I had always been weary of my health. My mother was not the greatest of parents, but she always told me to cherish the body I lived in. She would be inclined to mention what foods cause what cancer, or how a single puff of a cigarette could lead to a decade of troubled breathing. Not to mention that she wanted my twin brother and I to be her perfect children. So she groomed us, and berated us for being anything less. At one point, her controlling nature got so bad that I had to leave. I was cut off from her completely by the time I was 19.
I wasn’t on my own for long, I found myself a fiancée who took care of me despite his poor eyesight. He was essentially blind, which made me the main caretaker of the house. I felt in control, while also having my own needs met. We were young, and in love. I can still remember the soft kisses on my face that he would give, after missing my lips entirely. Despite our poor financial situation, I became pregnant rather quickly. I was terrified of it… I knew I wasn’t ready to be a mother and even suspected that I would fall again into the repetitive cycle of abuse. My child did not deserve what I went through.
It was late at night, a few weeks after I initially found out. I remember holding onto my fiancées hand, praying for a solution to my misery. I needed a sign that I would be a good mother, I needed hope that I could do it. Of course, nothing happened that night and I went to sleep. The next morning we had breakfast together, and I left for work. It wasn’t a great job but the company was nice. My boss made me uneasy as he seemed to know every step I took, but the building was filled with security cameras. He told me to go home early… I wasn’t sure why but his eyes looked down to my abdomen and I felt like I wanted to vomit.
I brushed it off as pregnancy sickness and left early. We primarily got paid on commission and it was a slow day. I knew I wasn’t missing out on anything financially beneficial. I remember being at the main entrance to our apartment complex and feeling… disgusted. It was dirty and run down. I knew there was mould hiding behind the bricks, and I could feel almost every pipe leaking from a hole made of rust. I never felt distaste for my building before— sure I knew it was bad, but we were broke 20 year olds. It wasn’t going to get much better. Yet something told me I didn’t want to go home.
I did anyways, ignoring the feeling and entering into my apartment. The smell of copper and metallic liquid filled my mind. I stared at my husbands recent corpse, stabbed more times than I could count. The next bit gets blurry… I knew the cops came and I did interviews. Thankfully, my boss was my alibi as I was quickly thought of as the primary suspect. The case went cold fast, as no neighbours were home at the time and the security cameras installed in the building, turned out to be fake.
I got time off of work, not much but something so I didn’t end my own life out of stress. I remember sitting at the dining room table a few weeks after the investigation finished, my stomach was rather plump now and I was trying to settle my mind. It had hit me all at once, everything was left exactly where it was when he died. My eyes wandered to the floor, and I could see a stain where he blood used to be. It was dark… I felt as if the wood had rotted after the blood had settled itself in. I thought I could reach down and rip out the floorboards, that’s how rotten it seemed. Before I could act, I was taken out of my trance by the dripping of a nose bleed.
Quickly, I stood up and got myself cleaned up. I didn’t notice the floorboards again for another week… when I had come to realise the stain had been spreading. The rot was growing, and yet when I stood on the floorboards themselves they were sturdy as ever. Putting in a maintenance request did nothing… so I was left to watch my floors continue to rot. Each day my eyes would catch the floor… and then I would be subjected to a rather nasty nosebleed. But, I kept watching until one day, I stepped on one of the darkest spots and my foot went into the floor. I was first annoyed that I now had a hole in my floor, which quickly changed into terror…My foot had been stained with this black ichor.
I tried to assure myself that it was nothing, just a mark from stained floorboards. I washed it off and thought nothing of it. Late that night, I awoke to a throbbing pain around my abdomen. I couldn’t sleep, and laying down didn’t make it much better. I stumbled to the bathroom and began to prepare myself a bath. The haze of the pain steadily faded as I undressed myself… until I saw my veins black and webbing around my lower body. In a panic I looked down at my stomach, poking for movement… when I noticed I could see through myself. It was as if my own eyes were capable of an ultrasound. Sure, the skin, fat, blood, and fluid was disgusting… but it was my child growing inside me. I was amazed, yet terrified, yet in love with this newfound pregnancy inflicted psychosis. I remember smiling down at my daughter, seeing her tiny hands. She was beautiful, she was everything, she was almost perfect.
My eyebrows scrunched up in confusion. Why wasn’t she perfect? I cleared the blood dripping from my nose as I continued to look down at her. The blackened veins had found themself the umbilical cord, and began pumping the ichor inside her. I closed my eyes and screamed, collapsing onto the floor. She was meant to be perfect, I kept reminding myself. I was born and raised as perfection, and now I was looking at an abomination that I would give birth too.
And I did… and I abandoned her swiftly. The doctors told me that she was perfectly healthy, they couldn’t see anything wrong with her. But I knew… I could see her heart filled with tar, and the iron weights in her lungs. Her eyes were slightly clouded over, and her skin was flaking with eczema and I knew… she was not who I wanted my daughter to be. She was not perfection and I would not allow myself to be near her. I know she found a good family…but secretly I hope they will see the truth inside her. The monster that had taken away my daughter.
I can’t help but be thankful for whoever answered my prayer. Although my motherhood troubles are gone, I find myself being able to see everything. Every speck of mould, every dust particle, every bug, every parasite. I have been enlightened to the truth of the world and I know I can reach absolute perfection. Or I would be able to… if I didn’t know the ichor still ran through my veins, waiting for another one of my children to capture. You don’t need to know this, but it’s bothering me quite a bit. Your office is rather disgusting and I suggest you take time to thoroughly clean it. No one wants a bug problem.