Chapter 2

-Frank-

Sometimes I get so weird I even freak myself out...

Avril Lavigne- Anything but Ordinary

When you take as many precautions with your home security as he does, the last thing you expect to see when you wake up is a large, skeletal rabbit at the foot of your bed. But that's what he's seeing right now. A big, reptilian freak of nature that's staring at him with eyeless sockets. It's so close that's it's almost touching his duvet. And it's one butt-ugly creature.

But Sark doesn't bother with details like that...not in situations like these at least. All that's going through his mind right now is that his life is in possible jeopardy from a giant bunny. His task now is to eliminate that threat.

His hand flies to the gun that he keeps on his bedside table. Fingers curl around it with the ease of long use, his palm closing in to cradle the familiar feel of the metal. Raising it, he takes aim at the...rabbit...and fires. The bullet zips through the air with speed unable to followed by the human eye. Sark doesn't take chances. He fires again; and again. All three bullets should have ripped into the rabbit's chest with enough impact to knock it back at least. But the rabbit does nothing. It remains standing upright- since when did rabbits stand on their hind feet?- and moves closer to the bed. Eyes infinitely blue and unreadable, Sark squeezes the trigger again. He hears it hitting something hard but it's not the rabbit.

Oh hell. It is touching his duvet now. His expensive blankets have been contaminated by a reptilian rabbit-like monster. And it's still walking forward, regardless of the solid wood of the bed. Only its upper half is visible now- the lower half is submerged in the bed. Sark's bed.

"Stay back," he cautions, not knowing why he's talking to it. Anyway, it's not like there's anything he can do.

Nevertheless, to his shock, it does stop. Halfway through his bed, it pauses at his words and cocks its head to the side in a weirdly dog-like manner. Sark doesn't like dogs. Or early-morning visits from bony rabbit-things that move through solid objects and show dog-like characteristics when ordered to stay back. He fires the weapon one final time. And the rabbit is gone.

He blinks. Once. Twice. He's dazed a more than a little confused right now. What the hell was that thing? What was it doing in his bedroom? Is it gone? Who sent it? Then a crucial thought hits him and shatters the other thoughts. Was it even real? His nerves are fizzing and he's too alert to go back to sleep. The gun quivers in his hand and he replaces it carefully on the bedside table.

Julian Sark would like nothing more than to get a proper night's rest, but apparently even that is to be denied him. Besides, it's morning now- albeit very early morning; it's still relatively dark in the room, and a glance at his full-length curtains tell him that it's much the same outside. He remains still on his bed for another minute or so, turning the image of the rabbit over in his head. At last he sighs and stands up, running a hand through his hair absently as he does so. Chances are, he's hallucinating- a nasty by-product of sleep deprivation. All the more reason to go back to sleep under his nice, crisp Egyptian-woven blankets, but he opts for tea and tells himself that he isn't an insomniac. The maid isn't awake yet, for which he is grateful. Sark would much rather be alone this morning- even if it does mean making his own Earl Grey.

As he waits for the water to boil, he starts to chew his perfectly-manicured nails. It's a nasty childhood that he unfortunately never grew out of- although he does his best to desist from it to keep up his façade in public, he always seems to find his nails tattered when he's at home by himself. He once made the mistake of starting to gnaw on his thumbnail one morning when he thought that Alison was still asleep- he'd turned around to see her staring at him with a mixture of surprise, disgust and condescension on her face. It took him a few seconds to figure out just what had piqued his pernickety lover this time, but when it hit, he removed his hand from his mouth immediately.

Neither of them had brought it up again- it was avoided with the careful wariness of another one of those dirty, shaming little secrets between lovers. Personally, Sark had never thought much of his nail-chewing habit as something particularly disgusting- at least not as bad as the way Alison seemed to find it. However, being the immaculately drilled gentleman that he had been taught to be, he'd accommodated her preferences and never again chewed his nails when he was within a five hundred metre radius of her. Now that she's dead, though, he'll chew his nails whenever he bloody feels like it...except during meetings with his clients of course.

Sark prepares his tea absently, trying not to think about the rabbit- it was just an illusion; a chilling one, yes, but an illusion nevertheless. However, as is with many things, the more he tries to ignore it, the more it bothers him. The memory of those hollow sockets and unusually upright position haunts him as he spoons a teaspoon of sugar into his Earl Grey, hanging over him like a thundercloud of bad thoughts. Sark carefully extracts a lemon from the fruit basket on the counter and sets it on a plate. The dull 'thump' that it makes on the porcelain reminds him nastily of the bullets lodged in his bedroom wall. The man scowls and yanks a drawer open, extracting a knife. Raising it above the lemon, he plunges it into the yellow fruit a little more violently than necessary and shakier than usual. Unsurprisingly, his aim goes a little wide and the blade slices into his left hand which he had been using to steady the lemon. Blood spurts from the wound almost instantly, starting from the back of his hand behind his knuckles to the web of skin between his thumb and index fingers. "Bloody hell!" Sark swears loudly and drops both knife and lemon, rushing to rinse his hand in the sink. The water is icy against his skin and yet burns against the cut on his hand. "Dammit!"

He waits till the water has washed away most of the blood, but it's a pointless exercise really, since blood just starts seeping out of the wound again once he turns the tap off. The young man growls and brings his hand to his mouth to keep the blood from dripping on his Italian-tiled kitchen floor. Storming over to a cupboard, he flings it open and has to steady the door with his hand again when it starts bouncing back from the impact. Sark rummages through the contents of the closet, careful despite the pain in his hand to keep things in order; at last he emerges with a roll of gauze. It would probably be best to call the doctor in this situation, but Julian Sark is currently in no mood to deal with another human being. He's having enough trouble with knives, fruits and a rabbit as it is.

With much difficulty, he manages to wrap up the cut one-handed before snipping off the end with a pair of kitchen scissors. It's about the crudest bandage he's ever made, but what the hell. His injury seen to and the roll of gauze returned to its rightful place in the cupboard, Julian returns to the task of preparing his Earl Grey.

A/N

I've finally seen Donnie Darko. Finally. Jake Gyllenhaal's cute...heh heh. Even if he does swear a lot. And talk dirty. Lol. I liked him better in 'Bubble Boy' though, much to my friends' horror. Well, I thought it was a good movie. Meh.

Anyway, if my descriptions of Frank the Bunny aren't up to scratch...call me and let's talk about Jake Gyllenhaal in Donnie Darko. ;). Besides, I got poetic licence- I just like keeping it under my bed with all the moth balls. JK

Nah...if you're liking it, PLEASE review because it seriously makes a difference. I will read them, so you're not wasting your time if you're kind enough to bother. 