Filed by Howard Anxo (against my will)
The following account is noncanonical. None of what you are about to read occurred in real life, in Valeroso County, or anywhere under the jurisdiction of sanity. There is no legendary contraband T-shirt called The Maltese Bunny. Rusty does not own a trenchcoat. Jake is not — and has never been — a noir-era crime lord.
Jake insisted this be shared “because history demands it.”
Please treat it accordingly.— H. Anxo
THE MALTESE BUNNY
A Valeroso Noir in One Hopless Act
They say every mystery starts with a dame, a crime, or something valuable enough to get good people doing stupid things. Mine started with a PTA mom holding contraband cotton.
The night was hotter than a downed server rack. Desert wind scraping over asphalt. The kind of air that made honest men lie and liars give motivational speeches.
That’s when she walked into my office.
PTA President Veronica Mendez. Clipboard under one arm. Justice under the other.
She slapped a plastic evidence bag on my desk. Inside it: A single T-shirt.
Black. Smooth. High-quality print that shimmered like danger in low light.
On the front, emblazoned in gold foil:
THE MALTESE BUNNY One Hopper to Rule Them All
I blinked.
“No,” I said. “Absolutely not.”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s real. It’s everywhere. And it’s spreading.”
SCENE I — A BUNNY WORTH KILLING FOR (FIGURATIVELY)
“You know what this means?” she whispered.
I sighed. I knew exactly what it meant.
A legendary piece of outlaw merch. Rumored to exist. Whispered about in hushed tones at school pickup. Said to be the holy grail of bunny apparel — a one-run, hand-pressed Jake creation before he realized screen printing could be monetized.
Collectors would trade juice boxes, Halloween stickers, possibly their siblings for it.
“Why come to me?” I asked.
“Because the Commissioner wants answers,” she said. “And the PTA wants justice.”
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“Jake,” I said.
“Yes,” she confirmed. “Jake.”
SCENE II — DOWN IN THE UNDERGROUND (BEHIND THE VCIM SHED)
I found Rusty first. Trenchcoat. Fedora. Like a Roomba auditioning for a reboot of The Untouchables.
He beeped twice in grayscale.
“Talk,” I said.
Three beeps. A pause. A dramatic swivel.
Meaningless. But atmospheric.
He rolled away into the shadows like he had a meeting with destiny or a stuck bearing.
SCENE III — THE CRIME SCENE
The school parking lot. Night. Silence thick as expired toner.
Kids had marked the pavement with chalk outlines of Hoppers. Tributes to fallen juice boxes. Signs of a culture adapting too quickly for corporate comfort.
I found a PTA tipster trembling in the glow of a flickering sodium lamp.
“Who has The Maltese Bunny?” I asked.
She swallowed.
“They say,” she whispered, “only one person has ever held the original. The man who printed it. The legend. The outlaw.”
Of course.
Jake.
SCENE IV — ENTER THE KINGPIN
I caught him down by the charging shed. Streetlamp beams carving long shadows across crates labeled:
ABSOLUTELY NOT MERCHDO NOT INSPECT
He looked up as I approached, smile bright as unlicensed intellectual property.
“Howard,” he said. “You here for The Maltese Bunny?”
“There is no Maltese Bunny,” I said.
He smirked.
“Isn’t that what they want you to think?”
He reached under the tailgate. Pulled out a wrapped parcel like it was contraband diamonds.
Inside: Another shirt.
Daisy, radiant in silver foil. Rusty silhouetted like a noir antihero. Clunker looming in the background like a veteran hitman with a squeaky joint.
Under them, in calligraphic script:
In Hoppers We Trust
I stared at him.
“This isn’t The Maltese Bunny,” I said.
“No,” Jake admitted. “This is just merch. The Maltese Bunny is a symbol.”
“A symbol of what?” I demanded.
He spread his arms broadly.
“Hope.”
“No.”
“Community.”
“No.”
“Brand potential.”
“Jake.”
He lowered his voice to a whisper.
“A legend must stay scarce, Howard. Otherwise, it’s just a shirt.”
SCENE V — THE GREAT REVEAL
“Jake,” I said, “the PTA thinks there’s a black market of bunny merch corrupting the youth.”
“There is,” he said proudly.
I pinched the bridge of my nose.
“And they think you created a priceless artifact called the Maltese Bunny.”
He grinned.
“I did.”
“No,” I said slowly, “you didn’t.”
He paused.
“…I might have?”
“What does that mean?”
“Well,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck, “I printed a batch of early prototypes. One of them came out weird — gold foil didn’t stick right, the bunny looked mysterious, the screen warped—”
“And?”
“And I thought it looked cool, so I gave it to a kid during Fall Fest.”
“And?”
“And now it’s the rarest shirt in the county.”
“And?”
“And apparently it’s worth three packs of Pokémon cards and a guaranteed turn on the swings.”
I sighed.
“So the Maltese Bunny is just a misprint.”
He nodded proudly.
“A legendary misprint.”
SCENE VI — CLOSING THE CASE
I returned to the PTA.
“Here’s your answer,” I said. “It’s not a crime ring. It’s Jake being Jake.”
Veronica stared.
“That’s somehow worse.”
“It usually is.”
She left with the grim acceptance of a woman who knows her children’s cultural fate was sealed the moment Rusty first rolled onto school grounds.
The above narrative is noncanonical. There is no Maltese Bunny T-shirt.No noir mystery.No informants in trenchcoats.Jake does not run a merch syndicate.And PTA mothers are not part of a shadow economy.
What actually happened: A single misprinted bunny shirt caused a minor popularity spike among fourth-graders. A parent asked where it came from. Jake admitted to experimenting with metallic inks.
I confiscated the screen. Problem solved.
The rest of this story is Jake’s attempt to elevate himself from “guy who printed the shirts” to “folk legend.”
— H. Anxo
