3. PREGNANCY DREAMS
PREGNANCY DREAMS
In the dreamscapes she could never remember, Isela’s daughters trailed behind her as she wandered paths into cave systems filled with petroglyphs of ancient mythology explaining her lineage.
Isela was lost and disoriented. Her body quivered from the cold.
A phosphorescent halo of light erupted around her entire body.
Her stomach squelched and growled. Her daughters watched as murky river water exploded from her mouth, centipedes flooding out and scuttling into the darkness of the caverns.
Under speckles of sunlight, patches of cloak ferns reached up at Isela’s legs and held her in place.
Her legs tingled in sharp prickles of pain.
A bulbous meaty lump squirmed beneath her skin and traveled from her belly to her throat.
Her daughters, who were glowing neon green, got down on their knees and prayed for her.
Their words bioluminescent as they spoke.
The cavern’s crescent skylight cracked open into a perfect circle and round stones fell from above.
A slimy and shining umbilical cord with tiny writhing fingers wriggled down the opening and wrapped itself around her head, ripping her face open, unraveling her skin like a ribbon in a spiral from her forehead down to her chin, until the sticky cord gripped at her brain.
Her daughters looked up from their praying hands.
They embraced Isela and then pulled at her arms with vigorous precision.
Her arms slid out of their sockets and each daughter wandered off in a different direction with her appendages.
In one of the dreams Isela could remember, her belly was round and bloated with earthworms. Small house sparrows swarmed her, overwhelmed her, puncturing her belly to get to the worms. She winced as the trails of blood on her belly flooded the room in the yellow house which she only ever saw in her dreams. She was embarrassed by the mess and this unexplained phenomenon within her.
How could she be the perfect wife with a belly full of worms?
The next morning, groggy and filled with dread, she found out she was pregnant with Alfonso’s baby.