The Garden of Poison


“‘EAR...’”
Holding the coffee can by the top end, I swung it in a slow circle with my wrist and listened to the remaining liquid swish around. The rabbit girl was sitting on the messy bed that I had neglected to straighten the previous night, as well as just about every night before that.
“The separatists are rabbits who live on Earth?”
She was fidgeting restlessly. Her long, bright hair fell about her form like a concealing shroud, and her bare feet looked filthy and sore. She glanced at me briefly as if woken from a daze, but soon returned her eyes downcast and simply nodded.
After I woke up from whatever mind-vacuum her alien machine had pulled me into, I was standing in my apartment as if nothing had happened. The ears it had given me were gone, of course. They weren’t real; none of what we had experienced was real. In a way, what we had done wasn’t so different from Markus showing me the online rants of those fanatics, if a little more high-tech.
The rabbit girl took a while longer to return to the waking world. She had sat there for some time, sleeping with her hand on the console as if she’d rather stay there.
    “Are there a lot of them?”
    “I do not know—ah—how many...” She responded quietly and shook her head. “I have n-never been to the Earth. Before.”
    “That name makes them sound like terrorists or something,” I noted, thoughtfully. She did not respond.
    “Who was that woman we saw? The one on the screen?” I asked, and Lumi’s eyes popped open to stare at me, incredulous that I really didn’t know. Then she seemed to remember where she was and who she was talking to. She closed her eyes again, giving a tired looking frown.
    “S-she, she is Lady Andromeda. A member of the C-Council of Lunarians. And she is my—” her eyes flickered toward me again and she stumbled in the middle of her sentence, but recovered quickly and went on. “She is not—ah—not our leader, e-exactly... But, but, she is very important. To us.”
    When she struggled with a word or phrase, she would make a sort of ‘chirping’ noise as filler. It was an animal sound, and yet it was also something I would only expect to hear from a machine.
    “So—you were sent down here to make contact with the Earth rabbits. You’re the messenger girl, huh?” I asked, plainly. She gave a small nod, ears drooping.
    “I take it that didn’t work out so well. What happened?”
    “They, they knew I was coming,” she began. “They knew when I would a-arrive on Earth, and they knew I would come alone and unarmed.” She winced, reliving her defenselessness.
    “There was no di-discussion.” She shifted uncomfortably in her seat, looking away. “They—ah—re-fused to deal. With, with the Lunarians.” Her voice was shaking a little as she spoke. I decided not to pry on the details.
    “Who are these Lunarians you keep talking about?” I questioned, grabbing my can of coffee to take a sip.
She can’t really mean people living on the moon, can she?
She brightened somewhat, clearly eager to change the subject.
    “Ahm—well—how to explain to a human...” She deliberated a moment, her chin in her hand. “In re-corded his-tory, the Lunarians deci... deci... agreed that the Earth and its people were filled with impur-ities...”
She was having a lot of trouble explaining herself in English, tripping over every other word. I rose my hands to tell her not to push herself, but she shook her head, determined.
    “So... so! They decided to migrate to the moon! To live in Heaven, as pure as the gods we were born from!” She shouted proudly, overtaken by her own lunar patriotism. I gestured to suggest she lower her voice, as the walls were practically made of cardboard and Markus might hear her, if he wasn’t then passed out in a pile of his own filth.
    God knows what that raving old pervert might say if he saw this little girl sitting in my room with me.
    “But that lady, uh, Andromeda... She didn’t have, er, ears... like you have,” I awkwardly stated, looking to her long, fuzzy protrusions. At the mention of them, they stood up straight. She fluttered them back and forth, looking a little embarrassed.
“Oh, no, no. You misun-der-stand.” She reached up to hold her ears in place with her fingers as she spoke. “Rabbits are the servants of Lunarians. They gave us pros... prosperity, and we give them our—ah—de-devotion. In return.”
She placed her hands back in her lap, but I couldn’t stop staring at her ears. With a shy smile, she fluttered them again, as if to show them off.
    “The first of us tra-veled to our home in Heaven with the Lunarians, and we have lived in—ah—har-mony... ever since. Under their g-guidance, our people live without pain, or hun-ger, or hardship... and we live free of, of impurity.”
    “Uh-huh.” My response was automatic and monotone, to match the dull sound of gears grinding in my brain. There was a rabbit-person describing ‘Heaven’ to me from my bedside.
    Perhaps I’m not asleep. Perhaps I have brain damage.
    Her bright expression quickly darkened into seriousness.
    “But, not all of us are so gr-grateful. The separatists are rabbits who will-ingly left Heaven to live on the impure Earth.
    “They prop-agandize through our com-muni-cation channels, trying to—ah—recruit more lunar rabbits.” She looked over to the machine near the window. “They, they don’t have any-thing like my SICP, so they’re forced to use human co-computers and send messages over Lago-Net.
“Lago-Net is d-dep-recated... It is very pri-primitive, compared to the Lunar Network I showed you.” She snickered in superiority that I thought unbecoming of the small rabbit girl.
    “The ‘Lunar Network.’ You mean how we went inside your, uh, computer thing?” I asked.
The SICP pulsed quietly in the corner. More than the vibrant girl with strange appendages, it was that thing which seemed like an alien.
    “You seemed different there, somehow,” I remarked, an understatement. The shaken, disheveled thing in front of me was hardly the same person as the well-composed, sharply dressed resident of the Lunar Network.
    “Diff-erent?” She put a finger to her lip. “Ahm—I suppose I am accus-tomed to it. And, Lunish is easier for me. To speak. Than—ahm—than English.
    “But, but! As the emissary, it is my—ah—duty! To speak as a human would speak. Yes. So, it is impor-tant that I, I learn.” She had become enthusiastic for some reason, but I was hardly listening, drowning her out with the sound of scratching the stubble on my face.
There wasn’t much to gain from piecing together the situation, I thought. For the moment she was stuck, but just how long could I shelter her if those separatist-whoevers came for her again? And why should I stick my neck out for this stranger? This alien?
    The scope of the conflict between the moon people and these gangbangers was way over my head. I was a hapless bystander who was simply getting in the way of international—no, interplanetary politics that had nothing to do with me.
    “It is believed... believed that the separatists want to claim the Earth for their own.” She followed my eyes with her face, as to regain my attention. “That, that is why they want more lunar rabbits to join them. That is why... they a-attacked me.”
    ‘Claim the Earth for their own?’
    I briefly imagined an army of little white rabbits holding pitchforks in their mouths, marching into a big city—the police struggling to hold back the oncoming tide of teeth and fur. The military is called in for air support, and the entire place is carpet bombed with incapacitating carrot powder. The rabbits would become docile and sleepy, and that is when the wolves would be released upon the city to purge it of the vermin plague. Every resident of the city would own a rabbit’s foot trophy, and white fur coats would suddenly come into popular fashion. Leatherworkers would boast of their ability to skin a rabbit in ten seconds or less. Every restaurant would serve braised, roasted or fried rabbit for weeks...
    My fantasy was interrupted by the sound of a loudly rumbling stomach. Lumi frowned, her face turned red.
    “I—ahm—I suppose I have not eaten. Since I, I touched down,” she stammered, twiddling her fingers. It was my turn to feel embarrassed, however.
    “I don’t... have any food here,” I admitted, scratching the back of my head in unease.
Never mind how seldom I could actually afford to stock my fridge; if I kept food in my apartment, I’m certain I would never leave it and I’d waste away in a pile of coffee cans, dusty books and old magazines. I purposefully ate out for every meal just so I had a reason to leave my door. And I’m pretty sure she didn’t want to eat the yellowing old lettuce from my fridge.
    “I usually eat out.”
    She stood up and stretched, and I was a little taken aback by how limber she was as she bent backwards and outstretched her arms.
    “Then, then we are going outside? To—ah—eat?” She asked.
The rabbit girl seemed excited at the prospect of leaving the apartment for any reason. I could understand; if I went to a new country, I wouldn’t want to be stuck inside some loser’s crummy apartment either. There was a problem, however. Two problems, covered in white hairs and twitching about of their own volition.
    “But, your ears... Won’t someone notice them?” I pointed to her fuzzy protrusions and she placed her hands over the top of them, like she’d forgotten they were there.
“Oh... I had not, not thought of that...” Her voice conveyed a quickly dampening mood.
    I didn’t have a hat she could wear over them—and I imagine such a garment would be uncomfortable for her anyhow—but I remembered something else of mine she could use.
    I stood up and opened the closet beside me. On the floor, in a pile with some other old clothes, lay folded my old red hoodie. It was full of holes and unpleasant memories, but it would serve well enough to cover the rabbit girl’s long ears and protect her from the autumn chill. I picked it up and positioned myself behind her.
    “What...?” She murmured, confused, as I wordlessly slid the jacket over her shoulders, slipped her arms into the sleeves, and tugged the hood over her head.
    It was much too big for her. It covered her like a dress, completely enveloping her skirt. The sleeves extended long beyond her hands. Inside the hood, her hair-matted face was all that was visible.
    “That should be alright,” I declared, just before noticing two little bumps at the top of her hood, where certain growths were attempting to stand away from her head...
    “Come on, let’s go get you something to eat.” I offered her my hand, and she hesitated.
    “Impure...” The word came from her almost as a whimper. I rolled my eyes and grabbed her sleeve-covered hand, prompting her to let out a surprised squeak.
    “Look, it’s alright. The sweater will protect you from how unclean I am, I promise,” I said, only a little sarcastic.
She still looked tense, but soon gave in and stepped toward the door after me. Her fingers relaxed in my grasp. It was then that I remembered she was barefoot.
    “Oh, that’s right, you don’t have any shoes.” I gave her a playful look and said slyly, “Well, I could carry you.”
    “No, no! I am used to walk-ing on my feet,” she protested, an annoyed frown on her blushing face. “The surface of Luna is very—ahm—soft. I will be fine.”
    The asphalt around this place was definitely not soft, and knowing my luck we could stumble right over the broken shards of some drunkard’s late night bottle of whisky or used needle... but I didn’t have any shoes for her to wear, so it was pointless to argue.

    Despite how long the morning had grown, the complex was still sleeping, so we managed to sneak out without being noticed. I watched closely the road we walked to make very sure that I did not subject Lumi to the earthly impurities of cuts and infections. Eventually, we made our way back toward the urban center that I had found her within the night before. Perhaps she was tense because she thought someone might see her, but the trip was very quiet.
    I imagined that if someone was there looking for her, they would probably be in disguise as well. Hidden in human skin, predatory rabbits hunting for an innocent girl.
    Figures cast us odd glances as we passed, lecherous gazes looking to find their way under her hood. She hid herself tightly in the cloth as we approached the building, looking nervous. The prying eyes surrounded us, any of them a possible separatist. I felt the cold sweat grow on my back as more and more people stared at her.
    How do they know it's her? There must be some sort of sixth rabbit sense that lead them back to their own kind—like pheromones. A disguise is useless, it seemed. Being outside during the day was nothing short of a death sentence.
    “Ahm...” She leaned closer to me and whispered. “Is there a—ah—rea-son we have stopped...?”
    Looking at her, it dawned on me too late why exactly people were staring. That hoodie I put on her, it gave the appearance that it was the only article of clothing she had on. It covered her entire body except for her legs.
    “Oh... No reason.”
    I hated being there during the day. Walking among all the hapless corporate thralls. Their puppet strings were nearly visible in the fluorescent light, guiding them from the prescription drugs counter to the aisles of manufactured food served in plastic. It made me uneasy, as did the crisp and clean smell of the building despite the cloud of smog hanging in the air outside. Pine aerosol wafted into my nostrils to tell me I was in an artificial grove, but in reality I had walked into a garden of consumerist poison.
Near the entrance, I noticed the rows of carts sported a line of smaller carts that I’d somehow missed my last visit. They looked small enough to be pushed around by a child, and little plastic flags flew from them that read Customer in Training. I shuddered at the thought.
Leading her around, I deftly avoided getting too close to anyone else in the store. If someone was headed toward us, I turned and took her in the other direction.
“Are you—ah—lost? Do you not come to, to this place? Often?” She was understandably confused by this.
“No, that’s not it...”
Yet even as I responded, it was her eyes that seemed lost among the bright, shiny packages and alluring advertisements. The confections section caught her eye, but I tugged her gently—and insistently—toward the produce area and showed her to an array of vegetable platters.
    “So, you like carrots? Lettuce? Broccoli?” As I offered them to her, she huffed in annoyance.
    “Rabbits are not, not a-animals! We, we can eat other things. That is a ste... stereo-ty... that is something only humans think!” Her cheeks puffed up in indignance, she folded her arms defiantly. It was a thin sheen of outrage, however, and I caught her casting lustful sideways glances at the platters. I silently snickered; she must have been very hungry. I grabbed one and guided her toward the zombie cashiers, eager to leave as soon as possible.

    There was a park nearby, a few tall old trees overlooking a creek with a covered bridge. It was a little place, with antique junk from long ago littering the grounds, like an old cannon and little log buildings. The cannon had been clogged with dirt and leaves and bore a heavy coat of green paint. The log buildings—a bandstand, gazebo and log hut—were just under a century old, or at least that’s what I’d been lead to believe.
    It was a cool, gray day and rain was quietly drizzling onto our heads. Nobody seemed to be around, not even the usual dusty vagrant hiding in a corner and drinking from a paper sack. I took Lumi inside the gazebo to shelter us from the rain; she slid the hood off of her head, allowing her ears to stand up and breathe. I thought about telling her to cover them again, but since we were alone I pushed the worry aside.
    There were two wooden tables inside, accompanied by wooden benches. The log roof kept the interior well-protected from the rain, so it was an ideal place to sit down and have our little meal. Lumi swallowed audibly as I opened the vegetable platter and the fresh carrots, broccoli and celery lay before her. She had looked awfully hungry before, but with the prospect of actually eating them in front of her, she appeared to be having second thoughts.
    Picking up a slice of carrot, she anxiously looked it over, carefully taking in each side. I kept my mouth shut and just observed, as not to discourage her. She dipped it into the mysterious white substance in the middle of the tray—ranch dressing to you and me—and brought it to her mouth. With much trepidation, she reached her tongue out for an exploratory lick, and sparks practically flew in her eyes. She covered the same slice in the dressing and took the whole thing into her mouth, chewing contentedly.
    I couldn’t help but grin as I watched her, prompting her to blush, cover her mouth and eat her next slice more reservedly.
    “So you do like carrots,” I teased.
She looked at me as she took another piece into her mouth, then covered nearly her entire face with the ends of the sleeves so I couldn’t see.
    “It is just... I wanted to try them,” she said, muffled through sleeves.
    “Try them? They’re just carrots. You’ve never had carrots before?” I scratched my head, a little confused.
    “I have... only ever eaten—ah—sim-ulated carrots.”
    “Simulated? Like, in that virtual network place?" I asked. She nodded, staring at the tray. “What, do you not have them where you’re from?”
    “No, no. We, we do. It is just... I have never had the—ah—oppor-tunity.”
“What do you usually eat, then? You don’t run around chewing grass, do ya? A rabbit used to get into my backyard and do that.”
 “Nooo, I said we are not an-nimals!” She feigned indignance, letting out a soft giggle, but her tone quickly dampened. “No, it is just... they are impure. So, I have never...”
She went quiet again, and returned to nibbling at the food on the tray. I rose an eyebrow at her, thinking some detail of what she was trying to communicate lost in the crunching sounds of carrot slices.
Impure? What is this girl’s obsession with ‘purity?’ I wasn’t even sure what she meant when she said it. What makes something impure?
Rather than pry, I allowed her to eat the rest of the tray without much conversation. I wasn’t very hungry, so I propped up my elbow on the table, rested my cheek in my hand, and watched the rain. The wind shook and stirred the pines into a slow, noisy dance. The occasional drop of rain struck the roof of the gazebo and echoed down to the paved floor. Though it was a bit chilly outside, the soft noise was nice. If I had stayed like that, I might have carelessly drifted off.
“Ahm—you said...” she spoke up, trepidation in her tone. I opened my eyes to find she had pushed the tray away from her with over half the food remaining. Not a big eater, it seemed. “A rabbit used to... get, get into your back-yard.”
“Yeah,” I responded, remembering the little gray fuzzball. “He was my neighbor’s.”
“And, and—this was an an-nimal rabbit? Yes?” Her voice was noticeably anxious. I slowly nodded; I’d have recalled the memory quite differently if it was a rabbit-person sneaking into my yard to eat my clovers in the mornings.
“Then, tell me something,” she said, pointedly. “What do I... How do I look? To you?”
“Well, you...”
My eyes slunk over her porcelain white hands and the dirty hoodie covering her body; I drifted over her vibrant, pale hair and long, curious, twitchy ears with their pink indentations. They looked so natural on her, to the point that it was difficult to imagine her without them. Without a doubt, she was not quite human. She was something different.
I stopped at her red-violet eyes. Such an odd, alien color. They blunk and peered at me with restless curiosity.
Those eyes.
Within the iris, there was a soft, pink luminosity. A brilliant lens of soft violet light. A flower held within her eye, focusing on me. I felt strange, looking at them. As if they held me in their grasp, boring holes into my skull. The blood rushed to answer them, to protect me from her gaze. I was light-headed, dizzy, but I could not look away. I didn’t want to look away. I wanted to dive into those eyes.
I shut my lids and shook my head. What was it she asked me, again?
“You look like...”
A white, furry creature with long ears and a twitchy nose, sitting on the table near the carrots. It came closer to me and sniffed me with its little pink nose. It made a shrill squeaking noise, like a chirp.
“Wh-what the...?!” I bolted upward from the table, stumbling backward. The little rabbit squeaked louder, standing on its hind legs. I turned around and tripped toward the gazebo’s exit, where the rain was gently falling onto the grass and dirt below. Cold sweat gathered on my forehead and an itchy, painful tingling crawled up my back as my nerves stood on end.
Have I really been talking to...?
“What is—ah—what is the m-matter?” Concerned words came quietly from behind me. My head swiveled around instinctively to face the voice, like I’d heard a gunshot. The rabbit girl was standing there in my filthy red sweater. Her ears stood to address me, raised in alarm.
“Nothing. I’m fine.”
“O-oh. Are you cer-tain...?” The somber notes in her rhythmic voice made clear that she knew I was most definitely not fine.
“Yeah. I’m alright.”
My head played back static as I tried to make sense of what I’d seen. I was nearly asleep a moment ago; did I merely dream it up? The rabbit girl looked to me with worried brows, and I pushed the thoughts forcefully from my mind.
“You have pretty eyes, that’s all.” I spat out the first thing I could think to say in a scattered attempt to reassure her. But I did not dare look into those eyes.

We left the park as quietly as we entered. I decided to take a small detour on the way back to the complex, on the off-chance that the gates to the bridge were open.
That useless covered bridge was the only thing the town had ever been been known for. Look in any directory or article about the place, you’ll see that bridge.
It bore no historical or cultural significance. It wasn’t even built here; it originally sat in another town and was to be replaced by a more modern, concrete bridge. Some bleeding hearts had it moved here in order to save it. And it wasn’t as though it provided an important means of passage, either; it covered a tiny creek and was often locked.
The park owner typically closed the gates at night, as vagrants had a habit of sleeping on it, and he often neglected to open them again when morning came. It hardly seemed necessary; though some homeless folk would still sleep on the boards given the chance, nothing would ever compare to the Great Hobo Couch of yesteryear when someone dumped their old furniture on the thing and the place became a regular hobo hotel.
It was open.
The gate had done little to prevent vandalism, though much of it appeared to have been caused by children. Several of the boards were cracked and looked prone to breaking. Colored chalk drawings of flowers and small animals covered the sides of the white wooden enclosure and sections of the boards. Assorted bits of paper trash and candy wrappers were strewn here and there. I spotted an empty box of Hop Tarts, toaster pastries that were shaped like bunnies.
In the distance, the green hilltops scraped the overcast sky with pine tips, opening up holes for the rain to come down. Water dripped from the bridge’s canopy and dropped in murmuring splashes into the creek below. It might not have been a very practical bridge, but it had a nice view, at least.
“The wind... is cold.” The rabbit girl’s soft voice joined the cool air. I just nodded and grunted, but that didn’t seem to satisfy her.
“Does it not b-bother you?”
“Nah. It’s better than warm weather, that’s for sure. I can’t stand it when it’s hot,” I remarked, stuffing my hands into my pockets. “This is just jacket weather. It’s only cold if you’re walking around without any clothes on.”
This didn’t seem to satisfy her either. She hobbled nearer and gawked at me in uncomfortably close proximity. Is there something on my face?
“Oh, I see. That is, that is why you keep that fuzz on your—ahm—chin. Human pro-tection from the cold.” She smiled like she’d puzzled something out, but I just scoffed at her. As if miss fuzzy ears had any room to talk about someone being covered in hair.
“On Luna... the air is warm,” she said, hugging her tiny frame with sleeved arms. “The wind, it sweeps over you, wraps around you. Like a blan-ket. It is never cold.”
Lumi gazed toward the horizon, looking this way and that restlessly, as if searching for something.
“Where is ☼?” She made a noise like a rising cello chord, but shot me a questioning look as if her question was wholly valid. After a moment of silence, she doubled back awkwardly.
“Oh—ahm—how do humans say... the ‘sun?’”
“Huh? It’s up there. You just can’t see it because of the clouds.” I pointed to a bright spot among the billowing white above.
“I have read about these—ah—‘clouds,’” she remarked, following my finger with her gaze. “They make the Earth wet, and—and they make the Earth cold. Are they not an enemy of human-kind?”
No end of curious things came from her mouth every time it opened. I just sighed.
“You don’t like rain, I take it.”
“I do not like having wet ears.”

The quickest path back to the apartment from where we stood was through the alleyways. It was a darkened corner between the urban center and the surrounding woodland, a road less travelled comprised of dilapidated houses and the back exits of bars. I expected to see an early rising alcoholic or two in the alleys, either digging for loose change or expelling his insides onto the gravel road—but it seemed mercifully barren that morning.
The houses were fenced off, slunk away from the town proper into shaded spots where they could be quietly ignored among the collide of wooded overgrowth and urban backstreets. Their windows were darkened and silent.
There came a rustling noise from somewhere in the distance. A cat’s gotten into someone’s trash, I imagined. Lumi was just behind me, looking anxious. The malaise of this place was getting under her skin.
“Ah!” A gust of wind blew the hood from her head. She shuddered as droplets of rain trickled onto her ears. “This... this is not the way we came. Be-before. We, we should hurry back.”
“It’s a shortcut. I’ve been through here a hundred times, don’t worry.” I tried to reassure her. The noise of displaced debris grew louder the farther we descended into the alley, however.
Someone taking their trash out, maybe?
There was a tall man standing in the middle of the alley, his body covered by a filthy robe and his head shrouded by a ragged hood. From where I stood, his clothing looked like it had been dragged out of a dumpster. Morbid curiosity compelled me closer, to make sense of what I was looking at.
He was overseeing a group of diseased rats, digging through the garbage. Several men squatting among the trash, each wearing filthy old clothes, some adorned with torn paper bags used as shawls. Digging and digging, tossing garbage everywhere. I had made a mistake coming this way.
I took a step back and nearly stumbled over a bottle that had been left in the alley, kicking up gravel as I righted myself. The man in the robe looked our way and took notice of me, and I thoughtlessly grabbed the rabbit girl’s arm to drag her along as I backed away with panicked haste.
“☆!” She squeaked in surprise, instinctively jerking her arm free.
Before I could convince her otherwise, the group of men covered in trash stirred, each turning to stare at us. They gurgled and sputtered on their own saliva, their mouths opening and closing. It appeared as though they were trying to say something, but I was too far away to hear whatever it was.
“The path of righteousness—has led us to His gifts, brothers. Our good faith—is to be rewarded.” The man in the robe spoke in gasping breaths. The words fell from his mouth unevenly, accompanied by lines of drool. “Look now; a wolf has brought us a spring rabbit—in offering.”
“Damn it,” I cursed. “Just a bunch of strung out junkies.”
    “What... what is hap-pening? Who...?” Lumi let out short, frightened squeaks. She was frozen in place, staring at the group in front of us. They had begun to shamble nearer.
    “‘Blessed are those—who hunger and thirst for righteousness—for they will be filled.’” The hooded man slurred his words together and wobbled slightly in place. “Our wolf is a sinner, brothers. He has strayed—from the Lord—and means to keep his sacrifice hidden in his bloody jowls. We must bring him... into the fold.”
    The members of this group of vacant-looking vagrants all had something in common. Smeared over their faces, their necks, their collars was a sickly green substance not far removed from vomit. What was visible of the hooded man’s face was covered in it. The stench of it was unmistakable even from several yards away.
    Skoab.
    A vile, mind bending gunk that makes an animal from a man. A vicious sludge thick with madness that they spread on their skin of their own free will. Each time I saw it, I was disgusted anew.
    “I can’t stand these lowlives. Come on, let’s get out of here,” I said, repulsed.
I tugged Lumi’s arm again, but she wouldn’t budge. Her eyes were locked onto the group in front of us, face frozen. Her ears stood tall in fright, twitching only slightly to signify that she might have heard what I’d said.
    “Hey, are you in there? Come on!” I shook her, but she would not move.
    “Fear not, child—we will paint the righteousness—into your skin... And you too shall be—at peace—with the heavenly powers. Let us sink into you... the grace of God.” The robed drug abuser’s words incited the drifters in the alley; their faces contorted into a sick, bewildered hunger, eyes transfixed on the rabbit girl. They hobbled closer, babbling, foam pooling in their mouths. They’d come close enough that I could hear their droning moans; ‘white rabbit’ they repeated over and over, as if hypnotized.
    Grabbing the girl and shaking her like a can of premade coffee, she finally stirred, and her soft violet gaze shifted over to me.
“...☽?” She murmured, sounding like a confused ocarina.
    Paper sacks flew through the air as a dusty drifter broke into a sprint and lunged at us, clawing at empty space. I took a step back and slammed my fist into his chin as he drew near. My knuckles popped beneath the impact, the sound echoing through the alley. His head bounced backward, his body lagging a moment behind before he rebound and lunged at me again. Balling my fists tightly, I prepared to swing again—and he stopped, babbling incoherently as he stared at the girl behind me.
    “W-w-w-whi... whiii...!” He doubled over, gripping his head and trembling. I had no time to question it; the others seemed unphased by the single vagrant losing his composure and continued their advance on us. I placed myself between the rabbit girl and the group of addicts, fists raised.
“Confess... confess your sins, my child. Therein by—with my blessing—you may be absolved, and still able—to enter the kingdom of Heaven.” The robed man flashed me a crooked grin.
Another junkie approached, arms outstretched. I stood my ground, ducking under his arms and sinking my fist into his stomach. The force of the blow caused him to teeter backward, but he appeared unharmed. He came for me again with his grime-covered hands, snatching at my clothes, my arms, whatever he could reach, his crazed eyes only inches away. I shoved him off with all the might I could muster, but he merely staggered backward into the chest of the robed man quickly approaching.
    He smelled of dried sweat and rotten clothing. I could see the green slime painted on his gums, and only just made out the beady eyes under his hood, darting about wildly. They struggled to focus. It was as though he was looking through me and on to someone else. His gaze wandered to the twitching, dusty drifter still clutching his head.
    “Children are lost only when they—refuse—the Lord’s blessing.” At the hooded man’s shaking words, the junkie calmed from his spasms. His head rose; he stared blankly at Lumi, features twisted and senseless. There was no intelligence in his eyes.
    “Confess... Not all of God’s children will—bask—in His light at the end of days. Do not refuse—His love.” The hooded man extended his hand toward me, covered in green muck, that noxious stench emanating from his body. Though teetering back and forth on uneven feet, he stood there calmly, awaiting an answer.
    I took another step back, bumping into the immobile rabbit girl. Her hands touched my back; she was trembling.
    “... A tragedy. Should that some refuse—His love, even when offered—directly.” His gasping breaths and drool conveyed no compassion.
The addict in front of the robed man threw himself at me, clawing at my clothes like a deranged animal. I felt his filthy claws cut my lip, his hands trying to dig into my skin. Swearing, I again shoved him forcefully off of me and he tumbled clumsily to the ground, sputtering and spasming.
    The drifters behind them groaned and growled like a pack of beasts. Whoever these people had been before was lost in the throes of their high. They had become animals, ready to tear me apart like a piece of meat.
    Gritting my teeth and balling my hands into fists, I cursed and steeled myself. As another junkie barreled down the alley to hurl himself at me, the rabbit girl behind me snapped from her stupor—and gasped.
    In her sharp inhalation, the man stopped. They all stopped, staring in Lumi’s direction, babbling and grasping their heads. Some of them fell over, while others addressed her with empty stares.
    The rain tapped my scalp and mixed with sweat. My muscles were stiff. I feared that if I moved even an inch, the people around me would snap out of whatever trance they had fallen into.
    “The lights... the Heavenly light! It—it is—blinding!” The hooded fanatic wailed and fell to his knees, grasping at the air. He covered his eyes with his hands, body twisting and flailing. He was completely out of his mind.
    I checked my neck and face for any trace of the green grime, briefly terrified of being infected with the same mind-fogging plague that was afflicting the people around me. I traced over every uncovered bit of skin to make sure. No, I was clean, it seemed. A short sigh of relief left me.
    Save for the hooded man, who was thrashing around on the ground and rifling through paper debris and fallen garbage, no one was moving.
    “Lumi, let’s get the hell out of...” My words fell short as I turned around to find the rabbit girl missing.
Curious, fretful squeaking rose up from the gravel below me. A little white fuzzy thing with a twitching pink nose hopped closer, looking up at me. Its brilliant white fur was quite wet, each droplet of rainwater shining in the light. A rabbit.
It’s a white rabbit.
I bent down to get a closer look at it, and it pounced onto my shoulder, as if to hitch a ride.
    It appeared to be the same white rabbit as before. I looked at the thing, clinging to my shoulder with its little paws, and thoughts formed like noisy static in my mind. There was not enough empty space in my head to question it, so I didn’t. I just watched, perplexed, as it puffed its jowls at me in an attempt to look innocent.
    Somehow, the situation made sense to my frazzled mind.

I shuffled clumsily in the general direction of my apartment, my vision a bit hazy and my head a little scrambled, but I knew I was heading the right way. The city was a far cry from a complex metropolis; the monument to artificial foods and prescription drugs we’d come from earlier was practically the largest building in town. I’d keep walking until I could no longer see it, and the roads were no longer well maintained. The city slanted downward into an old ditch, an edge of suburbia where you could be quietly forgotten in the prick of a needle or the bottom of a bottle. I’d find myself in this ill-tended place and I would know I was home.
To think about how long I’d lived there was a sobering endeavor. It was a tiny place, shuttered off from the city proper by trees and unwelcoming cracked roads, frequented by addicts looking for their next fix. If I had to put a date on it, it had been something like four years. Not as long as Markus, however, who as far as I could tell was born directly onto the recliner in his room and has never left it.
How easily I’d let the years drift by. Yet despite the unwholesome residents and general state of disrepair, I still preferred it to the alternative.
I reached for my doorknob to turn it, hoping to be done with the town and its troublesome people for another day.
    “Good to see ya, kiddo!”
Alas, it was not to be.
The cheery, well-meaning voice of an older man stopped me in my tracks. He was taller and much wider than I was, old enough that all the hair on his face—not his head, as none remained there—had turned grey. His skin was a leathery red, wrinkled and stretched from age, and he wore a plain white t-shirt and sweats. This was my landlord. A nice enough guy, I supposed, which was an opinion I was forced to have of anyone who would provide me with a place to live; but he had done just as many varieties of opium as anyone else who lived there.
    “Not every day yer up among the livin’!” He waddled closer and bent down to my level. “Ya doin’ alright? You look like ya seen a ghost.”
    I felt the cut on my lip swelling and painful scrapes under my jacket I’d gained during the alleyway encounter with the junkies. My grasp on the waking world was tenuous; inwardly, I questioned if this was really my landlord or a large human-shaped lobster who had come to scavenge for urchins. Perhaps I was still asleep, perhaps I never left my chair. Perhaps those junkies beat me to a bloody pulp and I was still lying in a pool of my own phlegm back in that alley.
    “I’m fine, Homer.” I said all the same, and turned from him to my door.
    “Err! Hey! Wait a minute!" He made a noise like a confused ox, calling again to stop me. “When did you get that bunny? You know yer not allowed to have pets here.”
    I craned my neck to look at the rabbit—at Lumi?—and she looked back at me from my shoulder. Those violet eyes sparkling with intelligence, with red-hued acknowledgement. I wasn’t imagining it, I wasn’t high. This was the same moon rabbit from the night before.
    “It’s not mine. I’m just watching it for a while.” I reached for my doorknob and twisted it.
    “Oh—is it that girl’s? The one from this morning?” He said teasingly.
I stopped, my eyes shot open. I felt a vein in my forehead pulsing. I didn’t imagine I could hide Lumi forever, yet there was no part of me that wanted anyone in the complex to know about the rabbit girl. Nothing good could come from the drug-addled brain of a junkie halfway to burnout nirvana knowing about a girl with bunny ears.
    “Harborin’ some little girl’s puff ‘a hair, huh? That the closest you can get to a girl’s real clump of fuzz, kid?” He said, his tone mocking. He was trying to get a rise from me, but the best I could offer was to look back with weary brows.
    “Something like that. I’m gonna go lay down for a bit.” I opened the door, stepped inside as quickly as I could and shut it behind me.
    “If you’ve met a girl, you have to introduce me, ya know! Them’s the rules, kid!” He shouted into the door, his booming voice muffled. “Ya know yer dear old mom worries about you. She calls me all the time, wantin’ to know if you’re still in that tiny little room all by yerself. Do I gotta let her down again? ‘No, he’s still flyin’ solo. Came home today covered in cuts an’ scrapes, probably gettin’ involved in some gang.’ Come on, kid! Who’s the girl?”
He lingered there like an oppressive cloud of smoke, attempting to coax a response from me. Soon he’d realize none was coming and return to his office, or so I hoped.
    “Well, when ya get the chance, talk to Markus,” he said, accompanied by a heavy sigh. “He’s got a delivery for ya.”
    Mentally exhausted, I allowed his words slip through one ear and out the other. A delivery was the last thing I wanted to think about. I fell into the chair near the counter and the rabbit hopped off my shoulder, disappearing from sight. My eyes closed without my consent, much too heavy to hold open.

    The man in the robes. I know I’ve seen him before.
    Static. Like flies buzzing about in my memory, obscuring my thoughts.
    Why did they stop? What did they see?
    They called her a rabbit.
    Is she a rabbit, or is she a girl?

    “...🎜★. ♪🌙.”
    That strange squeaking, again. Like a piano was trying to speak.
My eyelids stubbornly refused to open, but with great effort I managed to lift them. Sitting there in the stool on the other side of the room was Lumi, soaked bright hair sticking to her head. Her ears twitched as my stirring caused the rickety old chair to creak. She turned her head to look, and seeing I was not yet dead, timidly spun around to face me.
    “Oh... I thought I would—ah—let you rest. You looked t-tired.” Her voice was in soothing juxtaposition to the aching pain in my head. “You are—all-right? Now?”
    I grunted affirmatively at her, but she didn’t seem satisfied with just that. She stood up and came closer, her face closed in on mine and she  focused intently on my features, analyzing my skin. I was about to question what exactly it was she thought she was doing, but the situation became stranger still as she hesitantly reached toward my fat lip with her fingers.
    After a moment of deliberation, she placed her finger on my cut and inspected it with her touch. I slumped weakly in the old, noisy chair and watched her tense expression.
She must think she’s touching that ‘impurity’ or whatever.
    Even huddled down in my ramshackle seat that may have been as old as I was, she did not manage to stand much taller than me. I hadn’t been this close to her before, hadn’t the chance to notice how small she really was. Her gaze stopped at my eyes, noticed me staring at her. Arriving at some conclusion, she touched the tip of my nose and smiled.
    “You are okay,” she said. Then her expression changed rather abruptly.
    “Do not act so, so fool-lish-ly!” She pointed at me, scolding. “The, the impurity makes you fragile. I have read about humans. You are—ah—frail beings... you do not recover easily. Those, those men! They were impure! What if they had—had hurt you?!”
    I boggled at her as she wiggled her long, pale finger in front of my face and lectured me. What is she talking about? She’s no more invincible than me... her cut is testament to that.
    She calmed down, sat on the bed near my chair and brushed the wet hair from her face. The fur on her ears looked frazzled and wet, and as the long appendages curved downward, droplets showered onto the sheets below. For a moment the room fell silent, save for patters of rain hitting the window. Lumi soon grew restless, unable to sit still for long.
    “Who were those pe... people? Wh-what did they want?” She bolted up from the bed, drops of rain bouncing from her ears and hitting my face.
Yeah, I thought, a society obsessed with ‘purity,’ whatever that means, might not know about street drugs.
    “I don’t think even they knew what they wanted.” The prospect of even attempting to explain it to her was exhausting. What did any drug addict want? An escape. To look at the world through rosier lenses, where they weren’t digging through someone’s trash in an alleyway. Those vagrants weren’t themselves. “They were high.”
    “High...? They looked q-quite low to the ground,” Lumi said. She twitched her nose at me when I snickered.
    “The stuff they had smeared on their skin, the green stuff. That’s skoab,” I said, watching her sit back down. Her ears perked up at full attention. “It’s a drug that, uh—when you rub it into your skin, the pores absorb it. And well, it makes you see stuff. Stuff that isn’t there.”
    Lumi tilted her head sideways slightly, her ears drooping in the same direction. This appeared to be a puzzling concept to her.
    “People who take it, they say it makes them feel euphoric. Like they’re a superhero, or, I guess in the case of that guy we ran into, like a minister. Somebody important, anyway.” I explained, though inwardly I wondered if it was really that simple. That stuff changes you.
    “Whuh...” The way her lips moved confoundedly, I could tell she was looking for a word that probably didn’t exist in English. She squirmed a moment before settling on, “why? Why would someone pur-pose-fully impair their own p-perception?”
    “That’s simple,” I said, folding my arms and grimacing. “Because they’re low-lives. Degenerates.”
    “De-gen-er-ate?” She blinked at me as she ran her tongue over the syllables, repeating it quietly to herself to ensure she pronounced it correctly. “They—ah—looked like fully e-evolved homo-sapiens. To, to me.” She put a finger to her lip, deep in thought. I could almost see question marks forming around her head. “Am I wrong?”
    “Hey, Lumi.” I said plainly, to regain her attention. She placed her hands in her lap and looked to me with a puzzled smile.
    “Yes?”
“You really are a bright star,” I chuckled.