Flyblown and Blood-Spattered

by Jarred Martin

  “No,” Maura said with forceful denial, “There is only one God. He is good and He loves you, and he'll protect you now. You're in his hands now and you'll be safe.”

  “That's not true,” Przemek said. “Have you ever seen your god? Because I have seen mine. I have seen them in the darkness of my land. I have been one with them in worship. I've seen their anger, and rarely their mercy. I've seen things that you could not begin to imagine. My father witnessed these things as well.”

  Maura felt the breath leave her body at the mention of her brother. She would finally know the truth now, and it terrified her. “Tell me,” she said, her voice marred by unease. “Tell me what happened when he left me. Why didn’t he come back? Why didn't he want to see me anymore?”

  “He did,” Przemek looked up at her with somber eyes. “He loved you. He talked about you all the time. But he told me you could never come to us beyond the ancient barrier. He said there were things about our world that would destroy you, things that would tear you apart. Things that would make every belief you held a lie, and he didn't want to expose you to that. It was mercy, not hatred that kept him from you, you have to understand.”

  “He met my mother,” Przemek continued, “when he crossed the border in his early days as an apostle of the jealous god, your god. And she showed him the wonders of our lands. He was converted. He had seen undeniable proof of the power of our gods. But in his heart, the love for his own god was strong. He worshiped in secret. And he must have convinced my mother and sister to worship as well, though I was never a part of it. Perhaps he knew that I would have refused. And I would have too. But there are no secrets from my gods. They recognized the betrayal and descended upon my family in anger and retribution. They paid for their betrayal with their lives. I found their bodies... it was awful.” Przemek wept at the memories, tears ran down his face. Maura tried to wipe them away but they would not stop coming.

  She held him tighter, and they stayed like that, in silence on the bathroom floor for a long time. Maura didn’t know what to say; it was crazy, the things the boy had told her, but he believed in them so strongly she didn’t have the heart to refute them. So they clung to each other as the hours passed, it was the only thing she knew to do.

  He fell asleep downstairs on the couch in the living room while she was fixing the door, the one that pastor Hodges had destroyed when he burst in. The lock had been torn from the wall, so she had to nail long slats of wood she found in the garage to the frame to keep it closed. She hoped she wouldn't wake Przemek with the noise, he had gone to sleep easily enough, but beneath the thin facade of calm she could see the fear in him. He still believed something was coming for him. She knew it would fade in time. The longer he stayed in her world, he would realize the silly superstitions that bound him to his own would drift away; and who knew, maybe someday he would look back and laugh at his primitive beliefs. She would be right there to laugh with him. They would be together for a long time, Maura knew. And even if she would never see her brother again, she would have him. They were family, all each other had anymore, and she was just realizing the love she felt for him.

  She fell asleep beside him on the living room couch, too tire to make the long trudge up the stairs. Maura held him as they slept, she would protect him. She would keep him safe. Forever.

  She was cold. There was a draft from somewhere. It was still black night when she woke up, shivering. She kept her eyes closed and wondered if she should get a blanket or if it would be worth it to carry Przemek up to her room where they could both sleep in her more comfortable bed.

  Przemek

  She was wide awake now and terror-stricken by his absence. She called out for him in the darkened house, but there was no answer. No, she cried out in her mind.

  He's not gone.

  He's not gone.

  He's just up in his room, the draft made him uncomfortable and he went where he could cover up.

  But where was the draft coming from? And then she heard the kitchen door slam against the frame as the wind outside gusted. She felt a sickness spread out in the pit of her stomach.

  She got up from the couch and grimaced as she stepped in something; something wet and sticky.

  No, she told herself, it's not what you think it is. I don't know what it could be, but it's not that.

  She reached for the chain hanging from the ceiling fan to click on the light.

  It came on, but she kept her eyes closed. She didn't want to look; afraid of what she would find. But she did look. It was impossible not to.

  There, on the floor, was a long streak of fresh blood. She followed the trail of blood as it seemed to twist and flow from the living room to the kitchen like a sanguine estuary. She knew where it would lead, but she followed it anyway. The trail ended at the kitchen door. The frame was marred by deep holes from where the boards where ripped out, they lay in the floor, bent nails sticking out menacingly.

  She stood staring out the door, crippled in wordless horror. As she looked out into the blackness she wondered what else lurked on the peripheries of her insular perceptibly. What shapeless terrors could the darkness birth? For the terrors that dwelt in her own mind were insignificant compared to the incomprehensible realities she had witnessed.

  God was no longer a comfort to her. And she shuddered.

  HEADLESS THALIDOMIDE BABY

  They say you love your kid the first instant you see it; all pink and screaming; little bloody mess. And it's pure love. Love you don't get to choose. Unconditional love isn't like dipping your toe into a pool; you dive in whether you want to or not. For me it wasn't any different. The first time I saw my little girl, I was in love. The Song of the Wind, the first time she saw her, when I handed that little joy-bundle to her, she handed it back and dry-heaved.

  I met The Song of the Wind a few weeks after we were married. We were all married. Hundreds of us. This was back in my Elysium days. Elysium Fields was this community of like-minded Earth-spirits, united under the goal of breaking free from the corporate industrial complex. Rhamadanthus, it was his vision. You probably saw it on the TV, you know, towards the end, when the pigs raided the place.

  We were gone by then, though. We had both decided that Elysium was sort of getting to be a conventional way to live unconventionally, if you know what I mean. So we split.

  The song of the Wind's biological father fronted us the cash to buy this mobile home (He kept calling her Ashley). So we parked it in the middle of nowhere- which is everywhere if you think about it- and that was it. Shelter: check. Everything else we needed was provided by the Earth Mother.

  We had a generator, too. And when I say we were in the middle of nowhere, I mean there was 7-11 and shit. But it was a long-ass walk.

  So we worked the earth. We tilled. We planted. We sowed. We reaped. We nourished the soil, and in kind, it nourished us. It was a good life.

  At night, sometimes we'd strip down and howl at the moon until our voices gave out. I'd fall back and pull her on top of me. We'd fuck like that, in the dirt and grass,entwined in one another like serpents; nothing above us but the stars and sky. Like I said, it was a good life. You know. Pretty solitary. Very Thoreau. Very Walden.

  But if contentment is a yoga mat, it was about to be pulled out from under us.

  The Song of the Wind started to show around mid-April, I think. I knew I didn't have any right to be as surprised as I was. I realized that she would be more fertile than most women, having avoided half a lifetime of being exposed to microwaves and cell phone towers, power lines. Shit, man, even the signal that comes out of your T.V. remote, you don't know what the fuck that shit is doing to you. ZZZZAAAAPPPP!! You're fucking sterile.

  If you knew how this turned out you'd probably have a lot of questions about the pregnancy. Like did she have a lot of weird cravings,or didn't you see any ultrasound images or anything? Didn't you know what was growing inside of her? The answer is: the pregnancy was normal ( as normal as it could have been; all things c
onsidered.) We didn’t see any ultrasound images because we didn't go to a hospital. Not even after Cinnabar Hawk Owlet was born. All western medicine is an opportunity for commerce. It's a ploy that exploits the eventual inevitability that human beings will become sick. They profit off of it. It's fucking cynical, man. So like, fucking excuse me if I don't participate, okay?

  I remember I was sitting outside in a beanbag chair. I had just huffed some glue or read some Noam Chompsky, I can't remember which, but I was sitting back, and it had given me a lot to think about. And she walked up. She asked me if she's still attractive-looking. She let me know how she's feeling vulnerable because of the changes in her body. I know I'm supposed to be supportive and shit, but I couldn't help but point out that, like, biologically she isn't supposed to be attractive right now because she's already knocked up. What the fuck would be the point? It's like, how can I go against my instincts, right? And I even went out of my way to explain that on a spiritual level, I feel totally different towards her, and it's not like I'm repulsed, you know? It's fucking biology.

  Plus, her tits were swelling with milk, which seems like it would be cool, til you get a look a them; weird, puffed-up nipples and stretch marks. I could tell when she lost weight that they were gonna head south, too; I wasn't looking forward to that.

  Not that I told her that last part about her tits, mind you. I'm not an idiot.

  She was pissed. Locked me out of the house. Fucking hormones.

  That was the pregnancy. Pretty normal from what I hear. It's not like she was eating toothpaste and lawn trimmings or some shit like that. Like the baby was forcing her to eat weird shit. Actually, even after it was born, the baby never ate. Never.

  And so life went on. She kept swelling like a tick. You know, getting more pregnant. One thing that was weird about it though: you hear a lot about how pregnant women have a glow about them, like they’re preternaturally back-lit with the spark of creation. The song of the Wind didn't have that. If anything it was like the baby was sucking the life out of her. Her skin got real pale, almost like this gray color. And she had these dark circles under her eyes, like she wasn't sleeping, but she slept all the time. Her eyes got real dull; hair too. Some of it even started to fall out towards the end.

  But I figured it was natural. I actually thought there was some kind of quiet dignity in it. You know? A mother giving up her life-force so that her child can live. Like those wasps that sting their mother to death as soon as they hatch.

  So she got bigger and bigger, and paler and paler. She ended up looking like some swollen ghost haunting our couch.

  And one morning, in October, she was sleeping on the couch and I was sitting next to her, just sort of zoning out, looking at the patterns in the faux wood paneling that we have on the walls, and how they look like little faces. Little faces, and their mouths are always open, like they're screaming. And I looked over at her, and she was wide awake, eyes big as shit, and I looked down and saw why.

  At first I Thought she'd pissed herself. She was wearing these gray sweatpants that had gone black in places the liquid had soaked through, and I said, did you piss yourself, and she says no, my water just broke.

  We had to throw that couch out. All that amniotic fluid. It ruined it. If it was piss, I think it would have came out. That stuff though, no way.

  I got her in the tub. Warm water and candles. I was trying to create a peaceful atmosphere for the baby to be born into. First impressions are real important. All the shit you see when you're a baby, even if you don't remember it, it still gets sort of permanently imprinted on your psyche. Subconsciously. That’s why I was on the edge of the tub very gently strumming a lyre. I had written a song for the occasion which I have titled The Birthing Song. It didn't have any words. Just a series of noises I imagined the baby would find comforting. Not that it did any good.

  The whole scenario I had envisioned of peace and calm, with the dim flicker of candles throwing shadows against the alabaster walls, was completely negated by The song of the Wind's very uncool attitude toward the whole birthing-ritual. Once things really started to get heavy, she abandoned serenity to welcome in this, like massive effusion of disruptive energy.

  I can still remember her in the tub. Screaming. Cursing my name. Going on and on about how I'm this and I'm that and I'm a motherfucker and how this motherfucker's ripping her motherfucking cunt in half.

  That stuff I said about first impressions; I meant it. I can dig how, on some level, birth is like a glorious chaos. One minute you're in this pleasant, warm and insular place, not so much happening, but it's familiar,it's cozy. The next minute you're being forced out into this big, ugly world, and it's so loud and bright, and it's cold and you don't know what the fuck is happening. It's chaos. But it doesn't have to be. I think an effort could have been made for our child to be received into a peaceful and harmonious atmosphere. Who knows? Maybe things could have turned out differently.

  Maybe.

  So she's in the tub, still screaming. She's past the point of actual words now and all that's coming out are these ugly, primitive growls. My lyre is in pieces, smashed against the toilet. And she starts banging around knocking candles off the edge of the tub. Thrashing like a shark trapped in shallow water. Like she was trying to shake the baby out of her.

  And she's pushing. She's furious. And finally, we get our first glimpse of our baby. Two little feet sticking out of The Song Of the Wind.

  It was a breech birth. It happens sometimes when the baby gets turned around inside the womb. They come out backwards.

  She pushed, I pulled and the struggle continued for an eternity.

  Until finally...

  I held her in my hands and I knew she wasn't dead. I told myself that.

  I know she's not dead.

  I know she''s not dead.

  She was warm. And I could feel life pulsing within her. And she was beautiful.

  And I held her for just another second. And I said to The Song Of the wind, "this is her, meet your new baby girl." And I place the newborn in her mother's arms for the first time.

  Her hands were on her for maybe two seconds before she shoved the kid back at me. She retched. Gagged. Her hands plunged into the bathwater, which had gone all cloudy with blood and everything else.

  She dug around frantically, like she was looking for a bar of soap. She gagged again and screamed, "where is it? Where THE FUCK IS IT!?!"

  Whatever she was looking for, she didn't find it. And I asked her what she was doing.

  And she turned to me with this god awful look I've never seen before, empty-eyed and drained of emotion and feeling, like she was just shutting down. And she said to me, so quiet "please. I can't. Please, just get it out of me. I'm so tired. Just get it out of me. I can't look."

  And I asked her what she was talking about.

  And she sank back into the water up to her chest, then her neck, and this tiny voice came out of her again "get our dead baby's head out of me." And she slipped all the way under.

  The baby in one hand, I grabbed her under the arm and pulled her back up. And I said, “She's not dead. Look.” And I offered her the baby again. The song Of the Wind recoiled. She turned away and squeezed her eyes shut.

  “Get that fucking thing away from me. I don't want to see."

  I got up and wrapped the baby in a towel and walked out the bathroom door. I should have stayed, I guess. I knew right away, though, she would never love our daughter. This kid would always be a freak to her. A failure of reproduction. Like a bad copy you could just wad up and throw away.

  I took the kid into the living room and sat down on the couch. And there, with the cold baby juice soaking into my cut off denim shorts, I counted her toes, her fingers, I moved her arms and legs to see if her joints were fused together, I looked at her spine. She was perfect. Symmetrical. Everything right where it should be.

  Except her head was missing.

  I realize that stuff like this actually got to be sort of typical
. The deformities, I mean. I have a lot of theories about what caused it: our drinking water, pollution from specific pharmaceutical manufacturing. The list goes on. I don't want to get into this right now, but I could. And it would blow your mind.

  I sat, cradling our new baby girl. I looked over the smooth contours of flesh above her chest. She had shoulders, but no neck. In the center, above her collar bone, there was this puckered mound of flesh that rose about a quarter-inch, surrounding some sort of orifice. Just a tiny hole, really. I thought it might eventually grow teeth or something and I could feed like celery, maybe, into it.

  And then I put my ear to her chest. I heard the steady drum of her heart. And it was strong. I ran the tip of my finger over the palm of her tiny hand. And her little fingers closed over mine. She was love. And I knew then, I only had to do two things: Love her and accept her. And I would, too.

  The song of the wind never adjusted to being a mother. Which is a bummer, because I know she had a lot of love to give. She was never what I would consider to be unsympathetic, or cruel before, but something about having the kid changed her. I can't say whether it was the uniqueness of the child that disgusted her, or maybe the onset of some sort of postpartum depression. In any case, she didn't handle it well.

  The Song Of the Wind mostly stayed alone in our bedroom following the birth. The closed door was her barrier between the surreal, but very substantive reality she wasn't able to face. One night, as I lay beside her in our bed, I asked her what she did in the room all day. “I just think,” she said.

  “What do you think about?”

  “Just one thing. Over and over.” Her voice had that dreamy sort of quality that told me she was teetering on the edge of sleep. “I think about having a baby. Giving birth piece by piece. You know? first an arm slides out of me, then a leg, little fingers drop out. And I put them all together. And when it's finally assembled, I look, and it's missing the head. Every time. It's like a jigsaw puzzle with a missing piece. It's incomplete. And I want to throw it away. I want to go to the store and get a new one.”