Bunny

“I can’t sleep.”  

“I’d be amazed if you could, Bunny.”  

Laurie rolled over and pulled the beaded cord of the nightstand lamp. The room filled  with a comforting tangerine haze through the smoke. Horizontally, she wriggled to close the  space between her and her lady, resting her head in the magical crook between thigh and  stomach. 

Jane lifted her joint from her lips, leaving a chocolate lip print on the filter, and tilted her  head down to lay heavy-lidded eyes on her lover girl. 

Laurie’s head still spun every time Jane’s eyes met hers. It was electric, the way she  loved her. She was stunningly beautiful from every angle, and her voice rolled off her diaphragm like the Pacific did off Zuma’s shores. She could convince anyone of anything with half the words and double the comfort.  

Jane’s hand tracked through the roots of Laurie’s hair, crimson nails prickling her scalp  in lines that made her spine tingle. A contented sigh left her tongue in a hurry, as if coaxed by  Jane’s convincing fingers. 

“My Bunny,” she muttered in her gravel-road tone, twisting locks of her ginger curls  between her fingers. She read Laurie’s face, silver lids fluttering shut over bloodshot eyes, a  smattering of sunny freckles across her button nose, soft smile gracing her glossed lips. Her nails  skimmed down the side of her face, leaving four jetstreams in their wake on her tanned skin.  

“What, exactly, is troubling your pretty little brain?”  

Laurie’s eyes fluttered open, and she crooked an arm under her head to prop her temple on, like a teenager at a sleepover. Jane closed the book she’d been reading—just something she’d 

picked up off the nightstand. She didn’t know what it was about, really, and frankly, she didn’t  care too much. 

After a long moment of eye contact, Laurie groaned and flopped onto her back. She  adjusted her long legs, one pulled up to her knee in a passé of sorts. Like a model, or a ballerina.  She’d been both, once. Her waif-thin frame had been envied in both. Bony arms, thin face, and  long, long legs—barely a size zero. There had only started to be problems when they learned  how she kept it that way.  

“It’s Val … You’re sure she’s okay with us staying in her room?” Laurie shifted  uncomfortably, averting her gaze from Jane’s. That stare. It was boring into her skull now. She’d  never admit to her lover how uncomfortable her gaze made her on occasion.  

“You know she is, Bun. You heard her tell us earlier.” Her voice had found an edge that  only added to the sudden chill in the air. Laurie nodded to herself, biting her bottom lip and  toying with the tie of the robe she was wearing. It was a little too small for her, in a color she’d  never pick out for herself. She didn’t look good in orange.  

“I know she did, I just … I don’t know. I’ve always felt weird sleeping in other people’s  beds. Even when I was out, you know …” Laurie ticked her head to the left, towards the ajar (or  was it shattered? She wasn’t sure) window. “I still didn’t sleep in the beds of the summer houses  we would get into. Felt wrong, I guess,” she muttered. She returned her attention to the robe tie.  Where had she even gotten it? She couldn’t remember. Must have been a gift.  

Oh dear. She was getting blood all over it. There was a gash in her hand she couldn’t  even feel.  

“Laurie.” 

She snapped her attention away from the robe tie and back up to Jane. Her face carried a  whole new set of worries, but they appeared to be masking something darker. She never called  her Laurie anymore. Her jaw was set. She was still holding the joint they’d been sharing.  

Well, she was. Until she grabbed Laurie’s wrist and pressed the angry, smoldering tip  into her arm.  

Laurie gasped, yanking her arm away and struggling to sit up on the hot silk sheets.  “What the fuck, Jane!” she shrieked, tears springing to her huge eyes. The burn seemed to eat at  her arm, an unsettlingly pale-centered ring that, under the influence, radiated up her arm, around  her back, up her spine, filling her throat—choking her.  

In her panic, she slipped backwards off the bed. She stepped on Val’s hand in the process  of catching herself. She whispered sorry. It’s not like she could hear her anyways.  

“Why can’t you just listen to the fucking words I’m saying?” Jane asked, the upsetting  edge still in her tone despite her calmness. Her dark eyes were filled with a hauntedness that  hadn’t been there previously. Laurie felt a chill creep up her spine, up her neck, worm its way into her ear and whisper, Run.  

She couldn’t. Her bare feet were rooted to the orange shag carpeting, by the dark stains  snaking out from under the bed. Despite the weed and the years upon years of endless party drugs  (and drugs that stayed around after the party), her brain suddenly felt clear. She remembered who  had put the stains there, and whose veins they belonged in. 

“Jane, what did we do?” 

Jane’s face was stoney, eyes empty, jaw set. A statue. Maybe if Laurie, too, stood still  enough, this would all go away. 

“You know what we did, Bunny.”  

“Janie, baby, you’re scaring me.”  

Laurie never called her Janie, unless she was scaring her. Usually, the pet name worked.  Right now, it did not. An eerie smile crept over Jane’s lips, completely stickered on—There  wasn’t an ounce of feeling behind it.  

“How do you not remember? You were there. Your mind is everywhere today.”  

Laurie was fighting off the drugs still in her system. They were threatening to pull her  under again; her brain was clawing for another hit and her heart was thrashing into her ribcage  like a bird begging to be freed. Shakily, she settled back onto the bed, trying to piece together the  evening.  

“Where did I get this robe, Janie?”  

“Val gave it to you. She said you looked good in orange.”  

Val. Val was wearing it. Why wasn’t she wearing it anymore? 

Laurie shifted her weight on the bony leg that was crooked under her and pasted on a  smile. “Well, that was awful sweet of her,” she giggled, using the last of the pot haze and the  delirium from her cravings to play the part of the innocent, stupid, brain-fried girlfriend.  

Jane seemed to ease up a bit. Her smile seemed to become less plastered on, more  genuine. It was almost scarier than before. “Yeah, it was. And you thanked her, and then she said  she had to go to her mom’s, remember?”  

Her mom was dead. 

“Right, yeah. Right,” she mumbled as she leaned into Jane. She could feel her heartbeat  in her shoulder blades. The burn was still angry, radiating, searing into every inch of her skin.  She traced her fingers up to her elbow, the track marks still raised and tender. A hit would fix this.  

A hit was how we got here.  

Why is the window broken?  

She turned her gaze to the window again as Jane contentedly rubbed her shoulder and  picked up her book again. There was a hole in the center of it, glass on the floor.  

Glass. 

The gash in my hand.  

Things were starting to click together. 

This story originally appears in OFM’s Suspect Press Takeover. Photo courtesy of  GRAS GRÜN via Unsplash