Bob's Story

Bob's Story

Bob was an ordinary, every day kind of guy. He worked nine to five. He
had a wife and two children. He supported Manchester United. But Bob
had one big secret, a secret which he kept hidden carefully from the
rest of the world, since were it to come out he would no longer be
considered ordinary or every day, he would be considered extraordinary
and one particular day. That one particular day would be Easter day,
because Bob was an Easter bunny.

He didn't know why it happened or how it happened. He only knew that
come Easter Sunday he would no longer be the man he had been Easter
Saturday; he would be a rabbit dispensing eggs from a basket to little
kiddies.

It all happened in a flash at midnight. His smoothly shaven chin would
suddenly sprout fur. His ears would elongate. His perfect teeth would
miraculously buck. It had always been that way, ever since he was a
kid. His parents had just put it down as a phase that he was going
through, some bizarre act of puberty perhaps, but Bob had always known
it was something more than that. Even at the tender age of five as he
looked in the mirror and saw a little, brown rabbit staring back at him
where a little, five year old boy should have been, Bob knew that he
was special. He also knew that his magic gift would never go away. It
was no mere phase.

Bob kept his gift a secret, though. On every Easter Saturday he would
be sure to lock himself away from all prying eyes, desperate that
nobody should see the transformation from man to rabbit taking place.
The day before he would always have been sure to make his excuses as to
why he wouldn't be around on Easter Sunday. It might be a fishing trip,
or working late at the office; it didn't really matter, just as long as
people were satisfied, just as long as it had the ring of truth.

On the day itself he would just have fun. While Bob knew all about
being an Easter Bunny, when Bob was an Easter bunny he had no
recollection of being Bob. That left him free simply to skip around
town dispensing goodwill. With his furry ears pricked up and his little
cotton tail bobbing along behind him, he would bounce merrily
throughout the town where he lived leaving little parcels of chocolate
eggs on doorsteps and windowsills. How the kiddies smiled!

If truth were told, Easter Sunday was Bob's one true day of happiness
in each year. Oh, the joys of being spared the stress and strains of
that miserable nine to five existence. No worries about the Luxembourg
Contract. No office gossip about him and his secretary. No over loud
mobile phone conversations to listen to on the perpetually delayed
commuter train home. Oh, the thrill of not being at home with the wife
and kids. No dull night in front of the telly's endless game shows and
soaps. No childish moans and whinges and demands for more pocket money,
more computer games, more ever more risque clothes. No wifely refusal
to grant the conjugal rights that he didn't really want that much
anyway, but which it hurt him to see denied. None of these things
mattered when he was the bunny. Bob did not exist to the bunny.

But the bunny did exist for Bob. That's why he was sat crying in the
waiting room of his local surgery. They'd had to call in a vet in the
end. All manner of blood tests, allergy tests, urine samples, stool
samples and embarrassingly intimate internal examinations had been
unable to pinpoint the myxomatosis. The vet had known straight away,
though, and two weeks later Bob was put down.

He leaves a wife and two children.