(i can see you, mommy)
GarneacVanessa Sewell tried not to scream when the whispers started again.
GarneacCurled up in the shadowed corner of her room, dirty skirt hitched up over bruised legs, chapped and peeling lips pulled back into a grimace—she closed her eyes and tried not to scream.Garneac
GarneacTried not to hear the soft voice of her unborn child.
GarneacHer hands, skeletal and ashy, played frantically over her slightly distended belly. She prodded and poked the crimson shirt, slipped fingers underneath the cloth and pressed and pushed, testing the hardening flesh.
Garneac(mommy?)
GarneacOh, my God, she thought faintly. Fear crawled behind her eyes, furtive, darting. Her nose flared; her mouth gaped as she sucked in air, swallowing the shriek that fought its way up her throat.
Garneac(i can see you, mommy)
GarneacFive weeks pregnant, tucked away in the corner of a rundown home in a lost, forgotten town, Vanessa broke down and began to scream.
GarneacHer throat clenched and her voice cracked—but still she screamed in the empty corridors of her mind.
Garneac(i see you)
** ** **
Garneac“The kid isn’t mine,” Roy said simply. His eyes were hard and flat. His breath, hot and rank with alcohol, with bitterness, with the sweet-sour smell of one who rots from the inside out.
GarneacHis lips, set in a hard line, twitched once, twice.
Garneachis young face, clawed by time and scarred by life
Garneac“Baby,” Vanessa pleaded, “Baby. Roy, don’t do this. I need you and—”
Garneac—she stretched out a needle-marked arm, varicose veins pulsing rhythmically. A half-mad presence lurking behind her wide blue eyes; her belly, flat and pleasing, hiding the hated life, the terrifying baby that wasn’t a baby and—
GarneacRoy slapped her hand away. He stepped back. He left.
GarneacAn hour later she was still reeling, still stunned.
GarneacAnd that was the first time she heard the thing inside her speak.
Garneac(mommy?) It crooned.
** ** **
GarneacMonths and seasons flitted by.
GarneacSummer filled the air with blazing heat and joyous laughter, bringing a time of seemingly endless warmth and light, ignoring the darkness just beyond; Autumn arrived dressed all in russets, golds, and caramels, strolling down streets with chill winds nipping at her heels; Winter struck down his siblings, smothering their struggling bodies under thick white blankets of cold snow and crackling ice that did not melt.
GarneacAll the while, Vanessa became more and more terrified of the mass of flesh that grew in her.
GarneacOne night in the heart of December, when the small town suffocated under a thin veneer of gleaming ice, Vanessa jerked out of sleep.
GarneacShe sat up slowly, painfully, leaning against the headboard. She tried to ignore the tender, bloated balloon that was her belly. The room stank of sweat and fear.
GarneacShe stared into the thick gloom, tense and inexplicably terrified. There was nothing but shadows and hidden furniture. A curtained window. The open door, now a gaping wound in the oppressive dark.
GarneacAnd then:
Garneac(i want to meet you)
GarneacA flurry of contractions hammered the flesh between her thighs.
Garneac(i’m coming for you, mommy)
GarneacHer lips opened in a soundless shriek.
GarneacAnd the thing inside Vanessa Sewell—
Garneaca baby, a god, a monster
Garneac—forced her to stand.
GarneacShe ran out into the night, and it embraced her.
GarneacStaggering, panting, she made her way to the hospital through an ebon landscape.
GarneacHer companion was a predatory silence that breathed.
Garneac“Push!” The doctor yelled at her, gloved hands between her legs. The nurses mimed him, facemasks stretching obscenely in silent wonder.
GarneacVanessa thought they looked like phantoms wreathed in bluish-white fire. They swirled, shifting from side to side, intense, dark eyes boring into her. She cringed, struggling backwards.
Garneac“No!” The—
Garneacphantom
Garneac—doctor yelled, holding her bruised and scabbed legs down. “Push! It’ll be over soon. You can do it—push!”
GarneacA bellowing in Vanessa’s head: (MOMMY, I’M HERE NOW)
GarneacShe gave birth, expelling a mass of blood and water and placental sack—
Garneac—and It, the crooning creature, followed, slithering amongst the foul fluids.
GarneacThe nurses crowed, delighted and ignorant.
GarneacVanessa locked eyes with the doctor, who was staring intently at the silent baby.
GarneacShe prayed It was dead, prayed to a God she no longer believed in: let It be dead, not sleeping, oh please, just do this, do this for me God and—
Garneac—the doctor dumped the baby in her unwilling arms. He stepped back slowly, confusion working its way across his grizzled face.
GarneacVanessa could tell that he knew there was something horribly wrong.
GarneacThe weary mother looked down at the peaceful face of her child, Its eyes tightly shut.
GarneacDefeated, cowed, she traced the pale cheeks, the button of a nose.
GarneacYou look so normal...she thought, secretly allowing herself to hope—
Garneac—only to have it wither away when the thing’s eyes opened.
GarneacYellow pus dribbled from Its eyeless sockets.
Garneac(i can see you, mommy)
GarneacIt sneered.
