The Fable of the Hare
A Feast Tale for Famine Times
Gothic Horror Folkloric Fantasy Literary Speculative Fiction

Heather Caldwell was raised to believe in craft over miracles. A trained magician—on the stage, not in secret temples or hidden groves—she knew the difference between a trick and a spell. Now she has an opportunity few get, a chance to learn at a mysterious institute in a shuttered asylum in Central New York. The building had been many things: a poorhouse, a clinic, a tuberculosis ward. Now, with the name changed and the wallpaper decaying under layers of theater posters, it called itself the Home for Old Magicians.

There is no brochure. No sign-up sheet. When you arrive, you stay.

Heather says she’s there to study. The staff call her Doctor Mirage and put her on the schedule. Her on-again-off-again stage partner visits when he can, until no one says his name and no one remembers his act.

Except the hares.

Weird and ever-present snowshoe hares—white all year, even in summer. The last remnants of a Catskills breed bred for stage work, docility and a year-round light coat. They don’t run. They freeze. They watch.

The hares remember things the mirrors won’t say aloud. And some of them remember being men.

As Heather tends the garden, walks the graveyard, and performs for an audience that never blinks, she begins to understand the rules of the Home. There is no outside. Only stages. Every room is a trap. Every performance leaves a mark. And magic—real magic—is not about belief. It’s about consent. Consequence. Containment.

When Joel returns, he looks right. Sounds right. Knows the act. But it’s not him. Not anymore. He has been rehearsed out of himself—each movement perfected, each beat locked in place like a trick with no exit. Heather knows him too well to be fooled. She also knows what happens when the audience doesn’t clap.

The Home feeds on stories. It hoards them. The worst ones end in transformation. The best ones end in understanding—which is nearly the same thing, if you live through it.

And now the hares are stirring.

The hares know when they are part of the trick. And what they want isn’t revenge.

It’s recursion.

The Fable of the Hare is a gothic horror fable about memory, performance, and the cost of being seen. Rooted in folkloric dread and theatrical inevitability, it is the fourth entry in the Feast Tales for Famine Times series—a collection of mythic punishments for modern crimes, where justice doesn’t arrive gently, and those who fail to learn are transformed.

For fans of Shirley Jackson, Angela Carter, and Peter Straub. For anyone who’s ever felt their story was being rewritten by someone offstage.

Let them watch.