Easter is fast approaching and I am beginning to fear for my life as I have every year for a decade.

I always loved this holiday as a child, something about a big fluffy bunny leaving treats in your house always excited my young mind. This all changed at age 17, when this experience took place.

One of my most vivid childhood memories was seeing the Easter bunny in my house, leaving chocolate under the fireplace and hopping away down the hallway. Of course I was only 8 or 9 so by the time this story takes place I had accepted that treasured memory was merely a dream.

I laid in bed, the night before Easter, just watching a film I can no longer remember. I heard a bump downstairs and thought noting of it. A second, louder and almost more intentional bump got my attention. I just assumed it was my dog messing around knocking into furniture in the dark but regardless I went to check.

I shoved past the door into the living room, slightly annoyed at my dog for getting me out of bed. Annoyance quickly tuned to horror when I saw the blood spattered on every surface. I was frozen in place until my eyes fell on the abomination stood in the now open front door. This thing took up the whole 7ft doorway, I knew it saw me and we stood there motionless until I made the decision that has cost me a good nights sleep every night since. I flicked on the light and this abomination came into full view. Patchy brown fur on wrinkled grey skin and as I looked up to its face I saw it was a fucking rabbit. Only it’s mouth hung slightly agape and revealed sharp and jagged teeth, with long floppy ears but worst were it’s eyes they were… human, full of intelligence and experience like it had seen many trips around the sun. This all sounds comical but I was so disturbed that I didn’t even acknowledge the mangled remains of my beloved dog in its claws.

I didn’t hesitate, I turned and ran up the stairs not looking back but I could hear it’s heavy footsteps behind me. I got to my room and slammed the door. The footsteps stopped just outside and there was a defending silence. Moments later the footsteps went back downstairs and I creeped to my window and say it lumbering down the garden, the dismembered body of my dog still in its grasp. Before it disappeared in to the trees at the end of my garden it turned and looked directly at me before disappearing into the trees.

The only reason I am writing this now years later is because my daughter told me she saw the Easter bunny last night.