• Rabbits hated Mr. Lancaster the magician. And when rabbits hated someone... things happened. Mr. Lancaster the magician looked something like a balding and starving squirrel. He was too thin and too short and he was most certainly bald. It wasn't only rabbits. No one really liked Mr. Lancaster the magician. The rabbits just disliked him the most.

    It was a Tuesday, and it was miserable outside. The small warehouse where Mr. Lancaster the magician kept all of his props (rabbits feel under the category of props) had fallen into disrepair years before. The dangerous and wiry cages the rabbits were kept in got soggy and unpleasant in bad weather since the roof leaked terribly. Fourteen rabbits in all were huddled in three separate cages. There had been fifteen earlier... But Mr. Lancaster the magician wanted to practice. Practice never ended well.

    The little freezing animals had stayed in a mostly static huddle (mostly, because rabbits' noses never seem to stop moving) the entirety of the day, shaking and trying not to step on soggy patches of none too fresh pine chips. When the door to the warehouse opened fourteen pairs of glassy eyes stared at the ragged shoes of their arch nemesis.
    He held a dead rabbit in his hands, eyes wide open and long yellow teeth visible through its open mouth. If rabbits could gasp in horror, surely that would have been the time for it. However, rabbits could not gasp in horror, so they merely wiggled their noses in fear and disgust.

    Mr. Lancaster the magician didn't take proper care of his rabbits when they died. Much like any pet they expected to be buried in the back yard with a nice little sermon and possibly some crying... However Mr. Lancaster the magician merely threw the bodies in the trash. It wouldn't be a bad idea to mention that the trash hadn't been taken out in a very long time. The beast of a man momentarily considered plucking another unlucky rodent from its uncomfortable cage.

    He decided to try again.

    He opened a cage and reached in, taking a shivering white rabbit by the scruff of its neck and dragged it kicking and screaming out of the cage. The sounds of rabbits screaming was a haunting one. Mr. Lancaster the magician stopped having nightmares about it a few years ago. Still, the little thing screamed.

    Inside the cage a smaller black rabbit darted for the door and slipped out before the wire was secured back in place. Arms full of screaming white rabbit Mr. Lancaster the Magician had no way to prevent the black rabbit making a clear getaway and vanishing into the streets, massive back feet kicking up water behind it, pavement grounding its too long claws.

    The three other rabbits in the cage watched their brother bunny go longingly.
    When rabbits hated someone... things happened.

    These things began manifesting themselves in strange ways. During practices the remaining rabbits would disappear. Mr. Lancaster the magician would wake up in the morning with long red scratches on his arms. Sometimes the scratches bled, but most of the time they just stung. For the most part, he ignored it.

    There came a time when Mr. Lancaster the magician found a lady. They dated for a time. She wasn't particularly special. She looked like anyone else. Brown haired and slightly thick around the waist, but she liked him. Most people hated Mr. Lancaster. He never told her that he was a mountebank. She never asked what he did.

    He was getting ready for a date one evening, pulling a slightly wrinkled shirt out of a tattered chest of drawers. When he laid it out he noticed that the collar was shredded. It looked as though it had been eaten by an animal. He chose a different shirt and went out. He bought some mothballs on his way back home.

    By the end of the week he had only three rabbits left of the original fifteen. That was just enough to perform, but he was a lot more careful with them. They were moved from the warehouse to his own apartment. It was a sad residence, but much better than the rotting old rented place they had been. The rabbits were warm for the first time in a long time. But their hatred only burned harder.

    Three performances had passed. None of the remaining rabbits passed away. In three days Mr. Lancaster the magician earned ninety seven bucks. He had somewhere near four hundred to begin with, but most of the people who came to his performance space demanded their money back. The ones that didn't seemed to have taken pity on him.
    He walked home, a cage tucked under his arm with three rabbits, noses moving. He could distinctly hear them breathing. It made him feel better knowing he had them.
    Almost home he began to rummage in his pockets, searching for his keys. And then he was on the ground, the cage bouncing away from him. The cheap wire door fell open. Mr. Lancaster the magician found his foot hung in a hole and his ankle was twisted almost one hundred eighty degrees. He watched the rabbits run off through tear blurred eyes. They were joined by twelve others, kicking up their massive back feet as they ran into the darkness.