The Fetus

Present Day

Brian gazed deeply, with glazed, red eyes, into his empty whiskey glass that rest in his hand, on the arm of his chair. The television blared, but he couldn’t hear it. He could only think. He reached for the bottle of bourbon that sat on the side table. He shook the bottle and regretted drinking the whole thing in one sitting. His body flashed with rage and he hurled the whiskey bottle into the TV and it went right through. He stood up to yell at anything that would listen. Anyone he could blame. But when he opened his mouth, all that came out was a sob. And he fell to his knees. And he became lost in his sorrow and his memories.

Two years ago:

“No, we are not going to Planned Parenthood. I’m going to be a father, goddammit!” Brian screamed, his face turning purple with rage.

“But what if I don’t make it through childbirth?” asked his wife, Matilda.

“Then at least the baby will be alive, Tilda, you have to think of the baby,” he replied. “I will never give my consent to terminating the baby.” His face seemed to be turning back to its original color as Brian began to calm down.

Matilda’s eyes began to fill with tears as she listened to her husband rant and rave and betray every single one of his vows to her when they got married. “You said you would protect me,” she sobbed.

Brian put his arms around his wife, “I am protecting you, sweetheart. I’m protecting your soul. You don’t want to commit murder, I know it.”

Present Day

Brian managed to get up off the ground. He stumbled his way through his house, his vision blurring and spinning from the drink. He was searching for the cure to these memories. The cure to his grief.

Brian managed to find it. He stood before his eight-foot tall, mahogany made gun cabinet. As he fumbled for the key in his pocket, he heard a scuffle on the tile in the kitchen. He remembered he was the only one in the house. He went to take a look and found nothing.

As Brian half-shuffled, half-stumbled, his way back to the gun cabinet, he could swear, he heard something dragging behind him. It sounded like it were matching his steps with its slides.

Step, slide.

Step, slide.

Step, slide.

He turned around as quickly as he could and nearly fell again as a result, but he still saw nothing. He rubbed his eyes and wondered if alcohol could induce auditory hallucinations. Brian’s anger was beginning to bubble again, and it wouldn’t take long for it to come to a full boil.

When Brian arrived back at the cabinet, he was beginning to get frustrated. His shotgun and pistol were missing. “I don’t know who the fuck you are,” He called aloud to whoever it was that broke into his house, “but you’ve made a fatal goddamn mistake!” A faint giggle escaped the bedroom down the hallway.

Brian went back to the living room to grab his baseball bat from behind the door. He looked to the hallway and smacked the bat against the palm of his hand menacingly and glared wickedly. He turned the lock on the front door to find it was still locked. He almost dropped the bat in surprise. Must’ve come in through the back door, he thought to himself.

Brian steeled himself and walked toward the bedroom, baseball bat in hand. The closer he got, the louder the giggling got, he could’ve sworn it was a child. No older than a year.

One year ago:

The doctor had come out of the operating room with a dark look on his face. He raised his eyes from his clipboard and faced Brian. He held out a finger and crooked it, beckoning the expectant father.

Brian ran to him excitedly, “How is she, doc? When can I go in and see her?”

The old saw-bones sighed and placed a hand on Brian’s shoulder. He looked Brian in the eyes with sorrow in the pools of blue affixed to his face. “I’m sorry son, she didn’t make it. Neither did your child.”

Brian pushed the hand off his shoulder and shoved the doctor. “What the fuck do you mean they didn’t make it? WHERE IS MY WIFE?”

The doctor looked apologetically at the grief-maddened man, “I’m sorry, Brian, we did all we could. We’ll have the bodies transported to the funeral home to have them done up for any arrangements you may have.”

“Horseshit. This is the best hospital in Arizona, and you want to tell me you ‘did all you could’? Fuck you, you killed my wife and my child and I will have your fucking license.”

The doctor just turned away and re-entered the operating room, “Do as you wish, but it won’t bring them back, and I doubt having my license will grant you any solace, Brian.”

Present day:

The giggling got louder as Brian approached the bedroom. He kept going and he started to hear a voice from behind him. “Daddy?” it spoke in a high-pitched, almost ear-piercing voice. “Daddy, remember how you treated mommy?”

Tears began to sting in Brian’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, as he finally understood what was happening. He was almost to the bedroom door.

“Daddy, remember how you would throw mommy into the walls?”

The bat fell from Brian’s hands as he reached for the doorknob. It was hot, and he could see an orange glow from the keyhole under the knob.

“Daddy, remember how it’s your fault mommy and I died in the hospital?”

He turned the knob and threw open the door. The bedroom was engulfed in flames, but Brian advanced anyway. He approached the bed and picked up the teddy bear he had bought for his first-born, unborn child. He turned around and lifted the bear as if it were a shield to face the half-fetus, half-year-old child that had already unhinged its jaw.

“Daddy?”

Its arms stretched and its hands grew as they enveloped Brian’s entire body. It lifted Brian and brought him to the seemingly endless pit that was its maw. The last words Brian ever heard were the words he’d wanted to hear directed at him his whole life: “Daddy.”