A Big-Game Hunter and a Cowboy Rancher crouched in the darkness of a cabin just left of Albuquerque. The curtains were closed, windows bolted with wood, and every bit of furniture blocked all possible ways in. All except for the front door. The Hunter and Rancher stared it down like it was barricaded with gunpowder and dynamite.

“I thought it was just some varmint, ya know?” said the Rancher, fiddling with the bullets in his revolver as a calming ritual. “All cute and furry, and I thought I could use a new pair of slippers. Next thing I know, the thing was standin’ upright and started talkin to me!”

“Me too,” said the Hunter. “It’s wabbit season, and I was wooking for one out in the fowest to make a stew out of wike me and my pawents did, you know? I found a wabbit and it got away, and when I thought I’d seen the wast of it, it fowwowed me home.”

“I don’t plum-know what ‘fowwowed’ is, but I followed it all over my property. Varmint stole all my carrots. The thing was mocking me. I tried catchin’ it, and stepped right on a nail that had been pulled outta the dang floorboards of my porch. Went right through my boot! I took it off to see, only to sit on a box of thumbtacks left in my chair. That thing is smarter than it should be.”

“That’s been happening to me too! I was pwaying my piano the other night, and then it just bwew up! It neawy took my hand off, and now my wiving woom is an utter weck! My wife was wivved.”

“She was what?”

“I said my wife was–”

Someone knocked at the door.

The Hunter and Rancher flinched.

Another knock.

“Maybe if we stay vewy vewy quiet, they might go away.

The door knocked some more. The knocking persisted until the Rancher got up. He put his whole body against the door and put the barrel of his gun against the eyehole.

“Who are ya? Whataya want?!” he shouted. 

“Pizza.”

The Hunter and the Rancher exchanged looks. Both were relieved. They haven’t eaten all day.

“Oh, alright then.”

He holstered his gun and undid the locks and latches.

“How much do I owe you?”

“An arm and a leg.”

It was a moment too late, with the front door wide open, that the Hunter and Rancher remembered that neither of them had ordered pizza.

Aside from the hat and a pair of white gloves, the pizza guy wasn’t wearing any clothes. His whole body was a carpet of dark fur. His ears tall and standing straight up, his eyes manic, and he wore a buck-tooth grin anatomically impossible for a human, let alone an animal that wasn’t supposed to smile.

The creature opened the box. There was no pizza. Instead, it was a fireman’s axe.

“What’s up, doc?”

The Rancher whipped out both of his guns. They, along with his hands, fell to the ground unfired.

“Tarnations!” 

He went down on his knees, tucking both bloody stumps against his now ruined button-down shirt in a vain attempt to stop the bleeding. The monster tossed the now bloody axe to the side, and stuck a cigar in the Rancher’s mouth. It lit a match from a matchbook and lit the end of the cigar. The gunpowder hidden in the cigar ignited, and the Rancher’s head exploded, leaving a smoking, neckless stump. The headless body slumped to the ground, his cowboy hat wafting daintily onto his back.

The monster stepped over the body toward the Hunter, whose throat was dry, pants wet, and face covered in terror-sweat.

“You kiwwed my wife,” bwubbered– err, blubbered the Hunter, keeping his shotgun trained on the beast. “You dwessed up wike her, called me honey. Kissed me, and pwetended to be my wife. I even thought you were her for a moment, but you awen’t my wife! Why did you do it? I’m sowwy Mr. Wabbit for twying to shoot you, but why did you have to kill her? Why did you kill him? What do you want?”

The creature’s grin didn’t falter, a gloved hand on its lower lip as though to stifle a laugh. It found the Hunter’s terror hilarious.

The Hunter found his courage and pulled the trigger. The gun didn’t go off. He felt the gun vibrate in his hands. The monster had two fingers plugging the end of the barrel.

“Uh oh.”

Both shells went the other direction, buckshot spearing through the Hunter’s ribs and vital organs. He was dead before he hit the wall.

It pulled out a rag and cleaned the blood and gunpowder from his gloves.

“Ain’t I a stinker?”

Wabbit. Rated W.

Aza Smith is just a guy from Dallas, TX, who, after getting his Bachelor's in Fine Arts at Texas A&M, decided to never use it and instead put all his creative energy into writing humorous fiction. Since returning from his hiatus from writing in January 2024, he has written and published stories under Flash Fiction Magazine, Flash Phantom, The Molotov Cocktail, and Curious Curls Publishing.