by Amy Cross
Hurrying to the window, I look out and see that the pigs are in their usual position, slumped in the mud. They should still be finishing the woman's corpse, but instead they're acting like...
“No,” I whisper, trying not to panic as I realize that she must have somehow escaped from the pen. “Please, no...”
Grabbing a knife from the counter, I race through to the hallway and then up the stairs. Before I manage to get even halfway, however, I hear raised voices in one of the rooms, and I realize Pa's shouting at someone.
“Who are you?” he yells. “What are you doing in my -”
Before he can finish, he suddenly stumbles into view at the top of the stairs and then falls, tipping backward and crashing down toward me. I grab the bannister and hold on tight, and a fraction of a second later Pa slams into me with such force, I almost lose my footing. Tumbling past, he lets out a gasp as he hits the opposite wall, and I watch in horror as he crunches down against the floor in the hallway. Even before he's entirely fallen still, I can see that his neck is twisted the wrong way.
“Pa?” I whisper, shocked by the thought that he might finally be dead. “Pa, what -”
Hearing the baby crying over my shoulder, I look upstairs and see the naked woman stumbling into view. She has the child in her arms, and although there's blood and mud caked all over her body, it looks like she managed to escape the pigs without suffering any serious injuries. Just a few bite marks here and there.
“He's mine!” I shout, clattering up the stairs two-at-a-time with the knife in my right hand. “Leave him alone! You can go, but he's mine!”
Slamming into her, I send the woman crashing into the far wall. I grab the baby and pull him free, before turning and racing along the landing until I reach my room. Once I'm inside, I try to push the door shut, only for the woman to force it open and send me and the baby toppling back onto the bed. At the same time, I drop the knife and it falls to the floor.
“Where the fuck am I?” the woman gasps, wincing as she reaches down and picks up the knife.
Setting little Alistair aside, I start to get up, only for the woman to raise the knife toward my face.
“Don't you fucking touch my son,” she continues, her voice trembling with fear. “Where am I, and where the fuck is my husband?”
I swallow hard. Suddenly, my throat feel very dry. “I don't think -”
“Where's my fucking husband, you little bitch?”
Lunging at me, she swipes the knife toward my face, missing by less than an inch. Pulling back against the wall, I hold my breath as she limps closer. I've never, ever been attacked like this in my own room, and my head is spinning as I try to think of a way out.
“Where is he?” she screams.
“You shouldn't shout like that,” I tell her. “You'll upset the baby.”
“I'll upset the baby?” she asks, her eyes widening with shock. “Are you fucking kidding me, you little freak? How did I get here? The last thing I remember is...”
Her voice trails off, and she stares at me for a moment.
“There was a crash,” she stammers. “We hit something, or we swerved and...” She pauses. “Where's my husband?”
“I don't -”
“Where's Pete?” she yells, stepping closer and pressing the knife against the side of my neck. “I'm going to give you until the count of three to tell me where I can find my husband,” she continues, as the baby continues to scream, “and then if you haven't told me, I'm going to cut your goddamn throat.”
“Please -”
“What the fuck are you, anyway?” she asks. “What happened to your face?”
As I look down at her trembling hand, I can already feel the blade's cold metal digging into my neck. If she pushes any harder, she'll break the skin.
“Where's my husband?” she asks.
“Please, just -”
“Where is he?” she screams. “What did you -”
Slipping away, I grab her arm and pull her away from the bed, quickly slamming her into the wall. She cries out and drops the knife, which I quickly grab before stepping back and then kicking her hard in the side of the face. Figuring I need to get little Alistair to safety, I pick him up from the bed and then step over the woman as groans on the floor.
“Wait,” she gasps, trying but failing to grab my foot.
Stopping outside the room, I turn and look back at her. She's trying to get to her feet, but the pain in her side is clearly too great and she's lost a lot of blood. Her belly is gross, all sagging flesh and blood smears. As she starts crawling across the floor, still screaming at me to give her the baby, she looks like some kind of monster. Pa always called the pigs his 'pretty little monsters', but I reckon that can apply to people too.
“Stay back!” I say finally, holding up the knife and turning it so she can see the blade, while balancing the baby in my other arm.
She cries out, but she looks too weak to do much. I reckon I can easily cut her down if necessary.
“You pushed Pa down the stairs,” I continue. I pause for a moment, surprised that I'm not more upset. I think Pa's death has been coming for a while, and in all honesty I'm kinda glad if he's been put out of his misery. In truth, I'm glad he's been put out of my misery too. While he was still around, I still felt like I wasn't completely in charge of the farm. Now that's changed. “Don't worry about Pa,” I tell the woman, “I'll bury him out back. I should feed him to the pigs, but that doesn't seem right somehow, so I guess -”
“Give me my baby!” she shouts, crawling a little closer. “I swear to God, you little bitch -”
“Keep back!” I swipe the knife toward her, just inches from her face, and she recoils slightly. “Don't you come near me,” I continue, “or bad things are gonna happen.”
“Please don't hurt my baby,” she sobs.
“He's not your baby,” I tell her, “and anyway, I'd never hurt him. I'm gonna raise him good, and I'm gonna make sure he fits in around here just fine, just like me!”
“No, please...”
“He's gonna have a good life,” I continue. “Much better than anything you can give him. I've seen flashes of the world out there, and I can't say I think much of it. I've watched cars going by on the road, and I've seen people from time to time. They never come here to the farmhouse, but once or twice I've gone to the edge of it all and I've watched for a little while. Looks like a cold, mean place to me. I like it a lot better here.”
“Give me my baby,” she whispers. As she reaches toward me, however, it's clear that she's close to losing consciousness. She mumbles something under her breath, but I can't make out any of the words.
“I'm sorry I tried to feed you to the pigs,” I tell her. “That was wrong of me, I admit. I panicked, but to be fair, you were trying to hurt me, so it was self-defense.”
She gasps, and it's clear she's in a lot of pain. I'm impressed that she made it this far, but I guess a mother can really find hidden strength if she's trying to look after her baby. I feel the same thing in me.
“You've got two choices,” I continue, hoping I might be able to make her see sense. “The first is you can come at me and try to force things, in which case I'll fight back and we both know how that's gonna go. I'm stronger and tougher than you, especially now you're in such a bad way, so -”
She lunges at me. Instinctively, I kick out, slamming my foot against her face and sending her slumping back against the door-frame.
“You're hurt,” I continue, “so you're not gonna get very far against me. Come on, be sensible. You know I'm telling the truth.”
She sits up and starts crawling toward me, but the impact against the wall has reopened one of the wounds on her side, and fresh blood is dribbling down her sagging, naked body.
“Your second choice,” I tell her, “and the one I think you should follow, is that you can leave. You can get up and walk away. I'll take good care of the baby, I'll raise him well, I'll raise him better than I was ever raised. He won't have Pa
yelling at him, or Brother trying to mess with him when he's trying to sleep, and he won't have to fight for his fair share at dinner. You don't need to worry about him, you just need to forget he existed. I'm sure you can make more babies, so just make another one to replace this one. You don't really need him, do you? You can spare him and -”
“Give him to me!” she gasps, although her voice sounds weaker than before.
“I've told you the two choices and -”
“Give him to me!” she sneers, as if she's trying to sound angry in an attempt to compensate for the fact she's so badly hurt. She's like a wounded, sick animal now, and I know what happens to wounded and sick animals. “Give me my fucking son, you bitch!”
“It's not gonna happen that way,” I tell her, before looking down at the baby's screaming face. “Come on, Alistair, there's no need to be upset. You can just -”
“His name's Hugh!” the woman shouts. “It was always... We always planned to call him... Hugh, after Pete's father...”
“You did?” I pause, running a fingertip against the side of his face while I mull things over. “No, I think I like Alistair better. I think he -”
Before she can get too close, I kick her again, this time slamming the heel of my foot into her mouth. I feel her teeth briefly digging into my flesh before she slumps back, and I see blood all over her chin when she tries to sit up.
“I'll sing to him,” I explain, rocking the baby gently in my arms, “and I'll feed him good, and I'll teach him stuff as soon as he gets old enough. He'll learn to run the farm, and maybe one day we'll find him some new friends, some brothers and sisters of his own. If Pa's really gone, that leaves me free to make a few changes around the place. I always held back before, I suppose out of respect, but now I can clean the house up, and the yard too. I can finally knock in those fence-posts that Pa never got around to, and Alistair'll grow up to be a big, strong man.”
I watch Alistair's face for a moment, before turning to the woman and seeing that she's face-down on the floor now.
“Are you awake?” I ask.
Silence.
Stepping around her, I see that her eyes are closed. She's lost so much blood from her waist and from between her legs, just in the last few minutes alone, that I guess she simply passed out. Still, I know I need to be careful, so I kick her shoulder a couple more times before using my foot to roll her onto her back.
Her eyes flicker open.
“Tell me how to do it,” I continue, hoping she might be able to help. “How do I make one of these babies grow in my own belly? Please, before you go to sleep, I need to know.”
She stares at me for a moment, before slowly her eyes close again.
“How do I do it?” I ask, nudging her face with my foot.
This time, she doesn't wake up.
She looks to be in a pretty bad way, and it's clear that she's deep asleep, maybe even worse. I wait, just in case she shows any more signs of life, and then I use my bare right foot to nudge her face. When she doesn't respond, I press my big toe against the side of her neck and feel her heart still beating, and finally I step back, confident that she really is out.
Alistair is still screaming in my arms.
“It's okay,” I say, looking down at him with a smile, “I just had to shut her up. Did you hear the fuss she was making? She didn't understand. Then again, outsiders never do understand what it's like here. I don't know why it's so hard for them.”
Crouching down and leaning back against the wall, I watch for a few seconds as he bawls some more, and then I lean closer and kiss him on the side of the face.
“It's just you and me now,” I tell him, pulling him tight. “I know it's gonna be difficult, but you'll get used to it, and I promise you'll have a better time than me. I was a baby when I came her too, and Pa wasn't very good at looking after me. At least, I don't think he was. Then again, I was all cut up when I arrived, and Pa had to fix my face. I know he didn't...” I pause, feeling as if I might be about to cry, but finally I manage to stay strong. “Well, I know he didn't do a very good job, and I'm ugly as sin, but that's just another example of how you're gonna have things easy. 'Cause you're so beautiful.”
He's still screaming, but I figure he'll have to stop eventually. Pa says I screamed a lot when I first arrived too, and I turned out just fine. Well, fine enough, anyway. And Alistair's gonna turn out even better. One day, he's gonna take over the farm.
First, though, I've gotta figure out what to do with the woman.
Part Two
PENNY
Penny
“We decided we don't want to know,” Pete says, wrapping an arm around my shoulder while patting my belly with his other hand. “We want it to be a surprise.”
“It's blatantly going to be a boy, though,” I add, laughing. “I don't know how, I can just tell. Maybe it's just a mother's intuition.”
“Don't you have, like, two sisters and no brothers?” Caroline asks Pete.
“Which means it's about time for a Y chromosome to sneak through,” he replies. “If Penny says it's going to be a boy, that's good enough for me. And if it is, we're going to name it Hugh after my father. Get a little of that Welsh lineage front and center!”
As they continue to laugh and joke, I feel a kicking sensation in my belly. I usually smile whenever I feel the baby moving about in there, but this time something seems very different. When I try to reach down, I find that for some reason I can't move either of my arms, as if my wrists are somehow stuck to the sofa. I pull and I pull, but I can't get them to budge at all, and slowly a sense of panic starts to rise through my chest.
Something's wrong.
Something's really, really wrong.
“Pete?” I whisper, but he doesn't respond. He's still laughing with the others.
Suddenly I feel water splashing against my back, as if somehow it's reaching through the sofa. I try to wriggle free, but Pete's holding me tighter and tighter, and the light in our apartment is getting brighter, almost blinding me. At the same time, I look down at my belly as I realize that I feel strangely empty, almost as if in the blink of an eye my child is gone. I know that's impossible, of course, and I tell myself that I'm just being paranoid. At the same time, my body feels colder, too, and I'm shaken by a very sudden, very powerful sense of solitude. Despite the fact that there are three other people here with me in the room, it's as if something has been torn away from me.
“Pete?” I stammer. “I need... I think I need help.”
He and the others are still laughing, but their voices are echoing all around me now. When I turn and try to grab Pete's arm, all I see is a vast, blurry wall of movement.
“Okay,” a voice says in the distance, somewhere beyond the white haze that suddenly fills my vision, “we're going to start bringing her around now. Everyone be ready.”
“We're going to give this kid everything,” Pete continues, but now his voice sounds distorted, as if I'm underwater and he's speaking from somewhere on the shore. I feel like I'm bobbing violently up and down, being buffered from all sides. “No kid of mine is going to go without. He's going to -”
His voice suddenly flares louder and fills my ears, and for a moment my vision flickers away.
“Pete?” I whisper, trying to reach out and grab him. “Where are you? Pete?”
“Just make sure you get the right drugs during the birth,” Caroline adds, her voice echoing through my mind. “There's no point going through all that pain without a little help. Trust me, babe, I should know. Get yourself doped up to the friggin' eyeballs.”
Suddenly I realize I can hear a beeping sound, followed a moment later by a series of faint creaks. My vision is still fuzzy, and there's an aching pain behind my eyes, as if someone is twisting the nerves tighter. I still have a sense of a bright light, however, as if something is lowering itself down all around me, filling the air with a kind of static charge. A moment later, I'm overwhelmed by the realization that I seem to be flat on my back in som
e kind of bed.
I blink, and my vision starts to clear.
A figure leans over me and shines a smaller light into my eyes, and after blinking a couple more times I realize that the man is a doctor.
“Mrs. Latimer, can you hear me?” he asks. “Penny, my name is Doctor Malone, and you're at St. Stephen's Hospital in Ashford, in Kent. If you can hear me, I need you to give me a sign.”
I blink again, and now I can see perfectly clearly. For a moment I feel as if I'm drifting slightly, as if my thoughts are a little hazy, but there's a kind of urgency pulsing through my body, as if some deeper part of my mind is trying to tell me that something's wrong.
I'm empty.
“Mrs. Latimer,” the doctor continues, shining the light into my other eye, “do you remember how you got here?”
Reaching down, I finally manage to place my hands on my belly, only to find that the pregnant bulge is gone. Filled with a sudden sense of panic, I pull my hospital gown up until I'm able to see the saggy, stretched flesh. Finally, even as more voices as if I'm okay, I start to scream.
Penny
“Do you understand? Penny, I need you to tell me that you understand everything I just said to you. It's important.”
I blink, and for a fraction of a second I see the face again. Scarred, torn down the middle, with two dark eyes staring back at me.
“Penny, can you look at me? I understand this must be a shock right now, but it's very important that you look at me.”
I blink again, and this time I see the cold, muddy yard outside the farmhouse. There's a sharp pain in my left hand, too, and when I look down I see a thick bandage running all the way up to my elbow.
“Where's my son?” I whisper, before turning to the man who's sitting next to my hospital bed. “Where are my husband and my son?”
