Abstract: Bunny Nathalie finds the Bay Area's Bunnies are proving to be a hard bunch to keep under her control.
"This museum always gives me the creeps," said Bunny Darby to her Mistress, Bunny Maria, as their high heels tapped out echoes on a stone staircase inside San Francisco's Fetish and Sex Museum. They ascended stairs from a secret backdoor entrance buried behind wood crates in a pit of basement shadows that bothered Darby even more. If a guard had sat at the front desk, the click clacks would have drawn his eyes across the floor to the stairwell where two sets of Bunny ears popped into view between marble balusters and newels. A pair of yellow ears struggled to move forward and the other set, blue rounded triangles of satin, kept turning back in annoyance. Sometimes the blue ears would seem to lecture the yellow ones. If he personally knew the yellow Bunny, he would have expected her ears to violently shake back with a retort. But that night, the ears seemed oddly unsure and tame.
With more high-heeled click-clacks, a guard would start to see the two Bunnies as their bare shoulders and tightly cinched bodies joined the view. Any guard would have fallen out of his chair at that point, even before Maria stepped ahead, showing her long shear nylon covered legs.
Darby carried a weighty office filing box, hence the struggling yellow Bunny ears pantomime. She knew Maria wasn't going to help, so she shifted her hands to get a better hold. She pressed it against the chest of her Bunny uniform. Somehow her ears hadn't pinned properly into her hair. She felt rushed and uneasy, blaming the museum and also a little – actually a lot -- Maria for suddenly changing the plans and joining in on the secret exchange. Something made Darby uneasy about her boss being present. No one had ever doubted Darby's work before. Then again, maybe it was actually better to have another Bunny present. In the past month, something had tainted the museum in an evil light, but Darby couldn't pin it down.
She awkwardly held the box in one hand and grabbed at her listing ears with the other. A couple seconds later, she felt the headband slipping again.
Looking even slightly disorganized irked her. Doing so in front of her boss just ticked her off. Pausing in the middle of a flight of stairs, she struggled to fix her yellow ears yet again. Clearly the museum should be blamed. It felt like something in the air, like a musky smell. It unsettled her confidence – and that really peeved her. Knowing they would be meeting the mysterious head curator, named Libby, who made dodgy trades in technology and magic, didn't help. But then again, Darby reconsidered her thinking because Libby was so nice, understanding, accommodating, and sexy. The list of positive adjectives rambled off in her head so quickly, like she had rehearsed them many times before.
Darby struggled to start the last group of steps. Her uncontrolled thoughts switched to nightmarish irrational ideas of being turned into one of the museum exhibit pieces, maybe a living statue frozen forever, doomed to see the world transpire, unable to participate. Why did she think of all that?
"Stop dillydallying," said Maria, waiting at the floor above. A gentlemen's club should have snapped a picture of her elegant pose, with a hand resting on the Yule marble railing and the other resting on a hip of her blue colored uniform. When Darby got close enough, Maria whispered, "You fidget too much. I need you focused."
"You didn't have to come. I've been dealing with this creepy place since Summer."
"Hush. I'm checking out what Libby is up to. Something's not right." The Bunny den mother checked something jammed down her cleavage. It looked like a lipstick tube. "You ready. You seemed a little frazzled."
Darby didn't like not knowing the plan. Her eyes peered at Marie's cleavage – to see the lipstick tube – the cleavage was perfect though. "What's that?"
"Shhh." Maria raised an eyebrow at her assistant, as if questioning Darby's competence. She turned away. Her Bunny tail bounced as she did a catwalk through the main exhibit floor.
Pursing her lips, Darby didn't like seeing the doubting look on her Mistress's face. It hurt. Her hand adjusted her ears again. She squeezed the box against her body and trotted hurriedly to catch-up.
The two Bunnies crossed the main atrium, the blue Bunny far ahead of the yellow. A skylight as wide as the atrium showed a view to the night's foggy skies. A century ago, stock traders filled the repurposed floor with their yelling and waving of colorful paper slips. Now the exchange had been converted to a sex museum. Display cases, decorating the outer perimeter of the main space, presented a comprehensive collection of strap-on dildos. A four story tall stone phallic took center stage. It aimed up to the glass panes over head, offering to penetrate the night sky. Darby paused to note its name: Rock Hard. She wondered if rock was used as a verb or noun. Her scattered mind shook her confused clouded head. Something bad was going to happen.
"I can't believe this is a museum," said Darby, stretching her head back to see the phallic stone tip. She quickly grabbed at her ears that almost fell off. "I don't need this shit." She did another quickstep to catch up. "It's like this museum sucks IQ points from my head." She squinted to see inside a glass case. Maybe a weapon? A seppuku sword? Maybe it was another dildo with straps. It was too dark to see. She had been to the museum before, but somehow her memories had disappeared and only fear stayed behind. Her costume could feel evil swirl around her legs. "I don't care if the Plexiglas cases have lead in them. I swear I can still feel a possessed wickedness."
"Some of these toys actually do suck out IQ." Deviously smiling, Maria added, "Or hammer in a tad of dumbness." Her eyes looked sideways to a display case with a plaster head looking up, mouth open, and a rubber rod aiming back down. "Mmm. Deep throating."
"Ew. Yeah, there's that. Sure. Just fucking great."
Maria gently smacked Darby's face. "Come on. Where's my detail oriented Bunny?" Her hand caressed and her eyes searched into Darby's soul. "There you are." The back of her curled fingers gently stroked the face. "I feel like you forgot to tell me something. When we get back, write up one of those droning reports of yours. It'll relax you. A calm mind always helps me remember things."
Darby could feel her confidence return, regrettably it was only a façade surfacing just enough to please her Mistress. Forgotten voices whispered stolen memories. Dark dread still churned in her thoughts.
Maria's gentle touch pulled away. "Good Bunny. Now, let's go." Her bright white Bunny tail disappeared into a hallway.
The box-bearing Bunny dwelled at the entrance. Glistening granite contours defined a wide archway chiseled and smoothed into a giant vagina.
"How do I not remember this?" She followed, muttering to herself. "A huge dick dungeon and it's like I never saw it before."
Transitioning through an unlit hallway, they entered a gallery of sexual masks. Maria ventured into another gallery ahead. Darby slowed, fighting the falling cardboard box. She wanted a cart, but Maria wanted the stairs because the elevators were slow. The assistant looked at the overhead tracks of spotlights aimed at each display. The fixtures hung down dead, unlit, like lifeless bats somehow sucking radiance from their targets. Absent of light, the mannequin busts below, all wearing historical headgear, leered back like foes.
The Bunny slowly ambled passed leather muzzles, zippered hoods, gilded Venetian guises surrounded in feathers, various blindfolds, and gasmasks. A ball gag nestled into a plaster head's mouth, customized in a stretch beyond any human limits. It caught Darby's attention. She peered at it. Her head tilted left and right. Her Bunny ears, always posed to curl forward in an obedient bow, brushed the glass box as her eyes tried to fight the darkness and see some details. It was too dark. She gave the box a heave up with a knee then pulled her shoulders back to find a balance, all while staring at the gag.
"Oh my." She sidestepped to the next plaster head with a metal contraption pulling its jaw open. The mechanics intrigued the engineering part of her. Good design always comforted her. She mumbled to herself, "I have to get one of these." Enough light from the nearby gallery allowed her to read a tag: "Whitehead Gag, medical device." She winced. "Ouch."
"Like it?" said a woman from behind.
Darby jumped. Her ears fell off. And now she found herself hunched over, her arms crushing the sides of the filing box. "Shit, Libby."
Libby bent down at the knees and retrieved the yellow Bunny ears. Her idea of a pleasant smile would confirm anyone's fears. "Here, my little cute rocket scientist." She reached over Darby's head and returned the ears. Her fingers ran through the hair. Her mind grabbed the last whiffs of confidence from the mind inside. "Come on," said the raven-haired museum curator in a well practiced sexy lilt. "I think Maria is over by the exhibit. I wish you hadn't brought her."
The box slid. It took a second to regain a grip before Darby could turn and follow the tall sinuous model, who wore a snug skirt blouse combo. Libby teased with a backward come-hither glance. She sported a black pencil skirt, white blouse, dark nylons, and black high-heeled pumps. Darby watched the woman's walk and how the derrière wonderfully rolled left and right. The dark skirt silhouetted a perfect curved outline. When they entered the first gallery, skylight added contouring shadows that helped Darby enjoy the view. With Libby's dark rimmed glasses and hair pinned up by a couple of number two pencils, the curator presented a flawless sexy librarian fantasy. The naughty office wardrobe was the woman's magical costume, an alternative version of a Bunny uniform offering its own type of enchantments in unreserved sexuality. It screamed dark evil desires, yet somehow to Darby, it felt stifled somehow.
Darby envied the few women who had the luxury to enjoy taunting their costumes in a repressive way by leaving accessories off, stored in a safe place to deny their costumes' full power. For some women, a controlling mistress cruelly withheld one of their accessories. Darby knew Libby fell into that group. The sexy curator always attempted to hide her bitterness regarding her one truant adornment. Oddly, Darby couldn't remember what it was.
In an adjacent gallery, the two women found Bunny Maria standing before a floor to ceiling Plexiglas wall, exhibiting special masks mounted at various levels, floating like fish in an aquarium. One item's glass lenses blazed in white highlights from the few lights illuminating the room. Matching the bespectacled Libby, but obviously the original frame, it was a pair of dark rimmed eyeglasses. A pearl beaded spectacle strap dangled about the mounting rod protruding from a black back wall. Imprisoned behind bulletproof high security Plexiglas, Libby's most important accessory stared back. Bunny Nathalie had denied the librarian's most basic source of magic, like locking away a Selki's pelt, it left Libby to oblige Nathalie's every wish.
Darby knew she had seen the display before, but it all felt new again.
