Rabbit in the Moon

I wouldn’t have thought it’d be so easy to fall asleep in front of a drafting table. You’d think you’d fall out of the chair or something, right? But I didn’t—not until Will slammed the door, I jumped awake and nearly slid right off. I grabbed the edge of the desk, cursing.

“Damn, did you do that again?” the squirrel asked, prancing over. “I’m supposed to be the night owl.”

I looked over at the wall clock: 3:37. “You’re just getting home? You’re still the night owl.”

“But you were up drawing again, weren’t you?” He walked over, placing a hand on my shoulder and leaning over the other. A lock of neon purple hair fell in front of his face as he studied the drawing, then broke out laughing. “Oh, Bob, it’s your dream date!”

The picture was a sight gag. A young fox had pulled up in a Miata, flowers on the seat beside him, obviously to pick up his date. He was looking up with obvious dismay at the woman: an attractive, if over-built, wolf who stood at least nine feet tall. She looked like she could easily bench press the car with its driver still inside—and from her toothy grin, her beau might be wondering if she was about to do just that.

“Ha ha.” I rubbed my eyes. It was true, I was a fox, and any time I drew a cute tod Will assumed I was projecting—even though I was clearly ten years’ the senior of the fox in the picture.

He patted my shoulder. “Well, granted, she’s kind of short for you.”

I grunted. In the middle of the last decade I’d done a half-dozen issues of a black-and-white super hero comic before the tiny publisher I’d been working with was swept away along with the other independents. I’d been the artist, not the writer, but I’d created some of the characters—including Leviatha, a sexy, busty vixen who normally stood a “mere” seven feet high but could get bigger at will. A lot bigger.

She didn’t do much except be a cute, smart version of the Incredible Hulk for the first three issues, but the fourth one we decided to do as an homage to Japanese monster movies. Your canonical two hundred foot tall tentacle-waving fanged reptilian whatsit attacked the city—to be met and fought by a three hundred foot tall Leviatha after it became clear that the rest of the team couldn’t do much more than annoy the beast. I got to do page after page of amazing perspective shots, although Leviatha probably did most of the damage to buildings. That wasn’t intentional—it was just more fun for me to be drawing her feet crashing through things. Or her bust. One shot I did had her thrown through a building with the viewpoint in her cleavage as she landed. That earned me a full page of vilification in the Comics Journal for pandering—and a stream of some of the most amazing commission requests for more pandering.

At first I resisted. The original idea the writer and I had was a Dark Phoenix storyline—that fight established that Leviatha outpowered the rest of the group by several orders of magnitude and they were scared shitless by both that and her cavalier attitude toward using it. I wanted to play around with the morality of that situation, not draw pictures—as the first fan letter that really made me drop my jaw suggested—of Leviatha using a tour bus as a sex toy.

The problem was, I couldn’t get rid of that image. I saw it really clearly any time I let mind drift. I didn’t do that commission then, but later on I did draw it.

And I started doing prints and commissions of Leviatha that were…well, we’ll just say risque, and not entirely in character. And they sold. Including the tour bus.

It’s not that most of what I did was pinups—certainly not the stuff I was most proud of—but I enjoyed cheesecake as much as the next guy. It just happened that most of my cheesecake was Amazonian or outrageously giant women. Will tweaked me about it, but mostly because he wanted some scantily-clad giant men.

“That reminds me,” Will said blithely as I got to my feet, steadying myself on the edge of the drafting table. “There’s a rave to celebrate the Solstice coming up this Friday night, and you’ve got to be there.” He literally bounced as he spoke, gesturing wildly with his hands. “It’s on a beach up on the coast of Sonoma. It’ll be—”

“Cold and windy. Will, I haven’t been interested in all-night dances for the two years you’ve been trying to drag me to them. I’m not a club guy.”

“This isn’t a club, it’s a beach, silly!”

“You know what I mean,” I said, irritated. “I’ve got to fall over into bed. I don’t think I got any rest sleeping at the desk, just a funny crick in my neck.” I started to walk toward my bedroom.

Will jumped in front of me and gave me his sternest look. If I were more awake I’d have burst out laughing. “Look, mister, for two years you’ve been saying you would give it a try if I thought it was something you’d really like. Something different.”

“I was saying that to placate you,” I mumbled, trying to shoulder past him.

He body-blocked me. “The word on the lists is that Jess is going to be there. I mentioned her after the first rave I saw her at.”

I squinted. “You want me to go to a rave so you can fix me up with someone? If I was awake I’d be offended.” I pushed past him enough that I could lean against my room’s door frame. If I didn’t, I’d fall over.

“No! I don’t even know her. I just want you to see her.”

I gave him a pained look, then straightened up enough to head into my room.

“Come on,” he said with an enigmatic grin. “They call her the rabbit in the moon.”

“They call me the fox closing the bedroom door.” I pushed the door to.

“You’re coming, right?”

“Will—”

He opened the door and stuck his head in. “You are coming, right?”

“Fine, I’m coming,” I growled. “Let me go to sleep!”

“Great!” He withdrew from the door, I closed it, and then I fell over on my mattress.

The rave site was cold and windy. And it wasn’t a beach—it was a huge grassy field, newly mowed, within sight of the Pacific’s rocky coast. The air had been crystal clear on the long drive out; even with the full moon you could have picked out hundreds of stars. Here on the coast, thin sea fog drifted past in ghostly tatters.

“Looks like they went all out, doesn’t it?” he said, leaning toward me so I could hear. The thumping drone of the music was already over conversational volume level and the speakers were hundreds of feet away.

“Dude, if they get the three thousand people you mentioned, at fifteen a head that’s forty-five thousand dollars. They’d better have gone all out.”

He was right, though. As we got up to the front of the line, I had to admit they’d gotten some serious theatre lighting—huge scaffolds surrounding the dance “floor,” a good thirty feet up, each one supporting blocks of top-of-the-line Vari-Lights. Static spotlights and strobes lined the support pillars. And these people knew how to use the rig.

I handed my money off to a perky catgirl who looked like she couldn’t have been out of high school. She was dressed in black shorts, a wide leather belt that hung open, and a sleeveless shirt of fine black mesh with strips of red cloth sewn in swirls underneath. She swayed in counterpoint to the music’s beat, tail mesmerizingly undulating behind.

“I don’t feel fashionable here,” I said to her.

She smiled up with brilliant white teeth. “Fashion isn’t what you wear, it’s how you wear.”

I wasn’t sure I could wear a faded science fiction con T-shirt and ripped denim shorts fashionably. I normally didn’t wear these jeans out, but the outfit was Will’s suggestion. Compared to his tie-dye half shirt, flared black jeans and multicolored glow-stick necklace, I might as well have been wearing a paper bag. I didn’t mind, though—Will usually made me feel that way if we went out together no matter what he wore.

The payment ritual complete, we pushed onto the dance field’s edge. As many people milled around the edges as danced, but the night remained in infancy for this crowd—over an hour to go before midnight. Here by the entrance, vendors sold drinks out of coolers, bandanas and necklaces, and the ubiquitous glow-sticks from the backs of their vans and Jeeps. I spotted bottled water and a lot of those little, frightfully expensive “smart drinks.” Will had been right, though—surprisingly little alcohol. At least, it surprised me. The last club I’d been to had one dance floor but three bars.

We passed next to one of the speaker stands. It felt like they had a subwoofer as big as I was. I didn’t hear the beat, my bones hummed with it.

“So where’s—” I started to say.

Will tapped his ear and shook his head, then pointed ahead. I hurried after him, not quite as nimble as the squirrel at sailing through the sea of dancers and dance-watchers. When we’d moved far enough away from the speakers he leaned toward me again.

“So where’s this Jess supposed to be?” I shouted.

“She’s not here yet.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Trust me. We’d see her.”

I looked around. Some people stood out—the wolf girl with hair that glowed purple when the black strobe lights fired, the fox wearing a huge striped floppy top hat, the skunk with tie-dye fur. Mostly, though, the mass of ravers blended into one another—and it’d only get more muddied as more people showed up.

“I’ll take your word for it,” I said doubtfully.

We stood by the DJ table, although “cockpit” might be more descriptive: three turntable decks, banks of electronics and industrial-looking CD players, two computer monitors, a huge mixing board. All the equipment was festooned with stickers—mostly band names, the occasional peace symbol or witty saying. Three people stood behind it; the two cats were clearly assistants, with the Doberman doing the lead.

“He’d be intimidating if he wasn’t dressed in purple,” I said to Will.

“Best DJ in the state,” Will shouted back.

I became curious enough about the equipment to circle behind the table, stepping over just one of a huge bundle of cables snaking off through the grass and walking up onto the tiny stage they’d set the equipment on.

Will tried to grab my arm and pointed at the dance area. I shook my head and pointed at the electronics. After a moment he let go, rolling his eyes, and bounced off in time with the beat.

The equipment looked more impressive once I could see the controls, despite it looking even more patchwork. The Doberman was selecting things on a computer screen with a trackball; I realized the current music must be running off MP3s—no, wait, he was starting to scratch in a segue between songs from one of the decks.

One of the cats noticed me and glanced up with a smile. I stepped forward. “He’s mixing an album with MP3s?”

“Nah, the turntable’s controlling an MP3 player.” He pointed at the closest screen. “See the three tracks there? The top one’s playing, the bottom one’s cross-fading in slowly and the third one he’s scratching live.”

“That’s pretty impressive.”

He grinned. “You a DJ?”

“No, just a geek. More geek than raver.”

The cat laughed, turning back to the board in front of him. I gathered he was reprogramming the lights. “I rave by geeking. The lights dance for me.”

“At least when you’re at a rave that can pull off a setup like this.”

“This is the shit, man. I’m working at a club in SF and our permanent setup isn’t this cool. So what brings you out here?”

I shrugged, hands in my pockets. “My roommate.”

He laughed again. The current light pattern’s sedate, flowing wash of blues and greens began to be pierced by staccato bursts of pinpoint red beams firing off in time with the new beat being mixed in.

“He wants me to meet a girl,” I added. I suddenly had a morbid curiosity about whether anyone else knew Will’s mythical moon rabbit. “I think he’s trying to fix me up. A rabbit—I think—named Jess.”

He burst out laughing. “Fixing you up with Jess? Wow. That’s badass.”

I blinked, nonplussed.

The new song’s rhythm took over, the blue lights going dark and the red lights bursting into a frenzied circular sweep over the dancers. With another laugh, the cat put his hand on my shoulder. “I doubt he’s fixing you up, man. I don’t know if anyone’s even spoken to Jess. I’ve only seen her once—and if other people hadn’t seen her I’d have just figured somebody had added something to my Red Bull without telling me.”

“Christ, between my roommate’s ‘rabbit in the moon’ shit and you, you make it sound like I should expect a goddess.”

“Yep,” he said flatly.

I thrust my hands in my pockets, curling my tail out of the way as the Doberman suddenly leapt up and pushed past me, rifling through an LP rack behind me and returning to his station with two twelve-inchers. He flashed me a toothy grin as he pushed past. He was at least a half-foot higher than my five-foot-ten, and I decided he could probably have been intimidating even in purple if he wanted to be. He didn’t look like he’d want to, though.

Nobody here did. I sat down on the corner of the stage, just to one side of the A/V tables, and looked out over the thickening crowd, a bouncing sea of flared jeans and surfer shorts. I’d imagined Will’s dress style as following a quasi-official fashion, but the crowd was hardly uniform—I could pick out the monochrome goth look, the denim and baseball cap grunge refugees, a liberal sprinkling of short, dyed punkish haircuts. Everyone danced, or at least moved to the music, but most of them danced alone. Glow sticks swung through the crowd like frenzied neon fireflies.

Minutes passed by. Even without dancing, I found myself falling into the music and the lights, beats sinking into my bones. It was mesmerizing.

Then I felt—something—in the crowd. Not a murmur; I could still only hear the music. Most people kept dancing. Not everyone, though. Some moved to the sides, thinning the mob’s center.

I got to my feet. As it turned out, it wasn’t necessary. The girl—the rabbit girl—picking her way into the crowd wasn’t exactly blending in. She dressed the part, with loose flared jeans and a tight hot pink halter top, a studded leather collar and wrist strap adding a touch of goth. Her short chopped hair flowed raggedly around her ears. Piercing cobalt eyes swept over the crowd—from a vantage point yards above the lights. She had to be at least fifty feet tall. As she stood still, her face blocked the moon.

Someone touched me on the shoulder and I jumped.

The DJ cat grinned at me from close by. “Your date’s here, man.”

I stared up at her. “Fuck me,” I said under my breath.

She walked out toward the crowd’s center, starting to sway in time with the music, looking across at the DJ station. The Doberman waved cheerfully, as if there wasn’t anything in the least unusual about her. She waved back with a grin.

Her movements got more energetic. People close by backed up—most still dancing, but a ring of them just staring up.

The DJ cut in a heavy drum line, and quickly melded the song into a slower but bouncier club mix. The rabbit giantess laughed and bounced in time, from foot to foot, dancing with the raised shoulders and loose limbs of a marionette. The dancers around her hollered and clapped as they skittered backward, although I’m pretty sure I heard a few more frightened screams in there.

“This is fucking impossible,” I shouted at the cat, keeping my eyes on the rabbit.

“Raves really are magic,” he said, heading back to his controls and flipping the lights into a new pattern, a little late. “Real magic.”

I followed him. “What kind of zen bullshit is that?” I screamed, knowing I sounded a little hysterical. I felt a little hysterical.

He just grinned, unruffled. “I’ve only heard of her showing up at raves. Maybe she’s only a giantess when she wants to dance. Maybe she doesn’t exist when she isn’t dancing.” He shrugged. “If you’ve got an explanation that isn’t zen bullshit, man, lay it on the table. Me, I’m sticking with magic.”

After it became clear he wasn’t going to volunteer anything else—not that I knew what I was waiting for him to say—I hopped off the platform back to the grass.

The other dancers had given Jess a wide berth—understandably—but they’d started to dance again, falling back onto the beat. A few danced up close to the giantess, trying to make eye contact with her. At least it looked close to me. I’d be worried about her making paw contact.

As the song’s beat shifted subtly, Jess leaned over, holding out a hand by one of the closest dancers, a fox who looked like he was maybe half my age. She kept swaying to the music as she leaned, tail bobbing high in the air over a tightly outlined rump, cleavage just over head level. My shorts suddenly felt uncomfortably tight.

The fox scrambled onto the rabbit’s hand and she swung him up over her head, reaching out toward a cat boy with her other hand. I’d seen the cat staring up and all but drooling a few moments before, but this unnerved him—he turned tail and started to run. Jess didn’t let him go, though. Her hand quickly caught him and lifted him up, his shriek greeted by amused laughter from his friends—who stood nearby, but not quite within rabbit range, perhaps having known something the poor cat didn’t.

Straightening up, the giantess resumed dancing, this time swinging her arms around, fingers entwined around her “passengers.” I watched, aghast, as they sailed through the air, their glow sticks—both of the two had more than their fair share of them—leaving faint trails in the blackness. Was that what had caught her eye? She’d wanted glow sticks of her own?

I’d moved forward enough that I could see the faces of her captives. The fox looked like he was riding a roller coaster—scared but having fun. The cat looked like the easily-nauseated person you didn’t want to be riding the roller coaster with. I bet he was putting all his concentration into not hurling.

I circled around Jess slowly. I saw Will through the crowd, once, giving me a maniacal grin, but I was distracted by a rabbit tail bigger than my head nearly thirty feet up. I hadn’t stared at women like this—particularly parts of women—since college days, after I’d realized that part of being adult involved keeping your tongue in your mouth.

But damn.

The fox she was holding gave me a wave as he swung by. I waved back numbly.

A minute later the song’s beat changed, another segue, and she set both of her “partners” down. The fox hugged her foot and scampered off. The cat dashed off in the direction of the portable toilets.

I was still behind her, trying to recover from the sight of her bending over, when the beat got harder, more tribal. All the lights changed to flashing blue, illuminating rings across the dancers on each downbeat and leaving them in only moonlight between beats.

Jess started dancing again, less fluidly, more of a jungle stomp in tune with the music. And I realized how close I’d gotten to her when one of her huge paws slammed into the grass a mere yard away.

With a yelp I leapt back, and stumbled, pinwheeling my arms to keep my balance. The giantess spun around on that foot, the other up in the air, her body directly over me for a moment. I stared open-mouthed directly up into her cleavage. Then her other foot came down behind me, as close as the first one.

She went motionless as our eyes met, the young goddess and the fox who’d stupidly ended up between her feet. Several beats passed.

Then she grinned, and raised her other foot high, bringing it down directly toward me.

“Christ!” I threw myself out of the way, managing to keep my balance this time. The foot slammed into the place I’d been, and her other foot came at me.

Great. Beautiful and homicidal. I ducked the other way, to be met by the first foot again.

After a few more measures of the song and rising panic on my part as I found myself corralled by her huge paws, I realized she wasn’t dancing quite as fast as she had been before she’d noticed me. She was missing beats sometimes, timing them to my movements.

She was toying with me, certainly, but she wasn’t trying to kill me. She was dancing with me.

They were beautiful paws, if you could get over the size. Under the circumstances getting over the size was damn difficult, but I tried.

At some point after that—just a few seconds, I think—I realized that I was…well, maybe not dancing, but no longer doing a screaming bug imitation. The trick was like aikido: you don’t think, you just move, and end up in the right places. Moving between her steps became less panic and more exhilaration. I was aware of people staring at me now as much as they were staring at Jess.

Of course, the trick is also not thinking. When I let myself get too caught up in analyzing, I stumbled, rolling onto my back just to see her paw coming down. Reflexively I put up both my hands. I hadn’t even finished thinking a derisive Yeah, like that’ll save you, dumbass before I was completely covered by the paw pad, pressed down tight against the grass.

By the time it occurred to me that I wasn’t dead, she’d already moved her paw, curling the toes around my shoulders and tossing me up into the air.

“Aaaaaaawhff!” The world stopped spinning when I landed in her hand, knocking some of the breath out of me. Her thumb curled over my chest to hold me there as she lifted me up nearly nose to nose with her.

“You were doing pretty good there for a minute or two,” she said. Her voice sounded soft but it resonated through me.

“Th…thanks,” I wheezed out. I hadn’t quite caught my breath yet, but I’m not sure I’d have been able to speak any better if I had.

“What’s your name?”

“Thayer.” I winced at myself. “Uh. Bob, I mean. Bob.”

“Bob Thayer. You’re not the comic artist, are you?”

My eyes widened. “You’ve—uh—heard of me?”

“Yeah.” She spun around, ending with a really serious stomp on the downbeat. Looking down at it made me notice not only the new view of her cleavage from this perspective, but how her jeans were just loose enough that they revealed glimpses of the thong she wore underneath. That was distracting enough I didn’t quite catch what she said next—except it was about Leviatha.

“What?” I said stupidly.

She grinned easily. “Just say I identify with her, Bob.” Jess winked, no longer stomping but just swaying her hips in time with the music. “Ever thought about drawing with a real model?”

“I—uh—” My mouth was getting dryer. “Not before now.”

Jess laughed. “I was watching you watch me. You want to be swung around like that?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“You want me to set you down?”

“No!” I said, a little too quickly.

Her grin got a lot wider. “Great.” She slipped me into her hip pocket, feet first, facing her, then started the stomp-dancing again. Swaying her hips a lot.

I hung on tightly, trying not to squirm. My view was all jeans and tail puff, and every hip thrust my way squeezed me tight. I closed my eyes after a few moments, trying to twist to the side enough that didn’t feel like I was in quite as much danger of being rubbed to climax.

After the music changed, she started to walk to the side. Even her walk was maddeningly sensual.

Then abruptly she pulled me out of her pocket, bringing her up to her face again as she sat down behind the crowd on the sideline.

“So what would Leviatha do with you?” she said, grinning widely again.

My tail was twitching uncontrollably and I was trying not to pant. “She’d…rrr…I mostly drew what she did with villains, Jess…”

“Never thought about what she’d do with somebody she liked, huh? Or somebody she just wanted to tease a little?”

I bit my lip.

The rabbit’s gaze flickered down to my shorts, then back up at my face. “Or tease a lot?”

I shuddered uncontrollably, realizing my arousal must be all too visible to her. “I-I…S-she…could do…well, anything she w-wanted.”

She grinned. “She sure could, but you’re ducking the question.”

“How did you—I mean—you’re a giantess and nobody knows about you? Nobody except ravers?”

“They’re not bothered by it. If I strolled down the street to your apartment like this, it’d cause a little more panic, don’tcha think?”

“Like this…?” I blinked. “You mean you could stroll down it some other way?”

She grinned again, stretching in a brain-breaking fashion. “I guess I could stroll down it nude.”

I made a low rrrrrr noise in my throat, crossing my legs as she held me.

“Or maybe I’m only a giantess at raves and people don’t notice me most of the time.”

“One…uh…of the DJs thought maybe you didn’t exist when you weren’t at dances.”

Jess laughed. “That’s a cool thought. Only one way for you to find out, Bob.”

I bit my lip again, staring up at her.

She leaned forward, lifting me up at the same time, so my view became almost entirely bunny muzzle. Her thumb, curled up against my stomach, slid down against my crotch and I jumped visibly in her hand. “Give me your address.”

I stammered weakly, trying to twist away from the thumb before I exploded. “I sh-shouldn’t give that out to someone I just met.”

“I could be a con artist, trying to get your address so I can come rob you?” She grinned, so my view changed just to white teeth for a moment. “Yeah, there’s a risk that you’d end up watching a giant rabbit girl rip off your roof and take your stuff, but I bet there are far better places for me to do that at if I wanted to. And I’d still let you watch.”

I sagged back in her hand and gave her my address with a whimper.

“Great. No promises of visits, but now there’s a possibility. You’ve got me curious.”

“I’ve got you curious?” I spluttered, dumbfounded.

“Hey, you’re handsome, you’re braver with me than just about any of the other guys I’ve met have been, and you’re an inspirational writer. I bet you’d be a great conversationalist if I wasn’t going out of my way to keep you tongue-tied.” She winked.

I swallowed, trying to keep my grin from looking either frightened or maniacal. “I’m—uh—not sure whether hearing a real giantess say Leviatha’s an inspiration to her is something that makes me elated or scared to death.”

Her thumb pressed slightly against my crotch. “My bet’s on ‘elated,’” she said with a smirk.

I twitched again, starting to pant in spite of myself. “I th-think the word for that is ‘aroused,’ Jess, and you sh-shouldn’t do that if you don’t want…uh…”

She laughed again, turning so she was facing away from the crowd completely, sitting on her feet with her knees spread apart. “Not on the first date, huh?”

I nodded mutely, not trusting myself to speak without squeaking.

Jess set me down between her legs, her hand still on me, and rested the fingers of her other hand on the hem of her jeans, right at the snap. I vibrated as I looked up to meet her eyes.

She grinned down, and her hand scooted me forward. I gasped, trying not to stumble. “I respect that, but no promises for next time, cute stuff.” I met the wall of her jeans, right against the fly. “’Cause if I want to put you on my tour bus, I won’t take no for an answer.”

Jess squeezed me firmly against her crotch. I felt myself get light-headed, eyes rolling back as I began to climax.

The rabbit girl let me drop to the ground. I was dimly aware of her blowing me a kiss, standing up over me, and walking away. I rolled over and all but passed out. After lying there about ten minutes I made my way around the crowd, back to the car, and curled up in the back seat.

When I woke up the car was moving. For a moment I thought Jess had picked it up, but I realized that was a fragment of a dream. We were driving down the Pacific Coast Highway, and I could make out the first hints of pre-dawn light past the hills to the left.

“So, had a fun time, did you?” Will said cheerfully.

I leaned against the passenger headrest. “Until my brain ran out my ears,” I muttered. I rubbed my eyes. “I gave her our address.”

Will looked at me in mock reproach. “Really! You get disgruntled if I bring over loud boys, and here you are planning to bring over someone who can’t even fit in the living room!”

“Will—”

“And I bet if she screams when she’s—excited, it’d break all the windows. You’re paying for those, mister!”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” I said, leaning back and rubbing my forehead. He snickered.

After another minute or so passed in silence, he said, “You know, you’re already going to be in rave legends.”

“What, am I the official consort of the rabbit in the moon?”

He grinned. “Sure, if ‘consort’ is an archaic way of saying ‘favorite toy.’”

“Don’t make me climb over the seat and hit you.”

He blew me a kiss in the rear view mirror and drove in, silent again except for his grin.

I rubbed my eyes. Except for the way I felt—and looked, and smelled—I’d have thought it was a dream. A very scary, very erotic dream.

When I got back home I’d shower, then collapse again. Then I’d want to draw, I knew. I just wondered if I’d end up having a live model sometime soon.