Mallory's Baby

I woke to the gentle rumble of a car flying down the highway. A 90s pop song whispered from the radio. My eyelids felt like they had been taped closed and the sticky adhesive still clung to my lashes. I wiped the sleep off my face as I looked at the blue lights of the clock.

The beauty of an American highway at two in the morning was one I was accustomed to seeing, though I did not remember planning this late-night drive. Orange lights flashed through the vehicle as we traveled through a long tunnel. My gaze went to the driver. A sense of relief came over me; my childhood friend and roommate, Lily Ann, was at the wheel, humming along with the soft music. Am I dreaming? The car lurched as it barreled over a piece of road debris. No, this isn't a dream. I shifted in my seat to get a better view out the passenger window as we came out the other side of the tunnel, still feeling as if my mind was in a bank of fog.

“Ow.” A sharp pain between my legs stopped me from sitting upright. Not two months ago I had given birth to my first child, a beautiful girl I named Victoria.

Lily Ann gave me a double-take, placing one hand on my thigh. “Hey, go back to sleep. You’re okay.”

“Where’s the baby?” I managed to ask. My mouth felt like a desert, making my stomach tighten. Tears came to my eyes as I waited for her answer. “Where’s Victoria?”

“She’s asleep in the back. You know I wouldn’t leave her at home alone. Everything is okay.” She patted my leg then returned to the wheel.

The world spun as I tried to look everywhere at once.

“The final destination is a surprise, but I’ll give you a hint to ease your mind. We’re heading towards L.A.” There was a lightness in her voice, but the way she spoke did nothing to calm me. Normally, she was the one I turned to when I needed a shoulder to lean on, but tonight there was nothing she could say to calm my nerves. Something was different. Why?

“Okay.” I turned my attention to my window. A box truck driving backwards passed us. As the driver went by, he turned to me and smiled. By the look of his cratered cheeks, I expected his teeth to be yellow and chipped, but they were white and shining. They glowed as if he had soaked them in a moonbeam.

“Lily, do you see that?” I leaned my head back, slumping down in my seat. “That man is driving backwards on the highway.”

“Close your eyes,” she demanded. Her voice was so stern and steady. Is she mothering me? I tried to narrow my eyes at her, but my lids were too heavy to hold open. My lashes stuck back together as I drifted off to sleep.

With a gasp, I woke up in a strange room. The walls were plain brown as was the thin, hard carpet. Still dressed in my pull-over and stretchy pants from the night before, my back ached against a hard bed. Lily Ann sat by my feet; her legs were draped over the side. Out of all the confusion, her outfit stood out as the weirdest of all. Instead of her relaxed traveling clothes or her normal graphic shirt, she wore a suit. Her tight skirt and shining heels were black while her shirt and jacket, a powerful red. Her expression, tight and disapproving, made me feel like I was staring at a stranger.

Unlike in the car, my mind was bright and burning. I assumed that we were in a hotel, probably for a surprise girl’s weekend away. In the past, getaways had always been planned by both Lily and I, but when I had gotten pregnant, she changed. Suddenly, she filled my life with surprises while encouraging us to stay at home and relax while the baby grew inside me.

I searched the room from my place in bed. There was no sign of Victoria as I propped myself up on my elbows.

“Lily, what’s going on? Where’s Victoria?” Furious, I raised my voice.

She sighed. “Mallory, remember everything we’ve been through together? Growing up next to each other, learning about boys, studying for our finals together, sharing an apartment… we’re basically sisters. Because of that, I’m going to ask you in the nicest way I know how.”

“What’s wrong with you? Where are we?”

“Did you feed Victoria the formula I gave you?”

My thoughts went bare. “You think that matters right now? What the hell is wrong with you? Is this a prank? Lily, this isn’t funny. Where is my baby?”

Lily Ann pursed her red lips in frustration. “She’s fine! She’s safe. Answer my question, Mallory. Did you feed her the formula that I gave you?” She looked like a stranger. If not for the unmistakable streak of red that ran through her bleach-blonde beach waves, then I wouldn’t have recognized her.

“I don’t know what you are talking about. Why would you think that I would feed her the formula?”

“So, you didn’t give her any?” Her mouth relaxed, but her stare made my hair stand on end.

I shook my head. “No. I make enough milk that I don’t need to give her anything else.”

“Oh, Mallory. That’s not the right answer.” She dusted off the back of her skirt as she stood. I held my breath as she walked to the side of my bed and loomed over me. “I’m sorry that things have to turn out this way, but it’s not up to me.”

“I’m going to need you to start explaining yourself.” I tried to get out of the bed but was only slammed back down by her. She was stronger than I expected. With a gloating expression, she tore the blankets from me. A thick band of cloth wrapped around my hips. I tried to lift myself up, but it was sewn to the mattress. A row of six numbers made up the metal lock on the front. It was warm to the touch. How long have I been sleeping?

“I don’t have to explain anything to you. I never told you anything anyway, and I’m not going to start now.” She stepped away from the bed. I had never noticed what a crooked smile she had until that moment. She glanced at me from the side of her eye as she strode to the door, her former charms vanishing along with any love I had for her. I have to do something.

My baby was missing. Nothing else in the world mattered more to me than getting her back to my chest. I had to protect her from whatever Lily had become, but my thoughts stayed back to the first day we met as little kids. Has our whole relationship, our whole life, really come to this? She kidnapped my child and myself, and then tied me down in some shabby hotel room.

If I had only known the true extent of this whole ordeal, then I would have stopped her the night before while we were still on the road. Are we really near L.A.?

I waited until she shut the door to move. Peering at the numbers on the restraint, I tried every birthday and anniversary I could muster. My birthday, her birthday, her parents… until I was stuck trying the anniversaries of our ex-boyfriends.

Click.

The first date I went on with Victoria’s father unlocked something in the cloth. With trying tugs and painful pulls, I loosened the restraint and wiggled myself free.

With a deep breath, I placed my hand on the door handle. To my surprise, it opened. I almost wanted to laugh. Who would tie someone to the bed but leave the door unlocked? Did she not think I would make it to the door or did she want me to get out?

Where am I? I looked to the right and to the left. This was no hotel. It looked more like… a hospital? A school? The floor was cold red tiles, waxed to reflection. The walls were a reddish-brown marble. Every ten or twelve feet was a golden column with a three-foot-high rectangular base.

“Oh wow,” I whispered as I stepped out into the hall. The ceilings were somewhere between twenty and twenty-five feet high. I’m like an ant.

From the left, I heard the echo of high heels clicking. My fear told me to run away, but there was no way I would find Victoria on my own. So, against my better judgment, I walked toward the sound. My warm feet made a sticking sound against the floor that echoed softly with every step.

“No, Lillian said she put the formula in the cabinet, watched the baby eat primarily from the mother… No, she claims she never saw the mother put formula in the bottle and make it that way. The container was getting lighter every day… I don’t know what happened to it. She assumed that it was getting fed to the baby… Yes, I’ve heard the saying.”

The sound led me to a woman. She was dressed much like Lily Ann, wearing a tight skirt and heels, except she was donned in a steely gray jacket. Her dark hair was short and set in exaggerated curls. In her left arm was a clipboard as her right hand held a click pen. Her left shoulder pressed her phone against her ear.

“Well, if the baby didn’t drink it, then who do you propose drank it?... The mother? No.” The woman paused, making me stop in my tracks. “Maybe. I did some weird things when I had a baby. How old is she?... What? That young? She has no younger siblings… It’s possible that she did.”

I slid toward the nearest column, ready to hide behind it.

“That means we have to test her. Are the baby’s results still negative? Oh, man…You can tell just by looking at the blood itself!” Her voice rose. “Getting her to the fifth floor is going to take too long. He expects the results in thirty minutes. He’s getting impatient…Ready to take my head off.” She let out a long sigh and spun around, giving me just enough time to move behind the column and out of her sight.

Her footsteps grew louder as she began to march back toward my room. “I’ll just go check her myself. You would think that if she ingested it, then it would be in the baby’s system.” She looked like a devil as she passed by me. I almost expected her to have a tail with a pointed tip.

“I have a little knife. I’ll just use that…” Her voice faded as the distance between us increased.

I took off in the direction she turned from, expecting there to be something that might help me find my baby.

Sadly, I got lost in the huge building. Every turn I took brought me deeper into the maze, and every door I tried required a keycard or opened to an empty room like the one I escaped. A few of the doors I saw were solid metal, and the only way to get inside was to ring a bell.

I stood in front of one of these doors, staring at the doorbell. Seconds dragged by like hours as I hesitated. I need help, but why would anyone help me? Lily had left me bound to a bed, expecting me to lie there and wait for something. She had given me an empty apology before she left. She better be sorry. The air filled with the sound of clicking. Someone, a woman in heels, was nearing, and there was no place for me to hide. I prayed that it would be Lily Ann.

“Ma’am!” The woman who I had followed turned the corner. Her gaze met mine, and there was no way out of it. This was the same woman who was on the phone earlier. I was never one for confrontation, but here it was as a person. I realized that any person I could have spoken to would have been the same. Confrontation.

“Are you Mallory? Come with me right now. We’ve been looking for you.”

Instead of responding, I turned tail and ran. What was I supposed to do? I heard her take charge after me. I looked over my shoulder to see her with a short knife in hand. She wanted to cut me to see my blood. I just wanted my baby back.

My feet stuck to the floor while she clicked with every step. I wanted to be untouchable, but she was getting closer.

Then, the worst happened. I took a turn straight into a slick spot and fell. The echo of my tailbone slamming on the floor interrupted the panicked running like a jet breaking the sound barrier. Not only had the fall bruised or broken my tailbone, it had knocked the breath out of me. I stayed on the floor, winded and shocked. Despite my best efforts, the two seconds it took me to recover were the exact two seconds it took the woman to catch up with me. As I leaned forward to stand, she slammed herself down behind me. Her kneecaps cracked against the hard floor as she landed, wrapping her arms around my throat to hold me in place. I struggled against her.

“You’re making this harder for yourself. It’s a small incision.”

“I just want my baby,” I screamed before I tried to bite her. She held me tighter, tucking her arm under my chin so I couldn’t get my mouth around her. I reached my arms up to grab her curls. I wanted to rip her hair out, but moment by moment, dizziness wracked my mind from the lack of oxygen going to my brain.

She used her small blade to slice open the underside of my arm. I froze as blood rolled across my skin. It was deep blue, almost purple, in color and thick.

“You drank her formula,” she whispered.

“I didn’t.” I felt breathless, tired. Pain radiated throughout my body. My tailbone, my neck, my arms, and between my legs all ached in different ways. It was sharp like a blade and dull like a river-washed stone and deep like a bruise.

“You drank her formula,” she repeated with anger growing in every word. “You drank baby formula.”

Down the hall, Lily Ann approached with Victoria in her arms. Her lips parted in a soundless gasp as she paused. Pressure rose behind my eyes as my chest tightened. The woman tightened her grip, squeezing my neck. I wanted to yell, but I couldn’t. No sound came out. No air could pass my lips. I heard Victoria’s cry.

Everything faded.

I woke up in my bed. Sunlight filled the room in bright cheer, but I felt none of it. Part of me couldn’t believe that everything was a dream, and the other part of me didn’t trust that it was. The moment I moved, I realized I had soaked the bed in sweat. I sat up quickly, staring at the crib across the room. Victoria cried out for me, probably hungry and wet.

“Shh, shh, Mommy’s here,” I spoke as I hurried to her, taking her up into my arms and putting her mouth to my leaking breast. I leaned down and kissed her fine dark hair. That was my baby, and I would let no one take her from me. “I’m here, and I’m never going to let you go.”

There was a gentle knock at my door. “Mallory? Are you okay in there?” It was Lily Ann.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I couldn’t stand to see her. Not after the doubt that had been placed in my mind. Is she really my friend?

“Okay. Let me know if you need anything,” she offered. Moments later, I heard her soft footsteps tap on the hard floor as she moved away. Her absence was a breath of fresh air.

Once Victoria finished feeding, I changed her and dressed her, treasuring every second we shared. I wanted to be happy, and though having her in my arms was a relief, I wasn’t. I told myself that Lily Ann kidnapping me and my only child, the woman chasing me, and the blue blood were all a part of a terribly vivid, elaborate nightmare; nevertheless, I kept glancing toward the door, waiting for Lily Ann and the woman to open it, dressed in their tight suits. I couldn’t forget the feeling of the woman’s arm tightening around my neck or the fear that froze me when I saw the color of my own blood.

How can a dream feel so real? I sat on the edge of my bed. As soon as I put weight on my tailbone, a dull ache began to radiate up my lower back. The sound of it cracking against the cold floor echoed in my head. But that was a dream.

With a sigh, I resolved to leave the room and speak to Lily Ann. A shadow of dread followed me to the door. It was only a dream! I kept my mouth pressed against Victoria’s sweet head as I went to join Lily Ann in the kitchen.

She stood at the stove, watching eggs fry in oil. Nothing about her was out of place. Her clothes were casual and relaxed, and her bleach-blond waves were all tangled together in a scrunchie on the top of her head like a crown of laziness. The only thing that was missing about her was the colored streak in her hair. It was gone.

“When did you re-bleach your hair?” I asked as I sat down at the nearby table. The pain in my tailbone returned.

“What?” Her brows furrowed as she glanced at me. The look of honest confusion would have made me smile at any other time. “Do you see my roots?”

“Then how did you get rid of your color?”

“Why would I put color in my hair? I’ve never, like, actually dyed it. You know I only bleach it. Plus, I haven’t bleached my hair since you had Vic.” She tipped her head down to show me the good two inches of her natural dark brown growth.

“Vic?” My nose wrinkled at the nickname.

“Victoria.” She flipped the eggs, folding one in half on accident. “Are you sure you’re okay? Haven’t started a new medication or anything?”

“No, I haven’t been taking anything. I’m still breastfeeding. But, I know for sure that yesterday you had color in your hair, and we never agreed to call her Vic. It’s…unfitting.” I argued. As much as I tried to keep the annoyance out of my voice, I know Lily Ann picked up on it by the raise of her eyebrows and widened eyes.

“Did your pregnancy brain delete the past two months? You asked me to call her Vic after she snapped your tailbone on her way out, and if anyone would know whether I wore color in my hair, I hope it would be me.” She lifted the pan away from the heat and gave the eggs a good look. “I made you two eggs. You want them?”

“Yeah.” Guilt crept up my spine. Was I really letting a dream make me mad at my best friend? “I’m sorry. I had a terrible nightmare last night, and it was too real. I guess I’m getting it mixed up with reality. It felt so real though. It was the absolute craziest dream I’ve ever had.”

“That’s so interesting. Last night I was watching one of those wild docu-series. You know the ones where it’s like the people get kidnapped by aliens or something,” she said as she plated the eggs. “Anyway, this one was about people who died and woke up in a reality exactly like their own, but it had a few little differences. Like, this one couple, the girlfriend got in a horrible freak accident and went into a coma. When she woke up, their dog was a different color, and her boyfriend’s birthday was two days before his actual birthday.”

She sat down next to me, placing the plate before me. “Oh my gosh, I forgot your fork.”

Lily Ann grabbed the silverware from the dish rack. “And this other guy, he fell like fifty feet off a bridge. The doctors were surprised he was still alive, but he totally thought that his wife went by her middle name instead of her first. Isn’t that weird? They called it soul-walking. The episode’s claim was that when people die in one reality, they wake up in one similar to the one they were born in, but some things are different.”

“Yeah, that’s super weird. How many people did they have on that show?” I asked.

“About… three people? You know, they can’t have too many people, or the viewers get confused.” She slid into her chair, leaving the fork next to my hand.

I paused. Her words seemed to flow around my brain like a whirlpool. Around and around it went until I finally spoke. “Are you saying that’s me right now?” I placed my hand on the fork but didn’t pick it up.

She shrugged and clicked her tongue on the roof of her mouth. There was the Lily Ann I knew. “Kind of… maybe. I don’t know.”

I lifted the fork and pushed it into the egg, spilling the jam-like yoke into the hard whites. “But, I didn’t get into an accident.”

Her eyes widened again as an exaggerated sigh escaped her lips. “A mother’s brain does wonders, huh? You really don’t remember?”

“No?” I shook my head. My loose hair brushed over Victoria’s face, almost falling into my plate.

“You had a horrible birth. Like, you died having that baby, Mallory. The only weird part about your story is that you were fine up until this morning. Yesterday, we were calling her Vic, and there was no question about my hair.” Lily Ann paused as she took a bite of egg. With food still stuffed in her cheeks she asked, “will you tell me about your dream?”

My hand quivered ever so slightly as I watched her throat flex as she swallowed. “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s probably better if I just forget it.”

“You always tell me about your dreams.” She pouted. “Will you at least tell me if you, like, got in an accident in it or something like that.”

A shiver raced down my spine, sending goosebumps over my skin. I hated being so shaken about it. “Yeah, something like that. It was actually traumatic. I’m pretty much sure I died at the end of it.” I could still see Lily Ann walking away from me with my baby in her arms as the woman suffocated me.

“Oh my gosh, what if you’re a soul walker? What if that dream was your second reality, then you woke up here? This could be your third reality. The doctors did have to revive you when you had Vic.” She tugged on her bun to tighten the scrunchie. “Like, you could have been resuscitated in a bad reality, and then when your ‘dream’ went bad, you woke back up in a good one. Sounds like one of those old fairy tales. Mind blown.”

I put my first bite in my mouth. “Maybe.” I held the food in my mouth to let the salt sit on my taste buds.

“Or not,” she said, seeing the dejection on my face. “It was just a show. Who knows, they were probably just a bunch of crazy people who made up stories to get on the show.”

I swallowed. “Yeah, who knows?”