A Hare Late

All the eggs stood silent, yolk down, as Egg White made his way beneath the hedge to rejoin his hard-boiled associates.

“As far as I can tell,” White began, “it appears the Easter Bunny has let us down--that is to say there is no sign of him.  No sign of his delicate long ears, his lucky feet, nor his cottony tail.  No, my fellow eggs, he is not here!  And I have scanned the horizon, I have searched as far as the eye can see!”

Egg White had an overt tendency for the dramatic, as well as hyperbole.

There was a noticeable lean, en masse, of eggs.  Egg White resisted the temptation to dress them all down with a ragging accusation of slouch.  Instead, being a good egg, he maintained his composure and said nothing, eyeing the eggs one by one with military efficiency rather than judicial condemnation.

White resisted his own want to lean too.  Oh, here we are, White thought, all dressed up in pink, spring green, mauve and turquoise, and that bunny stands us up!  Now, isn’t that just great!

Just then, a rather unassuming egg name Zack Lee approached White with a smile.

“And what are you so happy about?” White demanded.

“It is Easter,” Lee clacked.  “Think of all the pleasure we’ll provide for the girls and boys in the Easter egg hunt!”

“That’s all well and good,” White rejoined, “but without the Easter Bunny, it’s like a birthday party without a cake!”

Zack Lee was peering through the hedge, which irritated White.

“Ahem!” White blurted, and Zack snapped back.

White tossed him a dismissive glance and cracked, “Mind your place, Zack Lee.”

Shell-shocked and blue, Lee rejoined the ranks.

Zack Lee’s effrontery only served to inflame White.  He felt his albumin begin to boil. How dare that hare? White thought.  We all show up for the Easter egg hunt, for this festive celebration, and he cannot? 

As was so often the case, White failed to stay in the present, traveling instead, to the past where order was a compulsion, where egg cartons and whole milk bottles had to be just so, where regimentation ruled and attention to detail was an unscrambled obsession.  Therapy had righted White, had shifted the focus to the now, had provided the mantra of, “I choose,” as a bulkhead against invasive long dead unsettling remnants.  Still, Egg would slip, and founder, and ooze yellow through a jagged fissure into a chasm of ghastly recollection. 

How dare the hare?  White again thought.  How dare I live where no life lives!  So what if the hare chooses to ignore this event, to snub the hunt, to sleep while we celebrate life!  So be it; that will not be the trigger for my departure, for my destructive trek into the coldness of ago.  I am Egg White, and the Hunt, along with Easter, are as one!

He readied all the eggs and gazed through the hedge to see boys and girls and adults alike milling and scurrying here and there in eager anticipation of the hunt.

But then, all of a sudden, he spotted the Easter Bunny, a contentedly playful grin on his face.

Egg White thought with a smirk, Never doubt the Easter Bunny!



556 Words
Writer’s Cramp Winner
4-12-20