bunny never sleeps

short story

So, “bunny” is the story that started it all.

Technically, it was the second story I wrote as Max Winter.

The first, “retro,” I wrote on my phone one night when I couldn’t sleep.

But it was “bunny” that really kicked up a storm. At the time, we had about two solid weeks of incoming calls. We optioned it to Netflix with a very cool female director.

Why haven’t you seen it on screen?

Well, from there, it was a typical Hollywood sob story. A script came in and read like $200M movie. The strike happened. Netflix shuffled execs...

It didn’t get made.

Still, I love “bunny.”

And it’s never been published.

Until now.

It feels like it’s the perfect way to kick off this Substack. I hope you enjoy!

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Bunny Never Sleeps

max winter

Bunny never thought she’d live to see the day that simply driving home from a doctor’s appointment in Beverly Hills might put her life in danger.

Then again, she never thought she’d live to see a lot of things. 

She didn’t look or feel her age. Not by a long shot.

Thanks to the best treatments money could buy: skin cell gene therapy, organ regeneration, the works. 

Bunny got into her armored vehicle and stared at her reflection in the bullet proof glass. She could be played by a movie star, she thought. And we’re talking about a *legitimately young* movie star. Not one of those names people Google with the word “age” and then act all shocked and wonder what work they may or may not have done to their face.

“Damn, Bunny. You look bangin’!”

She felt her upgraded heartbeat as she smiled at Itzik Ben-Bassat, the head of her team of ex-military and ex-Mossad guys – her “boys” she called them. They finished their security check on the vehicle, nodded to each other and got in the front.

“Thanks, honey,” she said.

“You know what Bob Dylan once said?” Itzik asked, looking her over.

“What’s that?” 

“Life is not about finding yourself. It’s about creating yourself.”

Bunny nodded. She had to admit she liked what she had created. She had weathered all of the latest treatments like a boss, she thought. Through all of this, not once had she ever had Duck Lips, or the Scary Mask Face for which Beverly Hills women were infamous. She had never gone Michael Jackson on her nose either. 

“You have subtlety and taste, Bunny, you really do,” Itzik said. 

“And the best fucking doctors alive,” she said.

They didn’t need to start an engine. The vehicle was like a Tesla-X on steroids, modified and armored to the teeth – and silent as a shark. Itzik was at the wheel. He was her favorite of the boys. Handsome in that very Israeli way, which included slicked-back hair and dark scruff.

“You’re staring at me again,” Itzik said.

“I am entitled to the female gaze,” said Bunny. “You know, I’m kind of surprised you don’t wear a gold chain.”

“I’m too classy for that,” he said.

“I’m not.” She cradled her chain lovingly in her fingers.  A little necklace with the Energizer Bunny on it.

“You just keep going and going and going…” Itzik said.

“Bunny never sleeps!”

Itzik’s co-pilot for this run, Doug Vance, was not amused. He was blond, thin and physically unimposing for someone who was supposedly ex-military intelligence. He was one of those quiet ones Bunny liked to watch.  

Of course, Bunny could be chauffeured around in a self-driving car, but she preferred a human component for her security. Those autocars could be hacked. AI could easily go rogue. She didn’t trust those things at all. Plus what would be the fun in that? Her boys were super handsome.

The vehicle made its way through the maze of the underground medical parking structure. It was designed to keep the high-net-worth clients safe. Increasingly, no normies could even catch a glimpse of the people who operated on Bunny’s level. We’re talking tech billionaires. Warlords. Oligarchs. Cartel kingpins. Kardashians. (Although, they didn’t look half as good Bunny did these days!) 

“Are you taking Doheny up to Sunset?” Bunny asked. “Or Santa Monica to San Vicente?”

Some things never change in Los Angeles. The separate cities of Beverly Hills and West Hollywood had different vibes, but also different security outlooks. A vehicle like Bunny’s would always be more vulnerable once it crossed into West Hollywood. Even with advance-drones patrolling out ahead of them, all kinds of shit could always hit the fan in Weho. Was Bunny just paranoid? Had things really gotten that bad lately? Maybe, maybe not.

Bunny didn’t think she lived in a dystopia. It was just L.A. 

“What do you think, boss?” Itzik said.

“You know I don’t fuck around,” Bunny replied.

Doug nodded his approval and Itzik pulled into the left-turn lane heading to Doheny. That route would mean fewer blocks and less time technically outside Beverly Hills. If they wanted to make it to Bunny’s compound on top of North Clark Street, above the historic Sunset Strip, crossover into West Hollywood was unavoidable – but this was probably the safest way. The drones were sweeping Doheny now for any signs of trouble. 

 “The drones give us a green zone all the way up to Sunset, dude,” Itzik said.

“Don’t call me, Dude,” Doug said.

In the backseat, Bunny was already lost in her device. She had taken to making a list of every word in the English language she could think of and typing it into an app. She was on 4,887.  A decent start, she thought.

4,887: Embrace

4,888: Imbroglio

4,889: Fisticuffs

4,890: Tarnation

4,891: Fornication

This was what she was reduced to doing for fun these days.  Pointless games to keep the mind limber. Keep the synapses firing away.

It’s funny what longevity will do to your lifestyle. If all diseases can be cured, pandemics vaccinated, cell decay reversed, vital organs rejuvenated… Well, then the only way to die is by accident.

Being run over by a bus.

That and murder, and suicide of course. 

Bunny often thought about life in her twenties. Back then, everybody thought they were destined to die at about 72. They would only be young and hot for about half that time - if they were lucky. That situation leads to a lot more risk. Not just rolling the dice in Vegas. Things like recreational cocaine use.  Sure. The occasional unprotected sex. Maybe even frequent unprotected sex. Hell, why not? We’re all gonna die soon anyway.  Bungee jumping? White water rafting? Travel to a third world country? Of course.

Bunny was long past doing any of that now.

Can you imagine paying tens of millions for every mitochondrion in every cell of your body to be rehabbed so you could get shot by prepubescent mugger at the Carnival in Rio?

No way, Bunny thought.

Bunny had a different equation now. She didn’t leave her compound except for her treatments in Beverly Hills. She didn’t swim in her pool. She didn’t so much as play a friendly game of badminton in her yard in case there was some kind mishap and she got a shuttlecock to the eye. 

It was the life of the mind for Bunny now. Not only was she a bigtime movie buff with a private screening room, those who knew her in her 20s would be pretty damn surprised by how well-read she was. She typed:

4,892: Belletristic

4,893: Idleness

4,894: …

The vehicle safely reached the top of Doheny and turned onto Sunset when Bunny caught sight of Soho House. Well, it used to be Soho House, until it was taken out by the Skid Rowers.  They had run rampant over downtown L.A. and parts of Los Feliz and Silverlake for the past few months. Recently they occupied 9200 Sunset Boulevard and turned the rooftop garden into an orgiastic perpetual bonfire. 

“Fucking Morlocks,” said Bunny. 

“What’s a Morlock?” asked Itzik.

The Skid Rowers were spilling out onto Sunset - a show of force in the neighborhood. An armed militia technically? But they seemed like a bunch of hipster douchebags to Bunny. She couldn’t tell which ones started out as actual Skid Row “unhoused” people and which ones chose to look that way. And they loved to flaunt aging skin and graying beards like some kind of badge of honor. Not to mention those hideous virus and flu masks.

 “They hate you because you’re beautiful,” Itzik said, taking a drag from his vape and cracking a mischievous smile.

“Flattery will get you everywhere, handsome,” she said.

Doug Vance side-eyed Itzik, unamused. “Just stay alert,” he said. “Don’t let your guard down.”

The closer to North Clark Street she got, the more they saw the graffiti tag that had started popping up everywhere. At first, Bunny thought it was cute:

Bunny Loves Money.

But she knew the people behind it weren’t trying to be cute.

She was rich. She was well-known. She was a target.

The vehicle was pelted with something.

Yep, it was eggs. Disgusting.

The windows immediately went to blackout mode.

Bunny only rolled her eyes and went back to her phone:

4,894: Derelicts

Doug checked a few things on the Tesla display screen and gave Itzik the thumbs up to go to the next leg.

“This is minor stuff,” Doug said. “We’ll get you home in no time, Mrs. S.”

Bunny nodded. It was weird being called “Mrs.” anything.  She hadn’t been married in so many years she stopped counting.  To be honest, she barely remembered anything about the guy.  Just a few random little things. Probably the only way he still had an impact on her life was that it was his idea once to toss a bunch of grapes in the freezer, and to this day, frozen grapes were her favorite midnight snack. Bunny now had an entire freezer dedicated to grapes.

And what about kids? The thing about living so many decades past a woman’s reproductive window is that part of your identity fades in importance. In the scheme of things, the mother years are as much of a blip as being in a sorority or playing high school field hockey. Bunny rarely thought about her biological contributions to our deranged world.

Up and down Sunset were the usual billboards. It was Oscar season. There were four billboards in a row that were “For Your Consideration” ads for a streaming movie starring the ageless Zendaya and Timothée Chalamet. Apparently, each had 47 Oscar nominations at this point. 

Whatever, Bunny thought.

They passed what until recently was the Roxy, the Rainbow, and the Whisky a Go Go, now hollowed out shells of themselves, but the old landmark buildings kept in tact for tourist selfies.

“So what’s on the docket, tonight, Bunny? More Scrabble?”

 “I’m not sure, Itzik. Maybe. You are kind to have learned that old game for me.”

“I still can’t beat you!”

“Well, my dear. I’ve been playing a bit longer than you.”

“Ma’am,” Doug interrupted. “Can I have your attention?”

Bunny raised an eyebrow at Doug. He was all business.  Didn’t speak much. Or weigh in on conversations about frivolous things like Scrabble.

“Ma’am,” he said. “We’re heading into the final stretch now, up the hill to your compound. We ran a ton of tests on the vehicle and it should be near impossible for them to breach the ventilation system, but given that gas attack last month, I would ask if you wouldn’t mind if we take extra precaution?”

Bunny nodded. “Of course not.”

Doug and Itzik secured gas masks over their faces and handed one back to Bunny.

She tried not to sigh or be resentful in any way. This is what she paid them for, after all.  

“I hope this is not too much of an inconvenience,” Doug said through his mask.

In the mask, Bunny felt like one of those normies who couldn’t afford the vaccines for all the variants of whatever was going around, but she was proud of herself for not complaining out loud.

As the vehicle turned onto North Clark Street and headed up the hill, bullets ricocheted off the windshield.

Nobody in the car even flinched.  

“That loser sniper again,” Bunny said, squinting at the guy sitting on top of the Whisky a Go Go. 

Itzik waved at him with a smile. “Keep wasting your ammo, asshole.”

At the top of the hill, Bunny’s compound was the imposing fortress it needed to be. She had snapped up four or five adjacent properties after a big earthquake tanked L.A. real estate prices temporarily. It turned out to be a great investment.

Nothing new for Bunny. She was even better at investing than Scrabble.

The vehicle pulled up in front of the gate, which immediately opened, recognizing, not only the car, but Bunny’s face and heat signature in the back seat. Itzik pulled inside the gate, which closed behind them. 

“Stop here for a second,” Doug said.

“What?” Itzik said. “Why?”

As soon as Itzik hit the breaks, Doug pulled out a gun and shot him in the head. 

He switched guns and in an instant he had a different one pointing at Bunny.

“Look Bunny. That was an HK-45,” Doug said. “This is a tranquililizer gun. If you stay calm I won’t have to use either.”

All Bunny could think was: how the hell had her security broken down? Itzik had worked with her for 20 years and he himself had hired Doug a year ago. He had trusted Doug, and all of that was backed up with extensive testing using the latest fMRI brain scan lie detector tech. Bunny had a passing thought: maybe self-driving cars and AIs were susceptible to hacking, but humans were still susceptible to far worse.

She’d had a target on her back so long thanks to her company. The de-aging technology. Many people thought: what better way to stop it than to cut it off by the head? But she was always focused on the outside threat. Not the people she trusted most.

Fucking hell.

Doug jumped out of the car, opened the driver’s side door and pulled Itzik down onto the pavement.  

He was dead.

Bunny wasn’t made of steel. She started to cry.

And then Doug shot her with the tranquilizer. 

 

***

 

When Bunny woke up, she was kind of surprised she wasn’t bound up and tied to a chair with a sock taped in her mouth like in the movies. No, she awoke casually in her own bed, just like it was any another day. 

Then she saw Doug and the rest of her security team standing around the bed, guns at the ready. She knew they didn’t need to tie her up. There were a lot people involved here. A goddamn conspiracy. Her entire compound was breached. She was completely fucked. 

“Why am I still alive?” she asked Doug.

That’s when she heard the clacking of military boots on her marble floors.

Through the double doors that led into the bedroom walked the woman who was clearly in charge. She radiated authority and carried herself as if she owned the place. Bunny sat up in her bed to take a look.

The woman peeled back her sealed, industrial-grade mask.

“Do you recognize me?” she asked.

Bunny stared at her. She noticed the badge-of-honor grey hair and – to Bunny’s disgust – wrinkles.  The woman rocked the jackboot military fatigue style of the old Skid Row hipsters. 

“Do you recognize me?” the woman asked again.

Despite her age and authority - her power in this situation - there was a yearning in her voice.

When you’re as old as Bunny, even big events that happen in your 20s are all but forgotten. But there was no mistaking it.  Through all that natural aging Bunny could see the obvious. She finally began to nod.

“Yeah, I know who you are.”  

Then the wrinkled old woman smiled and said it:  

“Hi, Mom.”

 

COMING NEXT: a brand new short story “crazy in love”

If you’re interested in rights contact: chris@winterlightpictures.com

©️ Max Winter 2020