Huey takes out the Sig Sauer and puts it to the baby’s skull.
“Goodbye, little bro.”
The sound of the gunshot echoes across the surrounding hills and out over the highway. A flock of ducks take off into the sky, startled by the loud report. Huey watches them disappear across the horizon before turning back to look at the baby’s ruptured skull. He reaches down into the pile of chunky gray matter leaking out of the infant’s head with both hands and begins to feed.
When Huey finally stumbles out of the woods back to his car he feels no better than when he left the house. Killing the baby did nothing to quiet the unease in him.
How could it have been the wrong fucking baby?
He drives home with his emotions running from rage, to fear, to panic.
It’s all over. If that baby lives it’s all over.
The house is silent when Huey bursts through the door and collapses onto the couch with his thoughts whirling through his head like a tornado. This had never happened before. Scratch had failed and now Huey had failed as well.
I know that baby is close. I just know it is.
Iesha walks into the room smiling from ear to ear, oblivious, as usual, to Huey’s foul mood. She sits down next to him on the couch and smiles at him, trying to get his attention.
“I felt the baby kick. You want to feel?”
She grabs Huey’s hand and places it on her belly as what looks like a footprint stretches against her skin from inside.
It has to be somewhere that neither Scratch nor I would have ever thought to look.
He feels movement beneath his hand as the baby kicks against Iesha’s stomach.
“See? Can you feel that?” She beams at him jubilantly
Huey looks down at Ieasha’s distended belly as it continues to undulate with their child’s movements. He looks back up into Ieaha’s eyes and smiles, then the smile falls hard into a twisted scowl.
“What’s wrong? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because God has one fucked up sense of humor. That’s why.”
Iesha’s eyebrows knit together in puzzlement as Huey gets up off the couch and walks into the kitchen. Seconds later he comes back with a knife.
“Jesus!” she shrieks as he plunges the blade into her stomach.
“Let’s hope it is.” Huey replies.
— | — | —
WRATH JAMES WHITE is a former World Class Heavyweight Kickboxer, a professional Kickboxing and Mixed Martial Arts trainer, distance runner, performance artist, and former street brawler, who is now known for creating some of the most disturbing works of fiction in print.
He is the author of Succulent Prey, The Book of a Thousand Sins, and His Pain. Wrath is also the co-author of Teratologist co-written with the king of extreme horror, Edward Lee and Poisoning Eros co-written with Monica J. O’Rourke. Wrath lives and works in Las Vegas, Nevada with his two daughters, Isis and Nala, his son Sultan and his wife Christie. When he isn’t writing or working he continues to compete in kickboxing events and train mixed martial arts competitors.
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