Somehow I was able to duck out of the mêlée of pumping white signs. I heard some guy call out his window, “The Easter Bunny’s crawling away. Hang him by his ears!” When the signs stopped flailing, I was already off and running.
I ran so far without looking back that I got crazy lost in the dense forest. When I stopped, the trees had closed in on me. It was turning dusk. Thanks to all the pink, my former band members could see me despite my head start.
From down in the culvert I heard their voices as they searched for me. My heavy breathing was thunderous in the bewhiskered head. I’d been focusing on my music career. I wasn’t in the best of shape, okay? For a while I tried not to breathe. Breathing is so overrated except when you are out of breath.
At least ten minutes passed in my little soggy burrow. The taunts from the lion, wolf and leopard had stopped. The sound of tinkling water beside me grew comforting. A piece of driftwood spun by on its way down the rivulet. There was no sound from above. I felt safe under the deadfall. A frog issued a protest to the pink invader. A copse of leaves left over from last fall waved at me beneath the cold water.
Bea says fall colors suck the tones out of other colors in the world. If oak leaves change in Berlin, yellow drains from an Iowa sweater or a bowl of curry powder in Bangladesh. When Japanese maples turn colors in Fukuoka, the hues of a thousand burgundy New York knapsacks darken. Bea told me that’s why all my black T-shirts fade. I said it was bleach. Bea lets me know color is like energy—it’s neither created nor destroyed. Color fades somewhere and brightens in another place. She calls it the yin and yang of hue. I told her there was no way to prove her theory scientifically. That’s the problem with her quirky theories, they make tons of sense when you think about them, but there is no proof. She was quick to point out that there is nothing that disproves her ideas, either.
Last fall we made a compost bin out behind the apartment. First, we had a huge leaf fight. I won, of course. When it was over and we had stuffed a bunch of leaves inside the bin, I reminded Bea that not only were we saving the environment, but a few baseball caps in Memphis had turned light green.
She just laughed and told me that’s not how the color law works. “It’s only when colors are created that others are destroyed.”
Can you believe her? Again, no proof. Like I was supposed to know that. Like they teach Bea’s theories in colleges across the land. Not that I’ve ever been to college or anything. So you won’t catch me using big stiff words like Virg. You’ll see.
And what did I say about not wanting to talk about Bea?
In the bunny costume I began smelling a strange odor. The smell was coming from behind me. Hades, it was coming from my behind, from the back hatch where I do my bunny business!
My tail was on fire!
I scrambled out from under the branches. Let me tell you, it’s hard to scramble and swat at your nether regions all at the same time. You’d better believe I got good at it in a hurry. When I jumped to my feet there was Geri. One of his lion paws was off and he was standing with a lighter in his hand. He’s the only member of the band that smokes. The rest of the band was laughing their furry heads off.
“Enjoy your seat warmer,” Geri chuckled.
One of them said, “Let’s string his ears from the trees.”
I turned to run and Geri moved in front of me. I stepped to the side and there he was again. When I darted the other way, Phil stopped me. That left no other choice than to push the she-wolf into the stream. She was the only one I could manhandle of the bunch since she’s a girl.
As Tasha crash-landed into the water I darted up the embankment with fire dancing up my backside. I was giving off enough smoke signals to make any Boy Scout proud. Easter Bunny costumes aren’t fireproof if you get them from the disgusting Zany Zoo Travel Agency. Keep that in mind.
At the top of the embankment I ran at least a hundred yards swatting and flapping with alternating hands. I hurdled a log, then another. My pink feet skidded on a patch of black mud. Then I went knee-deep into a puddle. I was in for a heck of a dry-cleaning bill from Virg.
S’ppose you need to know why I didn’t just ditch the bunny costume so I could run faster. Well for starters, I don’t run fast in stocking feet and it was way too cold to be running in boxer shorts. Easter season is chilly in Florence, New York. Plus the zipper was rusty and impossible to unzip. So yeah, that was another squirrelly question.
I scrambled past huge maples that densely populated the forest and a cypress or two. The voices of my pursuers were getting closer. I was working up a lather in the costume.
Finally the air began lightening and I realized I was reaching the outskirts of the woods. Off in the distance I glimpsed the blinking red sign of the travel agency EVERYBODY LIMBO. You can only imagine how cheap and gaudy it looks.
So there, standing at the edge of the forest, I saw a man waving me toward him. He had on a Hawaiian shirt.
Copyrights Trademarks and Ownership: © Copyright Bottletree Books LLC All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-933747-30-9. Andrew Barger is part owner of Bottletree Books LLC. Digital images of the cover may be resized and shown as “fair use” for purposes of selling and promoting the book. This work and all names, characters, places and incidents are fictional. Any resemblance to actual events or locals or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. BOTTLETREE is a registered trademark of Bottletree Books LLC. The Bottletree logo, and related trade dress, including all cover art designs are trademarks of Bottletree Books, LLC.
Table of Contents
Shapeshifting the Werewolf in Literature
Hugues the Wer-Wolf : A Kentish Legend of the Middle Ages
The Man-Wolf
A Story of a Weir-Wolf
The Wehr-Wolf: A Legend of the Limousin
The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains
List of Short Stories Considered
About Andrew
The Best Werewolf Short Stories 1800-1849 Page 16
