a keystone species
Oct. 4th, 2024 08:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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leetoltreatexa keystone species. bunny - mona awad, ava/samantha. early canon divergence, ava's pov. for fiachairecht <3
Samantha wants to be saved in the campus forest. It isn't really a forest, you know that. It's barely even a grove. If the sun's high enough, the trees don't provide adequate shading. Some mornings, there isn't birdsong. The poets spurn the grove in favor of a dilapidated strip mall on the edge of the opposite side of campus. It still smells like Hollister a good twenty feet deep into the parking lot with faded lines. That's never been your brand. Maybe if it was, art school would've worked out. You're a prose girl, deep down. (Being concise is for those that don't worry about their mortality, if this next sentence is a final one.)
But at night, with stars peeking through the foliage, here feels like a forest. Smells like a forest, pines and oaks in harmony. You wish it could be deeper – want frogs croaking, rodents scurrying about, bats flying overhead, the mysterious sounds of the unknown. You want the rot and the worms, want the dead leaves from an infinity of trees, want to feel like you're wild again.
The bunny looks up at you, with huge unblinking eyes. Her nose twitches, mouth hangs open a touch.
She followed you so easily once you scruffed her. Followed silently, kneels at your feet. It's the drugs of course – but how fun to imagine it is compliance. That the most rebellious of them, the one that adds sex and violence to her nostalgia, that she wants this. She's been craving this. Obsessed with it and unable to write about anything else. To itch at her own stitching until she can be unmade.
Can you turn a Bunny into a bunny? The question begs your knife.
She doesn't scream once.
.
You aren't much of a cook, neither is Smackie. But a girl's gotta eat and baking is simple enough. Turn up the heat and toss something in the oven. Pies are great. Entirely premade or partially, easy to not fuck up. They just ask for a bit of patience. (The hardest part is restraining yourself. Got a self-destructive streak that reaches for the flame.)
Samantha tells you all about her day. Her classes. Her decision to scrap her thesis, start in a brand new direction. Samantha isn't sure if she means it as the words leave her mouth, you both know this. You'd give it thirty-seventy odds that she burns it all down. You and her have always had similar odds.
She mentions offhand that one of the Bunnies missed workshop, how Creepy Doll performed an allegedly impromptu funeral dirge spoken word poem instead of commenting on Duchess's latest proem on porcelain – cheaper and dramatically smashed at the end. The closest Samantha's ever seen the bunnies in disarray, she says, her smile wide enough to show off all thirty-two of her teeth.
There's a bit of the pie's gravy darkening her molars. Your fingers ache to reach inside her cavernous mouth, to press her open further, to feel out every tooth's individual ridge and lick them clean.
"We should celebrate," you say, though neither of you care for the trappings of celebration.
Samantha agrees, puts on some music and you both try to remember all those dances from class. Turn it into a drinking game – a sip for every misstep. Doesn't take long until you're both laying on the floor, passing the flask back and forth and giggling over nothing.
.
The second Bunny dies screeching, trying in vain to escape your knife. She tried to hide herself with a pair of kitten ears, should have sprung for claws. One of your hands is wrapped around her hair, keeps her in place. You stab fast, not a single care to aim, just keep stabbing until she's still and silent.
For all of Warren's campus security and extra lighting, no one comes to the grove to stop you. No one chases after your bloody shadow.
There is, of course, a major downside to such a haphazard kill: the meat is ruined.
.
Two deaths inside a week is a bit much for Warren, even with their axe-wielding murderers haunting unlit alleyways. There is a vigil set up in one of the quads, candles multiplying faster than rabbits.
Rabbits, too. Funny how many show up for the Bunnies, proven to be true kindred spirits. It becomes a trend to photograph bunnies at the vigil, bathed in candlelight. Looking serious and solemn and not at all delicious in a stew. A few undergrads start taking selfies with the rabbits that flock there, and overnight every fashionable Warren student or faculty member has updated their profile pictures and phone backgrounds and tinder photos.
Bunnypalooza, they say, edit out the origins. Makes your lips curl up at how easily they are pushed aside.
Two down.
.
The Duchess doesn't close her eyes. It isn't defiance but a final attempt to bribe you away from your mission with her body. Not the first time she's offered it up like this, too practiced. To shear her silver hair, to pluck out her black opal pupils, to scrape the strawberries from her candy gloss, to take her pearl necklace and replace it with a bloody one. Her eyes beg for mercy, but her lips aren't convinced you're a killer. Obvious in the way she only begins to scream as you slit her vibrating throat.
Her blood smears over your fingers like sticky paint. Rubs off easily, but leaves a trace behind that darkens your fingerprints. Emphasizes the ridges even through your mesh gloves.
.
"Fosco didn't show up to workshop today," Samantha says. She waited to say it until now. Until you've both eaten dinner and danced until you were winded, collapsed on the floor for a break. Moved up to the couch once you could breathe again, and Smackie rests her head in your lap. You pet through her hair, like how it winds about your fingers, silky smooth through your mesh gloves. (A little too silky, but you've gotten rid of the culprit, she'll return to reasonably priced conditioners soon enough.)
You should probably think about getting a job. An excuse for the increase in your disposable income. Samantha won't ask tonight, nor tomorrow – but she will, eventually. It could be a game. See how much money you can spend before she asks where it's coming from. (Samantha hates not knowing things, would much rather make up an answer than ask outright.)
"It was just me and Caroline."
"Hm?"
"Cupcake."
And her fate was already sealed, but you want to kill her even more for the room she takes up in Samantha's mouth. For daring to try and become more than a pitiful nickname.
.
You think Cupcake must have gotten her name from gorging herself on cakes, a plump narcissist. You haven't cooked her yet and know her meat will be sweet, diabetic blood thick with glucose. You can smell it from her slit throat, a single stroke to take her out. The neatest, the best – a feast within her Body and you know she's written some trite short story like that before. You have an urge to find it, to do a dramatic reading of it while Samantha tries not to laugh through stuffed cheeks.
The final Bunny, at your feet. You thought the violence that beats in your chest might soften once they were all dead. The thought feels ridiculous now. That the urge to decimate might be slaked by killing four creatures that could barely hold a unique idea between them. You have merely swatted the gnats that once swarmed.
You don't know what or who would satisfy your thirst. Can't imagine the Lion or that other teacher making a dent. You wonder how much blood it'll take to pacify. Only know the Bunnies have made you hunger for the unknown.
(Lie. You need to devour a god. Only counts if you believe in her.)
.
There is a veritable forest on the edge of campus. Has grown large and long enough that it no longer fully resides in Warren, perhaps never did. To be inside transports you to another age. Feels unlikely that if you walked back a few blocks, you'd be among the ubiquitous brick buildings of higher education.
Inside, you are whole.
Inside, you hold many impossibilities in mind. That this forest with trees wide enough to be hundreds of years old, only came to be this week. That it was your gardening, your husbandry, your forestry, that allowed such creation.
You never thought of yourself as a creator. How could you? A failed art student, are you not creation's opposite? Not destruction, but inaction. Static – the ugliest of all words. Something you no longer are. Nor is she.
Samantha smacks her lips; breath smells like the pie she devoured all by herself. She never asked you what the meat was, didn't need to.
"Do you still want to blow up Warren?" Smackie asks, silly, knows the answer. Insecurity has her fidgeting, boots crunching leaves as her weight shifts.
"I don't need to," you say.
Samantha kisses you for the truth.
Your tongue delves into her mouth, licks out the final echoes of the Bunnies. And Smackie is entirely yours once more – always will be.
fiachairecht <3Samantha wants to be saved in the campus forest. It isn't really a forest, you know that. It's barely even a grove. If the sun's high enough, the trees don't provide adequate shading. Some mornings, there isn't birdsong. The poets spurn the grove in favor of a dilapidated strip mall on the edge of the opposite side of campus. It still smells like Hollister a good twenty feet deep into the parking lot with faded lines. That's never been your brand. Maybe if it was, art school would've worked out. You're a prose girl, deep down. (Being concise is for those that don't worry about their mortality, if this next sentence is a final one.)
But at night, with stars peeking through the foliage, here feels like a forest. Smells like a forest, pines and oaks in harmony. You wish it could be deeper – want frogs croaking, rodents scurrying about, bats flying overhead, the mysterious sounds of the unknown. You want the rot and the worms, want the dead leaves from an infinity of trees, want to feel like you're wild again.
The bunny looks up at you, with huge unblinking eyes. Her nose twitches, mouth hangs open a touch.
She followed you so easily once you scruffed her. Followed silently, kneels at your feet. It's the drugs of course – but how fun to imagine it is compliance. That the most rebellious of them, the one that adds sex and violence to her nostalgia, that she wants this. She's been craving this. Obsessed with it and unable to write about anything else. To itch at her own stitching until she can be unmade.
Can you turn a Bunny into a bunny? The question begs your knife.
She doesn't scream once.
.
You aren't much of a cook, neither is Smackie. But a girl's gotta eat and baking is simple enough. Turn up the heat and toss something in the oven. Pies are great. Entirely premade or partially, easy to not fuck up. They just ask for a bit of patience. (The hardest part is restraining yourself. Got a self-destructive streak that reaches for the flame.)
Samantha tells you all about her day. Her classes. Her decision to scrap her thesis, start in a brand new direction. Samantha isn't sure if she means it as the words leave her mouth, you both know this. You'd give it thirty-seventy odds that she burns it all down. You and her have always had similar odds.
She mentions offhand that one of the Bunnies missed workshop, how Creepy Doll performed an allegedly impromptu funeral dirge spoken word poem instead of commenting on Duchess's latest proem on porcelain – cheaper and dramatically smashed at the end. The closest Samantha's ever seen the bunnies in disarray, she says, her smile wide enough to show off all thirty-two of her teeth.
There's a bit of the pie's gravy darkening her molars. Your fingers ache to reach inside her cavernous mouth, to press her open further, to feel out every tooth's individual ridge and lick them clean.
"We should celebrate," you say, though neither of you care for the trappings of celebration.
Samantha agrees, puts on some music and you both try to remember all those dances from class. Turn it into a drinking game – a sip for every misstep. Doesn't take long until you're both laying on the floor, passing the flask back and forth and giggling over nothing.
.
The second Bunny dies screeching, trying in vain to escape your knife. She tried to hide herself with a pair of kitten ears, should have sprung for claws. One of your hands is wrapped around her hair, keeps her in place. You stab fast, not a single care to aim, just keep stabbing until she's still and silent.
For all of Warren's campus security and extra lighting, no one comes to the grove to stop you. No one chases after your bloody shadow.
There is, of course, a major downside to such a haphazard kill: the meat is ruined.
.
Two deaths inside a week is a bit much for Warren, even with their axe-wielding murderers haunting unlit alleyways. There is a vigil set up in one of the quads, candles multiplying faster than rabbits.
Rabbits, too. Funny how many show up for the Bunnies, proven to be true kindred spirits. It becomes a trend to photograph bunnies at the vigil, bathed in candlelight. Looking serious and solemn and not at all delicious in a stew. A few undergrads start taking selfies with the rabbits that flock there, and overnight every fashionable Warren student or faculty member has updated their profile pictures and phone backgrounds and tinder photos.
Bunnypalooza, they say, edit out the origins. Makes your lips curl up at how easily they are pushed aside.
Two down.
.
The Duchess doesn't close her eyes. It isn't defiance but a final attempt to bribe you away from your mission with her body. Not the first time she's offered it up like this, too practiced. To shear her silver hair, to pluck out her black opal pupils, to scrape the strawberries from her candy gloss, to take her pearl necklace and replace it with a bloody one. Her eyes beg for mercy, but her lips aren't convinced you're a killer. Obvious in the way she only begins to scream as you slit her vibrating throat.
Her blood smears over your fingers like sticky paint. Rubs off easily, but leaves a trace behind that darkens your fingerprints. Emphasizes the ridges even through your mesh gloves.
.
"Fosco didn't show up to workshop today," Samantha says. She waited to say it until now. Until you've both eaten dinner and danced until you were winded, collapsed on the floor for a break. Moved up to the couch once you could breathe again, and Smackie rests her head in your lap. You pet through her hair, like how it winds about your fingers, silky smooth through your mesh gloves. (A little too silky, but you've gotten rid of the culprit, she'll return to reasonably priced conditioners soon enough.)
You should probably think about getting a job. An excuse for the increase in your disposable income. Samantha won't ask tonight, nor tomorrow – but she will, eventually. It could be a game. See how much money you can spend before she asks where it's coming from. (Samantha hates not knowing things, would much rather make up an answer than ask outright.)
"It was just me and Caroline."
"Hm?"
"Cupcake."
And her fate was already sealed, but you want to kill her even more for the room she takes up in Samantha's mouth. For daring to try and become more than a pitiful nickname.
.
You think Cupcake must have gotten her name from gorging herself on cakes, a plump narcissist. You haven't cooked her yet and know her meat will be sweet, diabetic blood thick with glucose. You can smell it from her slit throat, a single stroke to take her out. The neatest, the best – a feast within her Body and you know she's written some trite short story like that before. You have an urge to find it, to do a dramatic reading of it while Samantha tries not to laugh through stuffed cheeks.
The final Bunny, at your feet. You thought the violence that beats in your chest might soften once they were all dead. The thought feels ridiculous now. That the urge to decimate might be slaked by killing four creatures that could barely hold a unique idea between them. You have merely swatted the gnats that once swarmed.
You don't know what or who would satisfy your thirst. Can't imagine the Lion or that other teacher making a dent. You wonder how much blood it'll take to pacify. Only know the Bunnies have made you hunger for the unknown.
(Lie. You need to devour a god. Only counts if you believe in her.)
.
There is a veritable forest on the edge of campus. Has grown large and long enough that it no longer fully resides in Warren, perhaps never did. To be inside transports you to another age. Feels unlikely that if you walked back a few blocks, you'd be among the ubiquitous brick buildings of higher education.
Inside, you are whole.
Inside, you hold many impossibilities in mind. That this forest with trees wide enough to be hundreds of years old, only came to be this week. That it was your gardening, your husbandry, your forestry, that allowed such creation.
You never thought of yourself as a creator. How could you? A failed art student, are you not creation's opposite? Not destruction, but inaction. Static – the ugliest of all words. Something you no longer are. Nor is she.
Samantha smacks her lips; breath smells like the pie she devoured all by herself. She never asked you what the meat was, didn't need to.
"Do you still want to blow up Warren?" Smackie asks, silly, knows the answer. Insecurity has her fidgeting, boots crunching leaves as her weight shifts.
"I don't need to," you say.
Samantha kisses you for the truth.
Your tongue delves into her mouth, licks out the final echoes of the Bunnies. And Smackie is entirely yours once more – always will be.
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Date: 2024-10-11 01:19 am (UTC)thanks so much for hosting!