Gerald Visits The Red Room

Gerald, the slow rotting Easter bunny, took a stool at the end of the bar. The place was a dump in the industrial tangle south of downtown Daytonville; it was the sort of place with bars on the windows and lit only by beer company neon. There was only one other customer in the bar, a haggard and smoking mess of a woman with a waitress uniform, name tag reading Dotty, a few stools down.

The bartender stood at about the midpoint of the scarred, wooden bar. He wiped a beer mug and glanced at Gerald with the wary eye of someone who knows trouble at a glance. Gerald removed his sunglasses, rubbed his paw beneath his blood shot eyes and stared back.

"Can I set you up with something?" the bartender asked.

"You could set me up for sex with an alligator if you have contacts," Gerald said with a sigh. "Barring that, I'll take a bourbon rocks."

The bartender poured two fingers of bottom rate bar bourbon over two greasy ice cubes and brought it over. His nose wrinkled back when he came within a few feet of Gerald. Gerald wrapped his paw around the rocks glass and looked over at the waitress.

"Hey Dot, can you spare a smoke?"

The waitress turned her head slowly, blurry eyes looking out from over-processed hair became suddenly concerned about something. She seemed to shake it off as she slowly reached into her purse and slid the cigarette pack down to him. Gerald took one out, lit it with bar matches, and slid the pack back to her.

"Thanks hon," he said. "Thank God Easter bunny's got opposable thumbs huh?"

No one answered. He took a heavy drag, let it out, and sipped loudly from his drink.

The door suddenly flew open with force and a man in his fifties, hair greased back and a face full of crags that spoke of things like road work and monster truck pulls, took in a quick inventory of the place. He wore a black and turquoise vest that seemed to run counter to the stained jeans and T-shirt that he also wore.

"Gerald, you son of a bitch! Did you think Cindy wouldn't tell me?"

The man began charging the length of the bar down towards Gerald's end. Gerald sighed out a cloud of smoke and tracked his movement. When the man was about 8 feet from him, Gerald deftly flicked his cigarette right at the man's fancy vest. The man gave a slight shriek and looked down, energetically brushing away anything flaming on himself. Gerald took this moment to quickly pick up his barstool and swing it. It connected with the man's head with a decidedly bass heavy thud. The man fell to the ground and did not move.

The bartender reached for the phone. The waitress looked from the prone body on the floor to Gerald's shambling mass moving towards the door.

"Do me a favor Dotty," Gerald said. "When he comes to, tell him that Cindy started this shit."