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Dan and Phil were out for a walk together as dusk began to settle in London. It wasn’t exactly intense exercise, but it was something both of their therapists had recommended to get out of the house more and supposedly the fresh air and change of scenery would help them de-stress. Dan walked on the outside out of habit, both because he and Phil had gotten so used to that arrangement when they filmed and because he didn’t entirely trust Phil not to wander into traffic and get flattened like a pancake when he started rambling on about something he’d seen on TikTok or dropping another barely-plausible northern anecdote from his childhood.
It was hazy out and made the sunset a blue-grey rather than orange, but if they wanted pretty sunsets they could look for them while on holiday rather than trying to convince the sun to make an appearance over the UK. Still, it did cast a few long shadows that really messed with depth perception, and Dan began to wonder if maybe he did need glasses after all.
Phil abruptly stopped in front of someone’s yard and Dan nearly tripped over him.
“Dan look,” Phil said, pointing a few meters ahead of them on the pavement.
Dan squinted in the direction he was pointing, trying to discern the identity of the small shape.
Phil turned back and laughed as he saw Dan struggling. “You really do need glasses, oh my god.”
“Shut up, it’s just the weird lighting.”
“Sure, it’s just the lighting,” Phil joked. “Anyway, look at the rabbit over there, we almost never get one in our garden.”
Now that Phil had pointed it out, the fact that it was a rabbit was obvious from the round body and long ears.
“We don’t get rabbits in our garden because we can’t be bothered to plant actual vegetables. He’s kind of cute, though.”
“Do you think we should help him?” Phil asked, still standing still watching the creature sitting idly in the road.
“Help him with what? I’m sure if we walk towards him he’ll run straight back into the bushes where he came from,” Dan said, continuing on with their walk as planned and heading in the rabbit’s direction.
Phil took a few quick steps and followed, but as they neared the creature it made no move.
“It’s not even scared of us,” Phil pointed out. “It might be someone’s pet on the loose.”
“Or it has rabies and we shouldn’t be this close to a wild animal.”
Dan did find the whole thing a little weird, and took a wide path around the creature, deciding it would be best to just leave it behind and let it figure out what its tiny rabbit brain wanted to do next.
“Do you know all domestic rabbits are descendants of wild European rabbits rather than the American ones? When I was a kid they told us that at the RSPCA when we got Holly.”
“Were you even old enough to remember that or are you just making something up and pretending it’s a real fact again?”
“No, it’s true, I checked on Wikipedia,” Phil explained as they walked along further and the sky got properly dark. “That’s why you can’t just judge whether a rabbit is wild or domestic by its appearance, sometimes the domestic ones look brown too.”
“If that’s a domestic rabbit then it was probably dumped outside by some spoiled kids for being too boring or something,” Dan said matter-of-factly.
“Don’t say that, it probably has some very worried people looking for it.”
“I wasn’t being mean, it’s just the reality that shitty people dump their pets outside after they take on more responsibility than they can handle or the kids get bored or whatever.” Dan knew he probably was shooting himself in the foot by pointing that out since it would only make Phil more worried about the creature and then they’d end up with a Steve the Pigeon 2.0 situation. “But maybe you’re right,” he added. “It did seem very docile, so it might have gentle owners out looking for it who accidentally left the door open.”
“Yeah, it might,” Phil agreed.
“And it also probably isn’t a domestic rabbit at all and then there’s no need to worry about any of that.”
“Right.”
Dan sensed he hadn’t fully fixed things and made an offer: “How about we loop back around the same road at the end and see if it’s still there, yeah?”
“Okay, then we can check on him. He’s probably back in the bushes eating a flower or something.”
*
It was dark out and the moon was a blurry crescent behind thick cloud cover when they eventually returned to the spot where the rabbit had been. The road was empty, and it wasn’t obviously lounging around on anyone’s lawn.
“See? No rabbit. It was probably just freezing out of fright earlier.”
“Well at least we did the right thing and checked, and now we know it’s just a wild bunny off eating someone’s plants.”
*****
The next morning, Dan woke up and got them each a bowl of cereal. It was a sunny enough day and pleasantly warm in the light. “Eat outside?”
“Sure,” Phil said, going to fetch his shoes while Dan stepped into a pair of slides with his pajamas. It was a lovely day out, assuming no large bugs were going to fly in his face and immediately jinx it.
“Cheers,” Phil said, coming out of the door in sweatpants and a bright pair of Crocs, raising his spoon to clink against Dan’s at their patio table as he sat down. “Do you know I had a dream about that rabbit last night?”
“Oh is that what you were muttering about?”
“I wasn’t sleeptalking, you liar,” Phil insisted. Sometimes Dan just liked to rile him up a bit.
“Fine, you weren’t. What happened in the dream?”
“Well, I was on a walk and then the street turned into a giant orchard and the fruits were this big,” Phil gestured with his arms all the way out. “Everything went hazy grey and I turned around to run, but my legs didn’t work and there was this huge wall of trees behind me. The trees had faces and so did the fruits and they all started screaming at me for killing their cousins while the branches wrapped around me and started to choke me. Then I woke up.”
“I thought you said you had a dream about the rabbit?” Dan asked, trying to process all the strange details in Phil’s story.
“I did, he was sitting under one of the trees staring at me. I think he wanted to help me escape.”
“Your mind is a strange place, Phil Lester.”
“Speaking of, look at that little cutie!”
Dan turned around behind him, and sure enough, today was the one day a rabbit had actually showed up in their garden. It was kind of adorable in the daylight, he had to admit.
“Do you think it’s the same one?” Phil asked hopefully.
“That would be incredibly unlikely.”
“He looks the same though,” Phil insisted. “His features are the same and he’s got a look in his eyes like he wants to save me from an evil tree.”
“Yeah he looks the same because he’s a rabbit and he’s brown.”
“You’re just jealous that Gilbert wants to be my new friend.”
“Ew, Gilbert? Are we really doing this again?” Dan should’ve known better than to assume Phil was over the rabbit sighting, especially if it was so deeply embedded in his mind that it showed up in his dreams. He didn’t mind the animal - really, it was cute - but he really didn’t feel the need to name it and give it a backstory.
Phil pouted. “You’re no fun.”
Dan relented, realizing that he really was being too much of a downer about the little bunny. “Fair enough, let’s hang out in the yard with Gilbert then.”
They sat there quietly for half an hour, watching Gilbert eat exactly two bites of grass while otherwise sitting there doing nothing at all. Dan was beginning to believe that Phil was right about this being the same creature as last night after all.
“Hey Dan,” Phil whispered.
“What?” Dan wasn’t concerned that this particular rabbit would get scared off by them speaking.
“Gilbert’s not very interesting and I think we should go inside,” Phil admitted.
“You said it, not me.” Dan grabbed both their empty bowls and headed back into the house. The rabbit watched from his spot on the grass entirely unbothered by the movement.
*****
Dan woke up to a soft buzzing noise, and rolled over in bed as he tried to wake up. It took a few seconds for his brain to kick into gear, and as soon as he opened his eyes he regretted waking up at all. An angry buzzing wasp hovered over his face in bed, and he let out an unholy scream as he immediately jumped to his feet, throwing the blankets at it as hard as he could in a desperate attempt to make the thing go away. He sprinted for the door, barely managing to outrun the wasp as he slammed it shut behind him and tried to catch his breath. He never left the windows open at night for that exact reason. Did they have hornets building a nest in the roof outside?
“Phil!” he called out, but got no response.
“Phil!” he yelled again louder, this time faintly hearing the shower shut off in the distance. Of course the one time there was a fucking wasp Phil couldn’t hear him.
After a couple of minutes that felt like hours, the bathroom door clicked open and Dan heard Phil yelp, smashing the bedroom door open right where Dan was standing in the hallway and slamming it shut again as he’d just done a minute ago.
“There’s a freaking hornet in the bedroom,” Phil panted, wet hair dripping on the floor.
“I know, why did you think I was yelling for you out here?”
“I couldn’t hear you over the water running!”
“Well I was going to ask if we had a can of wasp spray but then you were in the ensuite bathroom and we both had to run through the wasp gauntlet.”
“How would I know if there’s wasp spray?”
“You live here too, idiot.”
“It’s usually only beetles and spiders and stuff that I can safely scoop up in a jar! If you want me to look then you guard the door and I’ll check in the closet.”
“Why do I have to guard the door?” Dan complained, expecting Phil to be the one who dealt with it like he always did with unwanted insects.
“Well I’ve only got a towel on and it’ll probably fly up and sting me in the ass if it sees me again.”
Dan conceded, trying to act brave about it with a shut door in between him and the wasp. “Oh fine, you go get the wasp spray.”
He anxiously waited by the bedroom door as Phil quickly padded down the hallway, listening for any more angry buzzing.
“Uh, Dan?” Phil called from down the hallway.
“What?”
“We don’t have any.”
“Fuck.”
“I think you’re going to have to go and open up the window to let it out.”
This was not the sort of way Dan wanted to start his day. “What if you wait here and I just go to the store and get some?” he suggested, dreading the thought of being unarmed with the angry insect.
“Then I’m stuck here alone with it,” Phil complained. He could usually deal with most insects without it becoming an issue, but most insects weren’t angry hornets.
“Well in that case go right on ahead and open the window yourself,” Dan offered, knowing neither of them was going to go that route.
“Ugh. What if we open the front door first, then we let it out of the bedroom and lock ourselves in the guest room?”
“How are we gonna know that it’s left if we’re locked in the guest room?”
“I’ll be locked in the guest room, you’ll be waiting outside the front door to check that it leaves.”
“Why don’t you let it out and I go hide in the guest room?” he whined, unused to receiving any pushback from Phil on insect removal requests.
“Daniel. I am not going to let the neighbors see me running around naked being chased by a wasp outside. You can handle one insect this time.”
Dan frowned, but he didn’t have any other option than to pretend to be brave about it. “Fine,” he grumbled. “We’ll open the door and hope there aren’t a hundred more that fly in.”
As they approached the door, Dan immediately spied the problem and turned to Phil. “Did you seriously forget to close the door last night? No wonder we’ve got a wasp in the house!”
“I swear I didn’t, I locked it up and I haven’t been out since.”
“Then who the hell opened our door?” Dan questioned him, and Phil had no answer. “Alright, fine. You go hide in the other room in your stupid towel and I’ll let the murderous wasp out,” he said, the adrenaline shock from the wasp earlier replaced by concern over the mysterious open door.
Dan steeled himself with his hand on the bedroom door handle. It was just a bug, he reminded himself, even if it was an evil, aggressive, territorial bug that could sting an infinite number of times and remember the faces of its enemies. He flung open the latch to the immediate sound of buzzing and ran like hell outside.
“Stop chasing me, you bastard!” he yelled as the thing flew around his head, swatting at it until it vanished back towards a tree in the neighbor’s yard.
Not wanting another surprise insect guest, he went right back inside and locked the door behind him, hoping the neighbors hadn’t seen him yelling like a maniac in his pajamas.
*****
With yesterday’s incident almost forgotten, they went about their lives as usual aside from making an extra trip to the store to restock on wasp spray.
“We haven’t done a Sims video in a while, should we load it up?” Phil asked as they sat side by side in their office.
“Sounds good. Any recent comments on how we fucked up last time?”
“Just the usual about not understanding the game mechanics, nothing specific.”
Dan knew they’d never win over everyone with the Sims series, but it still got plenty of views despite the audience’s insistence that they were always playing it wrong. Sometimes Dan would ignore the comments on purpose, because they couldn’t be too perfect when playing. It was technically a gaming channel, but mostly it was them talking and interacting and not hardcore gameplay. If they tried too hard to focus on strictly gaming it wouldn’t be nearly as funny or interesting.
Just as the computer was about to load the game, the screen cut off to black.
“Fuck, did I step on the wrong wire?” Dan asked. Both of them were prone to getting their legs tangled up in the mess of cords underneath the desk.
They both leaned down to check, nearly bashing their heads together. Dan scanned the row of cords against the wall, looking for something out of place.
“Christ!”
He definitely found what was out of place.
“Are you alright, did you hit your head?” Phil asked with concern.
“It’s the fucking rabbit, look over there!”
Sure enough, nestled in the pile of cords was a little brown rabbit, the black cable to the computer between its pointy teeth. It had chewed the wire coating clean off, exposing frayed metal cables underneath.
“Aw, poor Gilbert, he must’ve come in the door this morning. Good thing he didn’t electrocute himself,” Phil said, more to the rabbit than to Dan.
“Well poor little Gilbert just destroyed an expensive computer.”
He was more than a little annoyed at the situation, shooing the creature out from under the desk. “Get the fuck out you little gremlin,” he told the creature, bending over and trying to herd it toward the door.
The rabbit did not comply.
“I’ll get a salad out of the fridge and leave a trail of lettuce to the door,” Phil suggested, getting out of his chair.
Dan waited until Phil was out of earshot to address the rabbit. “You little rat, I think you just hate me.” The creature couldn’t understand Dan’s words anyway. “You’re so creepy when you don’t blink your eyes, do you know that?”
“Dan, are you trying to talk Gilbert into leaving?” Phil asked, coming back holding a large handful of lettuce.
“I was telling him he needs to stop being so creepy and go back outside where he belongs.”
“He’s not creepy, that’s just how bunnies are.”
Phil began to drop the lettuce in a trail toward the door. Gilbert sniffed at a leaf with barely any interest, but followed Phil.
“Oh, so he won’t listen to me at all but he just follows you like that.”
“Maybe he knows you were being mean to him and he’s decided to be my best friend instead.”
“You’re just offering him food,” Dan argued, although it was pretty clear the rabbit didn’t care about the lettuce at all.
“See, it’s easy,” Phil announced, opening the door and letting Gilbert hop free. “I know how to speak rabbit.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
*****
“Phil, you can’t leave the fridge open! Were you raised by fucking cavemen?” Dan shouted. He’d gone looking for a bottle of Ribena and found the door flung open and dripping condensation on the floor. All the food was in a jumble of ripped open bags and boxes, shredded and damp.
“What are you talking about?” Phil looked up from his phone and walked over to the scene where Dan was standing. “Jesus Christ, what the fuck happened?”
“You tell me, I just wanted to get a drink.”
“You think I did this?” Phil asked, incredulous. “You know I’d never ruin all the food like that.”
“Then who did?”
“I don’t know, maybe we had a break in or something?”
“Who would break in and do this, a fucking bear?”
“I don’t know!”
Dan took a deep breath and tried to bring down his anger. Between the hornet, the computer cable, and this, he was having a really shitty couple of days. “Alright,” he breathed. “Do we call the police?”
Phil thought for a moment. “I think maybe we should check the rest of the house and see if there’s anything else first. I’m not sure what the police can do about ripped open food,” he explained, gesturing to the mess.
Dan shoved what he could back in the refrigerator to sort through later and closed the door. There was a sudden skittering sound on the floor, and he whipped around to find the source. He saw nothing.
“Did you hear that?” Dan asked.
“Sorry, wasn’t paying attention.”
He sighed and set off to catalogue the rest of the house. For the most part, everything appeared exactly as it had before in his recollection. The furniture was all there, nothing valuable had been stolen, and the TV had no damage. A couple of plant pots had some dirt spilled over, but he’d asked Phil to water them yesterday and that wasn’t terribly surprising.
*
The front door was ajar again, rocking slightly in the cool nighttime breeze. He got out his phone and immediately took a picture.
“Phil, it’s the god damn door again,” he called back, debating if it was worth dealing with the police right now or if it could wait until the next morning.
Suddenly there was a sharp pain at his heel and he reflexively yelped and lifted his foot off the floor like hot lava. The pain intensified and he looked down to see none other than that fucking rabbit gritting its teeth into his heel, hanging off the back of his foot in the air with blood dripping down onto the floor from the bite. He shook his leg hard, trying to get the creature to release him, but it only bit harder, chewing at his skin and pulling back toward the ground. With brute strength in its tiny body, the malicious fuzzy creature gave a hard tug and snapped off a strip of skin in his teeth, scampering out the door with his bloody prize.
“Holy crap, are you alright?” Phil was staring at Dan’s blood gushing on the floor as he entered the room. “I should get you the first aid kit, Jesus.” He ran back to fetch some bandages as fast as he could, coming back to inspect the wound as Dan sat down on the floor trying not to bleed on anything expensive. He awkwardly pushed the front door shut from where he sat.
“That fucking rabbit attacked me!”
“Are you sure it was a rabbit? That’s awfully nasty.”
“Of course it was, it probably holds a grudge against me and wanted to give me rabies.”
“I don’t think rabbits really get rabies. Are you sure it wasn’t a squirrel or something?”
“Not all of us have a tendency to get bit in the Florida, Phil. I’m very sure it was the rabbit.” He took a wad of gauze and put it under his heel, trying to stop some of the excess bleeding. Phil had kindly started wiping up the other blood droplets on the floor around him. “It even ran off chewing on a chunk of my skin.”
Phil scrunched up his face in disgust. “Can I see the damage?”
“Yeah, sure.” He gently peeled bloodied gauze pad away and looked at the bite. For all that it hurt, there was only a thin strip of skin missing around the back of his heel, but it was deep enough to bleed a fair amount.
“That’s not too bad, actually,” Phil told him. “You should probably get in the shower so it doesn’t bleed all over while you clean it out.”
Phil offered him a hand up and Dan leaned on Phil’s shoulder as he hopped toward the bathroom. “I just want this day to be over.”
*
The hot water did help clean out the wound and it bled considerably less than it had before by the time Dan got out of the shower. Phil had turned the bedroom lights off and was seemingly asleep already. Getting his pajamas on and re-wrapping his foot so as not to stain the sheets, he carefully slid into bed and attempted to get some rest.
*****
Dan woke up gasping for air in a dark room, suffocating in his sleep. He tried not to think about it and refused to open his eyes, hoping he could ignore it and go back to sleep for the rest of the night, but something just didn’t feel right. The blankets were wrong, the air was wrong, something about the room was wrong. He slowly opened his eyes and adjusted to the low light.
Black beady eyes stared back. The rabbit was sitting on his chest, breathing on his neck. Dan was frozen in the decision. He wanted to reflexively hurl the damn creature away, but he didn’t want to actually hurt it or provoke it further, so he laid as still as possible waiting for it to hop away and move on.
Sharp teeth sank into his neck and he screamed.