Nine months ago my darling husband, Michael, died in a horrific car accident. He was the manager at Subway, a chain of restaurants that serve customizable sandwiches. The evening of his passing, he received a call from the store. Apparently, the closing sandwich artist locked the keys in the office and needed Mike to come in and lock up. Ever the responsible manager, Michael grabbed his coat and left. Little did I know that would be the last time he would blow me a kiss through a closing door.
Some time had passed since his death, and I found myself outside his Subway yet again.
The longing for my husband brought me back frequently. The Subway experience was my way to resurrect him, if only for a couple moments. I immersed myself in the aromas of the store, each one summoned bittersweet memories: fresh baked bread on his uniform, breakfast sandwiches in bed together, and cold-cuts on our wedding day. My excursions to Subway were my single comfort, and I craved the relief they brought me. I typically went in the evenings, on some quiet nights I could almost hear him from across the table.
That particular evening I was lamenting the events that brought about my husband passing. If only someone else was closing. As I ate, I watched through teary eyes the competent, young sandwich artist carry out his closing duties, and we exchanged knowing smiles. It was not the first time he had taken care of me while he closed. I returned to my sandwich, a pity party-sub if there ever was one, existing as something between a daydream and a nightmare.
The jangling of keys brought me back to the present. The sandwich artist informed me that it was just about time to wrap things up. The way that he stood tall between the door and I roused something primal in me, and just as he was about to turn the key, he turned to me with a look as if to say: would you like to stay a while longer?
I nodded yes.
The latching of the door was like a starter pistol. I leapt up into the strong arms of my sandwich artist and we immersed ourselves in one another. We made our way back towards the kitchen, tearing off each others clothes in turns. I removed each of his baggy, compostable gloves revealing his hirsute hands, which skillfully and nimbly unclasped my brassier. Before long we were completely nude, and I sat astride the man and we writhed into one another atop the slender white cutting board. The sneeze guard had steamed up, as if to blush in the fire our passion. We had become nothing more than our shared instinct for pleasure.
He began to demonstrate the mastery of his craft; meat and produce his paint, my body his canvas. He painted masterful strokes of marinara along my curves, and assertively laid cold-cuts of meat down towards my scorching loins. The juxtaposition was exquisite. With much patience he nibbled on the meats, lower and lower, until I felt a warm, penetrating girth. The sandwich artist worked tenderly to ease in the sub I loved so dearly: a toasted foot-long double egg-salad, made with all the fixings. Slowly and surely he worked the sandwich in, and with every twist and push another saucy scrambled mess squished out. The artist was diligent to lick up every last morsel. I took every inch of that sub and quivered with delight, I knew the piece de resistance was yet to come. His mouth made it back up to mine and I met his gaze with my own, urging him for the finale. With a great squelch he thrust into me with his own throbbing sub and let loose his special sauce. For one moment of pure ecstasy, that great emptiness within me had been filled. We collapsed to the cold, tile floor to revel in exhausted bliss, however short it was.
I never returned to that store.
Months later, when the grief from the loss of my husband had weaned and the shame from my Subway triste had subsided I found myself grappling with a new flavour of malaise. I was on the toilet alone, legs long asleep, transfixed by two blue lines. I cried as regret usurped both grief and shame. I made a call that evening.
The operating room was cold and dark. Quiet. A rhythmic beep punctured the silence. I laid anesthetized on the operating table, the lone doctor hunched between my outstretched legs. She inserted various frigid metal instruments and I groaned through the dull stretching of my dry, cracking lips. The surgeons expression dropped into one of intense focus, and she advanced into me with her scalpel. Every cut felt like the snapping of thick rubber bands. They kissed my insides like whips. Both the doctor and I began to cough and gag. Foul stenches of fermentation seeped from my depths into the air. My own lungs began to burn. Something was horribly wrong. I could feel the surgeons hands shake as she reached into my womb with yet another steely implement and began a tug-of-war. Fibers and sinews snapped as she yanked. I winced and felt as if my ovaries were retreating to my stomach. Finally, with a wet, slippery crunch, the doctor wrenched a mass from my bloody, prolapsed uterus. She fell back, bringing with her a sizable egg, black as tar. Foul steam seeped from fissures in the shell, effusing with it a meaty froth. It bubbled and dripped to the floor where it formed a sizzling pool. Sizzling in it, face down, was my doctor. I looked upon the void, bewitched in horror. It was as if I was before the gaping mouth of hell itself. The shell began to fizz and dissolve, revealing a rubbery, innervated placenta. The casing stretched and gave way with a clammy snap. I prayed this was some kind of anesthetic nightmare, but what emerged would make a nightmare cower.
Several arachnidan limbs unfurled from the creatures abdomen revealing its horrific, fractal nature. Each organ and orifice was like a festering, recursive cancer. Proboscis-like mouths emerged from the throats and tongues of other maws. Its jaws articulated frenetically, each chattering a thick, fused tooth. Corrosive drool oozed from the gums, and from the mouths there was a guttural shriek:
MOTHER
The screech pierced into my soul. Dental pain, white and hot, radiated from my marrows and permeated my bones. Only echoes answered my despairing cries for help. I was cursed to be alone, my only company was regret incarnate: purified, distilled, alive. I alone had to repent once and for all. I would proceed with the abortion myself. Mothers know best.
I leapt from the table towards my brood, brandishing the vacuum that separated it and I.
I slashed into its malignant skin and hair and I cut my hands, the resulting wound was something between a gash and a burn. We both blistered and festered with fetid smells of smoldering ashtray and melted flesh. I jammed the suction apparatus into a lidless, darting eye. It screeched in pain and tears of tar bled from the puncture. The blight lashed out wildly – its limbs articulated pneumatically, unnaturally. It crashed into a table of medical equipment and sent various instruments flying.
The shimmer of an airborne scalpel.
I grasped at the glimmer of hope and brought it down into my child with fury, its matrix of nerves and veins gave way as I wrenched the knife to and fro - indiscriminately. I peeled back layers of leathery, poisonous flesh, turning my young inside out, hell bent to find the core. Instead of the face of evil I was met with the twisted truth of my mistakes. The eyes of my own late spouse, the face of agony of a husband denied fatherhood. A tormented reflection of love perverted by grief that makes you wish for death instead of motherhood. I looked into a broken mirror and saw what could have been.
The scalpel fell from my trembling hands, my duty finished. Michael, I hope you understand.
They say death takes you to a better place, but where does something sent from hell and forsaken from heaven go? I don’t know exactly, but I’m sure I’ll find out too. What I do know is a part of her lives on inside of me as a painful reminder that motherhood is not so easily revoked. A part of her has lived inside me a while, bearing witness to who I became at that fateful Subway: Mother of Sin.