Caution: This story contains content that might be disturbing to some readers, including pregnancy loss and graphic violence.
It was only a little blood at first, though much more would follow.
The pink lipstick-like smear in Mallory’s underwear was unexpected and out of place, like finding a Doritos wrapper in a baptismal font.
Spotting is common, she told herself, trying to talk over the clamoring murmur in the back of her brain that knew exactly what was happening. It’s probably nothing.
Outside her stall, she could hear the mumbled shuffling of other conference-goers comparing notes, planning routes to their next session, complaining that the coffee was too hot, the food options too limited, the venue too hard to navigate.
Mallory closed her eyes and tried to focus on the hot tingling ache blooming inside each of her breasts. It hadn’t been unpleasant for her at all–if anything, the ache made her feel powerful, magical, an unexpectedly godlike creature capable of meting out life itself.
You aren’t pregnant anymore, a darker corner of her gut whispered. It’s over.
She heard her phone vibrating in her purse. Her lock screen was full of notifications from Jonathan.
<<how about benjamin?>>
<<cassie for a girl?>>
<<its gonna be a boy though>>
<<wanna bet on it??>>
<<I love you so much >>
She stared at her phone, her stained underwear around her ankles. When she’d seen the positive test, she’d stopped breathing. She’d felt like she’d missed the final step of a staircase. Jonathan, on the other hand, burst into simultaneous laughter and tears and wrapped her up in his arms, shouting, “Oh my god oh my god oh my god!”
While he clung to her, she started to cry too. She didn’t know how to tell him she was unsure, and she didn’t know how to say that she already felt like a terrible mother for her ambivalence.
Blighted ovum, wasn’t that what they called it? All smoke and no fire. An elaborate hormonal dress rehearsal played with enthusiasm for an empty house.
She’d call the birth center when she got back to the hotel, and then she’d text Jonathan. There wasn’t much blood. This wasn’t an emergency yet. Worrying wasn’t going to help. She flushed the toilet and stood up. She had just enough time to make the next session, “Eco Burial for Total Beginners.”
***
Her boss Laura had pursed her lips every time Mallory brought up green burial. “The bereaved,” she’d said, looking even more camel-like than usual, “need time to say goodbye. They need to see the person they loved one last time. And I don’t care what you’ve been reading on the internet.”
But even if Laura was overly hung up on the importance of an open casket, Mallory loved working with her. Laura had taught her why it was important to slip a pillow under a cadaver’s head on the cold metal gurney, to hold their cool hand while you inserted a cannula into an artery to begin the embalming process, to hold space for friends and family that had no idea what to do in the face of the most predictable and most unimaginable human circumstance. “That’s our job,” Laura had told her. “We know what to do.”
Still, Mallory grinned a bit disloyally when she slipped into the Magnolia Room. The hall was full of combat boots, tattoos, and friendly morticians her own age–people ready to talk about the value of letting family wash the body, to question embalming as standard practice, to consider new ways of doing things.
She took a seat in the back as her phone buzzed again.
<<we could name him after your dad, maybe>>
<<but i really like benjamin>>
<<benji for short!>>
The real cramp started three slides into the internet-meme-laden PowerPoint. As the woman at the front of the room discussed the environmental damage caused by mercury in dental fillings, the pain grew more and more intense, tightening around her like a belt.
Some cramping is normal, she reminded herself. She repeated it over and over again, losing track of the presentation, until finally she couldn’t pretend any more.
She left before the Q and A, clutching her stomach. She caught the conference shuttle back to the hotel, sitting on her complementary tote bag in an effort to preserve the bus’s upholstery.
As soon as she got to her room, she called the birth center. She and Jonathan had called almost before the test strip had dried two weeks ago. Mallory had already known that she wanted a natural birth, and the center was warm, tastefully decorated, and enthusiastic. She had envisioned herself laboring powerfully while Jonathan held her hand and a midwife gently wiped her brow and whispered encouragement.
The midwife on duty told her what she already knew. With strong cramps and that much blood at six weeks, there wasn’t much point in going to the hospital unless she started going through more than one pad in an hour. Something had been set in motion that couldn’t be stopped.
“It’s not your fault,” the midwife told her. “These things happen. It’s sad, but perfectly natural.” Three days ago, the same woman had chirped that giving birth was what Mallory’s body was designed to do. Guess I’m perfectly naturally fucking broken, then.
As soon as she hung up, her phone buzzed again, and again, and again–Jonathan sending a volley of links to cribs and car seats on Amazon. For the next hour he contentedly carried on a one-sided conversation about each model’s virtues while Mallory sobbed alone on the hotel bed, curled protectively around the tight painful center of the end of her pregnancy.
***
Her breasts were still sore the next morning, but the ache was already fading with her plummeting hCG levels. She stared at the continental breakfast pastry and rubbed her stomach. It was only bloated, not rounded by a tiny, starfish-handed spark of a future nestled deep inside her, gently drifting on the warm tide of her pulse. This was nothing but gas and water retention that would resolve itself soon.
She flipped listlessly through the conference program. Only a few minutes before the next session. She had a sudden urge to be at work, where she could care for someone, massage moisturizer into still cheeks, rub baby oil into dry hair so that it could be smoothed and brushed, gently slip limp arms into a favorite dress or shirt. There would be no baby for her to tend to, but she’d settle for a corpse.
<<sweetie, please text me back>>
Her throat tightened and she turned off her phone. Then a session she hadn’t seen before caught her eye.
“The Most Important Job in the World” was its title. “It’s never too late to fix things. Join us to gain the tools you need to turn yourself around. We can help you.”
Normally she would have laughed. That just about took the cake for bland conference vagueness. She’d circled a few other options that had looked interesting yesterday–one about social media and another about aftercare. She closed her eyes. She was so tired. The cramps were nearly gone, though the blood was now steady, black and slimy with stringy clots and a rich earthy smell that turned her stomach. She needed to go home.
But Jonathan would know as soon as she walked in the door, and if he didn’t, she would have to tell him. She imagined his face crumpling.
“We can help you.”
She wanted to know what it meant. Forty-five more minutes couldn’t make things any worse, could it?
***
She drifted down the conference halls looking for the Daffodil Room. She found Magnolia, Peony, Snapdragon, Rose, Iris, and Begonia, but no daffodils.
“Excuse me,” she said, flagging down a conference volunteer. “Where’s the Daffodil Room?” She pointed at her program.
The volunteer squinted at it. “There isn’t one,” she said and gave Mallory a strange look.
“It says right here,” Mallory insisted, thrusting the program at her.
“That’s an ad for cremains keepsakes.” The volunteer was inching away from her.
“No,” Mallory started to argue, but then looked at her program again. Sure enough, there was nothing at the bottom of the page but a pixelated logo of a company selling custom paperweights and pendants made with cremation ash.
“You’re looking for the Daffodil Room?” A woman asked behind her.
Mallory turned. The speaker was a nondescript middle-aged woman in a conservative skirt suit and tasteful pumps. But when Mallory tried to focus on her face, the woman’s features seemed to blur. Mallory had an uncomfortable feeling that she would never be able to point this woman out in a crowd, but then she found herself pulled under by the sound woman’s low, resonant voice. “I’m headed that way. I can show you.”
“Okay,” Mallory said, forgetting the shifting conference program, the nonexistent Daffodil Room, the look the volunteer had given her. The woman smelled like cloves and campfires. Mallory realized she was inching closer to her, waiting for her to speak again.
“I saw you on the conference shuttle,” the woman continued as they walked. “You looked like you were hurting.”
Mallory shook her head. “Cramps,” she said and laughed nervously.
The woman nodded seriously. “I see,” she said. “Let us talk to you. We can help. And we need you.”
They were now at the end of a long hallway she hadn’t been down before, but the walls were the same aggressively neutral shade of blue-gray. Mallory had a fizzy feeling in her head, like she was on the verge of panicked laughter at a frightening joke she couldn’t understand.
“Who do you work for?” Mallory asked.
The woman took her hand. Mallory, who generally wasn’t a touchy-feely person, didn’t mind in the slightest. “Someone powerful,” the woman answered.
Mallory obediently followed her into the Daffodil Room and took a seat in the last row near the doors. There were a handful of other attendees, but they all sat alone, facing forward, backs to Mallory. No one spoke.
She was starting to feel a little lightheaded. Maybe she needed to leave, to go to an urgent care clinic. She wondered if she was losing more blood than she thought. She felt herself slowing down, a heavy liquid calm coagulating in her veins. Her eyelids were heavy.
I need to go home. The thought was a flash of animal instinct, and she started to stand up.
But then the woman who had walked her into the room tapped the mic.
“Welcome,” she said, spreading her hands. “Thank you for choosing to spend your time here, with us. We’re here to help you.”
She seemed to be whispering directly in Mallory’s ear.
“You feel lost,” the presenter continued. “Broken. But don’t worry. We can show you how to make a correction, to get back on track. It’s never too late. Everything is negotiable. But in the end, it will be up to you to use the tools we give you. We can only nudge you in the right direction. Will you let us?”
Yes, Mallory nodded. Yes. A distant part of her saw that the mic was unplugged, and saw that there was something unnatural about the stillness of the other attendees. That part of her frantically tried to flood her body with adrenalin, to make her stand up and run, screaming for help. But it was such a small part of her, and it was so far away.
“You have lost something,” the woman said, her voice a snake coiling itself around Mallory’s brain. “So have we. We need your help, too. Together, we can turn back the order of things.”
Mallory smiled sleepily. The presenter launched into her slide deck.
***
When the session was over, Mallory felt warm, content, and prepared. She reached under her chair and wrapped her fingers around the swag underneath it. An oversized tote bag. A large plastic case containing a cordless oscillating sternum saw. A newspaper clipping. Missing Infant Last Seen Near River. Her breath caught at the sight of the little boy’s grinning face. Her little boy’s grinning face.
***
The drive back home took about an hour and a half. Oklahoma slipped past her like a vague dream. How long was I in that presentation? She steered her car into town, toward work. It was nearly midnight, but Laura’s Civic was parked outside, as Mallory knew it would be. She’d seen it on one of the presentation’s slides.
Her college boyfriend had gotten ahold of pure dextromethorphan powder once, and they’d administered heroic doses to themselves. It had resulted in an odd, floating state where Mallory had experienced her mind tethered to her body by the slightest spider thread. She’d thought she was going to die, and it had been the gentlest, lightest feeling she’d ever had.
When she greeted Laura, she felt something similar. Laura was shaken, as Mallory had been told she would be.
“Good, you got my message,” Laura said, steering her toward the prep room. “This one…this is bad, I don’t know what else to say.”
Laura hoarsely explained that their guest’s age was eighteen months, that he’d been alone in a dark, floating world for four days. Drowned. Decomp minimal, but skin damage and discoloration significant (it was this word that broke Laura’s voice). Laura possessed infinite depths of compassion for her families, but Mallory had never seen her lose her composure over a corpse before.
The family wanted a closed casket service and wouldn’t be persuaded otherwise. Mallory gathered that Laura, for once, hadn’t even attempted to sell them on it.
“Mal, can you finish this one for me?” Laura asked. “I’m sorry. I just…I knew him. I knew his parents. This one is too much.”
“Of course,” Mallory said. “Why don’t you go home, get some sleep? I’ll take good care of him.”
“Are you sure?” Laura asked.
The gratitude in her voice stirred something in Mallory. She tried to make her mouth form the words–HELP ME–but they stuck in her throat.
“Thank you,” Laura murmured. “I’ll check in with you tomorrow morning, okay?”
***
Mallory made sure Laura had gone before she approached the small shape on the gurney. The air was heavy with a briny smell.
She gently peeled the sheet back.
His face, blackish green and puffy as it was, was beautiful. His open mouth was frozen in a gasp of wonder, his black lips forming a perfectly round “oh.”
She took his small hand, feeling his chubby fingers. She imagined them in embryo, floating, slowly curling and uncurling.
Laura had already started the embalming process, which had removed some of the fluid, but there was only so much that could be done in a case with this much water damage.
He was fragile. He needed her.
She gathered his little body to her and sang into the cold green seashell of his ear.
“Hush, little baby, don’t say a word.”
She kissed his head.
His eyes were a muddy sea green when he opened them.
***
When they arrived at her house, she assembled the oscillating saw. From somewhere deep and inescapable, Mallory shrieked and hurled the full weight of her soul against what was about to happen, to no effect. Her mind felt as though it had been trapped under ice, and she rushed up at it and screamed a choking underwater scream.
Jonathan threw open the door. “Thank god,” he yelped. “Where the hell have you been, Mal?”
“I’m sorry,” Mallory managed to choke as she depressed the trigger and plunged the whirring saw into his sternum.
Jonathan screamed and tried to wrench the saw out of her hands, reflexively twisting away from her.
“He has to eat!” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry, but he has to eat!” She lunged at him again.
Jonathan pushed her away and tried to run, thick black blood oozing between his fingers, but the ragged opening in his chest brought him to his knees. He collapsed.
Mallory leaped to her feet and ran to the car, helping her baby boy out of the enormous tote bag. She brought him to Jonathan. She pushed her husband over on his side.
He tried to speak, or more likely to scream, but nothing came out except bubbling wheezing gasps and pink froth. Her baby boy toddled toward him, his muddy eyes curious and excited.
Mallory sobbed, struggling to crack open Jonathan’s rib cage. He was slipping away quickly; she’d damaged his lungs. Her mind felt cruelly clear but unable to control her own hands. Unable to stop. She dug into Jonathan’s center. His heart was still beating, weakly.
Her baby boy sat down next to her and grinned up at her.
Mallory’s mind stilled, her own thoughts and self pushed under the surface again.
“That’s my boy,” she cooed. “Eat up.”
His little face disappeared inside Jonathan’s chest. Jonathan slipped away forever a moment later.
***
She dragged Jonathan’s body into the guest room and closed the door. Her little boy followed her inside. She lifted him up and he wrapped his pudgy little arms around her neck. He leaned his cold face against her shoulder, his tiny weight collapsing against her, puffy, waterlogged skin soft and pungent.
She held him all night. He never cried, though he sucked his thumb occasionally. His mud-colored eyes never closed.
***
Laura was next.
She came to Mallory’s house the next morning. “Mal!” she yelled, pounding on the door. “I know you’re in there, open up! Please, the police will be here soon. I want to talk to you first. Let me in. We know you took him.”
Mallory slid the saw into its battery base. Her baby boy, who’d grown (so fast, they grow so fast), watched quietly from the corner.
“Please,” Mallory whispered. “Please don’t make me do this.” Sparks showered her vision at the effort of wrenching the words out from the dark and watery place she watched herself from.
But then he smiled at her. “Mama,” he said. Mallory stared at him, and then her mind slipped out of her grasp again.
“Baby,” she said, running over to kiss his cheek.
“Hungee,” he said next, rubbing his round little belly.
“Of course, sweetheart. Of course.”
***
Laura’s funeral parlor nose recognized the thick, heavy scent of Jonathan’s putrefaction as soon as Mallory opened the door. The older woman’s eyes flew open, but Mallory grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her inside with one hand. With the other, she slit her throat.
Laura gurgled confusedly. It hadn’t been a perfect cut, but the blood spurted vigorously enough. Laura staggered backward, clutching her neck, and Mallory reached for the saw.
This time, though, her baby boy flew at Laura. How did he get so strong, Mallory thought bemusedly as he tore open her mentor’s chest and sank his teeth into the slick fist of her heart. He was just a little baby only moments ago, and now look at him. All grown up.
***
When he’d finished his slurpy meal and Mallory had wiped off his cheeks and hands for him, she dragged the body to the guest room. She looked at Jonathan’s corpse, which had begun to bloat.
This was wrong. Laura would be furious if she could see this scene. This was not how the dead should be treated.
And just like that, she was herself again. The act of caring for her dead jolted her back into a universe with its own logic of birth and death, insensate to the forces of will, human and otherwise, that tried so desperately to overturn its trajectory. A universe that she had violated.
She dropped the saw.
While her baby boy greeted the two police officers that had arrived at her house, she carefully arranged Jonathan and Laura on the guest bed, putting pillows under both of their heads and folding their hands. She drew the blanket up over the ragged holes in their chests. She held their hands. This much she could do.
“I’m so sorry,” Mallory choked softly to Jonathan and Laura, though she doubted the thing wearing the flesh of a dead child could hear her over the screams of the police officers in the living room. “God, Jonathan, I’m so sorry.” She started to shake violently and turned away from the corpses and dry heaved in huge shuddering convulsions.
But then she heard the silence in the living room. She squeezed Jonathan’s hand one last time. She’d made a terrible, terrible mistake, and she understood that with each victim, the thing was growing stronger and harder to stop.
She’d have to stop its borrowed heart from beating with the borrowed blood of the people she loved. She picked the saw up again and took a deep breath.
***
But she froze at the sight in her living room.
A little boy, with Jonathan’s curly hair and her blue eyes, sat on his play mat in the living room, wearing nothing but a diaper and giggling uncontrollably at the sight of himself in the hallway mirror. His belly was round and soft and his skin pink and smelling of baby lotion.
When he saw Mallory, his face brightened, a goofy, impossibly sincere smile breaking out across his face. He waved both hands at her. “Mamamamama!” he yelled in his sweet little voice. He wobbled as he stood up, but then he ran toward her on his pudgy little legs, hollering “Up up up up up!”
Mallory laughed and set down the handheld mixer she was carrying, ignoring the splatters of red velvet cake batter it shed on the linoleum.
Her head felt a little fuzzy, like she’d just woken up from a nap in the middle of a sleep cycle. Jonathan would be home soon, and they’d all three eat dinner together, afterward maybe plonk Benjamin down in front of Sesame Street to give them a minute to reconnect, just the two of them.
What had she been dreaming about that had made her so sweaty? Why was her heart pounding so hard?
She glanced at the hallway mirror. Had she seen huge splatters of dark red meat in its surface? Two blue uniformed shapes in broken heaps on the floor? A malevolent black shape just behind them, waiting patiently for its next meal? Where were these thoughts even coming from?
She shook her head to clear it. She needed to get dinner on the table, and she’d need to do something about that smell. What was that smell? And when was the last time Benji ate? Maybe she needed to give him a snack.
God please no, please no, somebody help me. HELP ME.
She swept Benji up in her arms and rubbed her nose against his.
He giggled again.
She could drown in that sound.
This story previously appeared in Gothic Fantasy: Lost Souls.
Edited by Marie Ginga
A.V. Greene is a writer living in the Ozarks with her family and a collection of carnivorous flora and fauna. For more, visit A.V. Greene's Worst Kept Secrets or follow her on BlueSky and Instagram at @avgreenewrites.