Every year, without fail, the Sausage Bunny came at dawn.
No one ever saw it arrive. Not properly. There were always stories, of course. Someone’s cousin who woke early and caught a glimpse of it moving between hedges, or a shadow crossing the kitchen floor where no shadow should be. But nothing clear. Nothing you could point to and say, there it is.
Only the evidence remained.
Small wicker baskets, left neatly in gardens and by doorsteps. Inside, rows of sausages. Perfectly formed. Still warm.
Children were told not to question it. “It’s just what happens,” parents would say, with a smile that never quite settled naturally on their faces. “Eat them before they go cold.”
And they did. Of course they did.
The sausages were… good. Better than good. Rich, comforting, with a flavour that felt strangely personal, as if it knew something about you. As if it had been prepared for you, specifically.
No one could ever quite describe the taste afterwards. Only that nothing else compared.
There were small traditions around it. You had to say thank you before the first bite. You had to finish every piece. And under no circumstances were you to ask where they came from.
Most people didn’t.
A few did, when they were young. But the answers never came in words. Only in looks. Long, quiet looks from adults who seemed, for a moment, to be remembering something they wished they couldn’t.
By the time those children grew older, they stopped asking too.
It was easier that way.
In some houses, if you stayed awake long enough, you might hear it. Not footsteps, exactly. More like a soft dragging sound, followed by a wet, rhythmic movement. And sometimes, though this was rarer, a low, satisfied breathing.
Those who heard it would pull their covers tighter and pretend they hadn’t.
Because if you acknowledged it, even silently, there was always the fear that it might realise you were awake.
And then it might not leave the basket outside.
It might come inside instead.