The yellow rabbit did not like the man with white hair for not dying right away.
The yellow rabbit did not like the man with white hair for not dying later.
The yellow rabbit especially did not like the man with white hair because he was arrogant, swaggering everywhere, poking his dirty fingers into places they did not belong, breaking the dream. The dream where it all came out right, that the boy came back, and everyone was happy.
Breaking the dream was unpardonable.
The others who didn't fit the dream, uninvited guests to the party, had been easily edited out.
The tall man with the brush haircut and the sour face a few weeks earlier had screamed, clutching his back and falling to his knees when he tried to get away.
Making it easy to edit him out of the dream.
Snip. Snip.
The messy short man who ate all the time without getting fat, who slept when he should be watching the Toy location, had been even easier.
Snip. Snip.
The aggressively cheerful man at the Cafe location who wouldn't stay off of the telephone...
It had taken five nights, but in the end, he too, had been edited out— leaving behind only his voice to disturb future intruders into making mistakes.
Snip. Snip.
The man with white hair was not only harder to edit out, but he broke the dream.
He.
Broke.
The.
Dream.
And now the children, the carefully chosen guests, all but three, were gone.
His son would not come back with only three guests at the party. Whom would he play with?
"I know how to get rid of the man with the white hair." Simon sang in the dark corridors of the yellow rabbit's brain. "Do as I say, and the dream will come back."
Relieved, because Simon had been awfully quiet lately, the yellow rabbit slid back, among the moaning entrails of the old theatre from where he had been watching the man with white hair tinkering with Margarita.
Simon always knew what to do.
All the yellow rabbit had to do was obey.
And the dream…
…
…
…would come back.