He didn't start off hating the rabbits. When Amy was two years old, she loved to toddle after them, her fat knees wobbling and her ragdoll Bunster falling flaccid from her chubby fingers. He remembered her squeal like a siren, starting off as a gurgle then becoming ear piercing. Anyone would think she was some special anti bunny device bought at the hardware in town, or that perhaps she'd stood on a thorn. They would laugh together and count the rabbits. One, nine, three, eleven.

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When Amy stuffed her clothes into a backpack and left for India, the rabbits multiplied. The tumble down house at the end of the lane was a becoming a haven of sorts for oryctolagus cunicululus. Having forgotten to return, or perhaps becoming one of any number of woman met by foul play in foreign lands, the lawn became like a no man's land of craters and furrows, because there was no siren to warn them away.

The beasts would look at him with a fluff veiled accusatory glare, or else with pity, for not doing more to keep her home and safe. After all, she was always theirs, despite the siren. She had one tattooed on the inside of her wrist to remind her of home. Perhaps they had all come to see why he didn't go after her. He agreed with them that it was odd that she didn't even send postcards. At times he would argue with them about whose fault it was she left. They argued it was his, for shooting the rabbits. He argued it was theirs, for being there in the first place.

Hurling his boot or once, an Amazon parcel wrongly delivered to his address, he would inevitably miss, send the rabbits scurrying into the pines, only to reappear, with typically twitching noses and those accusatory glares.

If only he had Amy's siren, he thought, and fell asleep dreaming of her little squeal and pies stuffed with rabbit meat and mushrooms.

This is in response to the Monday freewrite. It's been a while since I've written, and what better way than to do it with a Hive freewrite? How a 'siren' prompt turned into a story of loss and rabbits, I do not know. Fun fact: my acreage was once part of a large estate whose owner was responsible for letting loose rabbits into Australia. I can see one on my front garden as I write. Pesky bastards.

With Love,