IGMS Issue 5 by IGMS

scrambling dash. She could feel whiskers and hot breath on the foot that was bare. Kicked back hard and lost her other shoe. Rabbit. Rabbit was coming, but so was Mom. Janey ran up the smoky tunnel and out into the open air. The ground was firm under her hands and feet. She did more crawling than running, but she got out. She was out, where the sun was bright and hot, and the wind blew the smoke to nothing.
    And where, Janey saw, the wedding guests were gathered. Just as Rabbit had said.
    They knew her at once. Probably there weren't a whole lot of girls desperately climbing out of rabbit holes in the neighborhood. They growled at her. Like Rabbit, they seemed larger than was natural. Unlike Rabbit, they didn't have much to say. There was just fur, and teeth, and wings. A screeching, screaming, skittering, clawing rush towards her. Janey screamed.
    She tried to run. Something caught her t-shirt in its claws, and as she jerked away, something else snagged her jeans. Just a rip, she told herself. Kids do worse to themselves all the time falling off their bikes. Keep running, don't look back. If you can just get to Mom, you'll be okay. Never mind how she knew that, she knew. The problem was the wedding guests seemed to know it, too. She turned one way, and Badger was there. He didn't look like a minister, he looked like he could literally tear her to pieces. She turned another way, and the birds dove and clawed at her eyes, pulled her hair.
    "You left me," growled Rabbit. "You tricked me."
    She turned again, and Rabbit was there. In the hot, bright sunlight, standing just outside his hole, he wasn't a nightmare ready to fade away. He was angry. He was betrayed. He looked scarier than ever. If he'd looked this horrible in the beginning, Janey would never have got within ten feet of him. He was huge. His fur stood out in quivering, muddy bunches. His eyes were wild and gummy and red from smoke. He wasn't even pretending to smile anymore, and his teeth. His teeth. "Now Janey," he said. He lifted his big, back foot to stamp. "The wedding. Our wedding. I'm going to marry you, Janey. And then I'm going to bite you. The guests are here. Now. Janey my bride --"
    And there wasn't time. There was just the wedding, and Rabbit's guests. Only, if it was a wedding, a real wedding, Janey realized, shouldn't she have guests of her own? Where was Mom? Why wasn't there anybody on her side? And she realized it was because they couldn't come if they weren't asked. But now she knew. The guests were here. She knew who could help.
    Janey invited the garden.
    The roses caught Rabbit in their thorns. The tomatoes picked up stakes and threw them. The pumpkins bowled into Badger and wrapped him a tangle of prickly vines until he couldn't move without strangling himself. Beans and peas shot up like green bullets aimed at the owl and diving crows. The corn rustled and swayed, driving the squirrels away with blow after blow from silk-topped ears. And the cucumbers, unleashed at last, rose up and gleefully overpowered the mice and the shrew, bludgeoning them to death one after the other. The garden was holding the guests at bay, but it couldn't quite hold Rabbit.
    "I'm going to bite your leg off," he said. He was moving now. Moving slowly, because it was more horrible. He wanted to scare her. He was scaring her. She could hear his heavy body straining against thorns and breaking branches as they tried to hold him. The garden fought, leaves and roots and everything straining to keep him back as long as they could. Just a few seconds more. A vine snapped under the weight of those paws. Rabbit lunged.
    But Mom got there first.
    Mom stepped forward with her cell phone still glued to her ear, and suddenly Rabbit didn't seem anything near as big as before. She stepped down hard and crushed Rabbit's head, grinding his skull beneath her heel with a sick, wet crunch while Janey shut her eyes. When Janey dared look again, Rabbit was unmistakably dead, and Mom was