Is it bird! Is it a plane. No it’s a Plot Bunny!
[AN: This story hails all the way back to story #298 in the first One Year of Instants. Buy your copy now!]
When she first saw Walter, she mistook him for a hobo and pretended she didn’t see him.
Their second meeting was even less auspicious. Her landlord hired her to serve him a writ about the smell. She found him in the middle of a nest of typewriting, strung out on coffee and suffering the early stages of scurvy.
In a corner, as far away from the nest as it could get, was what appeared to be a rabbit crammed into a cage that was far too small.
The smell was him. He hadn’t bathed or changed his clothes inside of a fortnight and the food stains were starting to compost. Every time Lorraine went near him, he said, “Hang on, hang on, hangonhangonhangon…” or, “Almost done. It’s almost done.”
Lorraine stuck the writ to the fridge and took his trash out for him, which did only a little something about the smell. Walter, evidently, had no time for bathing, meals that didn’t come out of a microwave, tidying up, or even putting his box-meal scrapings in the bin. Or, for that matter, flushing the toilet.
He finally finished typing with an explosive, “And… DONE! YES!” He gave the rabbit the finger and lurched, zombielike, into the shower where things apparently got orgasmic over soap and water.
Lorraine, meanwhile, at least organised his piles of packrattus and took a curious peek at what he’d been typing.
It was the best thing she’d ever read.
She nearly leaped out of her skin when he tapped her on the shoulder. “Excuse me? Who are you?”
“Lorraine. Whelks. I live down the hall from you. Our landlord wanted me to serve you notice about the smell.”
“Yeah. Things get messy when Fluffykins gets out.”
That should have been her first warning. Hell, in retrospect, it should have been the only warning she’d have ever needed… but retrospect has a perfect view.
Things only got worse from there on in.
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