by Susan Donym
As soon as they got to the beach Milo took off on his own, his arms crossed tightly over his breasts. He could feel the stupid things jiggling all around with every step he took, and as he walked along the shore all the guys were staring and he could feel their eyes all over his body, everywhere. Their lusty gazes were like sweaty hands all over his skin, touching him, probing places he didn't want them to go.
He was standing on the sand, looking out at the ocean, when he heard a man's voice behind him.
"Hey, sweet cheeks! You are one hot little mama!"
Milo just hurried away down the shore, his head down, his eyes clamped shut to hold back the tears. He knew he was giving the cat-calling jerk exactly what he wanted: blushing, weeping and running away. He knew how exciting it had been to get that reaction from a girl, how powerful it could make a guy feel.
And now he knew how it felt to be that girl, her face burning with humiliation and her eyes blind with tears.
It was the first time a man had ever talked to Milo like that. But he knew it wouldn't be the last. He had become the kind of girl who blushed and wept and ran away, and his humiliation was going to be a source of endless delight for the kind of awful man that Milo used to be.
A MOTHER'S WORK
God, you are so annoying! I'll never get any work done if you keep kicking inside me all the time!
I told you before, don't kick when I'm at the office. How am I supposed to answer you? If my co-workers see me talking to my own belly, they'll think I'm insane.
OK, OK. I'm in the ladies room now, and I have the stethoscope out so I can hear you. Now what the heck do you want this time?
What's that? Speak up, I can't understand that squeaky little baby voice of yours.
Let me guess, you want me to go back to the library and keep looking for some way to reverse the spell your wife put on us. Well, forget about it, pal! I've spent months looking through every book of spells I could find, and I haven't learned a damn thing. For all I know your wife was the only person who could have reversed the spell, and now that she's run off who knows where, we're stuck like this forever.
Believe me, I want you out of my belly as bad as you want to be out of there, but we're going to have to live with this. It's been almost 11 months, and you haven't come out yet. The doctors tried inducing labor and you still wouldn't come out, and I almost died when they tried to put me under to give me a C-section. It's obvious your wife intended for you to be inside me forever. So just settle down in there, and leave me alone!
Damn it, stop kicking me, you little parasite. I swear, if you keep this up I'm gonna have you aborted! Do you want me to go get you vacuumed out of there? Huh? Then be a good baby and stop kicking Mama!
What's that? Are you actually trying to threaten me? That's hilarious. What can you do? You're a freaking baby, stuck in my belly. And if anything ever did happen to me, good luck, pal! I'd like to see how you'd do now, without my nice, warm womb to live in.
I don't think you understand how this works, tiny. You're not a person anymore. You have no rights, no say in what happens here. Nothing. Zip. Nada. I am a woman, and now you are just an annoying little thing that lives inside me. You're a helpless lump, that's all you are.
Go ahead, throw one of your little tantrums. See if I care. This whole mess is your fault. If you'd told me you were married, I never would have slept with you in the first place and your wife wouldn't have caught us and put this damn spell on us. As far as I see it you deserve whatever you get, but I don't know why I should have to be punished forever like this for your stupid mistake!
What? I can't understand a word you're saying in there. It doesn't even sound like you're speaking English anymore. I think you're forgetting how to talk or something. I guess that must be part of the spell. Well, that's probably for the best. Maybe now you'll finally shut the hell up in there!
Thanks to you I'm gonna be a big, fat cow for the rest of my life. How am I supposed to explain being pregnant all the time, but never giving birth? How am I ever gonna get a new boyfriend? You've ruined my life, you little son of a bitch!
Uh-oh! Hang on, somebody's coming into the ladies' room. I gotta put the stethoscope away.
Oh, hi, Mona! Um, yeah you did hear me talking. I was talking to my baby. You know, I heard that's supposed to be good for them.
No, it hasn't been more than nine months. It's only been, um, eight. Eight months, that's all!
No, to be honest, I'm not enjoying my pregnancy. I wish it was over with already. I want to see my feet again, and stop peeing all the time, and not have backaches and swollen boobs. I'd give anything just to have my old life back.
I had dreams, things I wanted to do with my life. But no, now I'm stuck as this little brat's mommy. Forever.
Yeah, you're right, Mona. I guess that old saying is true...
A mother's work is never done.
THE CURSE OF THE MALIKAR
It all began centuries ago, as a ghastly curse upon the women of the Malikar clan.
One of the Malikar women was a notorious slut, delighting in stealing away the husbands and lovers of the other women in her village. Finally she made the mistake of bedding the lover of Yaga, who was at that time the most powerful witch in all of Europe. Yaga was furious, and she put a spell on every Malikar woman born from that day forward. The curse ensured that no Malikar woman could ever again take a man into her bed without dire consequences.
At first the Malikar women were bitter about their fate, but as the generations passed they came to see the curse in a new way, as a kind of dark gift. By the early twentieth century, the Malikar were actively using the curse for their own ends, to enforce justice as they saw it.
Each Malikar sister traveled the globe, seeking out men who were truly wicked, beyond redemption. When a Malikar found a wicked man, she would live in his shadow, following him for weeks, even months, making certain he truly deserved the special form of punishment only the Malikar sisters could inflict.
When a Malikar was certain a man was beyond salvation, she would appear before him on a dark and lonely night, stepping forward from an alley wearing clothes designed to excite his most base appetites.
Thus it was that poor Angus O'Toole first encountered Alexia Malikar.
It was a cold autumn night and Angus was stumbling home from a pub when he saw a beautiful, dark-haired girl before him in the street. She was wearing a shiny, tiny black dress that left little doubt as to her profession.
She was the best-looking whore Angus had seen in his life, and he was prepared to offer any amount to entice such a creature into his bed. He could afford to offer any amount, because he didn't actually intend to pay her anything. After he'd used her, he'd just kick her out, as was his custom with whores. If she complained, he'd backhand her across the face. Actually, he was hoping she'd complain.
But before Angus could make an offer, the girl named her own price, a price so low he thought he'd misheard her. He accepted, and she followed him back to his grimy hovel without another word.
Once they arrived and were inside, the girl quickly stripped off her clothes and laid back on the bed with her knees apart, waiting for Angus with an expression of eager anticipation. The wicked man looked down at her supple body, not quite believing his own good fortune. Little did he suspect that his luck was about to run out.
Angus laid atop the Malikar sister, savoring her soft breasts and sweet kisses. The moment he was ready he thrust himself inside her, little caring if she was ready for him, but as he did so he had an unpleasant shock as the curse took effect.
Something was pulling at him from inside the girl, gently at first, then harder and harder. He tried to yank himself free, but he was stuck tight to the Malikar's loins. The pull from within her grew still stronger, and the wicked man found himself being drawn, groin first, inside the Malikar. He watched in horror as her loins stretched wide to accommodate his legs, then as she slowly enveloped his belly and chest, working her way toward his
head. He tried to scream, but already her nether lips had squeezed the breath from his chest.
He put his hands on her knees, trying to brace himself and stop the process, but the suction was simply too great. He was swallowed, bit by bit, as a snake devours its prey. The last thing he saw, before his head was drawn within the wet, spongy tunnel, was Alexia Malikar looking down at him with a grin full of mockery and contempt.
Once she had absorbed the wicked man's entire body, Alexia laid there, her belly hugely swollen to accommodate him. Anyone who had seen her then would have thought she was pregnant with a litter.
She waited for the next stage of the spell, and then at last her muscles went to work contracting around Angus, pushing on him, squeezing his flesh, crushing him down. This was the most delicate stage of the spell, and it was vital that the Malikar not be disturbed.
Inside the Malikar, the wicked man knew only darkness and agonizing pressure across every inch of his skin. Sometimes the pressure would be steady and methodical, like a vice, other times it was quick and sharp, like being pelted with bricks. It crushed his bones, knocked the teeth from his mouth, squashed his form in unfamiliar directions.
Finally the squeezing stopped and Angus dared to hope his nightmare was over. But then a new kind of crushing pain began. This one rolled from his toes all the way up to his scalp and then back down again, and with each pass it was like he could feel every drop of moisture being drained from his body. He felt like a washcloth being wrung out, over and over again. And still the pushing and prodding would go on, driving him half-mad with pain and confusion.
Finally, countless hours after it had begun, the pressure stopped, only to then explode across his back like a whip. Angus felt himself being shoved forward, through the same slippery tunnel where he'd entered the Malikar.
His passage seemed slightly easier this time, and the next thing he knew he'd landed with a wet plop between the Malikar's thighs to face a world very different from the one he knew, a world in which he was a small and helpless thing.
He saw Alexia towering over him, terrifyingly large. She picked him up in her hands as if he was no more than a loaf of bread, gazing at him with eyes of pure malicious delight. Looking down at his own body, he saw the thick belly and hairless, helplessly wriggling arms and legs of an infant. The shock made him shriek, and the piercingly high, child-like sound of his shriek made him shriek again.
The wicked man now perfectly resembled a newborn babe, but he would learn his fate was far more cruel than that, for babies eventually grow up, and Angus never would.
The Malikar's enchanted belly crushed a man down into a plump, baby-shaped little lump, but it didn't actually make him younger. He still had his adult mind, but for the rest of his life he wouldn't be able to speak or walk, and he'd never get any larger or look any older. He was a grown man, trapped forever in a baby's soft skin. He would die looking just as he had the day he was born.
Of course, the Malikar sisters took special delight in inflicting their punishment on younger men, the better to draw out the cruelty of their tortures. The day Angus was transformed happened to be his 28th birthday, so he had many long decades of infancy ahead of him.
Alexia Malikar bundled her new charge in a blanket and carried him into the night, cooing and singing to him in a near-perfect imitation of motherhood. She brought him to the home she shared with two of her sisters and half a dozen of his infant brothers. There he was given his supper direct from the bosom of one of the Malikar, a feast as galling as it was delicious. Then he was powdered and diapered, and put down for the evening.
The baby-shaped men were kept in one large nursery, each in his own crib, and through the night Angus was tormented by the burblings and bawlings of his brothers. They sounded like the occupants of any nursery in the world, and Angus wondered how they could live with themselves, acting the role of helpless infants as if it was the most natural thing in the world. How could grown men lie in cribs, drooling and mewling, allowing themselves to be nursed and coddled by the very women who'd reduced them to this sorry state?
For a time his hatred of the other tiny men gave him some focus, but then he realized that eventually he would become just like them. He was already hungry, and he knew he'd soon need his diaper changed again. He'd have no choice but to bawl for help, and when he did his cries would sound no different from his new brothers'. Without the nursing and coddling of these strange women he'd be dead in a day, and the longer they cared for him, the more he'd inevitably grow accustomed to it.
And so that night Angus O'Toole, cheater, thief, brute and killer, sucked his little thumb as he cried himself to sleep in his crib.