Chapter 6
Chapter Six
The screams are horrendous when I begin my work. Filled with terror and the knowledge of impending hell waiting to come out of me just for them.
Verona is now in a harness, hanging on the inside of the armoire where she can’t get in my way. Where she can’t make unnecessarily attempts to save her mother in vain. I will not forget about her. I just want to save her for last.
It’s taken nine furious hits with the hilt of the machete to stop Mother from fighting me. Usually those that enter my room are full of fight, and that’s what I like the most.
I don’t beat women.
This is different.
This is just my way of incapacitating her so that there’s a minimal amount of blood to clean up. Priscilla always gets angry when there’s a mess, and so do I.
The two of us are on the bed as Verona kicks and screams behind us. She doesn’t want her mother to die now, she doesn’t hate her, and she never meant anything mean she said to her.
Those are her lies, not mine.
I haven’t made any cuts yet. I’ve simply climbed on top of Mother and ripped her shirt open. She’s weak now; hit one too many times with the end of a blunt object, her eyes slowly rolling back and forth as my hand caresses her stomach.
“Is it a boy or a girl?” I ask her.
“Leave her alone you motherfucking piece of shit!” Verona screams from behind me.
I roll my eyes and shake my head; I’ll be sure to cut her tongue out by the time I am done in this room. Perhaps I’ll let her live with a gaping wound in her mouth so she will learn how to speak to others with respect.
Perhaps, but not likely.
“Uhh...” is all Mother can offer me in response.
“It’s okay,” I tell her softly, as I lean forward and run a hand gently down the side of her face. “I like surprises.”
I move quickly and carefully, sliding the blade as deeply into the lower part of her stomach as I dare. I don’t want the child to die in her stomach. I want to see it first, hold it, give it the hope of love, before I rob it of life.
I’m not a thief.
It has no choice in the matter, as I’ve said, and I just like the thought of being able to look into its face. To watch it as it molds to me for the few moments that I let it live, to let it believe that it’s in a warm safe place as I have thought so many times before.
Oh her screams are glorious the harder I pull the blade across! It digs in maybe an inch deeper, and I use both hands to steady it so that it doesn’t go any further in than it needs to. Behind me Verona is screaming violent threats of what she’ll do to me as soon as she frees herself, but I pay her no mind. This task is meticulous and must be handled with care if I want them both to live.
One could argue that I’m providing a service, or a kindness even. But, of course, that would only be argued by someone that doesn’t know me, and I would allow them the thoughts.
“I’m almost done,” I say to her through grit teeth as I continue dragging the machete as far inside of her as I dare to go, and across. The sound of the flesh as it rips is almost melodic to me. Chaotic in its tune, but a beautiful sonata, nonetheless.
I’m almost to the other side of her stomach when something inside me snaps and I lose my careful patience. I take a deep breath and place a hand down firmly on her stomach and yank the blade the rest of the way across. One jerk. Two. The blood flowing out of the giant gash on her stomach is majestic and for a moment, I lose myself in the sight.
I had never seen such an amount of blood flow from a body before and I wonder if she would mind terribly if I stuck myself inside of her.
Remove the baby first.
I pull the machete out of her and lay it on the bed next to us. She’s too weak now to use it, and even if she tried, I would be able to stop her. I dig my hands into her, as far in as they will go—which turns out to be almost my entire forearms. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be feeling for, but I know that I’ve cut her deeply enough when my hands brush against something reminiscent of a newborn child. I turn my head to the side and wrap my hands around it tightly and begin to extract it from her when another song of screams hits my ears.
I look down and smile; it’s so small, not full term, but not quite what I would consider premature. I never did ask her how far along she was, but it was of no matter once I had decided on taking the child from her womb.
The umbilical cord is attached to something still inside of her, and I cradle the baby covered in blood and what looks like some kind of mucosal substance against my chest as I tug until it comes out.
Afterbirth? No, this is the placenta.
I lay it on the bed as I hold the baby against me, using my pinkie to let it suckle while it calms.
It’s a boy; Verona has a brother .
I gently rock the baby boy in my arms and look up at Verona as she continues to buck like a wild horse.
“PLEASE!” she screams at me through a cascade of tears. “Just let us go!”
“But there is nowhere to go,” I reply as the little boy’s cries begin to subside. “Now, tell me, did your mother pick a name out for the baby?”
Behind me, she moves on the bed, and I reach quickly for the machete. I’m not sure if she had been attempting to wrest it from where it was laying, but I won’t allow her the attempt. Not now that my arms are preoccupied with new life.
“Guy, please! ” she begs.
I chuckle and look down at the little boy still suckling my pinkie and smile. “Are you calm now?”
His eyes, still not open, squeeze together tightly as a small cry escapes from inside of him.
“No?” I ask him softly. I reach for the machete again and place it under the cord, laying it over the blade like a pyramid of sorts. A couple of tugs in a downward manner and I’ve severed it from the placenta. I get to my feet, machete in one hand, baby in the other arm, and whisper softly to him.
I tell him how the world is a dark place made of utter shit. I tell him of how life isn’t really worth living with a mother that wanted him to die and a sister that only thinks of herself. I tell him it’s better this way, and I think he believes me.
I lean my face down and press my lips softly against his head for just a moment; to give him the only feeling of love he’ll ever know in his short life. Then with his mother watching from the bed, and his sister screaming from her place suspended in the armoire begging me for mercy, begging me for his life, I turn him upside down and grip his ankles.
I smile when I know I have their undivided attention. I raise the baby over my shoulder, the baby boy with no name, and with every bit of strength inside of me, proceed to slam it violently against the wall until the crying stops.
Until there’s nothing left but blood, brain matter, and the broken bones of a limp corpse that lived so briefly in a small moment of insincere love.
I take the now mangled shell of a life that was once so briefly and toss it onto the bed with the mother.
“It’s a boy.”