You don't know what prompted the visitor that time. The smell of blood stays fresh in the air of the cellar for a few hours, then starts to curdle. You leave as quickly as you gain the energy. You pass the child strapped to the chair as you walk out. She's dressed in a pink tutu, a plastic wand with a star on its end sitting in her lap. You force your eyes ahead.

Another week passes. Nobody else comes over, at least, not that you know of. You're quiet, polite to the rabbit when you aren't avoiding it entirely. The Witch has started to make you nervous; she doesn't seem like she knows what's going on around her most of the time, but her part in whatever sick things the rabbit does to pass the time is very real. That fucking rabbit. It's the one who probably programmed her, however strange that is to think—she could have been programmed to lie. To act dumb.

Maybe she closed the door behind you.

You think of her standing, towering over you by the front door, her presence nearly as imposing as the rabbit's—her eyes droopy, lopsided, sunken into her gray felt flesh, her mouth always slightly ajar to reveal cozy rows of dull yellow fangs, like kernels of corn—her mane of fake fleece cushioning any extraneous rods or wires that might have poked out from behind her face. The Witch looms over you with a sweet, absent smile and her arms hanging uselessly at her sides. Every now and then one of her nickel fingers will twitch, or flex; enough for you to know there's still something alive in her arms. Enough that she could use them if she wanted to. If the rabbit wanted her to.

Maybe she was smiling while she did it.

These kinds of nonsense thoughts come and go as the days trudge on. You've stopped trying to squeeze any sense out of them after the first dozen tries. If they're memories, you doubt they'll help you much at this point. If you're just losing your mind...

You frown at the dusty phonograph in the parlor as you lean back on the yellow chintz couch. If you're losing your mind, you wouldn't be surprised.

"Pumpkin's waiting for you."

You jump in your spot and choke on a gasp. Witch is standing a foot from you with her hands folded delicately at her waist. After a moment her mouth opens the slightest bit more, as if she's taking a breath.

"Little one."

Was that supposed to be one sentence?

You manage to whisper, one hand clenched on the chintz, "What?"

"He's in the dining room. I'll love to see you two grow closer." Her voice is soft and stilted as usual. She turns from you and walks on those invisible tracks into the darkened hallway, and her mane is absorbed into the void. The tracks, or what the robots' movements have shown of them, seem to wind through the same set of hallways around the house like a carousel. You wonder what the rabbit could want to hide from them while they're wandering.

The hall to the dining room is no less unsettling than the first few times. You still hunch in, begin to hurry down the hall as the dark, lurid wallpaper and the photos begin to close in and you nearly squeeze your eyes shut but then you see the face of the rabbit at the end of the tunnel.

It's sitting on the right side of the table, its claws folded, head turned forward and black eyes burning through you as its ears barely touch the chandelier, one empty chair opposite it. You want it to stop smiling.

A minute passes. It untangles one hand from the other and gestures mutedly to the chair on the left.

"Sit."

You rip your gaze away from its face and sit down. A small, forest green vase of fresh lilies sits at the center of the table; it's too dark to tell if they're fake, or if the rabbit would really go out on the regular to pick new lilies. The image would have made you laugh if you were alone, but here, under the rabbit's stare, a cold wave of nausea rolls under your skin.

You fold your arms on the table—after a moment of consideration, you inch your elbows away from the edge—and try not to hunch in further.

"Why am I here?" The words come out far smaller than you intend them to. The rabbit gives a small tilt of its head.

"I would like to know you better."

It folds its hands again, claws scraping one another as they settle, and lowers its voice.

"What's your name, little bunny?"

Oh, fuck that.

You're immobilized for a moment. Then the words jolt through you again like a snoozed alarm, and something burns, anxious, in your chest. You swallow, shake your head and stand up.

"No. There's no way in hell I'm—"

The rabbit drums its claws on the table. Loudly. Something shuffles to your right.

You whip your head around. Billy has hobbled down the hallway and settled in the doorframe, a five-foot porcelain wall. He's cloaked in darkness like everything else, a dim pool of yellow light shining on his head from the chandelier, and his eyes flicker between you and the rabbit. It hasn't taken its gaze off of you.

"Billy, be ready to keep."

Keep. You've heard that word before but can't quite guess what it means to these things. It sends a shiver through you regardless.

Your hands clench on the table and you knit your brow at the rabbit. It raises its head just slightly, one claw twitching over the others.

"You were saying?"

This cheeky motherfucker.

You slide begrudgingly back into your seat and hug your arms. Your heart's pounding in your chest—from fear or anger, you can't tell by now.

"I was saying," you mutter, "there's no way in hell I'm telling you my name."

The rabbit pauses. It drags one claw, light and slow, around the corner of its placemat.

"There's no need to be such a rude thing."

Its voice is soft and low. It sounds more disappointed than angry.

Another minute passes without event. You don't let yourself breathe too loudly. You don't take your eyes off the rabbit. The room starts to feel more empty by the second—eventually, Billy's presence melts away and it seems to only be the two of you again.

"How old are you?" the rabbit asks, and you're a bit more prepared for its voice, this jolt of fear lighter than the last. "I can see you aren't a child," it says. You narrow your eyes.

You definitely treat me like one.

Maybe it will be better to answer this time. You can hold whatever you'd like from the rabbit, technically, but there's a quiet danger in testing its patience. One day, one unanswered question, it might snap.

Your eyes lock on the lilies again. Your palms have gone sweaty, fingernails digging into your arms.

"Twenty-five," you say under your breath.

The rabbit leans over the table on its polite, folded arms, and you flinch back in your seat. Sitting in the same room as this thing was close enough.

"Sorry?"

"I-I'm twenty-five," you utter as quickly as you can to make it return to its seat. You're squeezing the circulation from your arms by now, overcome with the urge to draw your knees to your chest like a child. The lilies look particularly lovely.

"Excuse me for assuming, bunny," it says after a moment. "I had thought you to be a bit younger. What were you doing so far from home that night?"

You would ask which night, but you won't kid yourself; it means Halloween night. The night you'd gotten fed, probably drugged, and pseudo-kidnapped because you needed a place to sleep. You stay silent. The rabbit waits a minute or two, then tentatively taps two claws together.

"Well?"

Nothing. You keep your jaw locked. Maybe it'll be annoyed—annoyed enough to hurt you, even—but you won't deign to tell this thing why you were on the streets so late at night.

It tilts its head in that cheeky way again and you want to rip its steel rod throat out.

"Or was there no home at all?"

No duh, asshole. But you bite your tongue as the rabbit's stare keeps boring through you, unbreaking. You have a feeling that if you keep its head on the edge of your vision, its eyes will blink.

"Why?" it asks.

None of your business. The tablecloth before you is a lovely shade of blue.

"You truly have no one who will take you in?"

It's getting harder and harder to hold your tongue by the second. You want to scream at it. It's swatting for any power it can hold over you, and you know that.

"I..."

You bite your lip and try to say something to get it off your back. But you come up empty, save for a few choice words that will get you sent back to the cellar at best. You roll the tension out of your shoulders, your gaze flitting to the side to the chandelier light's slow dance on the wallpaper.

"I see," the rabbit says when you don't finish your sentence, and its voice drips with barely contained satisfaction. You nearly recoil in your seat.

"I'm so sorry, little one," it adds, and you can tell it doesn't mean that one bit. Or maybe it does—in a way that one might be sorry for a trampled flower, or for popping a bubble the birthday kid had been chasing across the lawn. It's completely meaningless.

"No family at all," it says in a surprised coo. You expect it to start clicking its tongue next, if it even has one. "Do you even have a mother?"

"Shut up."

It slips out, quiet and scathing, and you dig your nails so hard into your arms you might start bleeding. God, if you could stuff those words back into your mouth—now the rabbit's perked up, leaning across the table again, its tall ears lightly rattling the chandelier.

"Excuse me—?"

"Nothing." You swallow. Hard. You hope one of its ears catches on fire and you're able to slip away from this horrible room. But maybe even the fire is tamed, so far under its spell that it sways on the rabbit's silent command.

"That didn't sound like nothing, bunny. I brought you here so we could talk."

"I don't have anything to say," you mutter, barely able to breathe, glued to the back of the chair as you wait for the rabbit to settle back into its own.

Sure enough, after one minute too long, it does.

"Do you think I'm being cruel to you?" it asks after a heavy silence. You have to bite the inside of your cheek to keep yourself from blurting out a yes. It waits another moment before softly continuing.

"I only say these things," it says, swirling one gentle claw in the air, "because I hope you may find a new family...here."

You stare, blank and wide-eyed, at the lily vase as you track the rabbit's movement in your peripheral like a frightened animal. Your stomach turns, seeming to process its words before you do. A new family. That may be the stupidest thing it's ever said to you outright. It doesn't know the first thing about you. It's been treating you like a pet—like a prisoner—for weeks, months, and it expects you to want to stay in this house?

"Are you so surprised to hear that?" the rabbit asks with a trace of amusement, and your blood turns to ice. It sinks in that second that no matter how stupid it sounds, you barely have a stake in that decision.

The rabbit extends a hand to the doorway—the empty doorway. Somewhere along this conversation, Billy had really vanished.

Are you being excused?

"I thought you had guessed that this is your home now, little bunny."