Easter Eggs and Bunny Boilers: A Horror Anthology

by Matt Shaw

  After she clubbed Josiah Christian in the back of the head with a section of broken brick and dropped him in a sprawl on the alley floor, she took her time regaining her jacket and fishing that knife out of the pocket.

  *

  In a drunken wave of humanity, Julian Maundy and his equally inebriated pack of friends finally vacated Fantasy Dress. A couple of them were completely pissed, falling down drunk, but most of them were still holding it together despite having consumed enough alcohol between them to put a small liquor store out of business.

  They hadn’t left the premises entirely willingly, knowing full well there was precious fuck all else they could do once they departed Fantasy Dress, but when it reached the point when even the sluttiest waitress, Kathy, was complaining about their raucous, crude antics, it was time for security to move in and move them on.

  Left with little other option in the small hours of the morning, they splintered into smaller knots of twos and threes. Some wandered off with ambitions of perhaps hailing a cab home, others departed in erratic, wavering lines with no idea where they were going.

  Julian and a few others hung around the general vicinity, loitering, under the belief that some of the lingerie girls would be clocking off soon enough. With plans to accost any that did happen to do so, the bunch smoked and stalked around the nearby streets, keeping eyes out for any women at all drifting into their orbit. There must have still been a couple of twenty four hour places open, because there was a reasonable number of pedestrians and traffic around, even at this late hour, but with their single-minded mission keeping them from thinking outside the box, the crew of liquored up men didn’t contemplate travelling too far afield from their chosen hunting ground.

  At some stage during their predatory prowling, constant trading of vulgarities and demeaning ripostes about the girlfriends that several of them already had, but didn’t have any intention of going home to, Julian felt eyes on him. Even in his state of intoxication, he felt as though somebody was watching him, eyes boring into him like lasers and he drifted away from the others, curious. He wouldn’t have believed it if somebody made mention of knowing when you’re being watched while he was sober, but for some reason, whilst pissed as a newt, he could well and truly appreciate it. Then he saw her.

  He couldn’t believe it. Whatever god looked out for maggoted fuckheads was smiling down on Julian Maundy right now.

  A few businesses up from Fantasy Dress, peering out from between two of them was the very waitress he’d had the biggest hard-on for whilst in the joint. She was staring straight at him, something of an alluring smile plastered on her sexy face. The hot, albeit aloof, blonde. Nah, more like fucking frigid blonde who’d had no sense of humour or interest in him and his friend’s endless procession of sexual come-ons. Shit, a gal working in a joint like that, dressed in less material than he’d need to lace his shoes and she wasn’t down to hear some horny remarks directed her way?

  Looked quite remarkably as though she’d changed her tune somewhat.

  She even still had those bunny ears she’d been wearing inside, atop her head. No disgusted looks on her face this time, no, she was all smiles. Dare Julian think it, slutty smiles? Come-on smiles? She was still in that tiny outfit she’d been wearing in Fantasy Dress and nothing more. He bet if she were to turn around she’d still have that fluffy little cottontail adorning her ass.

  Goddamn, Julian loved Easter. Not for any of the religious horseshit, nor the candy or what-have-you; shit he didn’t even like chocolate. What he loved it for was the fact that it seemed every single year, without fail, he had an uncanny knack of picking up and getting laid. In almost any kind of situation something would happen, resulting in him getting his end wet. Most times he actively pursued that goal, but others he didn’t and things just fell into place, leaving him riding triumphant while his stupid girlfriend was none the wiser. Just like now.

  And this blonde stunner wasn’t just some lingerie waitress bitch dressed up as a slutty bunny, she was a bona fide Bunny. Her name was Bunny, for fucks sake. This was fate, had to be. She was the Easter Bunny. At least as close to any kind of Easter Bunny as Julian Maundy was ever likely to believe in.

  Happy Easter, Julian.

  The blonde with the bunny ears and the name Bunny on her driver’s licence, took one step out from where she’d been hiding-or waiting, Julian wasn’t sure which-between establishments. She surfaced from the dark shadows that stretched back between those buildings just enough to ensure he saw her properly, then she beckoned with a come hither finger that was a pretty clear indication of her intentions to Maundy.

  He couldn’t be one hundred per cent sure he saw everything after that quite as plainly or whether his brain was clouded enough by alcohol for his eyes to play some tricks on him, but she turned around and thrust her ass out, popping those bare buttocks out in a motion that wasn’t difficult to mistake. It was her fluffy little costume cottontail that was making him think his eyes were deceiving him. While she had her butt sticking out, wiggling it tantalisingly, that tail he’d been making lewd comments about all evening didn’t seem to even be there. Yet when she slapped her ass with one hand, the tail reappeared.

  Did she have it in her hand or what? Julian’s booze-soaked brain found that small, trivial detail perplexing, but the brain he relied on more heavily than the one in his cranium spoke to him from below his waist and he didn’t need any more bidding than Bunny’s come-hither finger and her gyrating backside to answer that call.

  Then she was gone, vanishing back into the dark between buildings.

  Julian glanced back at his companions. Ensconced in a loud drunken debate, they hadn’t even noticed him take leave of their presence. Even better, they hadn’t noticed the woman pop out onto the sidewalk and then disappear again. Which suited the hell out of him. He wasn’t sharing with them. Hadn’t ever had any plans to.

  He wasted no time hastening up the sidewalk, departing the immediate vicinity of Fantasy Dress and its surrounds, aiming for that dark mouth of a passageway she’d disappeared into.

  Even in a sober state of mind, Julian had no qualms about entering a dark domain when sex was on the agenda. Being inebriated and fired up by the amount of bared flesh on display in Fantasy Dress only heightened his desire to rush after the sexy Easter Bunny.

  It was lighter than he’d expected in there, but still dark enough that his pink shirt looked like it was a glow in the dark job. He could see vague shapes and a spill of light from the open mouth that was the other end of the passage, though he couldn’t immediately see the girl. He was already fumbling with his zipper, trying to free his stiffening dick. Being pissed right now wasn’t giving him a case of the flops at all, not when he knew what was waiting in the shadows for him.

  “Bunny? Oh Bunny, don’t run like a rabbit now.”

  “I’m not running. I’m right here. Waiting.”

  One of those nebulous forms sashayed from the clustered shadows cast by the neighbouring buildings, taking shape as Bunny herself and Julian completed the job of getting his erection out, inwardly marking up another notch for a successful Easter egg hunt. Every year without fail, he was the champion, scoring the prize egg each time while his drunken mates ended up falling over one another, talking utter shit and hamstringing their own efforts to pick up a fine piece of Easter tail.

  “I overheard you before,” Bunny said. “You have a girlfriend. Is that true?”

  “Ah not really. I mean, she’s…”

  “No need to lie. I kinda have a fetish for attached guys, you know. It’s a big thrill to me.”

  “Yeah,” Julian laughed, bolstered by that knowledge. “Yeah I got a girlfriend. Stupid bitch is sitting at home, clueless.”

  “She lives with you, does she?”

  “Sure does. Though I guess ‘live’ is a bit of a stretch. Bitch never wants to do shit. So, fuck her.”

  “No. Fuck you.”

  Bunny stepped right up close to him and it wasn’t a fluffy
bunny tail she was holding in her hand now. It was a bloodied folding knife, serrated blade extended. She punched it into the side of his neck.

  As she pulled the blade back out, blood squirted in a gory spray over the bright pink of his shirt and he staggered a couple of steps backwards, eyes bulging and useless hands clapping at the stab wound. His legs went spastic and rubbery under him, and he dropped on his knees with a jarring thump that knocked his palm away from the spouting neck and sent more claret in crimson rivulets down onto the garish outfit which was fast becoming stained with a darker hue than he’d started the evening with.

  “Look, you’re getting blood everywhere,” Bunny said and tossed something towards him. “You’re so full of alcohol, that blood is going to be as thin as water and you’re just going to bleed out. I doubt your jizzrag is going to help with that much, but here you go.”

  The fluffy bunny tail of her costume bounced off his chest, where an escalating spread of blood was soaking into his shirt, and fell onto the ground before him. For such an innocuous little white ball, it appeared to be mocking him and in his stupor of pain, he couldn’t tear his eyes off it. He fixated on it, tried desperately to focus on it as though it were some inane beacon to keep his tenuous grip on life intact.

  Then Bunny moved in closer, still wielding her gore dripping knife. She wasn’t done with it yet.

  *

  At first she thought the loud hammering was issuing from inside her skull, but as she came fully awake and shook off her disorientation, Magdalena Christian realised the infernal banging wasn’t a result of the hellacious hangover she was sporting. It didn’t help it any, but the two were independent of one another.

  The reason for that obnoxious noise being so loud was because it was the front door, the thumping reverberating around her cranium like it was being subjected to a sadistic army of tap-dancing fucktards. And instead of being ensconced in her bedroom, where the sound would be muffled and faint at best, she hadn’t quite made it that far. Another night spent passed out in the lounge, mere metres from the front door.

  By the time she’d righted herself on the sofa, swinging her legs over the side with an accidental motion that was far too exuberant for her head to take without kicking renewed bursts of dull, throbbing pain through it, the banging had ceased. She sat there for a second expecting it to resume, but all was quiet now.

  If it was Josiah, and there was every chance the imbecile had lost his keys out on another booze-soaked, skirt-chasing, slut-ogling expedition, he wouldn’t relent on the banging, he’d just keep at it with his usual idiotic obstinacy, probably punctuating it with curses and shouts. Clearly he hadn’t made it home once again, but she hadn’t really expected anything more.

  Getting up was an effort. Her mouth was Sahara desert dry and the taste in there was feral, something she knew she could attribute to the few glasses-come on, now, the few bottles-of red she’d knocked back over the course of the evening.

  Fucking Easter. She was no believer in anything affiliated with the holiday at all; it was either an ultra-commercial money suck, a blatant excuse to stuff faces with chocolate or a reason for the fervently religious to assemble and worship, but she did subscribe to the notion that one shouldn’t be spending it alone. Yet, that was exactly how she spent each Easter, Christmas, everything. Getting acquainted with a bottle of wine, then chasing it with another and for good measure, maybe one or two more after that.

  There was nobody outside. Nobody standing there impatiently with fist raised ready to start up the banging ensemble again. No inebriated Josiah hanging onto the railing or sprawled in the garden bed. Nobody departing the scene, discouraged with the lack of answer. But there was a brightly coloured, garish, cellophane covered Easter basket sitting on the welcome mat just outside the door.

  “What the…?”

  Stooping, she picked it up and backed inside, peering with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion at the strange item. Who the hell would bother dropping off an Easter basket to her? She hadn’t received one since she was a child and all of her friends knew she wouldn’t be interested in receiving one now. Not unless it was full of bottles of wine…

  It wouldn’t be from Josiah. That wasn’t his style at all. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d given her anything, aside from headaches, grief and indigestion. The days of him even being able to give her any semblance of an orgasm were long gone, buried by time and dust. She wasn’t sure if he even knew what an Easter basket was, let alone any of the alleged ‘true’ senses of the holiday itself.

  Could it be from some prospective admirer? She wasn’t lacking for suitors; there were a couple of strapping young lads at the gym who always eyed her with appreciation and engaged her in flirty conversation at any available opportunity and there were others elsewhere who’d indicated they’d have no problem pursuing her if she suddenly presented herself as available. She didn’t think it was any of their styles either though. No, this just seemed bizarre.

  Maybe it was a complimentary gift from one of the various liquor stores that saw frequent activity from the Christian credit cards. That was perfectly feasible. Between Josiah and herself they must have been keeping these establishments in business.

  She took another cursory look around outside, just on the off chance she’d catch a glimpse of somebody departing or loitering around the area waiting to see her reaction, maybe a delivery van, anything to present a clue, but there was nothing. Pulling the door shut behind her, she went back inside.

  Normally she’d be brewing up a nice hot pot of coffee, but at the moment she felt as though she couldn’t even stomach that. She knew anything that hit the pit of her stomach would be exiting twice as fast. Instead, she returned to the place she’d woken up, perching her rump on the edge of it while she placed the curious, gaudy item on the coffee table.

  “It’s too early in the morning for this nonsense,” she commented to nobody in particular, though truth be told she hadn’t a clue what time it was. It could have been after midday for all she knew, and since her solo drinking binges usually carried on well into the small hours of the morning before she inevitably passed out, it was a fair bet that it wasn’t that early at all. In any case, early or otherwise, no time was good for looking at the utter brightness of the outlandish cellophane encasing the basket. It wasn’t doing her head any favours at all, so she tore it open, ripping it away from the basket to see what it contained.

  Peering at it, Magdalena saw the inside of the basket was mostly comprised of bright shreds of paper, like confetti or the streamers from those absurd little Christmas crackers, all bunched around to constitute a variegated nest. In that nest were two foil wrapped eggs, their coverings as garishly bright as the cellophane and the paper streamers. There was so much colour there it made Magdalena want to throw up and that would have been the case whether she was hungover or not.

  She didn’t see a note or a card or anything to indicate who was responsible for this aberration that looked like it had been pissed out by a rainbow. Maybe it was somebody messing with her. Somebody from her past when she’d been a pill popper, a raver who downed ecstasy pills like lollies. Maybe there were pills inside the eggs or something. Shit, at this rate she’d almost welcome that. She would have welcomed it last night. A fleeting semblance of happiness to curb the stupid notion of spending Easter alone, albeit a synthetic one.

  Plucking an egg out, she held it in her hand and gazed at it. It was pliable; not at all what she’d expected. It wasn’t the firm feel she’d been anticipating, had it been chocolate or plastic encasing something else, or if it was chocolate, then it was starting to melt and soften. That prospect almost made her gorge rise and bring that nausea swelling back up in her. Nonetheless, she peeled it anyway. And then she did throw up.

  Even without having ever seen one in this state before, Magdalena didn’t need to have done so, to know what she was holding in her hand was a bloodied human testicle. A gory shrivelled walnut of a thing in its bed of brig
ht Easter foil, that inner layer still flecked with red spots.

  Magdalena dropped it with a horrified shriek and projectile vomited an acidic stream of bile, scampering away from the offending article in a clumsy motion that bumped her into the coffee table and upended the lurid basket on the floor. The other foil-wrapped egg, which she didn’t need to unwrap to know she had the grisly former nutsack resident’s twin accounted for, fell out among the tangle of multi-coloured paper streamers. Falling atop this mess, apparently formerly buried under the nest was a card, bright pink in colour and speckled with blood.

  The last thing Magdalena wanted to do was touch that, but morbid curiosity defeated all other cogitations. Hunched on the floor on hands and knees, still trailing tendrils of bile from the corners of her mouth, she reached out a trembling hand towards that card, snatching it between fingers that really wanted to be anywhere but there.

  Happy (belated) Easter, Mrs Christian

  It took quite some convincing to make your husband see that he really should be giving his cream eggs to you for Easter, but he came around eventually. I know they’re a little late, but I have been a very busy BUNNY.

  Yours truly, the new Easter BUNNY.

  *

  Magdalena Christian wasn’t the only one to receive an unexpected Basket on Easter Monday.

  Over on the other side of town, Jessica Abbott likewise answered a knock on the door of the apartment she shared with boyfriend Julian Maundy to find a garish abomination of a basket sitting innocuously on the floor outside.

  So too did others. Quite a few others.

  After all, Easter Sunday was one of those nights of the year that seemed to bring all the freaks out of the woodwork. Many of whom happened to cross the path of the self-proclaimed new Easter Bunny.