Untimely Ripped

Bloated. She woke up with the feeling and retired with it. The parasite wasn't even three weeks old. And hungry. Always hungry. Always wanting more.

There was always a slight dryness of the tongue. She would stand under the shower, head cocked back and mouth open, and allow the water to invade her teeth, saturate her lips with its warm torrent. And it would still feel arid.

Hubby reassured her the feeling would pass. His smile cut his face in two, his teeth peering out from the gashes in his cheeks, his paternal claw roughly massaging her belly. It stirred at his touch. A small embryo tunnelling its head into the walls of the uterus.

She could imagine it gravitating towards his hand with its chipped fingernails - the texture of cracked plaster - and knuckles that sprouted dark oily hair. He rested his filthy hands on her for that extra minute longer, forcing his will through her abdomen. A proud father, no doubt, passing on his excitement to his brood.

He held her by the hips and reminded her that his family would arrive in the hour. Embracing her as he would moving a mannequin, he strode away to another corner of the house, scraping his ear canals red raw with one of his hooked nails.

She understood what must be done.

A tuft of her hair fell to the ground behind her heels.

Inside her womb, the watery green creature drained more of her blood and nutrients. It swelled to twice its original size. The head shrunk, becoming more humanoid. The pits that it had for eyes blinked.

She had three saucepans on the go. The aroma choked her. A pot boiled over and she scolded herself. There was a twinge in her stomach. Spluttering some more on the billows of steam, she reached into the back of her throat. A dislodged molar, strawberry red, was returned to her between her thumb and index finger.

Hubby appeared from behind her, his coal-black eyes in awe, oohing over her discovery. He joked about having a naughty bite to eat before the meal.

He stole the tooth from her. He flicked it with his thumb up high and caught it in his mouth. As he masticated the load, it crunched like walnuts. His belch sprayed the kitchen wall in pinkish-red spittle. She continued cooking.

The smells reached the swollen offspring. Two cavities formed on its snout-like head. They flexed open and shut. A mouth formed along a crease and it yawned.

The Mother removed the finest china from their glass cabinet. She paused to examine her pale, twisted reflection. Her eyes had blackened around the edges of their sockets. Her head came out pear-shaped, her face flattened and stretched by the unflattering panes.

Under the weight of the crockery, her arms elongated slightly. She noticed a faint bump hang over the waistline of her skirt. She bit the inside of her cheek. Her mind entertained the idea of standing on a stool and then dropping herself onto the back of a chair. Just a thought.

She set a place for everyone at the narrow dining table. Walking had turned to hobbling. The parasite now had shoulders.

Its hands had ballooned into puffy arachnids. It rejected the placenta by removing the umbilical cord with its new digits. It tore off pieces of the uterus's interior, savouring its host's flesh with its newly acquired tongue.

The father called out “Tamsin”, Mother's name, a name she had not heard for so long.

The guests had arrived early. He wanted her to receive them at the door. Her navel was the summit of a freshly grown, round belly. The extra weight rooted her to the carpet.

The bell rang. Each step burned. Her muscles complained.

The bell received a dose of adrenaline and trilled over and over again. She reached the door just as her hips expanded outwards, finding pain with every new inch as they emerged either side of her lower back.

She flung open the front door. The bulbous, cherry coloured lips of her Mother-in-law cried out the name “Tammy!” and pecked her ashen cheeks. Tamsin watched a pair of taloned nails and painted eyes float past. The Sister of those features stood a foot shorter in the doorway, but her lips carried the signs of heavy smoking. Indeed, there was a fresh cigarette dangling freely from the corner, gripped and chewed by yellow ocher teeth, as she introduced herself.

The smoke irritated the dwelling monster. His arms were animated in the layer of skin above the womb.

As Auntie let herself in, a thin girl in a tank top and revealing shorts followed afterwards, plucking out the acne on her face and sucking the residue from her fingers.

Tamsin watched Sister-in-law enter with her gangly posture; a prophecy of the not-so-distant future.

Perhaps if she used a slice of broken glass... maybe later. Her leg and arm muscles were thinning into ribbons as their fluids drained into the creature's domain.

Hubby smooched each female member of his family, leaving a trail of saliva on each one. He toyed with Sister and yammered with Mother-in-law. Auntie would join in when appropriate. It was all ritualistic. Tamsin had observed this cycle many times.

She dished out the food. Hubby snorted about how long it was taking her and slapped her buttocks as she passed. Tamsin grimaced. The fetus howled in its amniotic sac, Tamsin's raggedy arms almost dropping the dish from the tremors it caused. Mother-in-law caressed the aqueous bump, never once looking Tamsin in the eye. The rest of the baby's carrier was a frame, skeletal and pathetic, the living tumour inside garnering all their attention.

Tamsin spooned out vegetables to Auntie who put out her cigarette stub on the carrots, tucking into the medley of ash and fibre. Sister refused her greens and Tamsin left the steaming bowl in the centre of the table.

She had to place two palms on the table surface to haul her body into a sitting position. Her cheeks had shrunk into bone. Hubby made a crack about the weight she would have to take off once the baby was born.

They laughed at that. Tamsin remained tight lipped.

Hubby's neck bulged in an atlas of veins as he roared. His lips curled back over his skull like the skin of a banana whilst his tongue whipped and writhed in a frenzy. Mother-in-law sprayed mashed potatoes. Auntie hacked up phlegm and Sister cackled manically. Psycho junior, the sides of his suddenly enormous head skirting Tamsin's ribcage, contorted his body into an uncomfortable posture, thrashing his mother's external body.

Tamsin, amid the laughing fit, noticed her arms developing tremors. They couldn't have been any wider than bamboo stems. If she tried to stand, she was certain her knee caps would splinter.

In a weak voice that was only just audible, she asked for the mashed potatoes.

They ceased laughing. Sister plunged a knife into the table's surface, then dragged the blade across leaving a shallow trench in the wood. Hubby concentrated on his shoes, either too ashamed or too angry to look Tamsin in the eye. He coughed surreptitiously.

Mother-in-law slapped the bowl with the palm of her hand. It skidded over the table's edge, smashing beneath the table, indiscriminately leaving creamy blotches on the laminate flooring.

Auntie pulled out a fresh cigarette and, using her lighter, set the corner of her napkin ablaze, using it to light up before stuffing the burning paper into her drink.

Tamsin considered their reaction as she would when deciding what brand of instant coffee to purchase. She vaguely day-dreamed of throwing herself from the roof of the house and wondered if any of the cretins would rush to her rescue.

She excused herself, sinking to the floor and crawling on all-fours for the kitchen. Her belly scrapped the floor as she heaved her way through the kitchen door, sitting up against the fridge to eavesdrop on the dinner conversation.

As she predicted, they talked about the baby. Nothing else. Not even a tangent. They would not tolerate digressions. Hubby was promising Mother-in-law and Auntie what names they would decide upon if it was a boy or a girl. Sister threw in her ten cents worth.

Mother-in-law wished for the child to be baptised. They had also, Tamsin recalled, been married in a church at her insistence too. She remembered the towering crucifix that hung above the altar, the effigy of Christ, bleeding in torment, piercing her soul with his vacant stare. She could see him offering to switch places with her, climbing down from his cross, removing the nails from his stigmata with sheer force alone, and then taking hold of her in his bloody hands, carrying her like his own bride and arranging her arms to fit over the slots where the nails would be driven in. Hubby would join in, position a spike over each of her palms as Jesus held her down, and Mother-in-law, with the heaviest bible Tamsin had ever seen in both hands, would bring it down onto the flat of the nail in a sequence of blows.

The tearing of her flesh and the fiery warmth of her blood reminded her too strongly of the thing in her womb.

It had taken hold of her spinal column. Blobs of colour, like fragmented pieces of stained glass, invaded her vision. She screamed.

She used the back of her head to repeatedly hit the fridge. The appliance rattled and miscellaneous objects rained down upon the linoleum. She heard glass shatter, blunt inanimate objects thud and roll away, then something metallic clattered near her hand.

The dining chairs could be heard scrapping on the floor. She perceived their disembodied footsteps heading for the kitchen. She blindly shot out her arm and picked up the mystery item.

Her heavy duty, fabric scissors.

But she waited for them before beginning. They had to be witness to this.

Hubby was the first to enter, the remaining trio of ladies peering over him from behind. The scissor blade entered under the belly button and was sliced upwards to within half an inch from the breast line. Tamsin retracted her instrument, crying out hatred that defied words, and plunged the scissors into her side, sawing around the life form in her frail body.

The witnesses remained frozen, gawping in horror but yet fascinated at the procedure. Mother-in-law was the only one to speak, muttering a comment on how Tamsin had her uses after all.

Once reaching the end of the circumference of the bump, Tamsin slid all of her fingers into the wound, feeling for her monstrous child, battling its flailing arms, gripping its body intensely.

And then she pulled.

It came out as one piece, child and sac. Tamsin tore it away, strips of muscle ripped off with it, stringy tendons the consistency of noodles dangling from the fetus. Her arms relaxed and it rolled onto its side, the membrane covering the child slipping from its transparent skin.

Tamsin's body was little more than a cavity. The hole had the texture of pulp, lumps of bloody meat and veins left were organs used to be. Her eyes were closed and her remains twitched and convulsed, dead to the world save for the reflexes that occurred in death.

The party that saw all of this crowded around the infant. They cooed over its eyes that were blacker than caves. They stroked its arms, the skin as clear as glass, the blueish network of blood vessels fully visible. Father burbled tears. Mother-in-law and Auntie fetched a sky-blue blanket despite the lack of sexual organs on the child's body. Sister fired off potential names.