The computer room hums with anticipation as Freddy hands Lorie a VHS tape labeled "12/13/94".
"Okay, first of all, why and how did you get this VHS?" Lorie asks.
Freddy explains, "This school was built on top of that restaurant where the Hare came from. He was a mascot for THUMPER'S PALACE with a system of strict rules. If anyone broke those rules, he was designed to stop them. But they rushed his design, and he became glitched."
He inserts the tape into the VCR.
The flickering footage reveals a nighttime break-in on December 13, 2001, at 11:32 PM. A thief enters the restaurant, texting someone about stealing valuables. He notices the Hare and turns on the power, hearing "Pop Goes the Weasel" playing.
Approaching the Hare, the thief reaches into its mouth to grab the voice box. Suddenly, the Hare's mouth clamps shut, crushing the thief's hand. In a horrifying motion, the Hare rips off the thief's hand.
The final moments show the Hare grabbing the thief's face as he screams, the footage glitching to static.
"Dear god..." Lorie whispers.
"When did you find this?" she asks.
"After we found Nomed."
"It killed him, didn't it?"
"They never found his body," Freddy responds.
Lorie's resolve hardens. "We've got to stop it."
"Where is it?" Freddy asks.
"The machines room."
They race out, determined to end the Hare's terror.
The bathroom's harsh fluorescent lights flicker, creating a strobe-like effect that makes reality feel fractured. Austin checks his watch, impatience growing. "Holden, seriously, the assembly's about to start!"
Inside the stall, Holden mumbles, "Give me one minute."
The first flicker catches Austin's eye - a metallic blur, rabbit-shaped, gone in an instant. "What the?"
Another flicker. Longer. More deliberate.
The Hare materializes, its mechanical body a nightmare of precision and cold calculation. Inches from Austin's face, its eyes reflect nothing - no mercy, no hesitation.
"What the heck do ya want?" Austin's voice trembles.
In one fluid motion, the Hare produces a screwdriver. Its arm moves with inhuman speed - a precise, surgical strike. The tool punctures Austin's neck, not just piercing but twisting. Arterial blood erupts in a crimson spray, painting the white tiles in a Jackson Pollock of violence.
Austin gurgles, blood bubbling from his mouth. The screwdriver remains embedded in his neck, vibrating from the force of the strike.
The Hare kicks him with calculated force. Austin's body crashes into the bathroom stall, splintering the cheap metal door. Bones crack audibly - ribs fragmenting like glass.
Holden remains oblivious, headphones sealing him in his own world.
The Hare approaches Austin's twitching form. Its hand closes around his throat, mechanical fingers crushing with horrifying precision. Cartilage in Austin's windpipe collapses under the pressure. His eyes bulge, blood vessels bursting into deep crimson beneath the skin.
"Stop... please?" Austin's plea comes as a wheezed whisper, more blood spraying with each attempted word.
The Hare's head tilts - a moment of cold assessment. Then its hands move. One grips Austin's head. The other his shoulder. A sudden, violent twist.
A sound like wet celery being torn apart. Austin's neck snaps with surgical precision. His body goes limp, sliding down the blood-slicked wall, leaving a grotesque trail of gore.
Holden finally notices the silence. "Austin?" He removes his headphones.
The bathroom feels wrong. Too quiet. Too still.
Mechanical feet appear beneath the stall door. A shadow that moves with predatory intent.
"Oh my lord," Holden whispers.
The Hare's head rises. Metal gleams. Eyes lock onto Holden - no emotion, just programmed destruction.
"What do you want?!" Holden screams.
Claws extend - razor-sharp, designed for maximum damage. They catch the light, promising pain.
A spray of arterial blood splatters the wall - bright, shocking red against institutional white tiles.
---
The fluorescent lights of the high school hallway cast a harsh, clinical glow as Lorie strode purposefully, her footsteps echoing against the linoleum floor. Freddy fell into step beside her, his eyes questioning.
"I gotta do a speech," Lorie said, her voice tight with a mixture of anticipation and anxiety.
"What do you want me to do?" Freddy asked, always ready to help.
Lorie reached into her pocket and pulled out a small device - the shocker. She pressed it into Freddy's hand, her fingers lingering for just a moment. "Find it," she instructed, her eyes hard with determination. "And use this."
A ghost of a smile crossed her lips. "Good luck."
Freddy matched her smile. "You too."
As he ran off, Lorie whispered something under her breath - a prayer, perhaps. "Que Dios te proteja." May God protect you.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Across the school, Mrs. Churchwell was a whirlwind of administrative frustration. She cornered Mr. King, her voice sharp and demanding. "Where is Lorie!?"
Mr. King spread his hands helplessly. "I don't know?"
"Find her!" Mrs. Churchwell commanded, and Mr. King scurried away like a frightened mouse.
She muttered to herself, "Great, we are 10 minutes behind schedule."
Unnoticed, a hare watched her from the shadows - its eyes unnervingly intelligent, unnervingly still.
In the quiet moments before the assembly, Mrs. Churchwell stood behind the heavy velvet curtains, her phone pressed urgently to her ear. "John, NO!" The conversation was heated, tense.
"Listen, I'm not stopping the assembly!" she hissed. "John, you tell your group to go—"
The line went dead.
The lights flickered - a strange, unnatural pulse that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. When she turned, the hare was there, its head tilted at an impossible angle.
"What is the meaning of this?" she demanded.
The hare lunged.
The auditorium hummed with nervous energy. Students and faculty shifted in their seats, waiting. The principal stepped to the microphone, his voice cutting through the murmur.
"Quiet, please. The assembly is about to start."
In the hallway, Freddy moved with purpose, searching. A door stood slightly ajar - an invitation, or a trap? He pushed it open, the hinges groaning softly.
"What is that smell?" he muttered.
He flipped on the light switch.
A bloody hand flashed into view.
"Oh my gosh!" Freddy's scream was cut short.
Back in the auditorium, the principal's voice droned on. "Now, I know it's been around 5 years since the passing of Mark Wodahs, but it's fresh in our minds."
Lorie Wodahs walked onto the stage, met with polite applause. She took the microphone, her hand trembling almost imperceptibly.
"Now, Jos—"
But something was wrong. Very wrong.
---
Freddy backed out of the room, his breath ragged. Suddenly, he froze. The hare stood behind him - a nightmarish silhouette that seemed to materialize from the shadows themselves.
The world went black.
When light returned, Lorie was on stage, her voice trembling with emotion. "I loved him. He was a very bright mind, and—"
The lights began to flicker - a malevolent dance of illumination and darkness.
"Oh no..." Lorie's words caught in her throat. "It's here."
The curtains parted like a grotesque theatrical reveal. Mrs. Churchwell stumbled forward, a ruler protruding from her back. She fell face-first, revealing the instrument of her destruction.
Screams erupted from the audience.
The hare walked out, deliberately, methodically.
The principal, still clinging to some semblance of normalcy, called out, "Oh, very funny. It's fake!"
He approached the hare, reaching out to remove what he believed was a costume. "Oh yeah, watch. I know that's you, Robert."
His hand grabbed the hare's head. It didn't budge.
"What?"
The hare's claws rose.
Blood splashed across Lorie's face and she fainted.
Tied to a chair, Lorie found herself in a nightmare beyond comprehension. Freddy and Rico were similarly restrained, the auditorium now a chamber of unspeakable terror.
The hare moved with calculated precision, grabbing an ax from the floor. It began to tape the ax to its head, then pointed alternately at Rico and Freddy.
"Do you want me to choose?" Lorie's voice broke.
A nod.
"I... I don't know!"
Freddy, resourceful even in terror, had already worked his hands free. But he remained still, a calculated decision in the face of certain death.
The hare approached Rico first, the ax pressed against the back of his neck. Rico's pleas dissolved into a desperate "Nooo! Please!"
A shrug. A shift. The ax now hovering over Freddy.
Lorie's scream was pure anguish. "NO!"
But Freddy was faster. He moved, dodged, ripped away his restraints. The ax embedded itself in the chair where he had just been seated.
"You're not getting me that easy," Freddy taunted, his bravado a shield against terror.
The battle was visceral, primal. Chair against ax. Weapon against survival. When Freddy wrestled the ax free, it seemed like a moment of triumph.
"Come on! Smile for me!" he shouted, swinging the ax at the hare's head.
The creature fell.
But nothing was truly over.
Rico had vanished. Freddy and Lorie believed, for one brief, hope-filled moment, that they might survive.
Then the hare jumped back.
And The ax found Freddy's back with surgical precision. Once. Twice. Four times.
Blood poured from Freddy's mouth, a crimson testament to his final moments.
Lorie's world shattered. "WHY!"
The darkness consumed everything for freddy.
---
The auditorium had transformed into a nightmare landscape of shadows and flickering light. Each breath Lorie took felt like it might be her last, the silence broken only by the electronic whine of her phone's flashlight and the ragged rhythm of her own terror.
Memories crashed through her consciousness like waves. Mark. Always Mark.
Their childhood had been a complicated dance of love and violence. Siblings who understood each other too deeply, who saw the darkness that lived between familial bonds. Mark had always been different - brilliant, unpredictable, with a mind that worked in ways no one else could comprehend.
A child's laughter echoed - soft, haunting, impossibly close. But this was no innocent sound. It carried the weight of memory, of something fundamental and broken.
"Mark?" The name escaped her lips like a desperate prayer, a plea to a ghost she both loved and feared.
"Lorie, here!" The voice was familiar, a spectral soundtrack to her mounting horror.
She spun, frantic. Left. Right. The hare moved just beyond the light's reach, a phantom sliding between reality and nightmare. Each movement was calculated, predatory. Not random. Not accidental.
This was personal.
"Lorie, behind you."
She turned. Nothing.
But the hare was there, always there. A manifestation of something deeper than mere physical threat. A memory given murderous form.
When it lunged, it was a blur of motion - a jump-scare made flesh, bringing with it the promise of unspeakable violence. But Lorie was no longer the scared little sister. She was a survivor.
Mark's voice continued, a spectral soundtrack to their brutal dance. "Let's finish this, LIEBRE."
The word hung in the air - a challenge, a memory, a threat.
The hare grabbed a sword. Its movements were too precise, too intentional to be random. This was choreography. This was ritual.
Lorie, armed with an ax, felt a strange sense of déjà vu. Memories of childhood struggles with Mark bled into this moment of mortal combat. They had always fought. Always tested each other's limits.
Their battle was visceral. More than physical. Each strike carried the weight of years of unresolved sibling tension, of psychological warfare that predated this moment.
Sword against ax. Block. Strike. Kick.
"Got you," Lorie snarled when she severed the hare's hand. A surgical strike. Precise. Calculated.
The creature's response was beyond human comprehension. It jammed the sword into its own bleeding stump - a display of inhuman determination that spoke of something engineered, something created beyond natural limitations.
"Rip and tear!" Mark's spectral voice encouraged.
Lorie slammed the ax into the hare's mouth. "Shut it!"
But this was no ordinary opponent. This was something Mark had created. Something that carried his essence, his twisted genius.
A sword found her leg. She fell against the wall, bleeding, fighting. But not defeated.
The hare wasn't flesh. It was a nightmare of circuitry and synthetic muscle, Mark's ultimate creation. Each movement was a precise calculation, servos and hydraulics driving inhuman precision. When Lorie's ax struck, sparks flew alongside oil
Its sword moved with algorithmic perfection, each slice mathematically calculated for maximum damage. But Lorie had grown up with Mark. She understood his mentally. She understood his mind.
When she severed its hand, exposed wiring sprayed like arterial blood. Electrical current arced between torn connections. The robotic limb twitched, fingers opening and closing in a grotesque mechanical seizure.
The hare's response was pure Mark Wodahs - "Rip and tear!" Mark's voice - now clearly synthesized - echoed through hidden speakers.
"SHUT IT!" Lorie slammed the ax into its mouth, breaking through layers of reinforced synthetic skin, revealing a nightmare of precision-engineered teeth and razor-sharp internal mechanisms. hydraulic fluid erupted like arterial spray. Circuits sparked
"Sorry bunny," Lorie growled, "it's time for your spring break!"
The Hare fell backwards onto the stage, laying there as the lights dimmed in its eyes...
"Nighty night."
When Rico arrived, the aftermath was beyond carnage.
"Is it dead?" Rico asked.
Lorie looked at Freddy's body. At the hare's remains. At the blood-soaked stage covered in mechanical debris.
"Is it over?"
Police sirens approached - a distant promise of safety that felt hollow.
"It's over," Rico said.
But neither of them believed it.
Because machines don't die. They wait. They plan. They remember.
