Pink Rabbit Blues
	by Agent Newbeau

        It was a very hot day, nothing unusual for August, and the pink rabbit 
was back. Third bloody time this week and it was only Thursday morning. 
I had been up late the night before, watching TV and trying to recover 
from the latest attack of that damn pink rabbit. I just can't get rid of 
him. No matter where I go, there he is.
        Last week it followed me to the mall. I was in the music store, looking 
through the sale bin and there it was, standing next to a life size cut 
out of Paul McCartney. I couldn't sleep at all that night. I kept having 
these dreams that the pink rabbit was joined by a walrus, only it had 
Yoko Ono's face, which was really scary because she looks like a praying 
mantis. It was indeed one of the weirdest nights of my life, except 
maybe for one where I was at a party talking to this guy about the sorry 
state of the soap opera as a genre and then I suddenly realized he was 
an actor on a soap that I had used as an example as one of the 
worst.There went my ride home. I had blisters for a week afterward.
        I'm not sure if I should try to communicate with the pink rabbit.  It 
might try to kill me or something. It could be an alien sent to take 
over the planet or something. Besides, I don't want to end up like my 
cousin Ralph. He kept seeing a red horse and when he tried to talk to 
it, it turned into a really big snake and ate him. The family said he 
got lost in a swamp and drowned, but I know the truth because he visited 
me after he died.
        I haven't told my family about the pink rabbit. They never believed 
Ralph about the red horse and look what happened to him. Personally, I 
never saw the red horse. I always saw an orange one. Cousin Ralph was a 
bit color blind or maybe I am. Or maybe there were two horses. Doesn't 
matter now. Ralph's dead and I'm being followed by a gigantic pink 
rabbit. And I do mean gigantic. You think Harvey was big, you should see 
this rabbit. He's at least eight feet tall, very fat, and bright pink.
        One thing bothers me though. Just where the bloody hell did this 
monstrosity come from? And more importantly, are there anymore like him? 
I haven't seen any other giant pink rabbits and I haven't heard anybody 
else say anything about them, but that doesn't mean there aren't 
anymore. People tend not to talk about such things in public, or even 
private for that matter. I don't tell many people about the rabbit. 
        I need to come up with a name for him. I can't keep calling him the 
giant pink rabbit who follows me everywhere. That's way too long a name. 
But names are a tricky thing, you have to pick the right one or else it 
just doesn't work. Take Boris Karloff for example. Would he ever have 
made it in horror movies if he had kept his real name? William Pratt 
just isn't a good name for a guy who played The Mummy and Frankenstein's 
monster. So I have to pick the right name for the pink rabbit.
        After doing some serious thinking on the subject of a name for the 
rabbit I have hit upon what I think is the perfect name. Halsten. An 
unusual name, but he's an unusual rabbit. I don't know where that name 
came from, I guess I must have read it in a baby name book or something. 
I like it and I hope the rabbit likes it too. I guess now that he has a 
name, I can start calling him Halsten instead of the rabbit.
        I did something really brave today. I told somebody about Halsten. He 
didn't say anything at first, just sat there sipping a cappuccino while 
trying to decide if there was anything to the story or if he should run 
away just in case I got violent or something. Then he simply said, "I 
believe you."
        All of a sudden I didn't feel so bad anymore. Somebody actually 
believed me about Halsten. If one person believed me, maybe other people 
would believe me. That's one reason why I decided to tell this story, so 
other people wouldn't feel so alone in their experiences. Strange things 
happen everyday and we should be more accepting of them and not 
automatically condemn those experience something that is not normal. I 
never understand what normal is anyway. What one person thinks is normal 
is what another would say is weird. It all depends on where your 
viewpoint fits in. What used to be considered liberal isn't so liberal 
anymore.
        All I really know for sure is that Halsten is real and he has a purpose 
for being here and he will reveal that to me when the time is right. 
Until then I must be patient and learn to live with him. It's really not 
so bad once I took the time to look at things from his point of view. He 
must find things here as strange as I first thought of him. Maybe not 
anymore. We've gotten used to each other and I am no longer surprised in 
the morning to find him standing beside my bed waiting for me to wake up 
so we can began another day. If only I could keep him from following me 
into the shower, things would be perfect.
        The End.