I hugged the stuffed bunny to my chest, burying my face into its small neck and breathing in. The slightest scent of rose covered by years of wear came to my senses.
I remembered my sister sewing the stuffed animal for my seventh birthday. I'd accidentally walked in on her while she was working on it, so when I received it, it wasn't much of a surprise anymore, but I'd took it from her with no less enthusiasm nevertheless. She'd said my eyes had lit up a thousand times over, and it amused her to see me in love with a handmade doll inferior to the expensive gifts I got from others. I told her I loved hers best — secretly of course, so my father wouldn't overhear.
She smiled at me and made me more of them, occupying herself since she had nothing more to do but sit pretty at a table when she was introduced to suitors my father chose for her.
"One for every man who wants my hand in marriage," She had told me, "One for every burden I cast out of my life is a blessing for you, because you'll be able to stay with your sister for even longer."
Back then I couldn't really understand what she was talking about. I didn't understand that she was at the age where a girl from a rich family like ours was supposed to be married off to another rich family. I played my part, nonetheless, nodding my head and taking in her words with wide eyes as if I did understand every word she said.
I'd watch her, sitting on her rose-scented bed and fiddling with the long ear of yet another bunny while she sat at her small wooden desk. Fabrics spilled from every corner it, and a little box full of colored threads, embellishments, and needles laid open just at her elbow. She would stab at the fabric with her needles and fill it with stuffing until it resembled that bunny I loved so dearly.
When she was done, she'd offer me the stuffed bunny and smile. "This one's called Theo," she'd always tell me.
Every one of them was named Theo and only ever Theo.
At that time, I'd wondered why all the bunnies who were supposed to be every suitor she rejected were named that name. It was a simple name, but one my sister said with so much emotion in her voice that she sometimes lost the ability to speak afterward.
She'd continue sewing me those stuffed bunnies day after day until two years later on my ninth birthday when she told me she wouldn't be able to stay and look after me anymore. By then, I had accumulated more than enough bunnies that they peeked at me from every angle of my room. I'd realized that each was filled with love and each was filled with hate, with my father being the symbol of the latter.
He wore a mask whenever people questioned about me, claiming that I was indeed the son of him and his wife. His wife, having been forced not to ever name me an illegitimate son, also lied that I was hers. However, since my fair hair and pale complexion didn't match their dark traits, rumors had spread that I wasn't their child. Some believed my father's lies, and others did not. However, I didn't care if my father kept me locked in the near-empty west wing of his terribly large manor, because I had my sister for company and my bunnies for entertainment.
Then, she'd left to marry a frivolous man who couldn't care less about her, and I was all alone with the faint scent of rose and musk and depression was settling deep into my heart.
By rumors of the maids who brought me my meals every day, I learned that my sister had been in love with a boy by the name of Theodore when she was at a young age. Since then, she'd visited him when no one was looking. My father, noticing her disappearance, had found out about her amorous rendezvous and thus confined her to the west wing where I resided.
She left sometimes to meet her suitors on quiet evenings to return hours after and sew me a stuffed bunny. A year before, she'd left permanently to become the wife of a man she didn't love, and now, it had been a week after she'd chosen to leave the world to escape the miserable life she was living.
I had come to the funeral as a show that I was the son of a grieving family, but not one tear had shed from my eyes. Not one sob had broken from my throat. It was anger that had blossomed in my chest and pushed outwards to dip my entire soul in fire.
The maids, ever so insensitive, had spoken carelessly about my dearest sister the mornings and evenings following the funeral. "The red string of fate doesn't always favor the rich," they had said, "And for the Lady, it was the red string of fate that led her to die by her own hand. To love a man she could never dream to live with..." The maids had paused at this, some twinge of pity in their eyes. "...Is such a terrible thing, is it not?"
Seven nights have passed as I sat silently, hugging my sister's bunnies to my body. Seven nights have passed since I felt the first pang of fury that coursed through me.
I waited for the maids to leave my room and listened to the sound of their worn shoes fade away before I slipped out of bed. Slowly opening my door, I peeked outside cautiously, then entered the room across to mine. My sister's room was the same as she'd left it a year ago. The maids had not touched it, and I was sure my father had forgotten that she existed. The same little box of thread and needles that my sister used still sat on her desk. Filliping the top open, I grabbed the first roll of red thread that I could find and bolted to my room.
The first bunny I took sparked anger within me and I dug my fingers deep in between the threads, ripping it apart so that its filling spilled out. I pulled my arm back and threw it against the wall in front of me, ignoring the terrified face it gave me as it came crashing down my bedroom floor. With the red thread, I wrapped nooses around almost every bunny's throat and strung them high from my ceilings. If it was the noose of that ring around her finger that bound her to such misery, it would be a noose that would punish her beloved Theo for not raising his voice in an attempt to make her happy.
Red tangled into arms and legs. Ears were crushed in a frenzy of my madness and others were torn open. By the time I was done, my breaths were coming out in sharp gasps, and perspiration glazed my pale skin with a clear sheen. Tears blurred my vision, and in every angle I turned my head, it was not the smiling face of those stuffed bunnies my sister made for me, but their broken and dangling bodies that danced in my sight.
Hundreds of Theos, tangled in red.
Hugging my legs to my chest, I buried my head into my knees and took in trembling breaths in between the silence of my fallen tears and wondered why my sister, this cursed Theo or I had to be born into this godforsaken world.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.