She would die first. I would crush the black life out of her. I would clinch my hands onto that skinny white neck and squeeze as hard as I could, crushing her supple throat shut until she expired.
The boy I would smother. I would use a cushion, or his own bedding if need be. Perhaps a plush toy. I would rather feel him die via proxy—for flesh of my flesh should not be killed directly by my bare hand. I didn’t think, despite my misgivings of his nature, I would want to feel his skin turn cold against my own. He was, after all, my only child.
I was lost in these reveries when I snapped back to reality. I focused on my family across the table and saw with a chill that the child was staring at me, his endlessly deep brown eyes as alien and empty as a rotting calf. I wanted to lunge for him right then, but knew the mother would have to be first. I could not be so cruel and devoid of humanity as to make a mother witness the slow, suffocating death of her child.
With a force of will I met Howard’s eyes, daring him to change my stance. Praying he would do something to make me feel compassion toward him. But he only stared, then looked to his mother, impeaching her attention. She glanced my way abruptly, as if my innermost thoughts had been revealed. I smiled and went back to my dinner. I knew there would be time to rid myself of them upon their return. There was no sense in having a scene.
They left the next day.
While they were away, I had spent most of my free time lounging around the house, reading in my study and organizing notes for an article I was to publish in the coming weeks. My nights I spent away in the arms of the young student, and the reprieve allowed me to forget my worries and dark thoughts for a time.
Given a bit of space to think, it was with embarrassment and a degree of self-loathing that I reflected on my murderous thoughts. I surmised that the strain of fatherhood and my career were creating unjust stressors on my psyche and had polluted my perspective of the things most important in my life. I researched whether postpartum depression could affect the male in the relationship and was both relieved and astonished to find it not only feasible but common. I resolved to try harder with Julie and little Howard in an effort to regain the family bond which had slipped away like frayed strips of silk through my fingers.
I had not, however, expected them back until the next morning, and was momentarily alarmed when I felt her weight settling onto the bed next to me.
Julie had returned in the middle of the night.
“Jules?” I said sleepily, groping for her.
She moaned something incoherent. My hand wove itself through tangled sheets to find her skin. I found the meat of her upper arm, and as I touched her I nearly cried out in alarm. Her flesh was scalding hot.
“Jules,” I said anxiously, feeling more of her, her breasts, her belly. “You’re burning up.”
“Yes, Howard, I’m afraid I’m a little sick, so we came back early. Little Howard is sleeping, and I desperately need to sleep as well.”
“Should I care for the baby in the morning, feed him or change him?” I asked quietly, although this is something I had never done, or been asked to do. With my newfound surge of conviviality, I thought it the smallest of sacrifices.
“No, please don’t,” she said, her voice tinged with alarm. “I’d rather he not be disturbed. He didn’t sleep well coming home and he needs a day to rest. If he cries, please wake me. Otherwise, he was just fed and should sleep through. Now please, Howard, I must sleep. Goodnight.”
I was confused but not overly concerned, and relieved to have been availed of my offer. I looked at the clock to see that it was not yet close to dawn. Feeling mischievous despite my wife’s ailing, I pressed my body toward her, reaching again for the feel of her heated flesh. I made it so far as a fingertip when she pulled from me with obvious rejection. She yanked the sheets around her like she always did when I was disallowed from affection, swaddling herself and leaving me nary a scrap to cover with.
With the determination of a short-armed hangman I leaned toward her again, desperate for her to feel my newfound sense of family loyalty and husbandly love. She recoiled from me, turning only briefly and saying sharply, “Please don’t.”
Her breath, I smelled, was foul. The same sickness that was frying her skin was likely boiling her insides and poisoning her intestines, the diseased secretions making their way through her nasal passages, coating her mouth and throat with rank bacteria.
Having just enough bedding to cover myself, and the press of the night pushing me toward sleep once more, I pulled myself away, closed my eyes, and left Julie to her healing slumber.
I don’t know what time it was when I woke. It may have been a noise, a sudden movement, or something else altogether, but something had shaken me loose from my dreams.
I opened my eyes and knew it was still night. Drowsy, my senses came to me one-by-one. I immediately noticed the room was warm, moist, and filled with a sharp animal odor. Although I was no longer covered by sheet or blanket, my skin was sticky with the pungent air, as if my body was laying in a heated coffin with only browning fruit and the worms for companions.
I was about to rise when I heard strange sounds beside me. Slowly, I turned my head and looked toward Julie, my body stiffening with tension beneath the grimy, slick excretions of my flesh. It was dark, so horribly dark, and yet I could see the sheets had rolled themselves around her in such a fashion as to form a womb. It encompassed her from head to toe, not a bit of her flesh visible. No moonlight came through the blinds, no ambient light from the hallway. The bedroom door gaped open to an even deeper darkness beyond.
It must have been the smell that woke me, but it was the odd sounds coming from within the roll of sheets, where Julie lay, that made me alert. It was a shuffling sort of sound, the kind one might make fighting within a straightjacket—a disjointed, struggling, sliding, jerking noise. The muffled, panicked exertions of escape. For a moment I wondered if Julie were being smothered in her sleep, much as I had imagined doing to little Howard. I moved to help her but was held back by an internal force, a kernel of inherent knowledge that stayed my hand, petrified my limbs, and kept me from making any movement whatsoever.
I noticed a respiratory rising and falling movement within the bulbous shape of the bedding, as if the twined ball of sheets themselves were swelling with the inhalations and exhalations of life. I held my breath.
I saw the first leg slip through the fabric.
It was thick as a wrist, but blacker than night. I could see the smooth pointed tip, the long coarse hairs flowing along the bent-angled limb.
I was too horrified to scream when the mass of bedding beside me slackened, as the thing inside slid heavily to the floor with a loud, meaty thump.
After a heartbeat I heard the hesitant clicking of stiff legs against hardwood, like sticks being tapped in rhythmic unison along the floor beside the bed. The clattering sound quickened and, with a heavy shifting sound, the thing slid itself beneath me. I wondered if it was momentarily sheltering, instinctually gathering itself in safety before venturing out into the larger world.
Perhaps it was—she was—just a little frightened, at first, at what she had become. Curious despite my horror, I fought the urge to look beneath my bed at the creature. I did not look, but heard the slightest drumming of a rapid heartbeat and the wet, prolonged squelching of her slick black jaws flexing open for the first time.
A moment later the heavy tapping on the floorboards resumed, much more assured now. The sounds moved away from beneath me, toward the far wall, then up along it. It finally settled high in the corner, presumably looking down at me. Presumably judging.
So I wait. Here, paralyzed in my bed, my prone flesh a sacrifice to the monster.
It moves. Its stiff legs tapping high up along the wall, then, yes, across the ceiling, warily, as if cautious to my impossible flight. I close my eyes tightly—so tightly—not wanting, not daring, for the sake of the sanity left to me, to witness the demon. The drumming taps of its legs continue and I k
now the thing is moving right above me...
And now the legs are silent. Has it stopped? Or, like the beast in the wood, is it lowering itself even now?
No longer sparing my mind, I force my eyes open to see it hovering just above me, its body bulbous and gleaming despite being covered in stiff, coarse hair. Its twitching legs, extended from its body, are as wide as the bed. Her jaws are wet, and her eyes—oh lord the thing’s eyes—are Julie’s, but multiplied!
I open my mouth to speak, to reason, to cry out, but the beast moves quickly—too quickly to counter—and lands on top of me, heavier than I’d imagined, its prickly weight settling onto my bared chest. There is a moment of reprieve, perhaps consideration.
Tears stream down my face as I look into its glassy eyes, searching for traces of my wife. I want to speak her name. I want to touch her.
I slowly lift a hand toward the hairy bulk. I feel a deep surge of love mixed with my fear. My wife, I think, and almost smile.
Before my fingertips reach her, she shifts her weight and makes a quick, jerking movement.
Something sharp and long punctures through my skin, entering through my abdomen and pushing upward, deep into my stomach. I feel the barb moving inside me, sinking deeper, puncturing some inner membrane. I gasp as a rush of cold fluid fills my insides, the chill spreading from my stomach to my chest, my groin, my legs. The venom rushes to my heart. My muscles atrophy, my jaw tightens. I weep like a child in quick, gasping heaves. I look into her black eyes and cry, streaks of hot tears flowing from my eyes, drool from my agape lips leaking down my chin. She shifts again, the weight of her pressing numbly on my groin, and she rolls to one side, then the other. I feel her silk as it twines around me. First my feet and quickly, oh so quickly, up my legs.
Things are softening now, my head is growing quiet, and I only wish it to be done, for my life to be over. It’s possible, I pray, that a new life awaits beyond the void, beyond the dark sacrifice of this world. I feel no hate, not even now, and I pray it was compassion, perhaps forgiveness, I saw in the multitude of her alien eyes. I hope so.
They say the function of hearing is the last thing to go before the spirit departs. And so it is, in the numbing darkness, the womb now taking over my face, that I hear sounds from the dark hallway—a soft clattering along the wooden floor growing louder. Something coming from the nursery with quick, clumsy taps.
As the world disappears I take solace in my dying moments knowing that, like his mother, I will contribute to the sustenance of my child.
Little Howard will feed on me after all.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Philip Fracassi is a screenwriter and the author of the literary novels The Egotist and the upcoming Don’t Let Them Get You Down. Mother is his first, but not last, foray into horror.
Follow him on Twitter (@philipfracassi), on Facebook and at www.pfracassi.com.
Mother Page 4