We Love You, Bunny

How did we end up in a circle surrounding the bunny in Kyra’s attic?

Well, Bunny led us there, if you can believe it. Hopped all the way from the garden to her place. He even looked over his bloody shoulder to see were we following? Fuck yes, Bunny. Following with no idea at all where he was leading us. It was sort of erotic. I was feeling, I’ll admit, sexual about it. Which was weird. And yes, I know what you’re thinking: Surprise, sur­ prise, Vik’s feeling sexual about somethingfucked-up. Well, fuck you, Bunny. It was weird, okay? Yes, I’ve been turned on by some bizarre shit, but I don’t fuck bunnies, Bunny. Just not a freak that way, sorry. And yet? I can’t deny there was something arousing about all of us together in the cool of night, following this furry creature, with his sly eyes that seemed to glow an even brighter blue in the dark. He seemed almost to smile at us over his shoulder. Like, Come on. Let’s go.

All the way there we didn’t fucking speak. Couldn’t. Didn’t want to spook him, first of all. Didn’t want him to run away. Don’t run away, Bunny! We would fucking die if you ran away now. We all held our breaths as we made our way through the dark, winding streets. Kyra was so happy when Bunny suddenly stopped in front of her house. We felt her joy inside of us, leaping and clapping its small hands, and it was awful. Yet we were so mes­ merized by the fact of Bunny in our midst. He hopped up her stone steps.

Like, Here. Here is where I’d like to go, ladies, okay? Okay, Bunny. Sure. We’re not loving this choice, but what choice have we? Bunny waited patiently while Kyra opened her front door; he just sort of sat there on the stoop, looking up. Watched her turn the key in the lock with the shakiest fucking hand, a smile on his face. And we waited with Bunny, small smiles on our own faces also. And we knew we would lose our souls to this, whatever it was. It was already happening. It had already begun.

Bunny went right in when Kyra opened the door. Hopped his way through the living room and right up her rickety staircase to the attic. Al­ most like it was Bunny’s place now, not hers anymore. He was the one who had collected all the typewriters and dumb knickknacks and fairy posters. Bunny was the one who owned two copies of the writing diaries of Virginia Woolf. It was Bunny who’d dog-eared the pages, thrice underlined the line: I am I: and I must follow that furrow, not copy another.

And then:

We were in the attic with Bunny. Dark. So dark but for a splash of moon in the triangle window that made everything a little silvery. And what happened was like a kind of dream. All of us suddenly in a circle around Bunny, glowing whitely in the moonlight. One of us had lit candles, when and why did we even light candles? Don’t know. Yet one of us had done it. Knew to do it. Knew also to play music from her iPhone. Something haunt­ ing and harpy with reverb. To burn an incense stick, four incense sticks, in fact, each embodying a different element-earth, air, water, fire-going all at once. To set a bundle of sage ablaze in an abalone shell, it was Kyra who did this.

“Why are you doing that, Bunny?” I asked her, watching her small, heart-shaped face lit orange from the many flames.

“Bunny wants me to,” she whispered, staring at the creature. He was simply sitting there in the pool of moonlight. Sitting in the center of us like our furry sun. Kyra’s eyes, when she looked at me, looked lost in the most terrible, beautiful dream. I was lost there too, I knew. We all were. Someone had also put on an old black-and-white film, it looked like, using Kyra’s projector. It played silently, hugely, on the attic wall. It looked foreign but familiar. A New Wave I didn’t recognize but felt I knew by heart all the same. A masked couple walking arm in arm, around and around a fountain. What movie was this, I wondered, and who had put it on? But I didn’t have the mind frame to ask more questions just now. Could only swim in this moment. And all while Bunny sat there in our midst like literal magic. The moon making him glow whiter and brighter. None of us dared make even a breath of a sound. Or move closer. Even though, god, I wanted to, Bunny. Looking at Bunny. And Bunny looking at me, I felt. Making me want. So much. Want what exactly? Didn’t even know. But my body hummed with it. Dripped with it. Bunny was emanating an energy. A magnetic force, like he was the moon and we were the tide.

“Hot,” I heard myself say. And it felt as though Bunny’s eyes had pulled the word out of me. Like a magician, really.

“Pretty,” someone else’s mouth said. Or maybe all our mouths said. Said it at the exact same time. The incenses were twisting in the air, the different smokes braiding themselves like hair in Coraline’s gloved fingers. Music played from all four of our phones now. My atmospheric bitch rock. Coraline’s poppy swells and power ballads. Else’s oblique ambient punctu­ ated with her Kate Bush and Heart. Those dark fucking fairy harps, which must have been Kyra’s. And Bunny seemed to be swaying now slightly to our various musics. Like he was dancing almost. Was her Or was he just sit­ ting there, munching the little mound of grass one of us must have plucked along the way and provided to him.”

“Amazing,” we all whispered. And then we began to sway with Bunny. Like we were all of us suddenly dancing too. The blue of Bunny’s eyes be­ came a kind of indigo then. Suddenly I was moving closer, my feet moving closer, inching toward this magic. Toward Bunny, who was drawing me near with his magnetism, his magnetic eyes and smile. We were all of us moving closer, I saw. Making a tight circle around Bunny, who was still swaying as we were swaying. Occasionally munching the grass.

“There’s a fairy tale about a girl who marries a rabbit,” Kyra said softly, swaying.”But the rabbit turns out to be an abusive asshole. So she runs away.”

“What are you saying, girl?” Coraline asked.

“Nothing.Just that in fairy tales, people have relations with animals like rabbits, is all. Girls are always marrying beasts in fairy tales. And … ” She trailed off, staring into Bunny’s eyes.

“And?” I asked.

“And then they turn human and hot when you kiss them. Or some­ thing.” There was an intensity to her face now when she was looking at Bunny. A trembling to her lips.

“Are you saying you want to kiss the bunny, girl?”

“No.”

But in our minds we heard her say, Fuck yes.

“Look, we’re not in fairy-tale times, Bunny,” Coraline snapped.

“Easy,” Else murmured. She, too, was staring intensely at Bunny, sway­ ing very close to him. I noticed a thin blue vein throbbing in her forehead. “Easy now,” she whispered. It was unclear if she was talking to Coraline or to herself or to Bunny.

“I know we’re not in fairy-tale times.” Kyra hissed to Coraline. “Obvi­ously, Bunny. I know this is … reality or whatever.”

“Well, then you know that in reality, if you kissed a rabbit, that would be fucking … bestiality, girl.”

“Yes. This is true,” I whispered to Kyra.”It would be gross of you,” I said.

Even though I, too, wanted to make out with Bunny.

“All I’m saying is that when we hugged the bunny, his eyes changed color,” Kyra said. “So just imagine … ”

Yes, we all thought in our minds. Imagine.

“All the dates I’ve ever had are so dull,” Coraline sighed.

And in the hive of our mind, we could suddenly picture her bobbed and bored in various prep-school-dance and college-party contexts. Waltzing with rich, pimpled boys with greaser hair like something out of a 1950s film. Twirling her pearls above her sweetheart neckline. Yawning into her gloved hand. Gazing out the windshield while whatever bow­ tied asshole talked about his postgraduate career plans. Dreaming herself elsewhere.

“Sorry, Bunny,” I said.”You’ve been so unfulfilled.”

And her eyes brimmed with tears. “Not that I’m even thinking about that,” she said, shaking her head.”Romance? I mean, I’m here to write. I’m here for myself.”

“We all are,” Kyra said, her eyes on Bunny.

‘Tm not even here to meet anyone,” Coraline insisted. She wasn’t really telling us, she was telling Bunny. Sort of laughing crazily. Sort of blushing.

“Though I suppose if someone came along, it might be nice,” she added.

She looked at Bunny’s twitching ears. Their slick pink insides. “Of course, they’d have to be my intellectual equal.”

“Of course.”

And then in the hive, in the hot pink mists of our collective mind, a figure appeared. A pretty blond man with a twitchy pink nose. He wore a pale blue shirt and an apron that said, I Will Cut a Bitch (and a Cake). He had a girlish smile and wore a pinkish lipstick whose very shade we had once seen her point to and say for whores. He was nodding at everything she fucking said, she was so endlessly fascinating. He was saying, Of course. Absolutely. Tell me.

“It might be very nice,” I said.

“Yes,” she said, flushed now, not looking at me.”But I’m really just here to make.”

“Me too.”

“Totally.”

“All the humans I meet are boring,” Kyra whispered to Bunny.”Period.” And then in our collective mind, we saw her footloose and red-cloaked in her fairy-tale world, fornicating with mists. Wandering among the half­ naked nymphs and leering wolves and buff mermen poking their lovely wet heads out of glassy forest pools, their eyes dark with wanting to drag her down to oblivion. She was prancing through this forest world to the music of Mary Lattimore, holding the hand of a giant creature in a rabbit mask. The rabbit was extremely long-eared and he wore a very smart black tux, and in his other hand he held an ax, which he was swinging wildly. Jesus Christ.

“I just want something hot,” I whispered.”And surprising. It has to take me by surprise,” I said. “To be provocative.” And I felt them see my own dream in all its nakedness, which I won’t share with you, Bunny, sorry. Except to say how strange it was to feel them seeing my insides like that. Fantasies that, despite my well-known boldness, I would never fucking speak, never write. I don’t embarrass easily, Bunny, but I’ll admit I blushed then.

“What about you, Else?” I asked her. Mainly to get their eyes out of my soul.

Else shook her head. Watched Bunny like he was a fire. “Desire,” she whispered, “is so elusive, isn’t it?”

“So elusive,” we agreed.

“Amorphous and complex. To give language to it is a tricky thing.” There were tears in her eyes when she said this. In the hive we suddenly saw crashing sea waves. Sharp rock and white foam, so much foam. And superimposed over these waves, like a film, a white antique chest of draw­ers. In the top middle drawer, an ornate lock. A very large golden key in the lock. The key suddenly turning slowly in this lock all by itself. We looked at Elsinore. She was very red in the face, staring hard at Bunny. That blue vein in her temple was really throbbing now. The dagger around her neck was glowing iridescently in the dark. Its point, we saw now, was very sharp indeed.

More images began to appear and disappear in the hive, Bunny. Quickly they arose and dissolved like some rapidly moving dream. Not just in our collective mind, but on the attic wall, too, projected like a film. The fastest­ moving movie or something, Bunny, it was crazy. Actors and musicians appeared and disappeared, dissolving into one another. Falling cherry blos­soms and our mouths opening to catch the petals. A hand held aloft in a rainstorm, the skin ecstatic with cold drips. That crashing sea, the shoreline jagged with black rock. The Poets smirking at us in the garden, their coats blowing open like bat wings. Allan in the Cave, looking even taller than he actually was, stirring his tea and insulting us in his Scottish accent. Telling us we were fucking terrible, sorry, not sorry. A red-nailed hand holding an ax.

And then? So funny to say, but we saw ourselves. Me handing Coraline my plaid shirt with my so-dirty fingernails, and Coraline taking her sky dress off in blue silhouette. Elsinore in her drapey linens talking to Ursula under the tented green, staring into me with her cold jewel eyes, and Kyra applying Cherries in Winter thickly to her pouting lips, waiting for ghosts to fuck. The four of us in the rose garden holding one another so tightly, Bunny, that we truly did not know where we began and ended. Holding until we were one incredibly fragrant, hot body, pulsing with want.

And then the screen went black.

The moonlight was now a deep silver pool in which Bunny floated. We stared at him, all of us red-faced, and the music played on, such violent harps and strings. Almost like we, with our minds, were making the harp­ist’s fingers drag across the strings with more and more violence. The black­ and-white film was playing on the wall again, the masked couple walking more quickly, backward now around the fountain, something diabolical in their smiles. Like they knew what we were up to in the attic, they were watching. And the rabbit in the moonlight pool was trembling, trembling. And what were we doing?

Oh god, we didn’t know. But it was hot, Bunny.

All our eyes on Bunny and all our hearts beating in time together like a bass to the song of this, and it was too much. Stop, we thought, but we couldn’t seem to stop now, it was too late. Because Bunny was trembling as we were trembling, and were we making him tremble with the force of our eyes and minds?

“Stop, stop,” Kyra whispered, “we’re hurting him, I think.”

And Coraline was crying and shaking her head, her mind screaming, JOY, JOY, JOY, and Else’s eyes were rolled back into her head, deep in her dark pink fantasy world of keys and locks.

And I? I don’t know where I was. Lost.

Lost in the moonlight pool with Bunny. Lost in the dreaming. Lost in the trembling of my own body, trembling like Bunny’s body. Lost in our mind frequency, which hummed loud now like a drone.

And then suddenly the frequency stopped, the world became terribly still. I looked at Bunny and Bunny looked at me, right into my eyes alone.

And he fucking exploded.

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Excerpted from We Love You, Bunny: A Novel by Mona Awad. Copyright © 2025 by Mona Awad. Reprinted by permission of Marysue Rucci Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC.