"I don't know! Why the hell do they want me? I just want to be left alone! Is that so much to ask for?"          The doctor shrugged. "You have to understand, Mary, that death is a very trying thing for most people."          "No shit? Stop it doctor, you're making my heart bleed violet rivers of sympathy again..."          "Mary, they have no direction, no leaders, no idea what exactly it is they're supposed to be doing here. It's natural for them to search for an icon, a leader, someone to look up to. Dead they may be, but they're still human. Well, the ones that were human before, at least. The other ones I can't really comment on."          "Doctor?"          "Yes?"          "I don't appear to be caring."          The doctor sighed and fussed with his clipboard. "Okay Mary, let's move on. I think we've gotten as far as we can on that subject for now. Let me read you a quotation."          "All right."          "'Each one of us, in his timidity, has a limit beyond which he is outraged. It is inevitable that he who by concentrated application has extended this limit for himself, should arouse the resentment of those who have accepted conventions which, since accepted by all, require no initiative of application.'"          "I see," said Mary.          "What I'm trying to get at here, Mary, is: what is the limit beyond which you're outraged?"          Mary rolled his eyes around lazily for a moment then slapped his knee and shouted, "Pass!"          The doctor sighed. "For the last time, Mary. This is not a game-show. Now tell me; what outrages you?"          Mary threw his hair back out of his face. "You know toasters?" he said.          "I... yes..." said the doctor.          "What the hell is the darkest setting for?"          "What?"          "You know what I'm talking about," said Mary. "The darkest setting. There's a little selector: light, dark, darkest. Usually represented by darkening shades of orange. What the hell is the darkest setting for?"          "I would assume," said the doctor, adopting a slow tone he often used in these sessions, "that some people like their toast dark. Is that unreasonable?"          "But," said Mary, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees, "there's already a dark setting! It's the one between light and darkest."          "Well, maybe some people like their toast darker than the dark setting can provide?"          "No," said Mary, sitting back. "That's not an acceptable answer. I noticed it this morning when I was counting the appliances, and you know what I did?"          "I have no idea..."          "I put a slice of bread in the toaster..."          "How odd..."          "And I jacked it all the way up to the darkest setting."          "Okay."          "And you know how it came out, doc? Do you know?"          "Darker?"          "Black."          "Ah."          "Do you know anyone who likes their toast black, doctor?"          "Not personally, no, but there are probably --"          "Other people that like it black, yeah. But NO!" Mary jumped to his feet. "I checked! You know who likes it black, doctor? Do you know?"          The doctor hesitated. "Who?"          "Nobody!" Mary howled, throwing his head back. "Abso-freakin' NOBODY!"          "I'm sure there must be..."          "So," Mary said, rubbing his hands together, "dark just wasn't good enough for the public. No, no no. Darkest was required. Some engineer got paid a truckload of money when his boss sauntered in and said, "Hey, why don't we jack this baby up a little? Make it knock their friggin' socks off! Give it a little extra kick!' A little extra dark."          "I really don't see why this upsets you so much, Mary. It's just a toaster. You seem to have no problem with any of your other appliances. Well, no emotional problem."          "Take your microwave for a moment," Mary said, stabbing his finger out at the doctor. "Does anyone ever say, 'Oh, pop it in for three minutes on CHAR, will you?' Ding! 'Mmmmm... just the way I like it... completely WRECKED! Does your VCR have a SHRED button on it? I mean, really."          "What about blenders?"          "What about them?"          Several hours later...          "Is that all that outrages you, Mary?"          "No," Mary yawned tiredly, slumped over in his chair, his jacket balled up as a pillow. "There's one more thing..."          "What's that?"          "Donald Duck doesn't wear any pants."          The doctor was ready for this one. "I've heard this one before," he said. "He has feathers, you see. There's no point in wearing pants when you have feathers."          "Okay, okay," said Mary, "that's what I thought too, see? But then it occurred to me... Mickey Mouse is a little risque what with wearing no shirt, but at least it kind of makes sense. Maybe it's hot out, maybe he feels more comfortable without a shirt on, maybe he comes from a culture where that sort of thing is acceptable, maybe he just doesn't care at the moment whether he's allowed to go into department stores or not. All fairly understandable in my mind. Not necessarily admirable, but understandable. But Donald... What does Donald do in the morning? He gets up wearing his pajamas and sleeping cap, puts on his slippers, goes and does whatever ducks do when they wake up. Then he gets 'dressed'. He puts on his little sailor's hat and his little sailor's jacket and if it happens to be a special occasion he'll even wear a tuxedo jacket, gloves, weird-ass dress shoes and carry a cane. But pants? Fuck them, apparently. I mean, he goes out of his way to wear everything but pants! Jackets, hats, accessories! I think that points to something a little bit deeper than 'well, he has feathers.'"

In a swarm of people, the bunny's vision remained clouded and his eyes felt disconnected from his head. His fur was tussled and dirty, black circles under his eyes, his mouth sagging down into a relentless frown pierced by his two protruding front teeth.          Occasionally the lack of sleep, steady abuse of painkillers and chemical suppression of anxiety would cause his vision to flip. Suddenly he'd be outside his body, looking on himself from impossible angles. He'd see himself handing out tickets at the huge slanted gates of Maryland, being stepped on and jostled and pushed around by manic fans and park goers. A steady stream of people would step up in a frenzy, pamphlets in hand, demanding to know where the Mad Hatter was. Children were dragged along by their arms, the parents unimpressed with the bunny's lack of playful comic antics like the friendly costumed characters at popular amusement parks.          He stood propped up against the orange ticket booth, immobile and seemingly dead to all sound. He was so tired he had to stand. Everything he sat on felt as comfortable as a bed and he couldn't sleep now. His head throbbed, his tongue ached like a broken snake and he felt each hair on his body stabbing into him like a red hot pin-prick.          "Sir?" someone was shouting at him above the rest of the crowd. "Sir!"          The bunny took a long pull from his canteen and set it down on the counter. "Yes?" he said. His voice crackled and didn't sound the least bit welcoming.          The man had a small boy in tow. Probably a car crash, he thought. Most father-son pairs are from car crashes. Most entire families seen around Maryland were murder-suicides. "I'm looking for... he checked the papers in his hand, "a... Mary Holiday?"          The crowd bristled and throbbed at the very utterance of the name, like they had forgotten their purpose in the flurry of gathering and making a lot of unruly mob noises.          The bunny gave him the line he'd been using all along. "I'm sorry," he said tiredly, "but I've been instructed to tell you that he doesn't exist."          "Really," said the man, giving him an even stare. The child pulled at his jacket. "I find that hard to believe."          "Faith is a tricky thing," said the bunny. He shrugged and stared off into the distance.          The man leaned forward over the counter conspiratorially. "What would it take for me to see him? It's very important, you see..."          The bunny sighed. "He doesn't want to see anyone. And even if he did, I don't know why you'd want to."          The man pulled back. "Fine," he said sharply. He looked down at his child and then back at the bunny. "My son threw up on one of the Mary-Go-Rounds."          "Ah," said the bunny, looking down from above.          "Well, will you please clean up the mess? He'd like to finish his ride."          The bunny blinked heavily and forgot to reply. The man eventually stomped off angrily with the idea of complaining to some sort of higher power, but the bunny grinned grimly with the thought that there was, to his knowledge, no higher power to complain to.

Mary tried to get into his room but was blocked by his least favorite kind of horde - a rabid one. They were hostile and adoring at the same time; infatuated, screaming nonsense at the door and trying to knock it in with their bodies. They shouted things like "Come out!" and "Show us your body!" and the more confused among them yelled "Encore!" They looked as though they had been camped there for a long time, as most of them seemed tired, worn and desperately in need of a shower. Maxine could do nothing but stand by and hope they didn't didn't get through the door. She would only occasionally drag one of them into a corridor and completely beat the snot out of them in the hopes that the others would notice and be scared off.          Mary stood behind the crowd, all their backs turned to him. Nobody noticed, as they were too busy pounding on the walls and carrying on.          "What the hell is going on here?" Mary said, leaning over to Maxine, his voice was drowned out by the crowd.          "Civilians and DFCA members, mostly," Maxine said.          "What the hell is that supposed to be?"          "The Deceased For the Clarification of the Afterlife."          Mary ran his fingers through his hair and waited for an explanation.          "The DFCA is a coalition of frustrated dead folks. It was organized some time ago, nobody's really sure when, and their objective is to get some answers about the afterlife. What the meaning of it is, why it exists and who's overseeing everything. Such as gods, devils --"          "Yes, yes," Mary waved a hand, "I'm familiar with unions of idiots. But why are they trying to bust into my room? I don't have any answers for them."          "They seem to think you might," said Maxine. "You're the most enigmatic one around here and it's widely known that you're the Mad Hatter around these parts and as far as these people are concerned, that's the closest thing to authority they've heard of since their deaths."          "Great," said Mary. He slammed someone on the back of the head with his cane. They collapsed into the crowd and disappeared. "Just great," he continued casually. "Well, tell them I don't know any more than they do."          "I've tried that," said Maxine. "But they don't listen. They just keep ranting and raving and demanding to speak with you... Mary?"          Maxine looked around and Mary was gone.

3:42am, September 13th, 1978. It looked like popular rumors about Texas or some deadbeat rural hot point of Western American goonism. Drunk red pickup trucks swaggered down deserted dirt roads like dogs with anvil tails. The air smelled of kerosene, grass and dust. Mary sprang out of his hat on this road under twilight and for lack of anything better to do he walked, kicking stones and swearing at himself for being so lovable.          Past a red farmhouse, some empty land overgrown with weeds and sloppy, dirty swampland. A cluster of weathered olive green mailboxes rusted shut at a fork in the road. Black flies and rotten log fencing. He traced dandelions in broken rows, a fat yellow-headed streak through the cool evening grass. Round a grove of stray apple trees, under the grass where the spiders live, the stink of moss, the taste of warm, dark blue wind and a dead man's foot sticking out of the underbrush.          It was a brown shoe hung on the end of a wet gray pant leg, presumably blood. Mary considered it a minute. He looked around. There was nothing in the air but the sounds of crickets and restless animals rustling through the long grass.          It took him awhile, but he dragged the body out by the brown shoe, cursing and swearing with the exertion. It was snared on the underbrush, the prickly weeds caught on the clothes and leathery skin. It was rough getting it up out of the ditch but eventually he managed to, and then dragged it out into the middle of the road where he walked circles around it, inspecting it slowly. It wasn't in very good shape.          The hat had been watching. "Why..." it said in a truly horrified voice, "did you do that?"          Half of the body's face was torn away, smeared by dried black blood and powder burns. The other half looked back at Mary unaffected, stark and expressionless, its pupil hanging in his one eye like a broken doll's. Like a parent looking beyond a child's failing grades. Pale face-residue on his gray suit jacket.          Mary shrugged. "Any idea what I'm supposed to be doing here?"          The hat said it didn't and continued being alarmed in silence. Mary sighed and then sat cross legged on the shoulder of the road, regarding the body with a low, frustrated glare, waiting for something to happen.

"Oh, bunny! Bunny!! Where are you!?" The crowds were calling for him. They were ravenous, now thirsty for news of Mary. Where he was, what he does with his time, how they could win his favor.          The answer to the question though, was that the bunny was trying to hide. He slammed the public restroom door shut behind him and braced it with a metal garbage can. It wouldn't hold for long, but it was better than nothing. He did a cursory scan of the room. Black and white checkered tile, stalls, urinals, sinks, plywood where formerly there were mirrors. But if there had been mirrors, the bunny would have seen he looked sick and tired. Black circles under his sunken eyes due to sleep deprivation. His normally soft, snow white fur was thick and clumped with dirt. His normal grooming habits let go with his descent into nearly constant substance abuse.          They were pounding on the door now. Hundreds of fists and loud shuffling crowd noises up against the door, banging with all their strength.          "Come out!" they yelled. "Come out!"          He looked into the reflection of one of the faucets and pulled the tender skin under his eye down. Veins surged like red hot wires in egg-white. He searched the medicine cabinets; through people's personal items. There was only one bathroom in all of Maryland, giving weight to the idea that it might be Hell after all.          He went through people's medication, razors, toothbrushes, acne creams. Nothing worthwhile. He looked back behind him, the garbage can was bending, threatening to cave under the pressure the crowd was putting on the door. It shook under each blow. He grabbed a bottle of cough syrup and a pair of pliers without giving a moment's thought to why the hell there were pliers in the medicine cabinet.          He kicked in the stall doors and found a large cool vent in the last one. He locked himself in the stall, wrenched open the vent with the pliers and climbed into it head first, sliding in on his belly and scrambling off as fast as he could. He heard the garbage can crash in on itself and give way, the door explode open and thousands of cheering footsteps rush through in a manic tidal wave. They didn't even give the common courtesy of waiting for the bunny to finish using the stall before they kicked in the door. That's just how fanatical they were.

Nothing did happen. At least nothing that caught Mary's interest, that is. The hat began moaning and sobbing until Mary threatened to put it on the body and then it stayed quiet except for the occasional mournful sigh.          After an hour or so of sitting there in the darkness on the cool gravel Mary started walking to the nearest city, dragging the corpse behind him by the pant leg. It seemed like the most appropriate thing to do. Mary had been stuck in some missions lately that never would have been completed had he not given up and started doing whatever came to mind.          The roads were rough and the sharp rocks probably took its toll on the body's back, but Mary rarely looked behind him. Occasionally vehicles passed by and Mary would make a halfhearted attempt at hitching a ride, but nobody ever stopped. They probably couldn't make out that the body wasn't luggage, or rather, any kind of traditional luggage - as it was still very dark, but obviously a thin man in a top hat on a road this far out was a suspicious sight to any traveler.          Several hours passed. Dawn was creeping up over the horizon. Mary had been staring at his feet as he dragged on and almost didn't notice the town he'd come upon.          It was small, the roads were coarse blood-red dirt, the buildings were all wood and none were over two stories high. A tall iron gate with a wide yellowed sign marked the entrance to the town. There was writing on the sign, presumably the town's name, but it was too badly corroded and weathered to make anything out.          It was still really early. The streets were deserted and there wasn't even a hint of activity in any of the buildings, so Mary lurched himself and the body over to the first shack he saw. He knocked on the door.          "What are you doing?" said the hat.          An old bearded man in ragged long-johns and a white undershirt opened the door.          "What can I help you with, son?" he asked in a sleepy Western drawl.          Mary leaned against the door jamb and tilted his hat in what he imagined was a polite way. "Hi," he said, with a little polite nod and wave. "I'm with the United Way?" He paused. The man said nothing, so he continued. "Yes, well, we're practically giving away these bullet-riddled corpses here..." He gestured behind him.          "Wah!" yelled the man, jumping back. The hat coughed.          Mary stepped into the room, dragging the body with him and letting it slump to the floor. "It's for a good cause," he said.          The man grabbed a frying pan off of the stove and started yelling sharp verbs like "Get!" and "Put!" and "Take!" and babbling incoherently between them.          "I honestly don't mean to bother you," said Mary, "but my friend and I were just wondering if you've maybe seen the rest of his face..."          The man backed into the corner. "I ain't done nothing, Mister! Please! Get that thing outta my house!"          "Your house?" Mary looked around. There was a black iron stove, a cot, a tinderbox, and shotguns in the far corner. "Pretty sweet setta 'commodations you got for ye'self here." Mary pulled at his belt and slapped his belly.          "Who... are you?" the man asked meekly.          "Murdered guy collector from New York. I have this museum, you see..."          The man boggled.          "Go ahead," said Mary, "ask another. I've got a million of 'em."          The man dropped his frying pan and lunged for a shotgun. He aimed it at Mary's chest. "I oughta," he said, stammering and cocking the gun, "I oughta blow a hole right clean on through you, Mister."          "I reckon I'd enjoy that, pardner."          "Mary, cut it out!" the hat said, frightening the man into dropping his shotgun and blowing out a window. He was all white and shivering with fear. "All the things of the body are as a river and the things of the soul a dream; life is a war and fame after death forgetfulness." - Marcus Aurelius          "Look," said Mary, slapping him on the back. "I gotta go wake up the entire town and raise hell, will you look after my friend here?" He gestured back at the body. "He doesn't eat much and if he tries to make off with any of your pretty stuff here, he's pretty easy to subdue." He looked down at the body to demonstrate. "You know, just show him a good time. But don't you take any shit from him, you hear? You got that? If he steps out of line, you do what you have to do to knock him back in.          The man shuddered and nodded.          Mary looked down again. "You hear that, Stan? If I catch you trying on this nice man's clothes like last time, believe me I'll kill ya twice as worse!"          He borrowed a tin pot and a spoon and excused himself. The man sat there regarding the ghastly disfigured body in cold silence. Cold silence until, of course, the screaming began.