cautionary tale part 04
Your lipstick is still pristine when we get home. You know I’ve been longing to kiss it. But you keep insisting I did such a good job that you don’t want to mess it up. You’ve been in a jovial mood ever since I saw you, which is dangerous and unusual when you’re on a diet.
The first thing I did when we got home was disappear upstairs to the sound of rushing water. I appeared a little while later to fetch you. The scent of sandalwood drifts in curlicues on the air behind me, as the stairs creak beneath your formidable weight
“Thought you might like a proper bath instead of just wet-wipes.”
A proper bath is bubbles, joss stick perfuming the room with sandalwood, and a bath tray bearing a glass of wine and three books from your beside table. When you see it you give me a little smile and come millimetres from kissing me, but leave it at just a tease. You push me out of the room with a hand on my chest, then wink at me as you close the door.
I’m left frustrated and impressed by your level of self-indulgence. I love it when you take. It makes the world feel right.
You descend the protesting stairs to find me doing something on the laptop in my lap. I look up to see you, towel wrapping your hair and bathsheet encircling your body. Two rabbits, pets I’ve had for as long as you’ve known me, gambol around my feet.
“Enjoy your bath?”
“Mmph,” is your conflicted reply. “I tried, but I’m starving. Blood and… well, non-solids aren’t exactly filling when you’re used to read meals.”
You step to the bottom of the stairs. Both rabbits use this as a cue to go ape-shit with excitement, like they always do when someone uses the stairs. The beige one, Barney, sprints top-speed to behind the couch, while the black one, Banks, bounces around in-place in that curious dance rabbits use to communicate extreme pleasure. You flop dramatically to the floor, back against the sofa and smoothing the bathsheet on your lap. Two rabbits bounce over and sniff curiously.
“What are you doing? Pay attention to me.”
“I’ll be with you in a moment,” I say, not looking up from my screen. “Just getting ahead of this… jogger in the park. Police IT have done something to lock my hacked account. I want to make sure nothing can come back on you…”
I throw an apologetic smile at you before looking to the screen, barely taking in the adorable scene of two buns daring one another to jump into your lap. They were terrified at first but you have won them over with treats and games in a year-long campaign. You are now part of the burrow.
The work I’m doing is engrossing. So I don’t notice when you’ve been quiet for an extended period of time. An internal alarm goes off and I look up.
You’re now holding Barney clamped to your chest, hard enough he instinctively does not kick and fight. Your jaw clenches and mouth draws down at the corners: you have just swallowed.
The laptop almost clatters to the ground when I jump to my feet. “Did you just—?”
“Eat your rabbit?” You give me a tiny smile. “I thought you’d give me anything I wanted.
I fluster, and then visibly relax. Your stomach is so flabby that nothing a creature the size of Banks can do will make a dent, despite her powerful hind legs. “I was just surprised, I thought they were too small to bother with…”
“… Well, now you know to pay attention to me when I ask for it.”
You give me a mock-stern glare. I’m still formulating a response when a tiny nose boops the back of my ankle. I look down to see Banks, uneaten, confused about why I’m standing up uselessly.
I look back to you, face a picture of surprise. You really are taking the diet seriously.
“Magic trick,” you say smugly. “Now pay me attention, or I’ll make the rabbits disappear. And no hat will bring them back.”