Circus Act III: The Pothole Incident

As soon as I finally entered the circus, I ran to the first souvenir stand I saw.

I needed to secure a personalized souvenir with my name on it before it disappeared from the spinning rack.

My name is apparently so popular that it is never there.

Every rack has fifty Britneys, twelve Marias, seven Jesuses, and one suspiciously dusty McLovin △ △ △ but never my name.

So this time, I wanted to be the first person with my name to arrive.

I was not going to let another Cin beat me to my own keychain.

Just as I was about to grab it, my phone rang.

I glanced down to see who was calling, and another person snatched it from the rack.

“Close enough to my name,” she said, walking away with the only evidence that I had ever existed in mass production.

It was the city, informing me that the rabbit had been located inside the first pothole he saw on the street.

They were still trying to remove the oil from his fur when officials realized he had accidentally discovered a petroleum deposit.

In just a few hours, while I was being searched by elf security like a chimpanzee being groomed for contraband, the rabbit had been awarded mineral rights, become a fifteen-minute trend, and received a small commemorative helmet.

Unfortunately, he had also filed paperwork requesting emancipation from me, citing “financial independence” and “irreconcilable differences regarding cage maintenance.”

The judge denied the rabbit’s emancipation request, largely because the rabbit had shown no evidence of being able to manage his own affairs, finances, or sudden access to crude oil.

The lady from the city told me that by the time I got home, I would most likely find the rabbit sleeping in the hammock, reeking of crude oil, as if none of this had ever happened.

Then she lowered her voice.

“Listen,” she said, operating under the municipal code of Hoes Before Bros, “during a brief break, the rabbit hopped onto an unattended computer and searched, ‘how to pretend to have amnesia after betraying your business partner.’”

This strengthened the judge’s ruling, making it final, official, and ineligible for appeal. The rabbit had clearly demonstrated that he had no control over his faculties.

He had enough control to commit fraud, but not enough control to stop entering holes.

I confided in her that I should have known what kind of monster he was.

He used to bring me flowers every day, which I thought was a token of devoted friendship at first. Excessive, but kind.

I kept thinking, Where is he getting the money for all these flowers?

Then one day, while I was stuck in traffic near the cemetery because one of the elephants had escaped the local zoo and was trying to set off a domino effect with the tombstones, I looked over and saw the rabbit dragging a bouquet off a stranger’s grave and hopping home.

That was when the smell finally made sense.

Those flowers had never smelled like roses. They smelled like formaldehyde and deception.

At the time, I told myself he was just resourceful.

But now, after the pothole, the oil money, the emancipation petition, and the amnesia search history, I was forced to reconsider the entire relationship.

I did not have proof he was trying to slowly poison me.

But all lies point to yes.

By the time I finished the anecdote, I realized I had zero bars.

She had probably heard none of it.

If the court had granted the emancipation, I would have come home to empty drawers, missing luggage, and a note written in carrot juice explaining that he “needed space.”

Which was suspicious, because the rabbit does not own luggage. He would have had to take mine.

Unfortunately, I could not just throw him out into the street. The city had already established that he had no control over his own faculties and would enter the first hole he saw, which meant abandoning him could be interpreted as animal abuse, negligence, or indirect cooperation with the petroleum industry.

So now I was stuck with him.

At least until my next magic act, when I could disappear him forever.