The twitching of my nose wasn’t for clover or the dusty remains of a dried apricot tonight; it was for the salt-and-copper perfume of the Tall One’s thumb. Outside the living room window, a fat, silver moon hung low, pulling at the tides and the marrow in my tiny bones.

A wet, meaty thud hit the plastic floor of my hutch—my front tooth, flat and blunt, discarded like a spent shell casing. It sat there in the sawdust, a useless pebble of calcium. In its place, the Monthly Incisors slid down with a rasping, rhythmic itch. They felt heavy. They felt serrated. I tested the new hardware, snapping them shut. Click. Clack. The sound was sharp and metallic, a weapon forged in a much darker burrow than this one.

The Tall One approached, smelling of cheap soap and ignorance. It’s been three weeks since he got me, and he still continues his usual ritual of high-pitched gibberish, cooing about ‘wittle bunny whiskers’ and ‘fluffy-wuffy ears.’ He didn’t notice my whiskers had stiffened into quills, or that my round, dark eyes were clouding over with a red, predatory film.

As the cage door creaked open, I peeled back my velvet lips, displaying the jagged ivory daggers that now ached for something that bled. It is admittedly difficult to maintain the facade of a defenceless herbivore when your skull is shifting and your jaw is unhinging for a tactical strike, but for a succulent mouthful of that digit, I could play the part for three seconds more.

Wittle Bunny needs his monthly protein.