Bunny

Samantha spends the winter months—January, February, and March—with Ava and stays away from Warren. She can feel her hair again, and Ava takes care of her. She cooks and makes Vietnamese coffee. Ava doesn’t ask her about school, and Samantha doesn’t inquire about her job.

One night, Samantha hears a creaking sound from upstairs. Ava has a lodger: Max. He enters the living room and kisses Ava. Samantha recognizes him: Max is her Draft.

Ava asks if Max and Samantha know each other. Samantha lies and says no, but then she says yes. Max says that they’ve seen each other around. Max has to go, but Ava says he should come home tonight, so the three of them can have drinks. As Samantha sees Max kiss Ava again, she has intense feelings. Her phone buzzes with texts from the Bunnies.

For dinner, Max cooks rabbit. Ava looks at him as the Bunnies look at their Drafts. Max, too, wants to blow up Warren. He listens to the Cramps and French pop music from the 1960s. He likes to tango. Samantha wonders if she has an ethical and moral obligation to tell Ava she created this animal/man.

Max acts like the other Drafts, and Samantha can predict what he’ll say. The Bunnies keep texting her, and Samantha remembers a wolf she saw at the zoo as a teen, a Czech cab driver she thought might kill her, and a best friend from childhood she pretended to marry.

Ava brings Samantha back to the present when she says Max is a performance artist. His next project involves Warren. Samantha asks for more details, but Max doesn’t like to talk about his work. He tells Ava something deep that Samantha once wrote in her notebook, and the three discuss tango and the made-up Diego. As the Bunnies keep texting her, Samantha watches Max and Ava tango and realizes they have a sexual relationship.

Ava confirms that she and Max have sex and accuses Samantha of acting like a 12-year-old. Samantha realizes she created a Draft with a functioning penis. She asks where Max goes, and Ava says she doesn’t know—maybe to Warren to work on his project. Samantha probes for specifics, but Ava says she doesn’t surveil him—she’s not a bonobo/Bunny. Ava notices Samantha has been acting weird. Samantha says she’s concerned because Max is a little intense. Ava says she likes that about him and kisses her on her forehead. She still loves Samantha the most.

Samantha goes upstairs to Max’s room—her old room. As an Echo & the Bunnymen song plays, Samantha reviews an old notebook. She discovers something new: Max made a list of the Bunnies’ school email addresses and passwords. She’s also on the list, and so is Fosco and the Lion. Max’s phone is on the bed, and it buzzes with lovesick texts from the Bunnies. They call him Byron, Icarus, Tristan, and Hud. Vignette sends him a picture of her naked torso.

Max enters the room, and Samantha screams. She demands to know what’s happening. Max smiles and wonders if Samantha should be going to school. He hands her the phone with an email from Ursula/Fosco: There’s an Emergency Mandatory Workshop at five o’clock in the Cave.

Nervous and scared, Samantha enters the dark Cave. Fosco welcomes her and says she appreciated her email. Samantha is confused but remembers her email address and password on Max’s list. Fosco offers Samantha soothing words and lectures her about the transition from the Cave to their dark, personal spaces.

Samantha notices Caroline. She has a white box and has never looked more like a Cupcake. She dyed her hair pale blond and carved the words “eat me” into her chest and arms. The words are part of Caroline’s piece. She wants to engage the Body more deeply. Fosco praises Caroline’s work, and so does Samantha, but Caroline is upset that Samantha hasn’t been texting her back.

Kira enters the room but doesn’t greet Caroline. Kira has a white box and makes small talk with Samantha. Victoria arrives with a box and looks like a ballerina on a bender. She smells like trash, and her entire face says, “Fuck you.” Dressed like a nun, Eleanor arrives late. She thought the workshop started at 5:11pm, and Fosco wonders why anyone would start a meeting at 5:11pm.

Workshop begins, and Caroline shares first—a story about an unnamed woman (Caroline) infatuated with a razor-wielding man named Byron. When she finishes, Samantha thinks she hears Eleanor call Caroline a slut. She hears Victoria’s repressed laughter and sees Kira write the word “bitch.” Fosco offers condescending feedback.

Kira shares her story about a redhead who can’t speak. Her evil sisters oppress her, but a wolf-like man liberates her. Caroline flees the room. When she returns, she says she hates Kira’s story and accuses her of looting the fairytale canon. Kira claims she’s engaging in artful appropriation, and Victoria says her story was dumb and dull. Samantha withholds feedback. She’s still processing Kira’s work.

Victoria goes next. She dumps her white box full of words on the floor. There’s a “this,” a “the,” a “dove,” and a “penis.” Kira whispers something mean to Samantha, and Victoria calls Kira a “little bitch.” She holds up a wrinkled page and reads a piece about a pornographer/garbageman, Hud, and an existential ballerina. They have a visceral union in a dumpster, and Victoria emphasizes the work with grunts and words like “ooze.”

Caroline calls Victoria a liar and a dreadful writer. Kira tells Victoria that she used to think Victoria’s work was too sophisticated for her to understand, but she realizes it’s Victoria’s fault. She’s too pretentious and lazy to write clearly. She snarkily thanks Victoria for teaching her to trust herself as a reader. Victoria replies with a cutting, “You’re welcome.”

Everyone turns their attention to Samantha, and she thinks about Max. He’s the god, the garbageman, and the sadist. He toyed with the Bunnies and acted like the single bachelor on the reality TV show The Bachelor. Samantha feels responsible for the Bunnies’ abject predicaments because she created Max.

Using feminist rhetoric, Fosco notes that the stories revolve around a boy. As women writers at an elite institution, shouldn’t they aim higher? Fosco asks Samantha if she agrees, and Samantha says she needs to hear from everyone. Fosco asks Eleanor if she’s writing about a boy. Eleanor says she isn’t, but she can’t share her story—she brought the wrong one.

Back at Ava’s house, Max wears Kira’s cat ears and asks Samantha about Workshop. Samantha says it was illuminating and then demands to know what he did to the Bunnies. Max refuses to divulge his specific attention—it’s art, so it’s open to interpretation. Samantha says the Bunnies are in love with him. She asks Max if he had sex with them—did he court and hurt them? The Bunnies are acting possessed, and they’re a threat. Max says the Bunnies are free. He grabs Samantha’s face and asks her if she liked seeing them attack one another. Samantha says no, but Max nods her head yes. She asks Max what Ava would think about his work. From the roof, Ava asks what they’re whispering about.

During dinner, Samantha hears Max repeat words she once wrote to Ava. She watches them dance and sees the Duchess’s face in the window. Samantha screams and points to the window. No one is there. Samantha says she had a dream or a hallucination and she should go to bed. She gets a text: Someone tells her she’s sick.

One night, Samantha and Max dance, but it goes badly. When she goes right, he goes right. If he goes left, she goes left.

Days pass, and Samantha gets an email from the Lion with Fosco cc’d. The Lion has to talk to Samantha in the Cave at 7:00pm. Ava tells Samantha not to go, and after Ava says she loves Samantha, Samantha confesses that she created Max. She tells her about the Bunnies’ workshop and how Max is getting back at them. Sarcastically, Ava calls Samantha a great artist. Samantha stresses that she’s not playing around, but Ava tells Samantha to go to her meeting. Samantha asks Ava if she’ll be here when she gets back. Ava says she will.

The Cave is dark, and Samantha calls out for Alan/the Lion. He answers, and Samantha remembers driving with him. He was drunk, and the Bunnies saw her in his car. At his apartment, they talked about books, and Samantha spoke with alarming specificity. She felt like she was at a play that the Lion had seen countless times. She told him about how the Bunnies hated her—she was lonely, she couldn’t write, her mom was dead, and her dad was gone. She cried while he drank. He didn’t speak or do anything sexual, but afterward, he avoided her, and Samantha made up stories to fill the ostensible nonevent with something.

Back in the Cave, the Lion continues to call out for Samantha. Fosco calls out her name too. A voice in her head tells her to run, but she stays. Two figures, Stocky and Slim, appear and tell her this is her committee meeting. She notices they have zombie skin and bunny ears. She wants to scream but can’t. She senses the Duchess gazing at her.

Stocky and Slim become Bunny Fosco and Bunny Lion, and Bunny Lion asks Samantha if she’s ready to start. Samantha doesn’t reply, so Bunny Fosco suggests they should start. They open a black book that has “My Sad Girl Novel by Samantha Mackey” written on the front. Bunny Lion and Bunny Fosco express their disappointment with Samantha’s work. It’s intriguing and has an exciting premise, but it’s excessively coy, and the heroine isn’t empowered.

Bunny Fosco admits that what happens to the heroine is sad, but Samantha doesn’t know what happens. Bunny Fosco comes closer. She has Kira’s ax. She tells Samantha that every great book, every Warren thesis, should be like an ax. Bunny Lion adds: “For the frozen sea within us” (279), quoting Franz Kafka. Bunny Lion and Bunny Fosco say Samantha isn’t a Warren writer—she’s an “asshole,” but they want to help her. Bunny Fosco lifts the ax, and Samantha thinks they plan to kill her. Instead, Bunny Lion presses on her neck till she blacks out.

A janitor finds Samantha bound and gagged in the Cave. As she asks him to help her, white feathers come from her mouth. The janitor unties the ribbons. Shaking his head, he comments derisively about Warren students and their art projects. Samantha replies that it wasn’t an art project, but the janitor cuts her off and lectures her about the real world.

As Samantha runs from Warren to Ava’s house, she hears voices about a gift that’s waiting for her. She finds Max beside a bleeding dead swan with an ax in its back. Samantha shakes Max and asks him what happened—what did he do? She says Ava told her to go—Ava wanted to be alone. Where’s Ava?

Samantha’s memory answers the question. She recalls leaving the Lion’s house and going to the pond early in the morning. She felt awful and saw a swan. Then, beside her on the bench, a woman wearing a black dress and black mesh gloves appeared. She looked familiar, and Samantha remembers how they tangoed on the roof. She also remembers her mom telling her not to let her imagination run away with her, but it has.

Samantha faces the truth: She made Ava from the swan. Now, she’s gone. Samantha wants to kill Max, but she knows Max didn’t kill Ava—the Duchess is the murderer. Carrying an ax, Max leaves the room.

Samantha follows Max in the predawn until he’s in front of Creepy Doll’s house. Samantha says he can’t hurt the Bunnies—it’s her fault. She told Ava about him—she loved her, and she had to know the truth. Max lowers the ax. Samantha hears tango music and sees Ava’s fishnet veil on Cupcake and Creepy Doll (they presumably tore it in half), Ava’s mesh gloves on Vignette, and the Duchess wearing Ava’s black silk dress. Samantha picks up the ax and enters—they left the door unlocked for Max.

The Bunnies call out Max’s different names, so they’re surprised when they see Samantha. They sense she’s upset and ask her to talk to them. She wants to know why they killed Ava. The Duchess calls Samantha sad, Creepy Doll says she is embarrassing. Cupcake agrees, and Vignette looks “borny.” The Bunnies accuse her of betraying them. She shouldn’t have gone back and forth between the Bunnies and Ava. They wanted to tell her about Ava, but she was too delusional—she cared so much about being too cool for everyone.

The Bunnies think Samantha killed Ava and doesn’t remember. Perhaps Samantha is unwell. The Bunnies make fun of Samantha’s relationship with Max and Ava and suggest its termination will lead to growth. The Duchess says Samantha can’t discern between reality and fantasy, but she’s about to go into the real world, so she can’t continue her delusional relationships.

Samantha can’t kill the Bunnies, but the Bunnies see Max out the window and run after him. They grab him and make beastly noises. Max is likely smiling. He stares at Samantha with a face that says “do it.” She picks up the ax and strikes him. Max turns into a deer. He kicks the screaming Bunnies, stares at Samantha, then strolls into the woods.

At the graduation ceremony, the Bunnies arrive with three broken legs, two sprained ankles, and two broken arms. The Duchess also has a neck brace. The Bunnies attribute their injuries to an accident with their book arts project.

Samantha hears Ava’s voice and has a friendly talk with the Lion. He’s just a man, and he likes her thesis—her writing is wonderful, and it should give her great opportunities. Samantha remembers returning to Ava’s house to get her notebooks and visit the tree where she buried her. Fosco yanks her into the present when she toasts her and the Bunnies. The Bunnies and Samantha discuss the book arts accident. Samantha comments on the damage book arts can produce—perhaps the Bunnies went too far. Fosco asks about the nature of the harmful project, but no one answers her.

Leaving the graduation scene, Samantha goes to the bench in front of the pond, where there’s a swan. Jonah joins her, and they talk about graduation. He shows her pictures and calls her his friend, and she asks him if he wants to go back to her/Ava’s house to sit on the roof with the raccoons. Jonah accepts her invitation.