MAY 2008 SLASH WINNER: "A Rare Bit of Rabbit Tail," by Haruki Murakami
You are all wonderful for giving it your best shot, and some of your submissions were really out there and inventive.
This month's winner was Haruki Murakami of Tokyo, Japan. Congratulations, and good luck with your writing career! We'll post an illustrated and recorded version of the story later in the month.
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A Rare Bit of Rabbit Tail
by Haruki Murakami
I am a rabbit, right, so don't you give me any guff.
I was sitting inside my stump and I was listing to records and eating a big plate of corn muffins when I got a knock on my door. It was my neighbor Mr. Nutkin, a squirrel who goes way back with me, and who has a sensitive face and very small hands. We have known each other for years, and I like him, even though he is a squirrel and all squirrels are religious.
Today, however, he did not look beatific. In fact, he didn't look right at all. He looked frazzled and downright unsympathetic. I made him sit down in a chair and I gave him a corn muffin and a warm Coca-Cola. I told him I wouldn't even speak to him until he had eaten something and so he munched on my delicacy and he started to relax.
"Is the corn muffin helping?" I asked. He was no longer breathing as fast. His sharp, quick hands stopped shaking.
"A little bit," said Mr. Nutkin. "Although, to be honest with you, there's no time to waste."
"Are you enjoying the music?" I asked. "It is the Electric Light Orchestra."
"Oh yes," said Mr. Nutkin.
"I think the music is passionate and proud, and wakes you up like a cold hand pressed against your back on a hot day."
"It is very nice," he admitted.
"Then can we just relax and listen to the music for awhile?"
We did this. We leaned back and listened to the music and ate our corn muffins, but eventually Mr. Nutkin had to speak.
"Peter, it's about your sisters," said Mr. Nutkin. "I think they are mixed up in some shady business. They have been dealing with a rough crowd, and I think they may have come to a bad end."
"What business is it of mine?" I said. "My sisters have made it very clear that they want nothing to do with me."
"The last time I saw them, they were leaving the forest for the encampment on the edge of the trees. The armies of Aslan have come to the forest, you know. You do not care about politics, but know this: winter may be over soon."
"And they went out to the camp to meet this traveling army?" I said. "My sisters have always been too loose and too curious."
"They went to see," said Mr. Nutkin. "They wanted to know. I watched them from high atop a maple tree, and I saw them treated with the utmost respect. They were taken right away to a fulgent, golden tent â€Â" only--"
"Only what?" I asked, impatient.
"Only they didn't come out again," said Mr. Nutkin. "I fear the worst."
"Nuts," I said. "I suppose you think I should go look after them?"
"I think that very much."
"Well, I will go, Mr. Nutkin," I said. "But not because you asked. I will go because it will annoy them to see me getting into their business."
I put on my leather jerkin, and made sure to bring my MP3 player, and made sure that it had plenty of juice. Walking through the forest without tunes can be a drag, especially if the birds are feeling especially vain and showy and won't stop chirping.
Mr. Nutkin accompanied me to the edge of the woods, but he said he could go no further. He was not afraid, he said, but if we were both taken, who would rescue us?
I marched right into camp and stuck my paw out at the first centaur I saw.
"Listen, buster," I said. "I demand to be taken to see who is in charge of this place. I am looking for my sisters. They came here recently, and the word on the street is that something bad may have happened."
"You wish -- you wish to see Aslan?" said the centaur, touching his finger to his lip.
"I DEMAND to see Aslan," I said.
The centaur looked around to see if anyone had noticed me yet. It was late afternoon and most people in the camp were lounging in the snow, playing slapjack or skittles. The centaur nodded once and began to trudge toward a big golden tent high on the hill. I hopped along behind him and eventually found myself at the tent's entrance.
"Here is Aslan," said the centaur, kneeling before the tent's entrance. "I believe that he will see you."
"Thank you," I said, adjusting my jerkin. I took my headphones out and stowed my MP3 player.
I stepped into the tent and beheld a sight that took my breath away. This Aslan; he truly was the King of Beasts. He had a full, thick mane of long golden curls, and a jaw so strong and noble that it looked carved from stone. His sad eyes were both wise and penetrating, and the way he moved was like a waterfall. He stood up from his massive Turkish rug as soon as I came in, standing and looking at me. The room stunk of his urine and his spray, and there were long rips on the tent's central pole that showed that Aslan had been keeping his claws sharp.
An enormous golden bathtub in one corner of the room was filled with chunks of cedar and gravel, and there were rows of lavender water on the shelf above it, next to high stacks of style magazines with bent corners and frayed edges. A litter box befitting a King.
"Excuse me, sire," I said, bending low and kneeling before him. He padded closer to me and sniffed the top of my head. My ears twitched, and I felt something stir inside my jerkin. His powerful forelegs clenched with raw power and his smell was intoxicating.
Here was a massive predator that could crush me in his jaws without the slightest remorse or twitch, and yet here he was smiling at me condescendingly and letting me bask in his primordial, leonine ardor and stench. I must tell you, I felt a passion that I have never felt before.
"How can I help you, young Mr. Rabbit?" said Aslan, with his eyes shining. "You are quivering already, aren't you? The sensitive sort."
"I am trying to find my sisters," I said. "If you don't mind, sire, they were rabbits like me, and there were three of them, and they had silly heads about them."
"Tell me, Mr. Rabbit," said Aslan. "Do you believe in fate and destiny?"
I thought about it quietly and then shook my head.
"I don't think that I do," I said.
"I believe very strongly in fate and destiny," said Aslan. "There is a great magic in the world, like the electric iron of a toaster oven. Each of us goes into the toaster oven and we have our allotted time to become who we are, and to learn from our mistakes. But there is a time limit, and when we are sufficiently toasted, we must pop up and do what is required of us by the universe."
"So you are saying that if you fight fate, you get burned up and somebody has to go after you with a fork to pull out your ashes," I said.
Aslan laughed. He had a deep, basso laugh that made my ears twitch with pleasure. He would make a great blues singer.
"Your sisters came here, just like you said," said Aslan. "They were just as silly as you say, too. They came here out of the forest and they showed up to my tent, and they pledged their fealty to me and asked if they could be put to service in a manner befitting of young girl rabbits. I was disgusted, and I told them to go home to their mother, to run along back to the forest from which they came. They insisted. They made demands. They were petulant. They thought they could know the mind of a lion and their King. So I let them have their way, and I let them do what they wanted. But they did not satisfy, and now they are gone."
"They are gone?" I asked.
"Do you hear me?" said Aslan, his voice getting low and mean. "THEY DID NOT SATISFY."
His growl was deep and terrible. I clutched my ears and watched him carefully.
"You will find their things over there. You will find their dresses, and their hats, and their sunshades. What you will not find are your sisters, Mr. Rabbit. And now you are here, wasting my time."
I wanted to leave. I wanted to leave, but I knew I would stay.
"I can satisfy," I whispered.
"You will also find their TAILS," said Aslan. "You will also find their pert little cottontails. I spit their cottontails out when I was done with them, do you understand?"
This should have shocked me; this should have made me piss myself with fear. But instead, I was charged as if with an electric current. My penis was harder than it had ever been before, and I was swimming in need as if hypnotized, like a swimmer who knows he is drowning, and who cannot help but enjoy the feeling of the cool water on his hot fur.
"I can satisfy," I whispered again, hopping over to him and standing right at his lips. I stared him deeply in the eyes without flinching, even though I wanted to fall apart before him. And then I ducked underneath him and went deeper into the folds of his cat body.
"Don't," he said. "Please. Don't."
I found his lionhood, shriveled and tremendous, and I cradled it in my paws and began to lick at the tip. He was surprised, and I could feel him grow tense, and try to turn around. I slipped one of my paws into the pooching fire of his anus, and he struggled but then relaxed.
"Do not fight me, my King, and I shall ease you into your destiny," I said. I took my paw out of his anus and focused.
I began to roll his semi-soft cock between my paws like hugging a pillar, and it began to grow large and hard, filling with strong blood with every pulse of his mighty heart. It was as majestic and golden as the rest of him, and the backward-pointing spines on the end were rough in my hands, but this only filled me with greater fervor and excitement. My legs began to tap, tap, tap, tap as I stroked and caressed him, and he bent down low and I could feel his velveteen, strong body grow tight and reckless.
He groaned. He growled and made the tent shake. I held on for dear life and put my mouth over the tip of his cock, clinging like a three-toed sloth to a branch. He pounded me into the ground now with the swing of his own hips, and I was only saved from being utterly torn apart by the strength in my legs.
Tap tap tap, I went. He was smooth at his business, and skilled, but I felt that it had been a long time for him.
He came quickly, and we both gasped together. When I opened my eyes, I was covered in sticky sheets of thick cat semen, and I was drenched from head to foot in goo like a moth emerging from a cocoon.
"DESTINY!" he roared as he came.
My own dick was still as hard as a coffin lid, but I heard something ominous as we both settled and his lionhood began to shrink again. I heard something I bet my sisters had heard, too. I heard the rumble of his stomach.
"I'll be going now," I said.
My wits returned, and I made a mad dash for the tent's flap. He came at me, but he only got the tip of my tail, and he wrenched it off with a frustrated roar.
"Clever rabbit," he said.
I hopped out of the tent and dashed around the edge, circling to the back. I heard Aslan call for his centaur through the tent wall. I was bleeding and panting and my bottom ached like the hands of a military drummer. I heard Aslan's centaur mutter an oath of obedience, and Aslan laughed.
"Take this tail and preserve it for me in a locket," said Aslan. "Some day I shall enchant it. I have a feeling it will bring me luck."
I didn't wait around. Without further ado, I snuck out of the camp, and made my way back to the forest. I was humbled.
I was humbled forever.
But I was still free.
Comment!
Posted by miracle on Sun, 01 Jun 2008 09:40:19 -0400 -- permanent link
