Johnson 33

May Flowers

By Benjamin Johnson

Content warning: Strong body horror

Brownish blood dribbles from the carnage of Caleb’s penis, hanging in tattered strips of skin and artery between his legs, oozing across the bathroom tile, seeping into the scattered hand towels, the edge of the bath mat, staining the caulking at the base of the shower the colour of rust. Caleb himself is sweat-soaked, slumped beneath the toilet paper holder, shaking hands gingerly probing the savaged hole of his manhood, when Eli finally enters and finds him.

“Caleb, what… What…”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Eli drops to his knees, his hands hovering over the viscera on the bathroom floor, though he cannot bring himself to touch, cannot bring himself to crawl through the red sea and go to Caleb’s side. “Don’t touch,” he says; shouts, “Alex, call an ambulance!”

Caleb’s fingers continue to poke and feel.

“Did you do this to yourself?” Eli asks.

“No. I thought I had to shit.”

“You went to take a shit and your dick exploded?”

“Yes.”

“What the fuck.”

“I don’t know.”

Alex appears in the doorway, phone pressed to his ear. “Ambulance wants to know what the emergency…” He catches sight of Caleb’s mangled genitals and his eyes roll back in his head and he slithers to the floor, smashing his temple against a towel rack on the way down.

Eli grits his teeth. “Fucking Christ.” He wrenches the phone from Alex’s hand, answers the operator’s questions: “Yes, hello. 24. Yes. Yes. Boyfriend. Uh, we’re both his boyfriends. Passed out. He might need to go the hospital as well. Apartment 11B. I’ll be here.” He stays on the line, daintily picks up one of the less-sticky hand towels and presses it to Alex’s bleeding temple, flicks another one to Caleb. “Here. Use this to staunch the bleeding.”

Caleb’s eyes are mostly the whites. “E, I might be sick.”

“Use the toilet.”

Caleb shakes his head from side to side, face pale and clammy. “Too much blood,” he says, which is when Eli clocks the brown stains slithering down the sides of the porcelain bowl beside his boyfriend.

“Shit.”

By the time Alex somewhat revives, Eli is letting the paramedics into the apartment, answering medical questions, watching as both his boyfriends are loaded onto stretchers and taken away. Down on the street, he can see flashing ambulance lights and curious gawkers. He tells the last paramedic, an overweight man with a salt and pepper goatee, that he’ll be along shortly, will drive himself, just has to check on a few things first. The door to the apartment slams, and Eli is alone.

He makes his way to the garbage can beneath the kitchen sink and throws up chunks of fried tofu and wet spinach from supper. Then, he neatly ties the bag and leaves it by the front door. He returns to the bathroom and peels the sticky bath mat up with two fingers, strands of congealed blood spider-webbing as he does so. This plus the garbage he removes to the garbage chute in the hallway and listens to them clunk away into oblivion. Finally, he returns to the bathroom. Fluid and bits of tattered flesh pool on the linoleum. He will have to deal with that later, but everything seems relatively cleanable; they can still get their deposit back. With a grimace, Eli lifts the lid of the toilet and stares down into the ruddy soup within the bowl, the site of Caleb’s initial eruption. He flushes the toilet and his stomach gurgles as the water bubbles up clogged, bits of skin and debris dancing to the surface. A large chunk of what at first appears to be flesh squirms to the top of the bowl, and Eli watches as it turns over like a sleeping infant, and sick rises in the back of his throat as he realizes that what he’s staring at is, in fact, a dead newborn rat. But then he’s slamming the lid shut and flushing again and, without checking to see if the water has gone, if the rat is gone with it, he leaves the bathroom and the apartment and staggers down to the street, throws up a second time and a third in the parking space beside his car, and drives to the hospital, wiping tears from his eyes the whole way.

“How are you feeling?”

“I mean, my head still hurts.”

Eli and Alex sit in straight-backed plastic chairs at the hospital, Alex clutching a mostly melted ice pack to his swollen head. Next to them, Caleb is sleeping, hooked up to a monitor. Beyond the thin paper curtain, their only source of privacy, Eli can hear doctors and nurses checking in on other patients, the shhrk of curtain rings on rods, the beeping of machines, the scribbling of pens, the slurp of hospital yogurt.

“What should we do?”

“Probably get another ice pack.”

“I mean about Caleb.”

“Oh.”

“Like, I know the doctors said this was some sort of weird pressure eruption or whatever. But now what? Do we change our diet? Does he have a tumour?”

“They’re running tests, E.”

“I know they’re running tests, Alex, but we need a plan for once Caleb wakes up. Surely something needs to be fixed here.” Eli’s leg vibrates abnormally fast. “What if he did this to himself?”

“He didn’t.”

“Yeah, but what if he did.”

Alex places his free hand on Eli’s knee and slows the vibrations. “He didn’t.”

“I found a dead rat in the toilet.”

“What the fuck?”

“It was floating in with the blood and stuff. I left it there. The toilet wouldn’t flush.”

“How did a dead fucking rat get in the toilet?”

“Maybe it crawled up through the pipes and drowned?”

“And Caleb went to take a shit on it? And then his dick exploded?”

“Don’t be a fucking moron.”

“Use your kind words, E.”

“Sorry. I mean, maybe the rat crawled up after Caleb’s accident. Smelled the blood.”

“Also, you just left it floating in the toilet?”

“Like I’m going to pick a dead rat out of a toilet with, what, a fucking rubber glove? Why don’t you deal with it if you don’t like how I am?”

“I understand you’re stressed, but again, kind words.”

“I don’t know how to deal with this at all.”

“I know. Neither do I. And neither does Caleb, probably.”

At 2:15 AM, Eli scrolls through Grindr in bed. Alex has volunteered to stay at the hospital on the condition that Eli deal with the rat in the toilet, which Eli has not done, meaning the horrible dead thing has been bobbing up and down in bloody water for well over six hours. Eli bought a chicken sandwich on the way home from the hospital, but ended up putting it in the fridge, unable to stomach the sight of the slick, pinkish-brown skin.

Eli taps on a profile with a familiar face, an unfamiliar torso. This is a guy from Eli’s hometown high school, the same guy who knocked up his girlfriend at 15 and called Eli a fag for wearing a rainbow wristband at an after-school student council meeting. He’s going by DL-Daddy, 6-ft, 169 lbs, uncut. Intriguing, Eli thinks, and messages him. DL-Daddy’s response is overshadowed by an incoming phone call from Alex.

“I need you at the hospital.”

“Is Caleb okay?”

“Please hurry.” Alex hangs up.

Eli rolls out of bed, throws on jeans and a soiled t-shirt, and in less than twenty minutes is fast-walking into Caleb’s hospital room. Alex stands right inside the door, face ashen. “Thank Jesus you’re here.”

Eli looks past him. The curtains to the room are spread wide, light from the office buildings and streetlamps across the street spilling in across the closed paper curtains of the six patients being kept in here. Caleb’s curtain is open, his bed empty, a trail of dark splatter leading under the bathroom door to Eli’s left.

“Is he in there?”

“Yep. It’s unlocked.”

Eli pushes past Alex into the bathroom. On the floor inside, Caleb slumps, clutching between his legs with a hand the colour of raw meat. Blood soaks into his hospital gown, half off and bunched up beneath his chest. The trail of dark liquid ends at his groin. Bits of flesh are clearly visible in the black shimmer.

“Caleb. Jesus shit.”

Someone outside the bathroom moans for him to be quiet.

Caleb blinks, his eyes unfocused and glassy. “Eli? I can’t feel anything.”

“Did you call the nurse?” Eli asks Alex.

“No, we can’t yet.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Eli goes for the call button, but Alex grabs his wrist. Caleb whimpers. Eli opens his mouth, several decidedly unkind words ready to spew forth, but the look in Alex’s eyes stops him.

“E, wait. Look.” Without entering the bathroom or looking at the mess, he hisses to their crumpled boyfriend: “Show him.”

Caleb’s eyes have nothing behind them. He pulls a shuddering hand up from his crotch and holds something out to Eli, small and red and slimy and tangled in itself.

Eli sucks in a breath. “Are those what I think they are?”

Two dead baby rodents, tangled and drowned in blood and viscera and something shiny and pale, possibly semen. As Eli watches, unable to look away, one of the corpses slides off of the other, lands in a splat of gore.

Alex heaves at the sound.

“You see them too?” Caleb murmurs, eyelids fluttering. “It’s not the drugs?”

Between Caleb’s legs, the stitches have been rent apart looking for all the world like prickly black hairs. His genitals hang in oozing tatters. A dripping sound comes from somewhere, but Eli can’t see the source.

Eli shakes his head. “Call the nurses,” he tells Alex.

“And tell them what? That our boyfriend is cumming rats?”

“No, tell them that we have an emergency before he fucking bleeds out, dipshit.”

“Eli, you can’t… You can’t tell,” Caleb gurgles.

Eli huffs. “You have an infestation of some kind.”

“E. Please.”

One of the other patients loudly tells them to shut up. Eli ignores them, pushes Alex aside and presses the call button himself. He returns to Caleb side, dons a rubber glove from the bathroom dispenser, seizes the rodents from Caleb’s hand and throws them into the bathroom garbage can. Their bodies hit the metal bottom with a squelch.

Alex gags.

“Shut up,” Eli hisses. “If you throw up, I throw up, and then it’s all over.”

“Eli.” Caleb is crying softly. “There are more.” He feebly spreads his legs.

Eli doesn’t try to process what he’s seeing, shovels the remaining three (four?) into the garbage as nurses enter the room, as Alex greets them with a shaking voice, as he grabs a clump of toilet paper and pretends to be merely sponging the blood from his boyfriend’s thighs. Swiftly, the nurses move him to the side, check Caleb’s vitals, bring in a stretcher. They ask what happened, and Alex explains in quavering tones without once mentioning the rodents. “His dick exploded again, I guess,” he says. Eli rolls his eyes.

Eli and Alex are left behind as Caleb is rushed from the room. A dripping noise greets their ears, and they both look down to see the blood dripping from Eli’s rubber glove.

Alex and Eli are in a supply closet. “I can’t,” says Alex.

“We have to look,” says Eli. He holds the plastic garbage bag from the hospital bathroom. It sloshes wetly every time he moves his arm.

Caleb is once again in remission, sleeping, his wounds sewn closed. They waited with him until the nurses left, until they could sneak the garbage bag out. Dark circles ring both men’s eyes.

“I’ll pass out again.”

“You’ll keep it together. I can’t do this by myself.” Wearing a new rubber glove, Eli reaches into the bag without further discussion, brings up one of the slippery dead things. Its entrail-slick body hangs limp in Eli’s blue palm.

Beneath the dim light of the closet, Alex’s face turns ashen. He sways and leans against a shelf of disinfectants.

Eli peers closer at the thing in his hand: spittly pink flesh, visible blue veins, an odor of raw, dead meat. “What kind of animal is this?” he asks.

“Rat,” Alex heaves. “Rat. It’s a rat.”

“No, it’s not. Look at the ears.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Alex.”

“Fucking fine. It’s a squirrel or something. I don’t give a fuck.”

“I think it’s a rabbit.” He looks up at pale, sweaty Alex grasping a heavy bottle of bleach for some sort of support. “Caleb is birthing rabbits.”

Eli calls in from work, tells them his partner had a medical emergency. His boss doesn’t ask any questions, hasn’t asked questions about his relationships since Eli brought both Alex and Caleb to the bar for a co-worker trivia night. She’d asked a whole lot of questions that night, made everyone uncomfortable: “Three guys, what a sausage-fest! How do you coordinate schedules? Or meet each other’s parents? I bet the sex is great! Is the sex great? Eli, I bet you’re a top, huh?”

Eli calls Alex’s and Caleb’s workplaces as well. Alex monitors Caleb, tells Eli to go home.

“What if there are more rabbits?”

“You didn’t get any rest last night. I’ll call you if we need you.”

Something gurgles in the pit of Eli’s stomach, maybe hunger or anger or despair. He presses whatever the feeling is down, drives home with sunlight squinching his eyes.

In the dim apartment, he kicks off his shoes, heads to their bedroom, takes off his shirt and pants, climbs under the covers, immediately rises and goes to the kitchen to make himself a ham sandwich, examines the slimy pink packaged ham and puts everything away, unmade. He heads toward the bathroom, lifts the lid of the toilet and is greeted by a foul smell that triggers his gag reflex on impact. The water level has receded and settled, rosy with blood, around the moldering corpses of several dead baby rabbits. Maggots crawl on and through their taut, veiny flesh, eat away at their eyeballs and ears. Eli doesn’t bother counting how many there are exactly, takes the wooden handle of the plunger and, eyes screwed shut, stabs down at them, breaking barely-there bones and smashing apart skin until the sound he hears resembles apple sauce squelched through teeth. He flushes the toilet again, grunting softly as the tank gurgles and chugs and presumably drains. He opens one eye to check and, while the toilet has flushed, several stringy pieces of flesh stick to the sides of the bowl. One of the baby rabbits’ heads bobs in the centre of the pool. Severed at the neck, it turns and flashes Eli the remains of its slithering spinal cord, floating in the water like a jellyfish tentacle.

Eli slams the lid shut and flushes once again.

Night falls. Alex is sleeping at the hospital. I’ll call you, promise, he’d texted. Eli had thrown his phone off the bed, then begrudgingly gotten up to retrieve it.

1:30 AM and a Grindr message appears at the top of his screen. In all the excitement, he’d forgotten about DL-Daddy.

hey sexy, says his first message from the previous night. looking for head? His next message reads, didn’t recognize u. gotten big since high school, huh?? His next message reads, I’m home alone tonight. Kid’s staying at his mom’s house. Wanna have fun??

Eli stares wearily at the message, his fingers hovering over the keys. Sex might take his mind off things. His and Alex’s and Caleb’s relationship is open, and he's in dire need of distraction. You’re up pretty late, he messages DL-Daddy.

I’m always up late, babe

I don’t think you get to call me babe yet

When

Show me a good time first

U want head?

Grindr suddenly disappears, replaced by a call screen. Alex. Eli answers immediately. “What happened?”

“More rabbits. Three.”

“I’m on my way over.”

“You don’t have to. He’s been taken care of. I cleaned up the mess.”

“You cleaned up the mess?”

“I closed my eyes and used a dustpan. I’m not completely useless, E. Fuck.”

Eli pauses, half-in and half-out of bed, pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry, Alex. I’m worried. How many more times is this going to happen?”

“I don’t know. How many rabbits are usually born in a litter?”

“Why the fuck does that matter? He’s a human being, not a fucking rabbit.”

“Just a thought.”

Eli brings the phone away from his ear, quickly Googles rabbit birth. “They can have up to twelve,” he says. “Twelve bunnies in a single birth.”

“Okay, so Caleb had three tonight. How many did he have yesterday?”

“I don’t know. Three or four, I think.”

“And in the toilet?”

“I’m not sure. I guess four or so. Maybe more.”

“Maybe that’s all the rabbits he has in him, then. He’s a smaller guy, after all.”

“I don’t think his fucking size has anything to do with this. This is a random guess!”

“I know, E, but random guessing is pretty much all I can do!”

Eli registers the break in Alex’s voice. He takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly, controlled. “It’s okay,” he says. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe Caleb has purged them all. He’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay.”

“I just don’t want to lose him,” says Alex, bursting fully into tears and forcing Eli to hold the phone away from his ear. “I love you both so much! I don’t want him to die!”

“No one’s going to die,” says Eli. “Try to get some sleep. I’ll do the same.”

“They think he’s tearing at his own stitches,” says Alex. “I gave consent to have him restrained once they’ve sewn him up again.”

Eli stops. “Caleb isn’t tearing out his own stitches, right?”

“I don’t think so. No, of course not.”

“Get some sleep,” Eli repeats. He hangs up the phone, opens Grindr again, but his vision blurs over DL-Daddy’s messages. He opens Alex’s text window, sends him a heart emoji. Despite the rancid taste in his mouth, he crawls back under the covers, puts his phone face down on his bedside table, and pretends to himself that he’s fallen fast asleep.

Caleb’s eyes flutter open and shut, dark circles making them appear bruised. His hands are bound to the bed by thick blue medical cuffs with white snaps. His dark hair is matted, stands up in crisscross directions. Sweat shimmers against his chest.

Eli’s chin presses against the heel of his hand as he stands at the foot of his boyfriend’s bed, regarding him. “He looks insane,” he says.

Alex barely acknowledges Eli’s words. He’s seated in the same plastic chair he’s been in for a couple days now. His hair is matted to his scalp; the stench of fear-sweat tells Eli he’s badly in need of a shower.

Eli crosses to Alex, places a hand on his arm. “You’ve done a good job. Go home. Eat something. Sleep.”

Alex cracks open an eye. “As if you’ve been sleeping.”

“I have.”

“Liar.”

Eli sucks at his lower lip. “I’ve got this, Al. You’re relieved of duty.”

Alex glances over at Caleb, brushes the back of one hand across his and Eli’s boyfriend’s clammy forehead. He rises slightly, plants a kiss on Caleb’s cheek, kisses Eli on the lips.

Eli doesn’t close his eyes, wrinkles his nose at Alex’s smell. They break, and Alex looks up at him, his blue eyes swollen with clouds. “Call me if anything happens,” he says. “And I swear to god, Eli, if you try to manage everything on your own, and I find out about it, I’m going to kill you. You’re good, but you’re not an island. I’m part of this relationship too.”

Eli doesn’t respond, watches his boyfriend run a hand over his other boyfriend’s forehead, neck, chest again. “If the rabbits come tonight, we have to tell a doctor,” he says.

“Caleb doesn’t want that.”

“Caleb’s sick. I’m making the call.”

“Of course you are.” Alex brushes past Eli on his way out; not forcefully, but enough to make a point.
Caleb mumbles something unintelligible in his semi-conscious state.

Eli runs a disinfectant wipe over the plastic chair before he sits down.

Eli wakes up sitting in the exact spot in which he fell asleep, his chin resting on his chest. He cricks his neck, stretches. The hospital room is dark save for the dim glow through the door’s inset window.

Caleb sleeps soundly, the cuffs not appearing to disturb him too greatly. Eli holds Caleb’s hand in the dark, finds his palm cool and chalky with dried sweat. The curtain cordoning them off from the rest of the room hangs like a bridal veil. The other patients in here are silent except for one woman’s soft snore.

Eli checks his phone and sees the time is 1:09 AM. A new message from DL-Daddy reads, looking for fun tonight?? I’m alone again. Eli doesn’t respond. He tucks his phone back into his pocket, focuses his attention on Caleb. Only then does dark anxiety settle into his limbs, the hair standing up on the back of his neck. The feeling of being watched settles under his skin.

Caleb’s chest rises and falls. A dark shadow congeals within this space.

Eli’s heart beats faster. He wonders briefly if he’s having a night terror, but this is something different. Something is coming. Something has arrived.

“Caleb,” he hisses and shakes his boyfriend, but Caleb doesn’t wake. Shadows seep under the blue curtain. Eli’s skin prickles. He glances around, searching for what, he doesn’t know, before his gaze comes to rest on twin points of yellow staring at him and Caleb through the curtain’s mesh upper portion. Amber eyes in a huge, dark face.

Eli screams without meaning to, grabs for the call button. Someone yells at him to shut up. Another patient starts crying. By the time Eli looks back up, the eyes are gone. He pulls the curtain aside, revealing nothing, as a nurse appears in the doorway.

“Everything okay in here?” the nurse asks.

Caleb blinks awake. “E? What’s going on?”

“Something. Something in the room.”

The nurse checks on Caleb while Eli marches through the room to the window. Through the glass, all he can see is the spotlit parking lot. He yanks one of the curtains back, is greeted by an irate father and his chest-tubed child. “What the hell are you doing?” the father asks.

Eli feels strong arms guide him away from the curtain, hears the rings at the top rattle closed, hears the nurse apologize profusely.

“There’s nothing in here,” the nurse tells him in a soothing tone. “You had a nightmare. Caleb is fine. You’re fine too.” He guides Eli back to his chair, offers him a blanket, a cup of water. Eli accepts. His whole body shakes uncontrollably. “Please don’t disturb the other patients,” says the nurse and disappears down the hall.

Caleb shoots Eli a weak smile, still tired, still restrained. “Nightmare,” he says.

Eli nods slowly. He doesn’t mention the crumbs of dirt outside of Caleb’s curtain, doesn’t mention the fact that DL-Daddy’s message still sits at the top of his phone screen. As Caleb settles back down, he listens to the deepness of his boyfriend’s breathing, pulls out his phone and, with a sigh, texts Alex. I saw something weird, he says. No rabbits though. Caleb’s fine. Love you. Call me when you get a chance. He puts his phone away, doesn’t feel a vibration from Alex, tries to sleep and realizes that any dream he might have had is now firmly out of his reach.

In the morning, Alex calls. “Everything okay?”

“Fine.”

“No rabbits?”

“No rabbits.”

A deep sigh of relief on the other end of the phone. “What was the weird thing?”

Eli hesitates. “Probably nothing. A bad dream.”

“You sound terrible, speaking of which.”

“Thanks.” Eli glances over at sleeping Caleb. Some of his colour has returned this morning. His sheets are crisp and blue and clean. “I thought I saw something watching us. Something with yellow eyes.” He hears a snap. “Alex, don’t bite your nails.”

“Okay, mom,” Alex says, spitting. “You really don’t think it was anything? This is all so fucked up.”

“I think, probably not. But, Alex…” Eli hesitates, watches Caleb’s chest rise and fall. “What are the chances you could stay here with me and Caleb tonight?”

Alex goes quiet for a moment. “Of course, I’ll stay, E. I told you, you don’t always have to be the strong one. You don’t have to be there for Caleb on your own.”

“Thanks. Love you. See you later.” Eli hangs up before Alex can say anything else, before he can tell him it’s good to be weak, before he can tell him it’ll be okay even if things are falling apart, and rabbits are being birthed and dying, and Caleb almost died, and we can all go back to normal once this is done. Moisture blurs Eli’s vision, and he runs the back of his arm over his eyes, leaves a dark stain on his shirt sleeve.

People only say it’s fine for everything to break apart when a rupture’s already underway.

Caleb wakes at dusk. Both Eli and Alex hold him, kiss him, stroke his hair. “Are you feeling okay? Do you need anything?”

“For a guy who’s birthed multiple rabbits out of his dick, not bad, I guess.” He flexes his wrists, tugs experimentally at the restraints. “Nothing came out of me last night, right?”

Eli glances at Alex. “No. No more babies.”

“Are we out of the woods?”

“Yes. We hope so.”

“I’m not really sure where they sit when they’re inside me,” says Caleb. He peers down at his blanketed abdomen. “The rabbits, I mean. I think they must coil up beneath my gut or something. Each time before they… emerge, I can feel them squirming.”

Alex takes Caleb’s hand. “Can you feel them now?”

“No. I’m empty, I think.”

Night falls, and the lights go out. Caleb drifts back into unconsciousness, aided by painkillers, while Eli and Alex take up positions on either side of his bed. They don’t speak to one another and, briefly, Eli thinks Alex might have fallen asleep, but when he looks over at him, he sees that he’s wide awake and staring into the darkness.

Next to them, the curtain softly sways.

Eli pulls out his phone to distract himself, opens Grindr, sees no new messages from DL-Daddy. He messages him himself: sorry for ghosting, personal stuff. I can meet up this weekend for fun.

In seconds, he receives a response: I like the sound of fun. My kid will be home this weekend, but we can be quiet.

U won’t be quiet if I have anything to say about it

Lol maybe a babysitter then

Eli continues sexting, deadening the world around him. The beeps and clicks of the hospital machine disappear, as does the sound of doctors’ heels squeaking up and down the hallway outside. Everything leaves but the bright rectangle of his screen and his own unsated horniness. He considers asking about Caleb and Alex, if they could join, but four is maybe a crowd. And Caleb won’t be sexually active for a while, he guesses. Definitely not before the stitches come out. Maybe things could go back to how they were before. Maybe he could calm down, let someone else take the reins. He and Caleb and Alex could go back home together and once again stay up long hours in the evening talking about the little heartaches and pleasures of their unconventional relationship, the farm they want to own together one day with goats and horses. No rabbits. There will be no rabbits on the farm, no dead bunnies in the toilet, no more blood sprayed across the floor, or blown-open penises seared to the inside of Eli’s eyelids. This was an anomaly that cannot, will not, be indicative of the whole of the rest of their lives. Eli won’t let that happen.

Eli looks up at Alex, sees him leaned back in his chair, eyes closed, mouth gaping. He sets his phone down on his lap, takes a deep breath and, for the first time in several days, his heart rate slows and he falls, tumbles, into sleep.

Eli wakes, a cloying taste permeating his mouth. He explores the crevices of his teeth with his tongue, rolls his shoulders back, opens his eyes to complete nothingness: no lights, no sound, no Alex, no Caleb. He blinks, refocuses, fishes for his phone. The clock on the top of the screen reads 3:00 AM exactly. He activates the flashlight, shines it about, and reels back in alarm. He’s still in the hospital room with his boyfriends, but they are not alone.

Hunched atop of Caleb’s still-sleeping body, its form vibrating with something like excitement is a humongous black rabbit. Its yellow eyes reflect the light of the phone, resting on him. Its pointed ears flatten to its scalp. Eli lurches to his feet. He has just enough time to see the creature begin to unfold its body, reach for him with unnaturally long limbs, almost-humanoid hands, before his phone slips from his grasp. Panic swells in Eli’s lungs. He screams into the darkness.

“Eli!”

Alex is awake and calling his name. He turns to answer him, but something barrels into him, and he slips and falls to the ground, cracking his head against the bedside table, the floor. Large feet scuff against the tile. Something metal clangs to the ground. Alex lets out a strangled yell. Eli hears a squealing noise, an animal in distress, and the sound fills him with primal fear, courses adrenaline through his veins. The curtain around the bed tears, bathing the floor in moonlight. Eli fumbles for his phone, scrambles to his feet, and shines his light around, catches Alex standing there, utterly bewildered, hands raised. A deep gash cuts across one palm, and red blood drips in a puddle onto the floor.

Eli rubs at his throbbing scalp. His fingers come away red. “Where’d it go?”

“I don’t fucking know! I swung. I think I hit it. What the fuck was that?”

A low moan emanates from the bed between them. Eli aims his flashlight at Caleb, registers a strangled cry from Alex. Caleb’s blanket is around his ankles again. His hospital gown is bunched against his abdomen. His underwear has been removed, the stitches where his penis used to be black and coarse, a few droplets of pearly liquid splashed across his skin. His entire body writhes against the sheets. Sweat drips from his forehead. His eyes open a crack, and the look in them is pleading. “I can’t… They’re inside me,” he whispers, before throwing his head back and wailing into the air.

Eli swoops to his bedside and holds his hand, his knuckles clenched white around Caleb’s palm. His boyfriend’s grip hurts, and he cries out, but the noise is nothing compared to the splitting of skin and Caleb’s sobbing screams. Eli is vaguely aware of Alex’s presence nearby, him talking to Caleb, trying to calm him down through choked-out snivels of his own, but Caleb’s hold threatens to shatter the bones in Eli’s wrist, and his world turns white, pain descending like a monster.

Just as Eli’s tendons are on the verge of snapping, Caleb lets out a gasp and breaks down into sobs. His grip releases, and Eli falls backwards, hands splayed against the floor. Alex is crying, and Caleb is crying, and Eli takes a second to breathe against the dirty tile before smashing at the call button, righting himself, surveying the carnage. Between Caleb’s legs, oozing from the bloody, despoiled flaps of skin, are more baby rabbits, tiny bodies clustered together and coated in thick, red goo.

“You said it was over!” Caleb wails. “I’m sorry! I’m so, so sorry!”

“Shush,” Alex says, perhaps more harshly than intended. “None of this is your fault. We should have been watching.”

Eli stares at the dead bunnies, horrible broken things, squirming out of Caleb like maggots, breaking him apart: little bloated bodies with sealed, dead eyes.

The door opens behind them, and a pair of nurses appear. “Everything okay in here?”

Eli whips around to them, blood dripping down from his scalp, forcing him to squint one eye. “No, fucking no. Stitches burst again. He’s bleeding. The rabbits are fucking everywhere. Help him.” He turns back to the bed and sees the rabbits are gone, that Alex has thrown the sheet over the coil of dead bunnies and removed them all in one fell swoop, now holds them in his arms. The two of them stare daggers at one another over the bed as the nurses move to Caleb’s side, flick on the lights, take his vitals, call for backup.

Show them, Eli mouths, but Alex shakes his head, plops himself down into his akimbo plastic chair, holding the bundle of corpses in his lap. Eli sees they’ve started to soak through, dripping fluids onto Alex’s pants and shoes. If he’s bothered, he doesn’t show it.

Soon, Caleb is gone, removed by the nurses for emergency intervention. Eli can hear his crying as the door to the hospital room closes, listens to the sound disappear down the hallway until he’s not sure if it’s real or only a memory ringing in his ears.

Alex’s gaze is unfocused. His hand is so slick with blood from his gash, he looks as though he’s wearing a crimson glove.

“You didn’t tell them. We agreed.”

“Caleb didn’t want them to know.”

“You need to have your hand looked at.”

“You need your head looked at.” Alex appears to emerge somewhat from his trance-like state, sets the rabbits down on the floor.

Eli moves around the bed to his side, examines his hand with his non-bloody eye, turns his attention to the hideously oozing sheet-bundle. “What the fuck,” he mutters. He opens the folds of the sheet like unwrapping a dumpling and peers inside, trying to convince himself this is real. The rabbits lie close together in a raw, liquid pile. Eli’s lip curls at the sight of their sticky pinkness, their mangled bodies, the way they slither together into one indiscernible mass. He gathers phlegm in the back of his throat and spits into the bag. His saliva disappears amidst all the blood.

He closes the bundle and stomps on it once, twice, grinding the heel of his shoe into the fabric, caring little about the squelching sound, the liquid seeping through the bottom.

“Eli, don’t,” Alex says, but the tone of his voice indicates he doesn’t really care, would pulverize them himself if he had the energy.

On Eli’s third stomp, he hears a small whine and stops.

Alex hears the noise too, turns his head to meet Eli’s gaze, fright replacing his placidity.

Eli squats in the puddle of blood and brain fluid leaking out over the floor and opens the sheet. Initially, the bag only reveals a bloody and stinking pulp, perforated bowels and snapped necks mingling fluids to form a miasma of rot. But then Eli sees something kick amidst the gore, tiny toes flexing amidst the sewage of its siblings. Without hesitation, he reaches into the bag and pulls the little body free.

A baby rabbit croaks in his hand, moves its head blindly from side to side as though sniffing him and Eli, sensing them somehow. The right back leg is a bloody stump, likely kicked off, but the rest of the creature is whole and pink and alive.

“Jesus Christ,” Alex murmurs. “What the fuck.”

Eli stares at the creature, turns it over in his hand like he’s inspecting the label on a bottle of ranch dressing. The pathetic thing squeals again. Eli’s grip tightens. He wants to squeeze this little monster until its lungs collapse, until its eyes bug out of its skull and the top and bottom halves of its body break apart like ground beef. But then he feels Alex’s touch, his fist wrenched open, the baby bunny removed from his grasp. He’s vaguely aware that Alex was saying something to him, couldn’t hear him over the rage throbbing in his ears. Now he turns his attention towards his boyfriend and the reproachful, scared look in Alex’s eyes.

“You can’t kill her,” Alex says.

“Why.”

“She’s not yours.”

“It’s a she now?”

“This is Caleb’s to decide what to do with. This is Caleb’s progeny. We’re witnesses right now. That’s all we are. Not fathers, not executioners. Witnesses.”

“Caleb won’t want this.”

“You don’t know what Caleb wants.”

Eli smarts at the admonishment, curls his lip in anger. “And you do?”

Alex looks down at the baby rabbit, still squealing softly in his palm, strokes its spine with the bloody finger of his cut hand. Surprisingly, the thing shuts up. “No, I don’t. That’s why I’ll wait and ask and respect his decision one way or the other.”

“I’m not fathering a rabbit.”

“Then leave.” Alex fixes him with a gaze infuriating in its coolness. “Maybe this is what the monster wanted. Maybe Caleb can heal if we let this bunny live.”

Blood drips into Eli’s eye from his cut, stings his tender flesh. “I want Caleb to be okay,” he says finally, dumbly.

“I do too,” says Alex. He regards the bunny in his palm, slick with viscera and the blood from his wound. “I’ve heard babies make everything better.”

Benjamin Johnson (he/him) lives and writes on Treaty 6 Territory in the Canadian Prairies, his work focusing on queering space through magic and camp. He holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and has had work published previously by the Ex-Puritan, Necessary Fiction, Hunger Mountain Review, and others.