WHAT’S UP UNDER BUNNYMAN BRIDGE?—an excerpt from INDRID COLD IS DEAD

Fairfax County, Virginia

I can’t fully explain this, but there is one name that is substantially less trustworthy than all the others and that name is Clay. If you are named Clay and you want to approach me for discussion, I will need six laminated forms of identification, three recent drool-free paystubs, and a notarized letter from the county sheriff. This distrust of people named Clay was based on loose evidence I had acquired throughout my life. A stolen Atari game here, a pellet in the back of the neck there. I have yet to meet a Clay that didn’t have prison yard eyes or smell like a vintage Burger King.

The mayor of the little Virginia hamlet that Bunnyman allegedly sets up shop is named Clay Klaysome. Not so much a big red flag, as much as it was a big red circus tent.

“Do I believe in Bunnyman…” the mayor said, contemplating my inquiry. We were sitting across from each other at the only eating establishment within thirty square miles that had glass on its windows. My recorder purred beneath him. “My quick answer is, yes, I’d like to say that I do believe in him.”

Yeah, no duh. I had zero doubt that Klaysome wanted to believe in Bunnyman since Bunnyman singlehandedly accounted for half of the town’s tourism, as every cryptidhead in the contiguous states had stopped off here at some point or another to jabberjaw with the natives. There was no other reason to sink this deep into Fairfax County unless you were in the business of making huckleberry jelly or participating in an egg-tossing contest.

“You see, it’s complicated,” Klaysome said, nervously fingering the little US flag pin on the collar of his baby-shit blue blazer. “I think Bunnyman—or, you know, something like him—used to exist back in the early ‘70s when he was popping up all over the damn place all the time, you know, chewing on stray cats and freaking people out and such… But I think whatever the heck it was either kicked the bucket or picked up and moved elsewhere.” Klaysome took a big pull from his sweet tea and started nodding his head like a Rain Man outtake. “But the legend of Bunnyman still exists, that’s for damn sure, and that’s the only part that really matters—to me, at least.”

I asked him if any weird happenings had transpired since that last Bunnyman sighting.

“Nope, not really,” he said, his body language now in three different time zones. “I mean, it’s an unusual little town anyway so Bunnyman would really have to go out of his way to get any sort of legitimate attention. Every now and then somebody will come across a partially gnawed-on squirrel or a deer that looks like it got Dig-Dugged to death, but we attribute most of that stuff to either wild dogs or maybe some bored-as-shit cult or perhaps even some form of intelligent life from beyond the stars.”

The waitress whizzed over. I ordered a Rockabilly burger—whatever that was—and a side of onion rings. Klaysome ordered a gross of fresh carrots, a side of diced turnips, and a whole head of wet lettuce.  

I decided to cut to the chase…

“It’s you, eh?”

“Come again?”

“You’re the Bunnyman,” I said, optimistically.

Klaysome’s face turned as red as a bug bite… My sixth sense went haywire… I heard the taser before I felt it and then I tasted the blood on my lip before I felt the whack on my face. Splayed out on the floor of the restaurant, I considered my options: remain flat on my back or roll over on my belly. Above me was a group of dudes who looked like they just saw The Blues Brothers for the first time. Before I could make some quip about being here for the harmonica audition, somebody’s loafers started playing footsies with my ribcage. I curled up and started whimpering like a newborn puppy.

“Get this fraud out of here,” I heard Klaysome say. “Take him down to the you-know-where and do you-know-what with him.”

Next thing I know I’m nestled between the chunky-style contingent of the Klaysome’s henchmen in the back of a dark sedan. Two dudes up front and one on each side of me. All of them were more or less wearing the same ill-fitting dark suit and the same dollar store fedora and the same gas station sunglasses.

“Driver, I’d like to go to the Waffle House,” I said.

Silence.

In front of me was a cup of little individually wrapped Certs.

“For real, though, I’ll give you five stars and a twenty-percent tip if you whip in a 7-11 or any place I can buy some gauze, some BC powder, and maybe a time machine and an Uzi.”

One of them hushed me. My low-grade sense of peril gave way to anger and indignation. I weighed the odds of jabbing my elbow squarely into the side of the head of the one to my right and then successfully making my escape out the door. The one to my left looked like he had the wingspan of an albatross. The odds were not good…

—So I reared back and kicked the one driving on the back of his head as hard as I could and then elbowed the guy next to me in the head. His sunglasses made a crunch sound and he yelped like a winged dingo. So far so good. And then that damned taser again. Apparently, the guy in the passenger seat had been keeping it discreetly trained on me the whole time. Bzzt!... I melted in my seat. They didn’t seem angry about my little outburst. Someone even turned on the radio. Pink Floyd’s Have a Cigar.

“You know, most people—present company included for many years—think that this is Roger Waters singing,” I said, out of one side of my mouth.

“It is Roger Waters singing,” said the one that I elbowed in the head.

“Walk towards the light, brother,” I told him. “It sounds like Roger Waters, but it is not Roger Waters. It’s this folk singer named Roy Harper.”

“That’s actually true,” said the big one to my left “Roger Waters got all sorts of hung up on the vocal line, and David Gilmour didn’t want anything to do with it, so they nabbed this bloke who was recording down the hall… Harper, yeah. Roy Harper.” I looked at him. His suit was dark blue. The one to my right was wearing dark brown. The one in the passenger seat who had tased me was wearing gun-metal grey. The one driving was wearing the closest to black, but it was still a charcoal.

“If you guys are supposed to be Men in Black, you gotta at least cover the fundamentals,” I said.

Silence all around. The real story of the Men in Black, I knew, was a real whirlybird of a case. Some accounts might have been CIA or FBI or the USAF, sure, sure, but many encounters seemed to suggest an otherworldly or perhaps supernatural agency. Folks who encounter these Men in Black talk of threats of bodily harm, glowing eyes, putty-like skin, robotic voices and unnatural movements, the smell of sulfur, and displays of sorcery that would make David Copperfield cream his britches. International Flying Saucer Bureau founder and proto-UFO nut Albert Bender, a sort of Lovecraftian Walter Mitty, had one of the first documented high profile MIB encounters way back in the ‘50s and it was not a feelgood experience. It culminated (Bender claimed) with a free trip to the interior of Antarctica and back, just to prove their point. (Their point had simply been this: shaddup about flying saucers or else, mister.)

The dudes I was being kidnapped by were no way at all affiliated with the real Men in Black. They sure as hell wanted me to think they were, but, yeah, they didn’t smell like sulfur, they smelled like a pish-posh of Armani Emporium, Funyuns, and ill-conceived scare tactics.

I eyed a potential soft spot with them, so I jettisoned my Gen X gruff, picked out a cuter tone, and said, “Hey, who do y’all think would win in a fight between Frito and Lay?”

No answer. They pulled the car over. We all got out and they walked me over to this bridge—Bunnyman Bridge, I recognized it to be.

The story of the pseudo-cryptid and proto-nimby known as Bunnyman is not a happy one. Imagine this: it’s 1970 on the dot and you are a teenager in a parked car on the side of a desolate road in Fairfax County, Virginia. You and your hunny bunny are sitting there, smooching, doing what teenagers typically used to do in parked cars, when, all of a sudden, a young gentleman dressed in a white suit with long bunny ears runs out from some nearby bushes and shouts, “You’re on private property and I have your tag number!” and then throws a hatchet through the right front car window. The hatchet hits neither you nor your companion but you are both pretty shaken up so you peel out and go notify the local authorities.  You give the hatchet to the police, which they still have in their possession to this day.

Fast forward two weeks… You are a private security guard for a construction company and there is a “rabbit” standing on the front porch of a new, but unoccupied house. The “rabbit” is wielding an axe and whacking away at a roof support. You approach him and he says to you, “All you people trespass around here… If you don’t get out of here, I’m going to bust you on the head.” Roger that, thumper. Gimme a second, I’ll be right back. You go back to your car to retrieve your handgun, but the “rabbit” bounds off into the woods. You tell the police the rabbit was about 5-feet-8, 160 pounds, and appeared to be in his early 20s.

Who was Bunnyman and what was he up to? For better or worse, it is probable that the sun will fall into the sea before anyone on this kooky plane of existence knows.

Without touching me, the four Men in Charcoal, as I henceforth derisively referred to them as, sort of corralled me into the tunnel beneath the bridge. One of them pulled out an old timey remote control and pointed it at the wall and clicked out “Shave and a haircut” on a it. A secret door whirred open.

“After you,” said one who had tased me. I walked through the door and one of them gave a me big schoolyard push in the back. The door slid closed behind me and the lights came on. I was now alone in a fusty room with no sign of nothing, except for the electric light bulb above my head. I pulled out my cellphone, which was at thirty seven percent and had no wireless signal. Presumably, they had deposited me here to rot to death, and I don’t really blame them.

“Well, shit,” I said to myself. Then I cupped my hand and said through the door, “Gentlemen, I have a request.”

“We ain’t no cover band,” said one of them.

“If you open up this door, I will allow you to take me to the nearest ATM where I shall pull out one hundred-forty-six dollars and eighty-seven cents, which the four of you can then divvy up however best you see fit.”

As I stood there and began to think about what a hopelessly long shot this was, I heard one of them say, “What’s four into a hundred forty-six?” to which one of them replied, “Thirty-six dollars,” to which another said, “Hey, that is ONE HUNDRED PERCENT more dinero than what I got in my wallet right now.” This kind of optimistic bandying went on for a long minute. Finally the door slid open and we all went for a joyride to the nearest ATM and I paid the boys thirty-five bucks each (leaving a few dollars in my account, so I didn’t seep into the endless glade of shit putty that is overdraft) and they all started whooping like they’d won both showcases on The Price is Right… I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing, but that’s sort of the status quo in my line of work. They gave me a ride back to my car, which was parked by the restaurant they had scooped me up in and then I high-tailed it back to the District.