Gestation

     I have been divorced for almost a year now.  Marrying in my thirties to a woman I had dated for four years felt like a sure-fire way of ensuring lifelong happiness.  Things have a way of escaping you.  No one can calculate the partnership’s strains for decades, let alone years, in advance.  And you never expect those minor “tics” to accumulate, highlighting the larger grievances.  Those little grudges and petty annoyances have a way of spiraling out of control, forming into cancerous resentments that spill into your day-to-day interactions with the one you love.  Which, in turn, further speeds that tumbling spiral.  Somehow, despite all that, Dianna got pregnant, and a spark of excitement and anticipation seemed to eclipse all those enriching spites.  

     Nine months of rekindled tolerance of one another almost felt like lost love, a love I realized I missed.  There was certainly love for the life forming within my spouse, which remained unshaken as optimism and joy for my impending fatherhood grew within me.  I found myself fantasizing about a life warm with a near-endless source of, not just contentment, but happiness.  The lifelong happiness I was promised when I took those vows.  

     My wife gave birth to a stillborn at the end of those nine dreamy months.  Shock brutally wracked those opiodic fantasies.  Numbed by the desecration, I was useless as my spouse screamed for an explanation from the doctors.  We drove home after a day or two at the hospital, silence piercing my ears the whole way home.  She wept more than I ever could.  Red-eyed and miserable, I attempted to grieve with her.  But what comfort I offered was cold and hollow to her.  The old, commonplace spites and annoyances were now fuel for a wildfire that had exploded through our lives.  They brought out a demon in me. 

     I never thought I could be so cruel, until, at our most vulnerable and miserable, I found I was eager to leap for her throat.  I used our collective grief as a weapon while constructing walls around my sorrow.  I’m able to admit that much.  And she deemed this unforgivable. 

     Months of solitary mourning and hostility led to the predetermined divorce papers manifesting in the blur of misery I was consumed by.  The proceedings were simple and quiet, to my recollection, neither of us willing to pretend we had the energy to scrape together what cinders of love remained.  

     A timeless blur of self-indulgence slogged by, the haze of distress intensified by alcohol.  One of those “tics” she saw as an “issue” during the proceedings.  Eventually, I hit the bottom.  Desperate for some form of stability and normality, I decided to make a change.  Late last October, I called my Mom.  I told her I needed to be home for a bit.  That I needed the familiarity and the embrace of an environment I could understand.  

      With the grace of a scolded dog, I returned to my parents’ home, dragging a suitcase inside the warm midwestern cottage.  My Mother gave understanding hugs.  Dad patted my arm, an awkward attempt at affection.  With solemn gratitude, I made my way to the guest room, where I proceeded to sleep for the rest of that early evening.  I could tell Mom wanted to keep an eye on me for those first weeks. Make sure I wasn’t abusing myself.  This strained tension in the house soon melted into a semblance of comfort.  This gave them the freedom to come and go from the house as they needed, unburdened by parental worry.  

     Visiting had always been a yearly excursion for me, but living at home, forming a bastardized childhood dynamic with my parents again, brought a bizarre sense of stability I was so desperate for.  At last, I had regained equilibrium.  However, a pit still gaped from within me, leaking its melancholic toxins into my mind.

Until I found it that early November morning.

     It was during one of my walks along my family’s extensive property line, trudging through the snow, when I stumbled upon a scattered patch of trees.  Thin, wispy young oaks, splayed in the middle of a field blanketed in snowfall.  When you grow up in the middle of nowhere, you tend to have an accurate mapping of the nowhere you tread most of your early life.  To be fair, I hadn’t visited home in months, but I definitely would have noticed saplings during my last hike across the property.  

     I stood there, examining the youthful intruders, when I noticed their layout.  A triangle, the three petite trees formed a triangle.  In the center was the youngest of them, vaguely bigger than a sapling, sprouting with three withering green leaves.  A parental instinct itched into my limbs as I stood over it; winter had descrated its chance at life.  Kneeling, I gently scraped the snow from around it.  I was shocked to find not soil, but thick sand cradling the sapling’s roots.  Removing my gloves, I prodded the loose foundation to discover the winter cold was not enough to harden it.  Expecting resistance, I was further astounded as my fingers effortlessly slid into the sand.  

     Adjusting my position, I dug both hands like spades beneath the sapling, determined to rescue it from its bizarre home.  Groping at thin roots for leverage, I was stunted as my finger made contact with a solid, smooth surface.  Jolting my hands out of the shifting sands, I stared, waiting for some woodland creature to come scurrying out from below.  Nothing came.  Daring further exploration, I plunged my hands back in, feeling along the abstract structure I felt beneath the sapling’s roots.  

     Its shape was still elusive, round in some spots, and rigid in others.  This mysterious tomb was now my sole focus.  With delicate maneuvering, I attempted to remove the sapling from the sand.  A single root seemed intertwined with its strange bedfellow.  I tore the girthy ligament from out its unknown anchor with a snap and placed the sapling against one of its older brothers.  Heaving and wrestling, I grunted over the pit as I worked the item out.  

     A final tug revealed it.  It was a skull.  Empty sockets stared at my shocked face.  Disgust surged through me as I reflexively hurled the decaying cranium.  With a hollow thud, it smacked against the bark of the tree directly in front of me.  

     It lay on a pillow of snow, facing me.  The sun shone its lazy rays through the cloudy sky upon it.  The skull had a tinge of an earthy brown hue, which highlighted the alien crimson around its single gaping nostril hole.  But what drew my attention further was the size of the cranium.  It was almost bulging, ballooning bone like a pregnant woman’s abdomen. I crawled over to it, brushing off the snow and sand to better examine it.  

     Kneeling, I dared my palm over it.  More surprises piled onto me as I felt a warmth emanating from the skeletal remains.  Cupping the skull in both hands, I lifted it from the snowy embankment, which only confirmed the source of the heat.  Rolling it from hand to hand, I noticed the abnormal weight distribution.  The cranium had a disproportionate tonnage, causing me to fumble with it.  

     I gave the skull a gentle shake, like it was a magic eight-ball eager to provide a decisive answer.  All I received was a sickening slosh splashing from inside the cranium.  Liquid.  There was liquid inside.  I gave it another soft cycle.  My palm felt the faintest contact. 

Something had pressed against the inner skeletal wall.  

     I quickly spun its face, eager to examine its eye sockets for an explanation of how the liquid remained inside.  The inner chambers of each hole were walled.  No eyes had ever sprouted from this head, I knew that for certain.  The abnormalities, I cannot lie, were alluring.  A discovery was shaking my life’s mundane, miserable, normality.  The nowhere I had lived in all my childhood had gifted me a something from a somewhere.  Foreign and puzzling.  Curiosity drove me to cradle the skull in my jacket as I trudged home.  

     With each step, I felt its temperature radiate through me, expanding and contracting, like a pulse.  As I jostled through the snow, that unknown contained within swished with the incubating liquid.  My eagerness to examine it swayed as well.  Although a pestering anxiety splashed and waned like ocean waves on the shores of my excitement.  

     It was not enough to halt me in the end.  I entered my parents’ garage and delicately placed my findings onto the workbench.  Turning on a space heater beside it, I warmed myself as I stared at the archaic mass.  With a click, the overhead light illuminated the skull, its sickly hue coated in blotches of melting snow and clots of sand.  Dragging a damp towel over it, I bathed it—each swipe of my hand confirming the movement from within.  

     Now clean, I soaked in the sight.  The near-bursting cranium tilted the hollow face upward toward the swaying lightbulb.  As I stared, admiring the grotesque treasure, I saw it shake.  The subtlety would have been missed if I hadn’t placed it down.  Tiny, a minor shift in position.  A kick from within.  Certainty.  My breath caught as I stood there witnessing a wonder I had no explanation for.  Something was gestating inside the pregnant skull.  

     A tremor ran through me as another soft kick jostled the decaying incubator.  Hesitantly, I reached out and gave it a poke, a childish movement reciprocated with a matching wiggle.  Then another.  And another.  Until a sudden crackle followed that wiggle.  I gazed slack-jawed as the engorged cranium shifted and rustled, while an internal pressure seemed to be growing.  Finally, a fracture erupted across the skeletal surface, and bone plates separated from one another.  

     My eyes widened.  My heart beat beyond count, as I saw the red, bloody tissue from within the brain cavity, pressing apart the already expansive confines.  The bone remained attached to the sinew, which now hung firm from its bone bason.  Cold sweat was soaking through my coat, while I examined the alien womb splilling its bile across the workbench.  I saw clearly the pulsing uterus, with what few fragments of protection remained clinging to it.  Its contents were growing.  

     A strange impulse surged in me.  I ran to the house’s entry, locked it, and then ran over to pull down the garage door.  The glum light of the dimming bulb was the only source of light in the room.  I stood a distance away from the bench, catching my breath.  The delicate pulse of the exposed uterus was guttural and desperate, like the dying heartbeat of a wounded animal.  With each quake, its contents seemed to cry out.  Desperate for life.  Pleading for it.  Its incubation soon to end, but not soon enough.  Its gestation had caused it to break through its only source of protection.  Fragility and exposure were now threatening it.  

     This patheticness stung me. As I clung to the handle of the garage door, I could identify why I had acted.  I had saved it and brought it to shelter at the pinnacle of its cycle.  It needed me.  I knew my parents could not see this for what it was—an immaculate conception.  

     A paternal instinct I thought dead and buried had driven me to defend and hide this bizarre miracle.  I approached that innocent vessel, throat stinging with emotions I had long suppressed.  I placed my prodding palm over the soft, sticky tissue.  

I felt him kick.  Tears burned down my still frozen face, as I craddled the fractured womb in my hands.  

     Removing my coat, I swaddled it in my arms.  Peaking into the house, I confirmed my parents’ absence before trotting quickly up the stairwell to the guest room.  Locking the door behind me, I pulled several pillows from my bed, creating a nest in the corner of the room beside the heater.  Wrapping it in a blanket, I placed the pregnant skull into its new home.  I admired my work from the seat of the bedframe, watching in wonder at the life forming in front of my eyes.  

     Whatever was growing in there was a gift.  A karmaic debt being paid off.  What I was due.  This hope seeped into my brain like a collection of syringes, numbing a bellowing voice that was screaming at its core.  A knot of anxiety and disgust that cried out in collective warning.  I would not let it ruin this, this offering.  A second chance.  A second chance at that elusive happiness I was owed.

     I hid it there in my corner as the weeks went by.  I would sit there watching it pulse for hours, those opiodic fantasies returning in waves of ecstasy.  My parents gave little notice to my absence most of the day; they were happy to see me, presumably, sober.  It was also helpful that my mood had improved.  The few afternoons and evenings when I was seen in the kitchen, they couldn’t help but notice my beaming.  What they perceived as rejuvenated sobriety, I recognized as paternal excitement.  

An excitement that drove me to text my ex-wife.  

     I wanted to share this emotional surge, a spike of hope-laced adrenaline.  I stared at my phone for over an hour, unable to formulate the perfect explanation that would be both intriguing and believable without coming across as insane.  Finally, I decided on simply asking her to visit my parents’ place to “get closure.”  Pacing in the guest room, I waited for her response, which came shortly after:

 “Ok.  I am on a work trip for the next month.  I’ll come sometime in January if that works?”

A date was set.  I giddily planned the revelation of our new son for the rest of the night.  

     I expanded his nest as he continued maturing.  The womb was growing rapidly daily, and the entire cranium was now scattered into bits of bone clinging to the moist tissue.  Only the skull’s face, with its walled eye sockets and single nostril, remained intact.  

     I would spend sleepless nights examining the fetus within, growing and expanding, which allowed me to get clear glimpses of him whenever he pressed up against the uterine walls.  He was strong.  The way he shook that womb as he repositioned himself was incredible to witness. If only I could have seen his face.   Vibrant and warm.  I needed to see it.  I yearned to see it.  

     Too long have I been haunted by a cold face.  That lifeless face illuminated in the sickly emergency room lights, so still, tiny, and quaint despite having been robbed of a future it didn’t even get the chance to comprehend.  In my restless dreams, it is always looking down on me, its open eyes beaming that same dank hospital light onto me.  Skin sallow and grey, mouth agape yet motionless.  I can never breathe in those nightmares.  Just stand paralyzed and screaming a soundless scream.  

 Only allowed to awaken when that hollow face begins to wail for its mother.  

     I shook the image from my head as I watched my new son roll in his incubator, eager to meet his family.  

The time was coming.  My son was to be born soon, and Dianna would be visiting in a week.  My anticipation flooded as I indulged in those old opioidic fantasies I had missed so much.  

     I was eager to accept him, no matter how loud the muffled alarms in my head blared.  That fluttering panic was continuously present in me.  It seemed to gestate along with my baby.  My temper flared whenever it seeped into my fantasies, ruining the happiness I KNEW was coming to me.  I just knew it was.  

    Then, three days before my wife was to visit, I woke to find the womb still.  Jumping out of bed, I ran over to its nest to examine it.  It was running cold, its pulse marginal and weak.  Horror tore through me.  I ripped all the blankets from my bed, swaddling it in multiple layers.  I held it to my chest, begging my body heat to be enough to revive its warmth.  

     Rocking it, minutes passed, and no signs of hope emerged.  It only got colder.  The moist, fleshy uterus stained my shirt with bile and mucus as I desperately examined it for the source of withering.  The skull’s face stared at me as I scanned it, before I poked a prodding finger into the gaping nostril.  A slimy rope greeted my touch.  Grappling it with the two fingers I could fit, I pulled it, revealing a damp umbilical cord.  

     The tip was stained with crusted blood and viscera, severed from whatever biome brought him to be—brought him into my life.  My mind raced, confusion and desperation to save the life I was promised stunning me.  For well over a week, my son had been growing rapidly, so why now was he suffering?  What changed since I discovered him?  Retracing my steps of the last weeks, the only cause I could nail down was me.  I was what was suffocating this miracle.  

     I had torn a source of nutrients from it.  The image of that limp sapling’s thick root I had ripped from the pit of sand flashed into my head.  A quivering pulse in my arms brought my attention back to him.  He was getting colder, life ebbing away by the minute.  I trembled as the weight of my actions caved in on me.  I shot up off the floor, the womb clutched in my arms, and bolted for the door.  I ran out of the house, stopping quickly for my phone.  

    A field of snow slowed my pace, and a soft blizzard was just starting.  Shielding the skull in my arms, I trudged with heavy steps to the location of the three trees.  I could not feel the cold.  Only a bitterness burning inside me.  Not again.  

     I arrived winded at the triad of trees, and began sifting through the piling snow for the sapling I had separated from its skull.  First, I came into contact with the pit of sand.  Then, nearby, against one of its brothers, I found the nearly decayed sapling.  Its sad, small presence was highlighted by that elongated cord of a root.  The tip was still crusted with the life it once produced.  

      Pleadingly, I crammed the root into the skull’s nostril, begging for some form of connection to be enough.  Enough to sustain the obscured life within.  The dead plant lay there, its withered state mocking me as I pathetically tied the cords together with torn bits of blanket.  Rocking him in my arms, I waited for signs of revitalization.  

     None came.  The biting winter wind diminished the fading heartbeat of my boy, whose chamber’s temperature was dropping rapidly.  In frustration, I struck at the dead sapling.  Its lifeless, frozen limbs cracked under my fist, bits of wood pierced my knuckles.  The sharp pain pushed my fist away, and I saw a thick bit of shrapnel sticking from between my knuckles.  

    Through clenched teeth, I tore it from my hand, unclogging a soft stream of blood.  I cursed as tears accumulated in my eyes, watching as the crimson flowed down my forearm, before coating over the exposed womb.  My mind blared one thought, screaming over and over.  Not again, not again, not again, not again.  That cold, dead face resurfaced in my memory, like bile rising atop a river of scum.  Its beaming eyes weeping, wailing for its mother.  

     I hugged the uterus, its mucus membrane soaked with my blood.  Shaking, I prayed harder than I had ever done before, words choking my throat as I begged God to allow this second chance-  that I would do anything for this second chance.  Just, not again.  

     I pulled away from the pregnant skull to gaze upon the dying happiness that would once again elude me.  Only to be greeted with a strange glow emanating from within the womb.  It pulsed, softly, but notably stronger than before.  Its chilled interior was beginning to warm.  Unsure of what miracle had occurred, I noticed my spilled blood.

The blood that had coated the exterior of the uterus was being absorbed.  

     Like a living sponge, it hungrily sopped up my dwindling flow of liquid gore.  Another spark of hope.  Taking that same stick that had pierced my knuckle, I stabbed my palm.  Blood spilled freely as I held my hand over the skull.  The thirsty incubator absorbed it all.  With each splash across the sinewy flesh, his pulse steadied.  The throbbing uterus was regaining its composure.  I gasped in relief, tears stinging my eyes.  I had found my son a new source of sustenance.  

     The internal sirens I had been muffling for days suddenly burst through my euphoria.  How much more will IT need?  I choked the traitorous thought out.  As much as HE needs, was my answer.  

     I must have sat in that blizzard for most of the afternoon.  Lying there in a pile of blankets, I cradled the pregnant skull through the passing storm, bleeding all the while, feeding it.  With each splash of my vitals, his pulse returned, still faint, but there. I was light-headed by the time I had to wrap my hand up and staunch the bleeding.  The wind broke across my smiling face, content with the secret being revealed, the secret I needed to ensure my son’s birth.  

     The winter evening was teasing the horizon, and the snowfall remained heavy but tempered.  With unsteady legs, I trudged back home, the knee-deep snow exerting my energy.  I returned to an empty house, my parents having left for a family trip, leaving me to house-sit.  I gratefully tore off my boots and coat before crawling upstairs.  Barely making it to my bed, I slept deeply and dreamlessly.  Holding tight the pregnant skull under the thick blankets. 

     A text from my mother assured me that the rest of the week I would be alone, as they were going to be out of town visiting her relatives.  Thankful for the privacy, I would spend the following day feeding the womb.  

     Placing the uterus in the kitchen sink, I held my hand over it while it bled onto the sac of flesh protruding from the back of the skull.  I was rewarded with only hints of regeneration, as the uteruen wall weakly pulsed and glowed.  The petite sign of improvement, crushing my morale.  I was just barely enough to stabilize him.  He needed more than this to THRIVE.  He needed more than I could give.  

     The alarm in my head was ringing, unable to be ignored.  How much more will it take?  My mind was too shaken to respond this time.  Until my phone rang.  Until I saw my ex-wife calling.  Tomorrow.  She’ll be here tomorrow to see him.  A seed was planted in the bile of my heart in that moment, as I stared at the drip feed of my blood trickle onto the pregnant skull.  The question arose of my own accord: How much more will it take?  The response came before I answered her call: As much as he needs. 

     “Hello?” 

“Hi, it’s me, are you still free tomorrow?”  She asked.

“Yes, all day.  My parents won’t be here, but they give their love and apologies for missing your visit.”  

“Oh,” the line went quiet.  

“Something wrong?”  I followed up.

“So, we are going to be alone the whole time?”  I hesitancy laced her voice,  “I don’t know if I am comfortable with that.”  

     My plans quaked, a tinge of desperation erupted from me, “Well, yeah, but it’ll be a short visit I promise!  I don’t want to ambush you, only to talk things out for clarity’s sake.  Please.”  

Another long pause, “What even is there to talk about?” she responded, a sense of realization emanating from her, “We are divorced, and I don’t really see the point in hashing out a dead relationship.  I’m sorry, I just, I don’t see what good could come of it.”  

     A familiar rage burned in my chest.  How dare she act like the way things ended was anything but hurtful?  My lure may have had ulterior motives, but I did desire that clarity, confirmation on how she viewed me and the marriage as a whole.  I wanted her to say it with her own mouth, not just vaguely gesture at issues, all of which were fodder for the real reason.  The grave we both stood over.  

     Trying to remain composed, I replied through gritted teeth, “It’s been rough for me.  I just feel like I need this to move past it all.  Even if you FEEL as though we have ‘hashed’ it all out, it clearly wasn’t good enough for me.  I NEED clarity, stability, something to make this whole horrid situation seem less like a blur of vague slights and more like genuine disconnection between us, y’know?”  

     My tone was revealing.  Her defensiveness kicked in, “Wait, wait, I think you made it pretty clear how you felt about me when we broke off, both verbally and physically.  I needed YOU, yet there I was catering to your pathetic drunken self-indulgence, always crying about the happiness YOU were ‘owed’ and all the while spiting me, like I was some incubator that failed its primary directive!  You made me feel AWFUL, and I think we made that clear in the courtroom.”  She took a breath.  I was shaking as she continued with a softness in her voice, “We both lost something we desperately wanted.  Nothing can change that.  That hurt was made worse by your behavior, and I made that clear in the proceedings.  Just because you were drunk during them does not mean it did not happen.”

     My head hurt, my heart was pounding.  With great restraint, I asked again, “Please, just come see me tomorrow, there is something I need to show you.”  

“What?”

“Something that will help m- us, this whole mess, please, just promise you will come tomorrow.”

“…Ok… But only for lunch, I can’t stay long.”

“Thank you, yes, that’s fine, perfect even.  Ok, see you tomorrow then.  You remember how to get to my parents?”

     “…Yes.”  She replied.  With that, the call ended.  My pounding brain swam with emotions.  Anger, resentment.  An old familiar bitterness.  But, elevating above all of that, was jubilation.  She was coming.  She was to see my son.  My plan would go through.  No matter how loud the sirens in my mind got.    

     Night came.  Still restless from the surge of emotions, I spent the dark hours sitting with my son in the living room.  The roaring fireplace was the only source of light.  I sat in the armchair, admiring the pregnant skull sitting upon the coffee table in front of me.  Its red, mucus-coated uterine wall glistened in the flexing firelight.  The thin veins of the sack throbbed with each soft pulse and movement from within.  I smiled, knowing that each gentle jolt of the womb was my son dancing as he grew.  

     My scarred hand lay on the armchair, palm up, wrapped in a dishcloth now stained red.  An emptied bottle swayed in my free hand, liquid joy burned through my body, quieting the conscience that was pestering me about my duty to come.  What blood I could provide was not enough; I knew that for certain, as I stared at that womb, I solidified my plan to ensure my child’s birth.  

     Clouds receded in the sky, revealing the moon, which now shone through the small skyline of my parents’ living room.  I looked up at its face and smiled at the blessing the world was giving me.  It would allow me what I was promised.  Closing my eyes, I drifted into sleep, as those familiar opiodic fantasies danced in my mind’s eye.  

     But sleep betrayed me when it came.  A restless nightmare engulfed my bliss and consumed me whole.  That cold face returned, its wailing, shrill cry burned my ears, and its accusatory eyes gleamed with a vibrance that blinded me.  No longer was it crying for its mother.  Now it was mourning.  I turned away in horror and confusion at this new scream; my attempt at running was fruitless as I floated in space, unable to move in any direction.  I was being dragged down, anchored by something in the void that surrounded me.  

     The screech from the immense corpse was deafening, as I searched for what was weighing me down.  I stared down at my leg and choked on a scream.  Dianna was gripping my leg, her torso contorted as she stared up at me.  Her face was painted in pain and anguish, as its flesh twisted into a bloody spiral, mauling her features into a pulpy grime, stained with ever-flowing tears.  

     My gaze shifted down her spine, to discover the source of her torture.  A sphere of living meat had consumed up to her waist.  Like a slug, its maw inched up with each toothless chew, its raw red skin shimmering with each pulse upward.  A starving womb consuming its meal.  Bile trailed behind it, the digested remnants of Dianna.  She wailed in agony once again, as some poison continued to contort her face into a bloody socket, eyes now popped and leaking their pus into the streams of blood spurting from her crushing skull.  

I woke to the sound of that cold face hovering over me, screaming for its mother.  

    I choked for air as I gazed around the living room.  Cold sweat stained my clothes.  I collected myself while shivering in the armchair.  The lamp next to me had gone out, and the dying fire was the only source of heat in the room.  

     A poweroutage.  The howling wind confirmed the source, as snow plastered the living room windows.  Shivering, I leapt from the armchair to check on the still vulnerable womb.  The eyeless sockets glared at me with contempt.   The room’s dropping temperature had turned the healthy red flush of the uterus to a chilled pink.  A pathetic pulse from within gently dislodged the drying mucus membrane into flecky specks dancing like spores into the air.  

     Another moment of desperation.  I hugged it to me under several blankets.  It wasn’t enough.  I re-opened my hand wound, blood rehydrating the dried membrane as it soaked in the nutrients.  It wasn’t enough.  I felt him tremble inside.  Jumping from my seat, holding him to my chest, I ran to the kitchen.  Grabbing a knife, I gashed my wrist open.  A red waterfall poured over the pink flesh.  The womb drank deeply, flesh returning to healthy warmth, while the pulse remained shaky.  

     It was enough to survive the night.  Lightheaded and weak, I shivered as I stumbled to the garage, the pregnant skull still in my arms.  A trail of blood followed behind.  

     My shirt was soaked with myself.  Propped against the wall, I searched along the garage for my Dad’s tools.  I found the staple gun.  Lying the womb on the workbench, I braced myself for the discomfort to come.  Placing the staple gun upright on the table, I pinched my gushing wrist closed and positioned myself beside the tool.  With the gun between my arms, I pressed my arms together to initiate the trigger.  A gachunk was immediately followed by searing pain as the first staple entered my skin.  Four more followed, sealing my wound for now.  With a spare washcloth, I finished the impromptu bandaging.  My head throbbed.  A coldness I could never describe had engulfed me to my core.  A deep shiver erupted through my body.  My legs gave out as I lifted the skull.

     Together, we lay in the garage.  The concrete floor entombed us in cold.  It was heard to breathe, exhausting.  I stared at my son, his own tomb a sarcophagus of suffering, as the membrane dried and cracked with the rapidly decreasing temperature.  Despair burned within me until I saw it.

A hand, plain as day, pressed up against the crusted uterus.  The imprint vanished for a moment before it smacked against the wall again.  And again, and again.  He wanted out.  He was soon to come out.  

     Joy warmed me.  I adjusted myself to view the clock above me— 4:43 AM.  The storm had died down.  The roads would be cleared in time for my wife to make it.  I drifted into a haze, which soon turned into sleep.  No dreams this time.  Only expectations.  

     The morning sun gleamed through the garage window, waking me up.  My head felt foggy and hollow.  I was freezing.  I glanced back at the clock—7:34 AM.  

     The day’s preparations were all I thought about.  Weakened limbs forced me upright before I returned to the living room.  I was greeted with a dead fireplace and the lamp, now lighting the room.  The power was back.  Blasting the heat, I sat on the couch wrapped in blankets with the womb buried with me.       

     There I sat, shivering cold, even as sweat pooled on my temples.  The knife was tucked beside me, hidden by blankets.  The soft heartbeat of the womb pushed any doubts from my mind.  The sirens had been suffocated.  I stared with dry eyes at the clock as the hours passed.  Another kick from my son, I felt it on my chest.  Just two hours left.  

     I jolted up from a sickly nap to the sound of the doorbell.  My heart raced, with what little blood remained sloshing violently through it.  Standing up nearly caused me to black out.  I caught myself on the coffee table, before placing the skull back on the armchair, camouflaging it in blankets.  I paced over to the entryway mirror to compose myself.  I almost fainted when I saw my reflection.  My hair was coated in a shimmer of sweat and grease, plastered to my scalp.  My thin beard was now a mess of tangled hair, stained with drool—and my face.  Pale and sickly, sallow and thin.  How long had my parents been gone? When did they leave?  Have I been eating?  My eyes sagged, dark circles highlighting my bloodshot eyes.  

How much have I already given?

     The decayed siren sprang out, its death-null.  Too much.  Are you capable of providing more?  

A tremor ran up my spine.  I brushed my hair and opened the door.  

“Hi Rober-”  Dianna choked on her words, “Oh my God, Robert, are you ok?”

Inhaling sharply, I replied, “Yeah, I’m fine.  Just haven’t been sleeping good is all.”

“You look terrible, that’s not just from lack of sleep.  Have you been eating at all?”  

Irritation sprouted in me, “Yes.  As I said, sleep has been rough lately.  Please, come in.”

Hesitantly, she entered, “Please, be honest,” she continued, “Have you been drinking again?”

Irritation was now solidifying into resentment, “NO!  I’ve been sober for months now,” I lied. “Christ, have some faith in me!”  

     My mind flashed the image of the knife, sitting snuggly under the womb’s blanket.  My ex-wife’s softened voice dissolved it, “Robert, you know I only ask because I worry about you.  I… heard about the hard time you had after the divorce went through.  We went through a lot of hurt, and I don’t judge you for coping with it.  I just wish you could have shared.”

     She entered the living room and nearly sat on the armchair, with its blankets hiding my treasure underneath them.  “Wait!”  I interrupted her, “Please, sit on the couch.  I spilled coffee on the chair, and it’s still wet… Haven’t had a chance to clean it properly.”  

     I could tell she had to restrain herself, pursing her lips, she sat on the couch quietly before continuing, “I don’t want to rehash what I said during the whole process, but you know you became distant.  It wasn’t just drinking.  You couldn’t stand being around me.  It felt like you…”  Her eyes were red, but she restrained herself, “It felt like you blamed me for what happened.  Like I had betrayed you somehow.”  

     You DID.  That familiar bitterness flared voilently in my throat.   I blocked the thought out, and attempted a reassuring smile, “I didn’t, and I don’t,” I lied, “I was just beaten down, is all.  No excuse beyond that.”  I stepped to the armchair, lifting the still-hidden incubator before sitting down and placing it on my lap.  

“Didn’t… didn’t you say the chair was wet?”  She asked.

“I already spilled it on me, no harm, no foul,”  I replied, smile still plastered across my thin face.  

Her discomfort was intensifying; she shifted awkwardly on the couch. “Anyway, I’m not here to re-discuss old wounds.  I’m doing much better now… I was hoping you would be too.”

I clenched my jaw, unable to let it slide.  I replied, “What does that mean?”

She flinched, “I just want you to be better.  I know you lost something you were almost more excited for than me, parenthood.  But enough about that, I’m sorry, you said there were things we needed to talk over.  Or show me?  I can’t remember exactly.  I was leaving work when you called, I think.”  

     The knife poked me from under the covers, “Yes, enough of that.” That cold face emerged in my mind for a moment, and I pushed it out just as fast.  “I have something to show you.  Something amazing that I hope you appreciate for what it is.”  

She crossed her arms and adjusted to the edge of the couch, “Ok?  You’re making me nervous, Robert.  I wish you would eat something.  You look sick.”  

Flaring rage in my chest kindled.  The knife was now in my hand, still hidden.  “You’re not my Mother.  You’re not a mother at all.”  The venom spilled from my mouth without a second thought.  

     Her eyes reflected a pain with depths I was incapable of perceiving.  “What the fuck is wrong with you, Robert?  How disgusting can you get?  I came here to give you a chance, to see how you were getting along.  Because frankly, I thought you were at your worst at that last preceding.  You are awful!”  

     My head ached.  The womb on my lap seemed to pulsate with each searing throb.  The knife’s handle was cold in my palm.  “I am trying to show you something, something important.  Something that I was owed, and you fucking know it.”  

Confusion mixed into the pain on her face, a cocktail of horror and disdain, “What are you talking about?  What are you OWED, you psycho?  Robert, you need help; you don’t just look awful.  Clearly, something has been eating away at you, enough to bring you back to your parents’, of all places.”

“What the fuck do you mean ‘of all places’?!”   

“You know what, just show me what you wanted to show me.  After that, I am leaving.”  She pulled her purse onto her lap.  

     As much as it takes, echoed in my mind.  Wordlessly, I slid the knife in my back belt loop, before standing up and revealing the engorged skull.  Her face was frozen as she tried comprehending the bulging sphere of slime and muscle spilling from my arms.  The pink flesh’s regained moisture dripped like the drool of a starving wolf onto the carpet.  I stared at her, waiting for a reaction, demanding she speak first.  Seconds passed before she bolted to her feet, with disgust painted across her features, “Oh my God, Robert, what the hell is that??  Oh my God, is it moving?”  

     My son’s hand pressed against his tissued tomb, desperate for his mother’s sustenance.  I guess I hadn’t noticed, but the womb was certainly bigger now.  I could barely contain it, its girth spilling over my forearms.  The skull hung loosely, dangling from its cranium, attached to the uterus only by a past duty now fulfilled.  

     I replied, “This is a miracle.  This is what I was promised.”  I contained myself, waiting for her response.

“What the hell does that mean?  What is it?”  She stepped back, purse held against her chest.

“What do you think it is?  Look at it!”  I stepped forward.  The lamplight glimmered off the flesh’s viscera.  Again, a tender hand pressed against the uterus from within.  Reaching out. 

     Her eyes told me everything.  That the wonder I held was an enigma of unholy origin, a vessel of unknown contents.  Her eyes met mine.  I was shocked, but for a second, before a trembling rage erupted.  Pity.  Those eyes pitied me.  

“This is the child YOU were meant to give me.” My vision blurred, “This is the happiness I was promised.  And it will be born, God as my witness it will be born.”  

Dianna had already maneuvered toward the hallway, her back to the exit, her contorted face aimed at me.  The pity had melted into terror, her foot trembled in a readied position as I continued, “I will do whatever it takes for him.” I gripped the knife, “As much as it takes.”  I brandished the blade openly in my spare hand.  

     “What the fu-”  She couldn’t finish, as I charged her.  Dianna’s reflexes saved her from my first thrust, throwing her back against the wall before sprinting to the front door down the hall.  Tearing at the doorknob, she wasted precious seconds pulling futilely before realizing I had locked it when she entered.  Shifting the lock, she whipped the door open, just as I tackled her.  

     The snow muffled her screams, her face half buried as I held her down.  She desperately swung her torso around, arms flailing in a vain attempt to block the first blow.  The knife plunged through the underside of her forearm, pushing through to pierce her side with its tip.  A gasp tore through her throat.  In my weakened state, I struggled to pull it free.  Thrashing the blade from side to side, it grated against bone, and a slush of flesh cried out before a slab of it hung from her underarm, finally freeing it.  

     A moan of anguish escaped from her shocked, gasping mouth.  Snow began to fall, its flakes speckling her lashes as her eyes remained fixed on me in disbelief.  I looked away.  

As much as it takes.  

     Her maimed arm flailed at me, the fin of mutilation flapping in the flake-filled air.  I pushed it aside before realizing I was winded, my head was light, and my wrist wound had reopened.  Fury was my only fuel.  I just had to avoid her eyes.  Snow gagged her outcry one last time as I raised my blade for the final strike.  Closing my eyes, I smashed it downward into her throat.  A whimper followed the sound of rending skin and tissue.  

     A stillness came.  Assuming the deed was finished, I looked down at my work.  Only to meet her still living eyes.  I flinched.  The horror had been replaced by a pity so soft it would make Christ weep.  I stared into them, those final moments elongated into a pseudo-eternity.  Her pupils dilated, as if gaping to consume the flood of poison they were siphoning from me.  

     Her last trembling breath was highlighted by tears brimming, never to fall.  Her grief was her death mask, and pity pooled in the corner of her lifeless eyes.  Blood dripped from my open wrist, drenching her face as I carrased its frozen features.  I felt faint.  I rolled off her and stumbled inside.  With lead feet, I teetered through the hallway back to the living room.  The womb greeted me with illated pulses and vibrant glowing.  Jubilation.  My son was to be saved.  

     I cradled him before cautiously making my way back outside.  The snow was coming down hard now.  Dianna was nearly camouflaged by the time I reached her.  Blankets still covering it, I placed my pregnant skull beside her.  Wrapping a separate blanket tightly around my wrist, I began my work.  Avoiding her sighless gaze, I lifted her torso out of the snow, tearing her jacket and shirt off, desperate to find the wounds already wasting precious fuel.  

     Her side and chest were still bleeding.  I rolled her onto the incubator.  The uterus pulsated in a dance of color and kicks from within.  A sickly gurgle splashed out of her body and onto the womb.  The rhythm of the pulse grew rapid and loud.  Dadum dadum dadum dadum dadum.    

     More, he’s calling for more.  Excitement seemed to replace the hollowness I felt.  She wasn’t producing enough blood.  As much as he needs.  I tore the carcass away and splayed it on the snow before me.  My quaking hands held the knife over her abdomen.  Eyes shut, I plunged it into her intestines.  A gush of innards burst like swelled balloons from the tear as I dragged the blade horizontally, pulling the flesh apart with my spare hand as I did.  Bloody steam rose from the gash, the punctured organs splayed out, their contents pouring puss and viscera in a river of bile across my hands as I tore her skin, opening the wound as wide as it would allow.  

     The eviscerated gateway lay before me, its dripping maw enticing the desperate visitor I was soon to guide inward.  Lifting the engorged skull, I gave my son a kiss against the membrane.  A gentle kick thanked me.  

      I stared at the mutilated corpse for a moment.  My eyes were drifting across the gnarled torso.  My traitorous eyes were dragging my gaze to that cold face.  I resisted.   

     With a sharp inhale, I began shoving the womb inside of her.  My grip was lubricated in a concoction of blood and mucus, causing me to slip and nearly plant my elbow into the uterus.  It was grueling work.  Several organs had to be torn from the cavity, resulting in a stinking pile of rot sitting beside me as I dug and shoved the throbbing womb deeper inside. 

     The skull was inserted first, the least of the strain.  With great effort, I folded a flab of flesh over the lowerhalf of the womb, before pressing the rest inside.  My bloodloss was more apparent as each push nearly caused me to black out.  The strip of blanket around my wrist was soaked through.  No time to worry about that.  

     I crawled to the garage, grabbing the staple gun off the workbench.  The journey back was interrupted just as I reached the snow on the driveway by a rush of stars attacking my sight.  My vision tunneled as I was flashbanged with the sparkling dots dancing across my gaze.  My skull felt like all of its contents had been thrown out in the midst of a rollercoaster spiral.  I passed out in the snow.  

     Feverish schizophrenic visions and anxieties seemed to assault my dreams in a blur of incoherence.  Cold faces.  Sightless eyes.  A sapling, its roots burrowing deep into the soil, far beyond the earth’s crust.  

    Then, a still image.  A pregnant mother, with an abdomen gashed open.  Her contents spilled in a pool of bloody organs at her feet—a fetus dangling from its umbilical cord just above them.  Its red, moist skin covered its underdeveloped limbs, which hung like withered twigs from its torso.  There they stood.  A pair of soundless, screaming mouths suffocated in snow.  Above them both, that cold face hovered.  No longer crying out for its mother.  Stiff lips quivered, as gentle tears rained down from those beaming eyes, like liquid gold gleaming in the void around us, no longer seeking its mother. 

Simply content in its sorrow, as it gazed upon her carcass.  

     A screech pierced the deafening silence.  My gaze returned to the dissected mother.  The dangling fetus clunge onto its dead incubator, pulling at the cord in vain, attempting to free itself from its decaying sarcophagus.  It turned and beckoned to me, with its deformed stump of an arm.  Its tongueless mouth whined a pathetic whistle from weak, water-filled lungs.  Unsure of what it wanted, I took a step forward.  I took another step, and then another, before I realized I was stuck, immobile in this space of enveloping darkness.  In confusion, I looked below me, and I saw a blade protruding from my wrist.  

     A whimper confirmed what the fetus wanted.  I gripped the handle and delicately unsheathed the knife from my flesh.  Searing pain.  The tissue gargled in contempt as it was hewn open.  I held out the dripping weapon.  The fetus gurgled in joy, stomach bile and fluid foamed and dripped from its undeveloped mouth.  The cord must be cut.  I must free him.  I hurled the knife through the air, just as the standing caracass of the woman began to howl in agony.  The hovering face above her screeched along with its mother.  

    I woke up to the sound of those two cold faces, crying out in an orchestra of misery.  My vision was blurry, and I felt sick and lightheaded.  I lifted my face to notice the crimson snow pooling around me.  Struggling, I lifted myself, blood still trickling from my covered wrist.  A circle of red snow highlighted where I had lain—like the snow angel of a murder victim.  

     Stomach bile burned my throat as I staggered to my feet.  How long was I out?... Where is he?  Panic replaced illness, while I searched across the lawn for the womb, uncertain of its survival in the snowstorm that continued to rage on.  The carcass was half-buried, barely visible through the white sheets gusting down from its semicircle of stained snow surrounding it.  As I approached it, eager to examine the womb, I froze in place.  

     The once bloated abdomen of the carcass lay limp and deflated, like stretched leather freed from all its contents.  Wiping the flakes from my eyes, I leaned closer.  The skull’s face was poking out from the once bloated stomach.  Its cranium was no longer bound to a gestating uterus.  Rather, a flimsy flesh sack, its tissue torn open on one side, revealing the internal world of scarred membrane and fluids, now spilled out across the snow.    

     A trail of sludge lay freshly etched into the snow.  It dragged across the lawn toward the house.  Clots littered the petite path, which I followed with bated breath.  The front door remained open, and a blotch of blood and placenta led inside.  My trembling hand pushed aside the door, fully exposing the internal entrance.  Snow had blown in, coating the floor in puddles, all tainted with a red hue.  

     Leaning against the wall, I guided myself down the trail.  It led to the living room.  The power had gone out again.  No tinder was lit in the fireplace.  The cold had invaded the home, and it dominated my frail frame, seeping its thin fingers into my core.  Tremors tore through me in waves as I crept into the dark room.  The winter storm outside blotted out the light coming from the window. A dim greyness was the sole source of illumination.  It filled the space like a fog.     

     None of that mattered.  My eyes followed the track of placenta and mucus as it wound across the wood floor onto the throw rug and behind the couch. Gripping the back of the armchair, I balanced my weak, frozen legs before glancing over the array of furniture.  A drowning gurgle halted me.  I stared ahead, ears focused.  A repeated gargle was followed by wet, gasping, dry-heaving.  Fluid splashed loudly as I dared my journey beyond the couch.  

     There he was.  The trail of slime led to a pool of internal juices, littered with bits of tissue.  Thin veils of membrane lay scattered, floating in the concaction of flooded bile, blood, and placenta.  Surrounding his current resting place were ropes of intestine he must have dragged out in his escape from that once living tomb.  

     He looked so fragile.  Red, moist, leathery skin encased clumps of flesh vaguely resembling a torso.  The legs, exhausted from their exodus, were mere stumps, one ending at the ankle, the other at the knee.  A single arm sat withered, curled to his tumor-riddled side.  The tiny hand’s three outstretched fingers attempted to hide his face.  

     His face.  A gasp escaped me when I met its gaze.  The single, encrusted eye, like a boil, bulged from its socket, held in place by thin, see-through lids coated in pus.  A chasm beside it indicated where the other eye should have been; those same veil-thin lids flapped uselessly, mere curtains for the leaking burrow.  Two holes indicated nostrils atop its forehead, deep, desperate inhales and exhales created a constant spattering of snot.  Tufts of thin hair sprouted randomly across his scalp, with patches of rash, secreting pus from their army of miniature boils, crowning his skull.  

     H-… its skull, still soft from birth, seemed to contain its contents in a jelly, devoid of any structure or protection, being massaged by the wood floor with each twitch.  There was no support for that head, for the neck was an elongated tube, lacking a spinal column.  What that neck led to was otrocius.  

     There was no jaw.  Its mouth began at its throat.  Like a torn seam, it extended in a diamond shape up to between its eyes.  Lipless edges ebbed and wiggled, unable to close the maw they revealed.  Rows of nail-like teeth jutted randomly along the interior.  The tongue.  It flayed aimlessly inside, encrusted in molars, clicking endlessly against the canines around it.  The teeth-covered club began to click left and right, up and down. Yellow salvia spattered with each click, as spit built up in the back of its throat.  

     I stood over… it.  My stomach churned, and my head spun.  My wrist continued to drip clotted blood onto the floor.  It stared up at me.  The bastardized humanity lay sprawled on the ground, choking itself to death with bile and spit.  Its single, ruined eye shook as it focused on me.  My throat burned.  A numbing sadness had overtaken me while I gazed at the revelation of my brutalized fantasies.     

     Cautiously, I squatted down beside it.  The genderless blob of flesh and tubes of liquefied organs grew still.  In my shattered state, a desperate, pathetic plan sprouted.  But first, one last attempt was needed.  My shaking hands hovered over the biological monstrosity, unsure of how to lift it without causing damage.  Eventually, I opted to support the head in one hand and balance the torso at the other end of the elongated neck in the other hand.  

     A migraine throbbed deep inside my skull as I struggled to stand up, fighting my tunneling vision to expand.  Balance was a growing difficulty, with no free hands, it was intensified.  Stuttering back to the exit hallway, I maneuvered my lead limbs forward, into the blustering snowstorm outside.   

     The remaining blood trail guided me through the downfall to the corpse.  Her face was nearly buried.  I turned away as I saw those frozen eyes poking out from the mound.  Stiffly, I dropped to one knee and placed the malformed fetus down before digging the snow from out of her open torso.  

     There, the fissure of torn flesh was unclogged.  The cold had stiffened the tissue; the heat of life had dispersed entirely.  The cavern, barren of innards, contained only one occupant.  Her heart sat inside the chamber, frigid and pink, its valves and tubes frozen shut with red frost.  

     I looked away, back at the dying fetus beside me, already coated in artic blast.  My body was numb.  From cold or blood loss, I do not know.  However, my head was hot.  The siren I had thought long dead returned in a horrified whisper.  It took too much.  

     I lifted the whimpering, birthed one, extended from me as if holding a sickly animal, and placed it inside the icy chamber of the carcass.  The wind buffeted me while I knelt over it.  It crumpled into itself, like a burning leaf, the last breaths raspy and dry, all fluid now frozen inside of it.  There was no life left to siffon for itself.  My opiodic love had left me entirely, leaving me sober and broken.  What remained was a crawling terror, seeping like bile up my throat, coating my brain.  

     It was no longer the son I dreamed of.  The iced eyes of Dianna drew my gaze.  The soft pity was maintained in them.  I wept as I turned my sight away, back onto the shriveled being inside of her.  

     I cradled it for a moment.  A death rattle signalled its nearing demise.  So I sat there, knowing what life I had wasted, snuffed, murdered, would never be redeamed.  But maybe it could be used for… him.  The carcass of my sins lay rotting on my lap.  The bitter cold already splitting its sickly, red skin.  Its peeling flesh revealing the layers of my depravity. And the desperation for a life of happiness I never deserved.  What happiness I had had gone unnoticed and now lay beside me, mutilated, with her eyes ever seeking me.  

     The dueling voices in my head had been unified into a single choir of horrified remorse, yet determined to execute my last resort.  I felt naked, all circumstances and delusions shedding from my mind, leaving me exposed to the evil I committed.  And the reward I was to receive.  My wrist reopened.  It was now or never.  I lifted the knife from Diane’s frozen carcass.  With a sharp inhale, I stabbed my stomach and swiftly sliced myself open.  I watched my intrales splash onto the pure snow.  

     The howling wind began to screech in my ears, while my vision tunneled.  The fetus I cradled seemed so heavy.  With what strength remained, I hurriedly shifted my intensitens aside from my open torso, before shoving my son inside.  My bladder must have been pierced, as a wave of urine burst out of me, like an engorged water balloon popping.  Through clenched teeth, I groaned weakly, pushing the fetus deeper into my open cavity.  I gasped as I felt his head hit between my kidneys, pushing them apart.  With the final adjustment, sliding his stump legs inside, against my liver, the task was finished.  I fell backward, my eyes facing heaven.  

     In between painful wheezes, an unworthy prayer for my son’s survival escaped my soundless mouth.  Numbness overtook me, and my vision darkened.  

     While I watched the haze of drifting snow, I made out their cold faces, the hovering entities of my sin.  My dreamlike state was paired with a hollowing drowsiness.  Death was fast approaching.  As I slipped unconscious there in the storm, their faces contorted into twisted frowns.  A third face appeared above them, shrieking in despair.  Its beaming eyes locked on me in contempt.  That cold face.  Its scream was of the wind.  All-encompassing.  

     The karmic debt I was promised, that I was owed, had come to collect.  I wailed as darkness enveloped me.  

In my final moments, I felt him kick.