Captain Space Bunny

So I'm writing a new story - one of those stories that presents itself to you in a flash of brilliance and makes you jump up and go running for a pen. Actually in this case it was a character who presented himself to me. A character the likes of which I have never written before.

I was looking at the Open Calls page on Dreamspinner's website and found a request for stories for a new anthology called 'Making Contact'. As you might expect with that title, the anthology is space themed:

Give us galaxy soldiers, space pirates, traveling aliens, intrepid explorers, and more.

Somehow, reading this, my back-brain did a little left turn and I found myself imagining, not macho space pirates or a muscle-bound galaxy soldier, but someone a little more vulnerable. Someone whose past is a little darker.

We're always reading stories and seeing films about genetically modified super soldiers, but in a future where cloning and genetic manipulation become common-place, worse things are bound to happen. Someone's going to start using the technology to create people - pets - to order. I could see a picture in my head of one of these tragic people, created to be hurt and used by others, brought up to belong to the last people in the universe who should ever be responsible for another person.

And thus Captain Space Bunny was born.

That's not his name, by the way. It's just the way I think of him. Captain Space Bunny is a human who was created, was genetically modified, to be someone's idea of a perfect sex slave. He's tiny and fragile looking, with ivory skin and pink hair and massive pink eyes. He also has bunny ears and a tail. He was made to be extremely strong and have accelerated healing so that if his owner got a bit carried away, he wouldn't be permanently broken (wouldn't want to throw that much money away, after all). Captain Space Bunny spent his 'childhood' moving between a lab where he was treated like a science project and a brothel where his owner did unspeakable things to him.

And then one day he managed to escape. He got out, got away from his owner and creators and found freedom. He taught himself how to act like a normal person and get on in the world, found a job on a ship, worked his way up. He taught himself to fight and use his strength. He cultivated a tough, cocky, Johnny Depp persona. Eventually he got his own ship. But at the end of the day, no matter how strong and capable he is, he's still pink and white and cute, with bunny ears and tail. He still has to deal with the way that people react to that, and the fact that anyone who looks at him can probably guess why he was created and what his past involves.

How could a person like that ever manage to fall in love? How would they ever learn to trust someone - even if someone was able to see past their sex-bunny exterior to the damaged soul inside? That was the story I wanted to write.

The problem with flashes of brilliance like this is that they often fall apart when you start work on the hard graft. Forcing your own, purely intuitive understanding of a character onto the page, making that character jump through hoops in your story, can rob them of their magic. That's what I'm struggling with at the moment. But I'm desperate to give my little space bunny his chance at love. Lord knows he deserves it.

The other problem is that I don't think I'm going to manage to bring the story in under the word limit for the anthology. So I'll just have to hope that someone will want to publish it as a novella. But in any case, I can't stop now. Captain Space Bunny has things to do.