Oh Little Beast, by Molly Skinner

The baby doesn’t care, he protested, I don’t like watching my food disintegrate only moments after I have finished eating it!

She looked into the baby’s blue eyes and decided it wanted pork chops. As the food slowly defrosted in the microwave, Alice gazed absentmindedly out of the window. Theirs was the top floor flat in a big converted Edwardian house at the top of a hill. From here she could see the whole city – an expanse of other windows, other women blending organic meals; Head Girls turned marketing/pr/comms executives with marble countertops and specific coffee orders dancing to the beat of a baby’s drum.

She checked the defrosting lump and noted the suspicious silence in the room. With a spin, she expected to discover its little body sprawled on the floor. Or perhaps it would still be in the chair, blue in the face, having choked on nothing out of spite. Babies do that you know – die for no reason.

If they were to start again, her husband reasoned, Alice would have to go in – at least to collect the things she wanted to keep. She stood for ten minutes clasping the cold handle before she entered, alone in the flat on a Tuesday afternoon. The blinds were open and the sun shone merrily into the room from the skylight, filling the space with a warmth that felt like an affront. It was exactly as she’d left it, the crib in the corner, a blanket folded over the end. Her mother had told her about the superstition but she bought the crib early anyway, named the baby anyway, loved it anyway. Now the crib taunted her, speaking the ‘I told you so’ her mother would only think.

Eyes closed, Alice ran through the list in her head. The battle plan. Empty the chest of drawers. Unpack the wardrobe. Fold each tiny outfit up and place in the reusable shopping bag. Remove the Peter Rabbit figurines from the shelf. Wrap in bubble wrap and place in the bag. The rest he could remove and burn for all she cared.

She crossed the room and opened the bottom drawer, crouching down, starting her silent prayer. At first she thought perhaps her eyes were betraying her, but as she stood back the image came into focus. She watched the little merino babygrows and cashmere cardigans writhing around in the drawer as if moved by a phantom puppeteer. Like an undulating sea the fabric shifted and pulsed.

She pulled a jumper out and with it they came: hundreds of tiny brown moths. Out they flew, in her throat and her hair, filling the room and landing on the blanket at the end of the crib; defiling everything they touched. The small garment she held in her hand was constituted almost entirely of holes.

Alice tripped back onto the floor, panting as she watched the room fill with perverse life. She was still on the ground hours later when her husband came home.

On appraisal, this baby was still living. Alice felt relieved and the baby, shocked too to be alive, let out a burst of exuberant gibberish and smashed its fists against the dining table. With a thump thump it shook the porcelain candlesticks Alice had arranged and before she could act, one of the pale blue candles slipped loose, rolled off the table and shattered on the ground.

It was the smallest candle of the three. Alice had burnt each one specifically to vary their heights and they had sat on the table undisturbed for a year at least before the baby had arrived.

She pushed it in its chair across the room as she gathered the pieces of wax in her hands. She sniffed and closed her fist tightly – turning to fetch it to the bin.

*

Before the candles had graced the table, she had stood them on the desk in the nursery turned home office. During this time she had simply refused to go through it all again. He had sat across from her on the velvet sofa she’d restored by hand, and suggested it in the same manner he might recommend they try the new Italian restaurant on the corner.

Every time he touched her she felt the need in his hands, not for her body but for what it might do for him. Her breasts already feeding a child that refused to grow. Eventually they’d reached an uneasy truce. I need you tonight, he would whisper in her ear. At dinner with friends his hand would find its way to her thigh, sliding up throughout the evening reaching for her, brushing against her. I’ve missed us, he would say as they hinged themselves together.

For a year or more her period came like clockwork. She could tell almost instantly when the familiar pain in her breasts arrived. For two weeks she would keep the secret to herself like the stash of licorices she stored in a shoebox at the back of their shared wardrobe. Her husband would light up when she skipped the wine at dinner just in case – the whole time laughing to herself on the inside.

But it was only so long before she found herself in the doctor’s office, agreeing to once again begin the injections, to use medicine to defy what her body had already told her. You fool, I have salted this land, she laughed. But nature, God or science laughed back and here she was, treasured babe in arms.