’t move my head. I tried to stand up, but my legs were numb. I next tried my arms, which I could see on my lap, but the muscles wouldn’t respond.
Then a light came on in the centre of the room. A bright, white spotlight from the ceiling shone down illuminating a grey folding table and two chairs in the middle of my open-concept basement. I don’t have a table there, I remember thinking, and: why was there suddenly a spotlight? This was the thought I singled out as not making any sense.
“Happy Easter, Mommy!” I heard my niece Jennifer say as she emerged out of the darkness on my left and ran up to the table. I saw that she was holding something, something dear, clutched tightly in both hands. I tried to speak, but only managed to move my mouth up and down slightly. In almost instant reply, Elizabeth spoke from the darkness to my right, as she too entered the bizarre stage that had materialized in my office.
“Oh and a happy, happy Easter to you, my love! What do you have there?” Elizabeth cooed as she sat herself down in the chair opposite her daughter. I always hated that stupid mommy voice she put on when talking to her child. So pretentious, so fake, I had always thought. And now she was doing an even more exaggerated version of it.
“My egg I painted, see.” She proudly presented her hands to her mother, opening them gently. “I painted a smile on it, see?” From my vantage sitting there in the front row I could see splotches of colour all over an ordinary chicken’s egg from the carton, as well as clearly the outline of two white dots and what would pass as a smile to a child’s unskilled mind.
“Oh, it’s so beautiful,” my sister continued in her silly tone. “It’s the nicest one ever!”
Hey, I thought, my kid made one too. It’s probably a lot nicer than that piece of crap. Wait, where is Jimmy? I felt a twinge of guilt. I hadn’t yet thought of my son since waking up to this ridiculous farce. What game are they playing, anyway? I tried to look around again, and – once again – realized I couldn’t.
“You know what happens now?” My sister whisper-shouted with excitement.
“What?” Jennifer replied, matching her mother’s glee.
Both of them turned in unison to face the darkened back of the faux stage.
“Why, it’s time for the Easter Bunny to judge!” I jumped from the sudden new voice in the room. I kid you not: someone dressed in a full, head-to-toe bunny rabbit outfit hopped into the light between them directly opposite me. Elizabeth and Jennifer both squealed in delight, raising their arms and shaking them as though they had just won a prize. Startled, I screamed, but I think it only came out as a low groan.
The person in the bright white bunny suit was tall, much taller than my sister or I, and I’m a statuesque five eight – nearly five ten in heels. Who the fuck is this guy? I yelled with fury in my mind. The bunny costume had a round, pink belly, and a goofy grin. Its ears stood straight up but flopped forward slightly at the ends. It held a wicker basket with a red and white checkered cloth covering the top. It sort of hopped over to the table, waving one hand – paw? – at my niece before turning to Elizabeth, patting her head. Jennifer cheered and both her and Elizabeth leaped from their chairs and rushed to hug the bunny man tightly across its wide waist.
All the while, the bunny man – or should I refer to as a ‘bunny person’? I was loathe, at the time, to refer to it as a bunny rabbit – stared right at me. At that point my frustration and annoyance at my situation turned to unease. Fun prank or not, whatever was going on in my basement that day was all very… strange.
“Gee, Jennifer. Gosh, that’s a wonderful egg you’ve got there,” it said in that ‘golly gee, aw shucks’ parlance you expect from a mascot at a sports game. The voice wasn’t quite a man’s voice, but also wasn’t quite a woman’s either. My two ecstatic relatives returned to their seats and eagerly gazed up at the… being. Then the Bunny Man – for simplicity’s sake, I’m just going to call it that from now on – placed its basket in the middle of the table while it picked up and carefully examined Jennifer’s egg.
“Such fine craftsmanship. A fine egg like this can only come from a very good girl,” it said while Jennifer smiled proudly. “And, of course, from a very good Mommy,” it continued, turning back to Elizabeth who flushed and averted her gaze in embarrassment. “I think it’s time for you to get your reward, if that’s alright with you, Mommy?”
Jennifer clasped her hands under her chin in a begging, praying posture. “Oh please! Can I have my reward?” Elizabeth pretended to think about it, her fingers rubbing her chin, drawing out the suspense of the moment.
The Bunny Man mimicked the child’s begging posture: “Oh please, Mommy, what do you say?”
Elizabeth laughed. “Of course, my sweet.”
Both the Bunny Man and Jennifer threw their hands up in delight. The creature pushed his giant paw into the covered basket and rummaged about for what seemed like far too long before finally, slowly, removing it. I could barely believe my eyes: it had removed a gigantic sheet of chocolate. Like, the size of a baking sheet. All one giant piece. It was bigger than the basket, so I had no idea how the thing managed to pull that trick off. It handed the sugar monstrosity to my niece who could barely hold it in her lap. I could see then as the bright light above bounced off of it that there was a carving etched all across the top of it – a carving in the shape of a heart.
“I love you, Mommy,” Jennifer said sincerely before taking a big bite out of the corner. “And you too, Easter Bunny!”
The spotlight went out and I was engulfed in total darkness. After a few seconds of silence, I could hear my quickening breath getting shallower. I tried to move my head again and could feel some success. I tried to hear what was going on around me, but all I could was my heart beat. In the complete darkness I felt trapped. The darkness closed in on me, seeping into my nose. The smell! Putrid, decay, as if suddenly dozens of rats had died in the walls around me and their combined odor finally permeated the room.
I don’t know exactly how long I sat there in that black void which my eyes could never seem to adjust to, but when the spotlight came back on I screamed in terror. The Bunny Man was sitting on its haunches, its face right in front of my face. Silhouetted by the spotlight and blocking out everything else, its dark maw filled my vision. Its nose was no more than two inches from mine. This play is fucking terrible. Get this man away from me, I thought. Angry, yes, but my uneasiness was turning rapidly into full-on fear.
The Bunny Man sniffed. Its nose wrinkled and crinkled up and down and side to side as its whiskers touched my face. As my eyes continued to adjust to the light, I could start to make out its features. The hair on its face seemed real. I could see mucus seeping slowly from its nose, and saliva on its whiskers. I looked up into its right eye and I saw the pupil dilate and zero in on my gaze. I saw the red veins in the whites of its eyes throb and ungulate. This wasn’t a bunny rabbit suit, this wasn’t some actor perched in front of me. No, this was a real… well, this was real. Then I smelled its breath again. I felt the air going in and out of its snout and heard the eagerness in its breath. I was in danger. That realization caused me to gasp, sucking in more of that foulness. I choked back vomit.
It licked its lips and I reactively looked down at its mouth. Oh, God, it’s mouth! Two, long pointed teeth filled the front, hanging over its bottom lip. The Bunny Man widened its grin revealing rows of jagged, broken, and sharp yellow and black teeth to either side of its front… fangs – I know rabbits don’t have fangs, but in the same way that this was clearly not a man in a suit, this was clearly no bunny rabbit. This monster had fangs. I shut my eyes as hard as I could while I mumbled some pleading to let me wake up and forget this nightmare.
And then it spoke in a much harsher, malevolent, lispy, and slithering voice: “Happy Easter, Ssssssamantha.”
Then I passed out.
I felt myself dragged backwards along the floor. With a thud, the beast slumped me into the chair Elizabeth had been sitting in.
Elizabeth! I suddenly remembered. “Where…where’s my…Elizabeth?” I eked out between sobs.
“Oh she’s fiiiiiiine,” it replied, drawing out its words, letting them dangle in the otherwise deathly quiet. The chair I was in was different from what Elizabeth had sat on. For one, it had arms. Also, it had straps. The Bunny Man quickly tied down my right wrist. While it did this, I reached out clumsily with my left hand in a half-hearted attempt to slap its face. With incredible reflexes it snapped at my approaching hand and growled and hissed at my face. “She’s cccccelebrating the wonderful holiday with her delightful little girl.” I didn’t bother to struggle as it then tied down my left hand, pulling the strap painfully tight. “That’s her reward. Let’s sssssee what yours turns out to be.”
“What… are you going to do to me?” I whispered through panicked tears and gasps.
Chuckles emerged from the beast as it stood, satisfied with its work in rendering me physically helpless once again: “Jimmy, my boy! Why don’t you come join ussssss?”
Oh no, Jimmy! Once again, I had forgotten all about my son. He shuffled slowly into the light from the darkness beyond, his hands cupping his egg, his face hung low. He had none of the excitement Jennifer had, none of the eagerness nor joy. But also, he showed none of the fear I was experiencing. He looked… ashamed.
The Bunny Man offered him Jennifer’s chair. “Hi. Mom. Happy Easter,” he said slowly, quietly, as he slumped down. What’s wrong with him? I frantically wondered if he had been drugged as I had clearly been.
“I’ve been a really good boy this year,” he continued in that slow, unenthusiastic way. “Haven’t I been good?” I couldn’t tell if it was a question directed to me or to the monster confining us.
“Yes,” I muttered. And then, after thinking about it honestly, I agreed in my heart that he had been good. When was the last time I said that? “Yes, of course you have. Of course, very good. Are you okay, Jimmy?”
Jimmy didn’t seem to acknowledge my reply. He just continued. “I got perfect grades in school like you wanted.” I nodded rapidly. “I never got in trouble.” Again, I nodded in agreement. “I painted that really nice picture of the family for Christmas.” Again, I nodded and smiled eagerly, trying to counteract the tears swelling in my eyes. My mind flashed back to his art class’s project. He painted the outline of our house in yellow, and he and his grandma as red stick figures holding hands in the orange yard. I was painted in black crayon, sitting inside my blue car waving at them.
“It was a beautiful painting, yes, Jimmy, yes.” I smiled, as best I could, and wished desperately in that moment that he would smile back. I needed to see some acknowledgement from him to know if he was all right.
“But you never hung it up.”
I swallowed a dry, hard lump. I had told him I’d hang it, but then put it down somewhere and never thought of it again. Shit. Now my head hung low, weighed down by my own shame.
The Bunny Man hissed in shocked disbelief: “Not even on the fridge?!”
“No,” both Jimmy and I whispered.
“Well, is there something you’d like to say to your mother now, Jimmy?”
I looked up at my son and deeply into his eyes. He looked deep into mine, I know he did. I had been a shitty parent. At that moment, I was sorry. I was going to make this better, once this nightmare was over, I promised myself.
“Happy Easter,” he said, finally, dismissively. He flopped his arms on the table and his egg rolled along toward me, bobbing up and down as it did. It came to a stop right in front of me only inches from the edge of the table. I gazed down at it. It was painted a simple, solid, bright red, save for a perfectly drawn heart in white that looked up at me. It was truly… perfect. He’s so very talented. Why had I never told him how talented he was? I stared at that egg, and gave up. I cried. And I was too ashamed to look up at my son.
After what must have been a full minute of raining tears down on this beautifully decorated Easter Egg, I turned my gaze back to my son – to Jimmy – and sincerely said, “Thank you. I love you.”
He smiled. He finally smiled. Thank god, I prayed, for the first time in years.
The Bunny Man picked up the basket and placed it in front of Jimmy before leaning over the table between us. “You truly are a good boy, Jimmy.” The creature turned its head on a swivel to look straight at me again before continuing: “Now, Mommy, shall we give your son his reward?”
I broke my gaze with my son to look up at the monster. The beast’s paws had become darkened claws, like the talons of a vulture. It clutched them together under its chin, which was getting wet from drool. It was smiling at me, I know it was. I looked into those eyes and begged that Jimmy’s reward would keep his smile on his face and make this whole ordeal somehow worth it for all the suffering this beast was putting us both through.
Jimmy put his hand into the basket. He rummaged around in it for a few seconds, paused, and then a few seconds more. That smile I had been so relieved to see emerge fell from his face. He slowly pulled his hand back and revealed…nothing. The Bunny Man yanked the cloth off the top of the basket revealing… a regular-sized, empty, wicker basket.
“What’s going on?” I stammered. “Where’s his reward? Where’s his candy?” Jimmy sat back in a huff as he folded his arms across his small chest, while confusion, terror, and anger swelled in mine.
The Bunny Man never looked away from me, as it leaned down on the table, a claw on its right paw tapping the plastic table, waiting for me to respond.
That tapping. That was the only sound in the room. I turned frantically back and forth from Jimmy’s sunken face to the Bunny Man’s gaping maw. Soon it began to shake its head slowly.
“Do you know where your reward is, Jimmy?” The creature asked my son. Jimmy shook his head with exaggerated force. The Bunny Man raised up his left arm and violently slammed it down on the egg in front of me. It exploded with a pop, instantaneously sending yolk splattering onto my face. Jimmy didn’t seem to react, but I yelped and leaped out of my chair as far as I could before my straps resisted.
“You see, Jimmy my boy, your mommy here – Samantha – didn’t think you deserved a reward. In fact, she doesn’t think you deserve anything.”
That’s not true! It couldn’t be. I hoped Jimmy believed the same.
The Bunny Man continued: “She works all the time, doesn’t she? She’s gone in the morning before you get up, and comes home only after she knows you are already for bed. Why? Because she doesn’t think you deserveeeee to see her. She doesn’t want to see you, that’s for sure. She never reads to you anymore, now does she?”
After a pause, Jimmy replied, “No.”
I could feel my legs now. I kicked and flailed them all around suddenly struggling mightily against the straps on my wrists. But it was pointless. The chair itself was bolted to the ground.
“When little Jimmy brings home a perfect score on his spelling test eager to see his mother proud of him, Samantha here barely acknowledgesssss it,” the beast continued, slowly, in its taunting voice. It sauntered around the table, around behind me. I was frozen. I held my breath.
“Yes,” Jimmy whispered.
“Mommy works all the time, but surely on weekends, she’ll have allllll the time to spend with you, her only child? But when the weekends finally come, when Good-Boy Jimmy wants to go to the park or to the candy store or just to spend time with his mother whom he loves so, soooooo much, Mommy tells him to be quiet. She just wants to sit. On her couch. Alone.”
The lights in the room had started to come up. Those last words the monster spoke truly hurt me, causing me to turn away from Jimmy in shame. What I saw was myself, a version of myself, collapsed on the couch, with one leg outstretched lengthwise, and the other dangling to the floor. Jimmy was standing over me, his little hand shaking my shoulder gently. His little whisper of ‘Mommy? Mommy?’ – I felt it in my heart as I watched myself grunt and roll over, turning away from my son. I wondered what occasion this was that was being reenacted, but it didn’t matter – it was every occasion, was it not?
“You know, your Mommy never got you a reward,” the Bunny Man hissed as it walked over to the other-me and bent to pick up an empty wine bottle toppled over on the floor. The thing waved it in front of its face. “But she sure got many for herself!”
“Yeah, she did. She always does,” Present-Jimmy spoke clearly, anger weaving through his words. I jerked back to look across the table at him in fear. I could feel the anger in his words like jagged cuts on my skin.
The Bunny Man said as he walked back to the table: “Don’t you think it’s time you got ssssomething, Jimmy?”
“Yes. I do,” my boy, my beautiful little boy, hissed, his voice indistinct from that of the Bunny Man.
The Bunny Man held the empty wine bottle by its neck and brought it down hard on the edge of the table. It shattered, leaving a jagged weapon in the monster’s grip.
“Please, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! I’ll make it up to you, I promise, I’ll make it right, I swear,” I moaned and begged and cried pitifully.
The Bunny Man bent down to look me in the face. As it did it brought its face right up to mine and I again saw those jagged teeth slick with greedy saliva, its mouth pulled back in a nasty grin.
“Yes, you will,” it whispered.
I felt the jagged end of the bottle pierce my flesh. My chest instantly burned while I also felt cold overtaking me. The hot blood ran down my shirt, my stomach. I gagged. I looked down and saw the bottle was buried above my left breast. The Bunny Man twisted and turned the make-shift murder weapon, first to the right, then to the left, then back and forth. It dug through my chest.
What could I do? The light in the room started to fade again with each twist. Or was it the light in me?
Then the feeling of suction permeated through me as this nightmarish creature slowly pulled the bottle’s end out. It took the air out of my lungs with it. Finally, it was over, I thought, but I wasn’t so lucky. I was transfixed by the broken, bloody bottle, and my still beating heart wedged in the end of it. The ice cream cone of a Devil.
“This belongs to Jimmy,” the Bunny Man whispered. The thing reached over the basket and poured my still-beating heart into it. The Bunny Man, covered in my blood, carefully placed the cloth over the basket again, fussing with the edges to ensure it was neatly and evenly covered. The thing hummed and moved its arms and claws over the basket like a magician over a tophat. I had no fight left. I sat there completely limp, just looking across the table at Jimmy. My son breathed heavily from his mouth, which hung slack; drool formed at the corners and then overflowed, slowly creeping down his chin and dropping onto his lap. He was so angry, and so hungry. And so excited.
The Bunny Man finished its ritual with a clap of its paws. While it looked at me, it gingerly slid the basket toward Jimmy. My son, in a frenzy, threw his hands into the basket, smiled a maddening grin of delight, and pulled out a large, chocolate egg. The spotlight glinting off its smooth surface showed an etching of a heart just like that which he had painted so perfectly onto the egg he had given me minutes before.
“Thank you,” the child who had been my sweet, loving son, whispered in a mocking tone of glee. He opened his mouth and pierced the egg like a vampire latching onto a woman’s throat. I felt my body fading away. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I was passing out for good. But I heard him say the words I dreaded hearing: “Happy Easter, Mommy!”
Yes, good. You deserve that, Jimmy, I conceded. My vision started to blur as what little energy I had drained away.
I hadn’t noticed, but the Bunny Man had been gathering up the bits of the shattered egg on the table, patiently drawing its claw across the table to pool the yolk. When it had gathered a clawfull, it pushed the yellow, red, and white mess into the gaping wound in my chest. This brought me back to the present as I gasped and mumbled: “What…why…now?”
Ignoring my sounds, it picked up more viscera and detritus from the floor and pushed that too into my chest, sending waves of stinging pain throughout my body. “Now now, Samantha, dearest. You deserve your reward, too.”
The creature delicately removed from the bottle the flap of skin that had once covered my heart. “Oh gee, I do love arts and crafts!” the Bunny Man spoke in that wholesome voice it had used with Elizabeth and Jennifer as it carefully placed the loose skin over the wound. The thing slowly licked a claw and ran it along the edges of the wound, each time burning my skin. As its salvia mixed with my body, I shut my eyes to the pain. When the burning sensation began to fade, I opened them to see that the skin had fused in place. I looked up to see the Bunny Man licking all the claws on its paws, sopping up my blood eagerly.
I woke to the sound of my own shrieking and the discomfort of falling with a thud onto the cold basement floor. I flailed, clutching at my chest. Terrified, I couldn’t catch my breath as I looked down to examine my chest wound. I saw what was there and I shuddered, grasping my blouse closed.
I tried to calm my breathing as Elizabeth hurried down the stairs calling after me.
“Samantha! Samantha, what’s wrong? Are you okay? What’s happened?” she calmored as I lifted myself back up onto the couch.
“What? Where… what time is it?” I asked erratically.
Confused, she replied, “About 2:30. Yeah, you came down here a few hours ago and then, AHHH!, you were shouting, so I nearly dropped my basket.”
I quickly surveyed my surroundings – my ordinary home office. No spotlight hung from the ceiling, no plastic tables, and certainly no chair with straps bolted to the ground. I shot a glance down to the floor beside the couch, and there were my two bottles of wine, unopened. I must have passed out from just exhaustion alone?
“Are you all right, then? You look rattled.” I saw that Elizabeth had been carrying something in her hands. A basket. A basket with a cloth napkin that looked all too familiar. She replied something to the effect that she had been gathering up the eggs the children had made that morning, but I wasn’t listening too closely. Anxious but desperately curious, I nervously reached out and peaked beneath a corner of the fabric. My eyes caught just a hint, just a little bit, for only a second, of a bright, red egg with a perfect drawing of a heart. A perfect egg made my perfect son.
Still covering my chest, but trying not to look too ridiculous or suspicious in front of my sister, I took a deep breath, realized what I needed to do next, and walked purposefully toward the stairs.
That day I spent nearly five hundred dollars on all the biggest and most elaborate Easter treats I could find, completely cleaning out both of Aldwych’s grocery stores. Jimmy spent that Sunday and Monday on a sugar high. We didn’t finish it all then, but we have slowly been working our way through it since, taking a piece out of the freezer each and every time Jimmy brings home a score on a test he’s proud of, or paints a lovely picture we agree should be hung on the fridge at once. Sometimes we forget all about the candy and just celebrate with a hug. I always remember to congratulate him and to tell him how much I love him, each time I do so I rub my heart beneath my breast.
I took to researching the origins of the Easter Bunny. I found it referenced in old Germanic lore. The popular early bunny legends had it as a benign creature that judged childrens’ behaviour, like another Santa Claus. Good children got sweet treats, bad children didn’t. But this wasn’t true, I knew it wasn’t. I drove to the university. I went deeper and further back into the arcana. It turns out there are references to a creature that matched the general description that came out at the beginning of Spring, not to judge the children, but their parents. Good parents were rewarded with good kids, and bad parents… well…
So as I said in the beginning: I am learning to love my child with all my heart and all my mind and all my soul. And it’s working – I’m definitely better. But I’m a work in progress. Anytime I slip and stumble in my determination, I try to catch myself by locking myself in the bathroom, taking off my shirt, and gazing at the scar on my chest: a scar in the shape of a perfect heart.