Ad Nauseam

by C. W. LaSart

  That month she missed her period.

  ***

  Alice ignored it at first, figured that maybe she was beginning menopause, though she’d been showing none of the usual signs that her menstrual cycle was winding down. This had to be some horrible dream.

  Corpses do not walk into your garden with the intent to copulate, and they certainly don’t knock you up in the process!

  She considered calling to make an appointment with her doctor the next day, but she didn’t. She was afraid of what they might find, certain that within her remained evidence of her vile indiscretion and they would lock her away forever in some asylum. Once she was forced to divulge the horrendous details behind the conception, the obstetrician’s next call would certainly be to a psychiatrist. She couldn’t go to a doctor, or rather, she knew on some level that she wouldn’t go to the doctor. She prayed the symptoms would go away.

  During the earlier part of the pregnancy, Alice had spent a good deal of time researching abortion on the internet, ordering countless herbal medicines that promised to terminate the child “gently and naturally”. None had worked.

  Bouts of severe nausea and cramping left her weak for days, but the child still seemed to thrive. It was hopeless. She would have to see this to the end or die trying. Alice wondered what the cops would say if they found her body. Oh, the horror this would create within the community when they discovered whatever monster she gestated in her diseased womb.

  ***

  She spent the next couple months trying to do her job, ignoring the morning sickness and fatigue, pretending she just had the flu. When her swelling abdomen became too much to cover with clothes, Alice took a hiatus from work, claiming mental exhaustion after the stress from the prank in her garden. After decades of working at the same college, she had reached tenure, and with no family and simple tastes, her savings were more than enough to support her. With no friends and her sister so far away, there were no visitors to check on her, which was just how she liked it.

  Alone in her house, Alice could no longer pretend she wasn’t pregnant. There had been no test to confirm it, but she had all the usual symptoms. She grew larger every day; and, at around six months along, the thing within her began to squirm, making her want to tear her belly open and rip it out.

  There were other symptoms, as well. Patches of dark bruising appeared on her abdomen that spread fast, forming mottled patterns all over her torso, resembling some kind of fungus. Her teeth began rotting nearly overnight, turning dark and mossy before falling out of gums which bled almost daily.

  And there was her appetite. Alice knew that expectant mothers often craved strange foods, sometimes even inedible things like soil or egg shells. She was still pretty sure her cravings were over the top. She became sick when eating fruits and vegetables, so she was stuck with dairy, meats, and breads. Then she could only drink milk that had long since curdled. She would wait for the mold to grow on her cheese and bread and relish in its musty green flavor as if it were the sweetest ambrosia.

  The worst, though, was the meat. She often left raw steaks and hamburgers on the counter for days, gnawing on them once they changed from a ruby red to a greenish grey. These things should have poisoned her, should have at the very least made her quite ill, but they tasted better to her than a pint of rocky road ice cream.

  As terrible as those things were, they were nothing compared to her odor. By the time she reached the seventh month, Alice could no longer go out in public at all. Her horrible pallor and nearly toothless mouth looked bad, but her stink was unbearable. She gave up on trying to find different soaps and deodorants to control it, and douching was useless. No matter what, she always smelled ripe and gamy, like a dead animal. She thought she might be dying. Alice ordered her necessities online, instructing the deliverymen to leave it all on the porch. She wondered if they could smell her through the door.

  Perhaps driven away by the smell, even her cats wanted nothing to do with her, half of them having run off and never returned. The remaining three spent most of their time hiding from her, and only ventured out of their hidey-holes to eat. They’d abandon dinner completely and scamper away when she tried to touch them.

  ***

  Alice broke down and made an appointment with an obstetrician. In the waiting room, the other women shied away from her, clearly trying to hide their disgust, but failing miserably. Even the receptionist turned her head away from Alice when they spoke, attempting to escape her pungent body odor.

  The doctor flinched when he saw her, and Alice thought she heard him gag during the pelvic examination.

  “Alice, at your age and given the lack of prenatal care, I would suggest an ultrasound and genetic testing.” The doctor said.

  “I will take the ultrasound for now, but I need to think about further testing.”

  Alice’s palms were sweating and her mind raced, wondering what the testing would reveal. She lay back on the table and closed her eyes as the doctor spread a thick jelly on her stomach, pressing a round instrument against her and squinting at the image on the screen of the mobile ultrasound machine. He shook his head and grunted, going over the same spot multiple times. When he had wiped her belly and helped her back into a seated position, he looked at her sadly, obviously unhappy with the news he was about to give her.

  “Is it alive?” she asked, her blunt and emotionless manner taking the doctor by surprise.

  “There is a heartbeat, but it seems irregular. There were also, some . . . abnormalities . . . structural abnormalities that I’m concerned about. I feel that it would be in your best interest to proceed with genetic testing and amniocentesis at this point.”

  Alice was silent for a moment before nodding curtly. “I understand your concerns doctor. You have given me a lot to think about. I will need a day or two to decide what I want to do.”

  Leaving the doctor with a promise to call within the next day, Alice drove home and sat on her couch, a carton of spoiled milk on the table before her. She imagined herself undergoing the testing. The long needle puncturing her womb to draw forth a black, viscous fluid. As if it could read her mind, the baby kicked. She rubbed her belly, soothing it unconsciously. The baby responded to her gentle touch, ceasing its restless motion.

  Alice felt a pang of unexpected affection for the creature. She didn’t know what it would be, but despite its paternity, it was hers. She began to feel a begrudging respect for the little creature that refused to be destroyed. As her mind started to go, that respect turned into affection.

  Fearful of what the tests might show, Alice called the doctor’s office the next day and said she would be seeking treatment from a different obstetrician. It was a lie. She now knew that she would deal with whatever lay ahead, alone. Taken by surprise by the developing love she felt for the baby, she would let no one stop her from seeing this through to the end.

  ***

  Alice threw herself back on the bed, cords of tendons sticking out on her neck while her clawing hands tangled in the bed sheets. Greasy sweat coated her body and bloody milk dribbled from her nipples as she choked back screams, terrified one of the neighbors would hear her and call the cops.

  She dug her heals into the mattress. Her legs opened wide, pushing with all she was worth. She was going on pure instinct now, an animal reacting to the pain of birth. The agony was overwhelming and became her whole world as she struggled to expel the infant, fearing she would split right down the middle and bleed to death on her own bed. This excruciatingly long process sapped her strength.

  Hearing her own flesh tear, Alice wailed, all thoughts of her neighbors calling the police pushed from her mind under the pressure of the unbearable pain. Unable to restrain herself, she pushed with every ounce of strength left, expelling the creature, the product of her dead lover’s foul seed, onto the sodden, soiled bedding. She let her head fall back against the headboard and wept with relief, not bothering to tend to the newborn until she heard it’s growling cries. She felt the sheets
pull as the beast began to make its way toward her, and what must be claws pricked her gory thigh.

  She leaned forward to collect her baby, but the gnarled umbilical cord hung, still attached, trailing up to disappear into her ruined vagina. Alice tugged to free it, and a burning pain flared inside her, as the stubborn placenta refused to be dislodged. Unable to get the scissors from the vanity drawer, she instead held the sinewy purple tether up to the thing’s mouth, allowing it to gnaw through the cord with its tiny, sharp teeth. Careful to avoid the biting mouth, she tenderly brushed his cheek, dislodging a maggot that had stuck there from the slime of the birth.

  It was a boy.

  THE HAND THAT FEEDS

  “Hey, Papa? Will you tell us the story about when you were in prison again?” The boy rested his elbows on his knees, his eyes sparkling with mischief.

  “Now, Bud, I wasn’t in prison. I just worked there.”

  “Yeah, Papa. Tell us the story about when you and Nana worked at the prison.” The girl set down the fashion magazine she had been flipping through and smiled. “It’s my favorite.”

  “I don’t know. Your mama doesn’t like it when I tell that story.”

  “Mama’s not here,” the boy stated sensibly.

  “What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. We won’t tell.” The girl chimed in.

  Papa leaned back in his chair and regarded his grandchildren with a look of playful consideration, bushy brows drawn together in thought and his lined face full of mock severity.

  He knew he would tell them the story, but it was part of the game to draw it out a bit. It was tradition that the kids spent the last week of summer vacation with their grandparents ever since they started going to school, but he knew at ten and fourteen, they wouldn’t want to hang out with their old grandfolks much longer.

  “I suppose we have just enough time while Nana makes dinner. I could tell it one more time. So you want to hear about how me and Nana met and fell in love?” He teased, smiling when his grandson groaned.

  “No, Papa. Tell us about Fatty!”

  “It’s Frankie.” The girl corrected her younger brother, earning a grimace that included both crossed eyes and a protruding tongue.

  “That’s right, sweetheart. It was Frankie.” He grinned at his granddaughter before winking at her brother. “But he was a fatty.”

  Papa made a show of leaning back in his chair, one hand rubbing his gray-whiskered chin as he looked off into space and composed his thoughts. When it looked as though both children were ready to pounce upon the old man, fidgeting in their eagerness, he began the story.

  ***

  “Frankie Hanson was as much a prisoner of his own body as he was of the State. A victim of his own insatiable appetite and a doting widow for a mother, he hadn’t walked in over five years by the time he came to live at the state institution for the criminally insane. Now that’s just a fancy name for a prison for crazy people, but we also took in the ones that had what they would call “special needs” these days. Frankie wasn’t the first bedridden inmate I had ever dealt with. But at over seven hundred pounds (we weren’t really sure because he had to be weighed on a shipping scale and we didn’t have one of those) he was certainly the most memorable. Rumor has it that at the time of the murder he weighed around eight hundred, but he’d been on a special diet for several weeks before we got him, and he’d lost some weight. All I know is, he is still the biggest human being I’ve ever met.

  “As I recall, it was quite a spectacle the day they brought Frankie in. I remember everyone who was able seemed to find a reason to be outside when the flatbed bearing the enormous, fleshy bulk of the new prisoner backed up to the doors of the loading dock. Before then, the dock’s only purpose had been to receive machinery and food for the kitchen, but it was the only door on the facility that was big enough to bring Frankie in.

  “It was late summer, so the weather was nice enough for Frankie to ride exposed to the air, and exposed he was. There weren’t clothes big enough to fit him. Though his lower body was swaddled in massive sheets, he was otherwise naked, and I noticed that carloads of gawkers had followed him to the perimeter fence where they were prevented from coming closer.

  “He sat upon a mattress that in turn sat on an extra-large shipping pallet like the kind they used in factories back then. I guess they still use them now, for all I know. It doesn’t matter, anyways. An industrial forklift lifted his heavy ass off the truck and in through the doors, but after that, we were on our own.

  “Now usually the inmates slept on standard bunks bolted to the walls, but there was no way this big bugger was going to fit on one of those. We ended up having to order a specially made hospital bed with a reinforced steel frame and some heavy-duty wheels that would allow us to move him around the prison. It took eight of us guards, and I mean young, strong men, an hour and forty minutes to shift ol’ Frankie from that pallet to the bed, and let me tell you, there was a lot of groaning and cursing going on. But we got him there, and then three of us pushed him through the kitchen. I remember your Nana’s pretty blue eyes were round as saucers when she saw him as we moved him across the building to where we housed the prisoners who, for some reason or another, couldn’t be kept on death row at the state penitentiary. The whole time this went on, Frankie never said a word, nor did he even attempt to help us. He just stared straight ahead, his piggy eyes glaring at nothing and his thick bottom lip stuck out in a pout.

  “Now, I don’t have anything against heavy people, Lord knows I’m not as slender as I was in my youth. And I reckon some of them have cause to be the way they are. Ordinarily I might have had some sympathy for the man, it must’ve been miserable being as big as he was and bedridden and all. We housed some really bad men, all manner of murderers and psychos, but sometimes they were just so crazy you couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for them. But not Frankie. I knew the second I looked at his face he wasn’t crazy. Oh no, that man wasn’t crazy at all. Pouting on that bed was nothing more than a huge slab of selfishness mixed with a generous dose of meanness to boot.

  “He wasn’t crazy. He was just plain bad.

  “Frankie was staying with us because he was just too big for death row. But that was where he belonged. Anyone who kills their own mama doesn’t deserve to live.

  “I didn’t know the Hansons personally, but I knew the story. Father gone a month before Frankie was born, shot to death pursuing a robbery suspect. A good man and a good cop leaving behind a heartbroken wife and unborn son.

  “I think in a way, it was probably Mrs. Hanson’s doing that her boy turned out the way he did, but you can’t blame a sweet woman like she was. She’d lost the man she loved with her body, so replaced it with loving her boy with food. Women used to take pride in cooking, but those days are just about gone. Hell, lots of women don’t even know how to cook anymore. But then again, most men don’t know how to fix a car, either, so I guess it’s a wash.

  “Now, there’s lots of reasons a man might do bad things. Poverty, temper, craziness, or jealousy. But that wasn’t the case with Frankie. In the end, he was just a child inside. I don’t mean simple. I’ve known plenty of slow guys who do bad things. I remember one kid who got kicked in the head by a horse when we were teenagers who was never the same again.

  “No, I don’t mean Frankie was slow. He was as smart as the next man, but he was spoiled by his mama. A full grown brat was what he was. Just a selfish, horrible person.

  “I guess his mama finally had enough of waiting on him hand and foot, so she decided she was going to put Frankie on a diet. There wasn’t much he could do about it since he couldn’t get out of bed, but she had tried before and always relented. This time she wasn’t giving in. Frankie couldn’t exercise on account of the fact he couldn’t get up, but he spent a lot of time working his hands. Flexing and squeezing those little doodads they make to increase hand strength.

  “The neighbors said they heard him bellowing for weeks on end, alternately pleading and cursing
his mother. Begging for food and calling her all sorts of names when she didn’t give in. Back then people didn’t get involved in each other’s business like they do now, so they turned a blind eye on the Hanson’s house and tried their best to ignore it.

  “Well, Frankie just kept getting madder about his mama withholding his food, and I guess one day they were arguing and she got too close. She wasn’t a very big woman and he had those strong hands. He snapped her neck like an old, dry branch and things got pretty quiet after that. It was almost a week before the neighbors got concerned and called the cops, but by then he had her mostly eaten.”

  ***

  “Talk about biting the hand that feeds you, huh?” Papa winked and the kids groaned.

  “Tell us about his leg, Papa.” The boy begged, but Papa held up a hand.

  “Who’s telling this story, Bud?”

  “You are.”

  “I’ll get there.”

  “Just ignore him, Papa. I want to hear the rest.” The girl glared at her brother before returning her attention back to her grandfather.

  “Okay now. Where was I?”

  ***

  “Working in the institution meant you had to get used to some nasty stuff on a fairly regular basis. It was just one of the things that came with the paycheck. You got used to it. You had to, or else you didn’t make it very long. Anyone who lasted longer than six months was considered a lifer, though not many did. It wasn’t boring, that’s for sure. Sometimes it was quiet for a while, but it never lasted long.