For Reasons Wretched and Divine

Hassenpfeffer

The Tacoma Killer was a name that floated around in allies and crack dens, through bad neighborhoods and prisons. A threat, a warning, spoken with fear or contempt, it didn't matter.

There were other names that were associated with The Tacoma Killer, ones that he himself had no knowledge of. It varied depending on who was saying it.

Bianca, who was five at the time, told the police that the 'Shadow Man' came and took away her mom's boyfriend. She didn't want them to find him, he hit her and her mom when he drank, and he drank all the time.

Pascal, who was seventeen at that time, told the cops that all he saw was a man in a black hood, and then the heroin dealer who was targeting school-age kids was never seen again.

Janine, who was thirty-eight, called him a crazy son of a bitch as she inked an identical smiley face on his side, shaking her head at the grinning graveyard already scarred into his skin.

Every iteration and variation, every strain and shade of him was as lethal as the next; violence bled into the heat his body gave off, a red haze that smelled like the guillotine.

o0o

Happy grinned down at the bunny that was falling asleep under his chin as he stroked its ears.

The rabbit in Sunshine's arms was considerably bigger and was desperately trying to eat the collar of her shirt as she talked with the pet store employee.

"And you're sure that they're something a sixteen-year-old could take care of?" she asked, politely directing the rabbit away from diving headfirst into her cleavage only to be rebuffed by the fuzzy creature. The employee, Erin, averted her eyes.

Happy did not. Given the opportunity, he was more than certain that he would do so as well.

"Absolutely, I was taking care of three American Rexes by the time I was twelve," she reassured. Happy had not a fuckin' clue what an 'American Rex' was but wasn't about to ask.

"And can they be potty trained?"

"Of course, most people who have indoor rabbits train them to use a litter box."

"Fantastic, and they can be neutered, right? Two minutes unsupervised in the yard with a wild hare, and I'm not going to have a house full of Bugs Bunnies?"

"Yes, we actually recommend that you spay and neuter all possible animals you adopt,"

Happy didn't have a bunny growing up, and he thought that perhaps his life would have gone a little different if he had such a docile creature to look after. Growing up, he had a scrappy little dog of indeterminate breed whom he had named 'Dutch' from 'Predator.' She was a mean stray, biting Happy more than a dozen times before he could finally pet her without her growling, and it took well over a month for her to finally sleep in his bed. But it was worth it. For the eight years that he took care of her, the two were an inseparable pair of teeth and punches, that forty-pound mutt was responsible for getting Happy out alive of more than one altercation that had gone south.

So maybe if he had an animal that didn't love fighting as much as he did, he wouldn't be quite as jagged as he was.

The employee had gone to print Sunshine off rabbit care instructions.

"You're sure you can keep the bunny 'til tomorrow?" She asked, trying to keep hold of the squirmy lagomorph.

Since she had only ever lived in environments that always edged on the uncomfortable side of sticky heat, she still wore long sleeves even as Southern Cali waltzed its liberal ass into springtime. Happy found it endearing that she couldn't handle even a hint of cold, which wasn't all the surprising considering that he found everything she ever did as endearing.