Petrol Wonderland

Three | Dance 'til You're Dead

And there was, indeed, a rabbit.

Outside, in the empty car park, beneath the roof of the station and between the pumps. Dead center. A rabbit. A six-foot-tall rabbit waving its arms side to side like it was at the best concert of its life.

It stood upright on its two, heavyset legs: the bottoms of which were heavily stained by the dark grass and mud of the surrounding forest. Further up, however, the fur was crisp and white as though maintaining it was someone's pride and joy. The bone-white fur was only occasionally interrupted by midnight-black stitches. They covered the body like a disease. Thick, wooly and wiry. They hung and draped from their spots as if they'd been sewn a long time ago and shredded from plenty of wear and tear.

Why on earth someone would need to patch up a rabbit suit so much was beyond Blake.

"What the fuck?" she asked, drifting out further into the center of the store.

There was something strange about the head. It was clear that the top and bottom of the outfit didn't belong together. The bottom appeared to be part of some cheap onesie you could pick up cheaply online or in a joke store. The top, however, seemed to be hand-crafted from paper mache.

"That thing looks like it was drawn by a six-year-old," Cleo said.

"Yeah," Blake said between dry laughter. Perhaps if she pretended that her pulse wasn't roaring in her ears then she'd be able to see the funny side of the giant, muscular, six-foot bunny-man with a creepy, little paper head, who'd emerged suddenly from the deep recesses of the forest and begun dancing in the empty carpark outside at fucking two in the morning. "His head looks like when you're six and you draw all the proportions fucked up," she continued.

"Yeah."

The two stared on as the strange rabbit-man in the car park continued to sway, his heavy paper-mache head lolling crookedly from side to side. The crumpled thing looked far too small atop his mammoth form in a way that just looked... wrong.

"This... I don't know how to feel about this."

"How long has he been there?"

"I don't know. I finished clearing up the sweets, looked out and he was just there. Made me jump out of my fucking skin."

The snout was unnaturally elongated. And the eyes were too small. In fact, it was highly doubtful that the person who made it had ever seen a real rabbit before in their life. The shape of the head more closely resembled a long, wrinkly tube. It also looked like the owner of the costume had simply super glued on two large, lopsided black buttons to the side for 'eyes' with very little care towards their placement. The ears were long and pole-like, as if beneath the dried paper mush were a stack of toilet rolls on top of one another.

Blake's eyes flicked to Cleo in the corner of her vision. Her heart had become twitchy again. It threatened more seriously to burst from her ribcage with every passing thud. Was fear a sane or insane reaction to this?

"Can we lock the doors now?" she asked. Definitely sane. Maybe.

Cleo didn't answer, simply raced into the staff room behind them. The clicking of buttons could be heard from within and after a few moments, she returned sounding like an old woman who smoked sixty a day and had just run a marathon.

"There's someone round the back."

"The back?"

Blake didn't peel her eyes from the rabbit man. He was still swaying, although considerably more enthusiastically now, as though the song in his imaginary concert was reaching its climax. He was so engrossed. Just watching him was making Blake's legs feel weaker and papery as though she was under some spell, hypnotized by his dance. Gradually, her heart was returning to its sporadic pace and the seeping cold from the refrigerator crept deeper into her skin.