Gift from God?

I watched a news report about this. I'm supposed to be calling the police right now but I won't. I've sat by my front door and listened to a baby cry outside for about ten minutes now.

The news report was about criminals in the area who would play recordings of babies crying in order to lure young women outside of their homes. I’m no woman and I haven’t looked young in years. Even during the brief period that I was, I never considered myself alluring enough to snatch up. If anyone is waiting outside to nab me, they’re gonna be severely disappointed once I actually step out.

The screeches of the infant are unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. There’s feral snarls and gurgles as the baby catches its breath between wails. I don’t think any generic baby-crying audio lasts this long or grants it any breaks. I suppose I should call the police regardless but it’s two in the morning, I don’t want them to come and make a whole scene if it ends up just being nothing. I’m sitting with my back against the front door, the sweat of my palms sleeking the cold metal baseball bat that I’m clinging to. I rise to my feet then spin around, flick on the porch light, and throw the front door open.

The bat rests on my shoulder as the sobbing continues. I walk off to the end of the patio and peer down the road, sparsely lit up by streetlights. The baby’s shrieks are undeniably coming from my flowerbed, I pull my phone out and shine the flashlight onto my rosebush.

The light seeps in between the leaves and illuminates some glistening ivory spikes writhing around in the dirt. I let the bat fall off of my shoulder as I approach the flowerbed. Using the cap of the bat, I lift the prickly branches at the base of the shrub and kneel down, flashing the light onto the barbed creature.

I can see that there is, in fact, a baby under the rosebush, but it doesn’t look entirely human. The infant is naked, a little girl, and she’s extremely thin. She’s covered in rough, flesh-colored scales of various skin tones. Spines protrude from her back, jutting out from the gaps in the plates. The nails on her fingers and toes are not only overgrown but honed, much like the jagged teeth sticking out from between her pouty, scarred lips. The light from my phone makes her cry more, her tears leaving zig-zag shiny streaks as they run down her cheeks, flooding the gaps in between the scales on her face. She throws her tiny hand up, blocking the glow of the flashlight. I shut it off and slip my phone into my pocket, I only then notice how much my hand is shaking. With my free hand, I reach in and wrap my hand around her stomach only to yank it away again. I look at my palm and three shallow cuts are now sliced into my skin. The tips of the scales are sharp too, I couldn’t tell just by looking at them. The baby looks down at my blood streaked across her stomach and pats her belly before bringing her hand to her gnarled lips. She sticks her forked tongue through her fangs to lick my blood off of her fingers.

A chill surges through my entire body as the reptilian baby quiets. I shake the dripping blood off of my wounded hand, then grit my teeth and reach back under, wincing in pain as I grab the baby and pull her towards me.

I have no other choice but to carry her like a football into the house, my palm supporting her chest and belly, consequently staining her with my blood. I can’t hold her like a normal baby. With the amount of damage that her skin inflicts, I don’t want to test my luck with the spikes sticking out of her back. I plop her down on the couch and lean her up against the crook of the armrest, some of my skin rips as I set her down, my blood splatters all over the sofa. I pull the plush blanket off the back of the couch and toss it across her lap. I hope that’ll keep her warm but I can’t rule out the possibility that she could be cold blooded, so once she’s situated I shut off my ceiling fan. I race into the kitchen to grab gauze and wrap bandages out of the medicine cabinet. As I run hot soapy water over my tattered arm and wheeze in agony over how much it stings, I keep my eyes on her. She grips the blanket with both of her hands and pulls it up in front of her face as if she’s playing peek-a-boo, her claws are poking holes in the fabric but I don’t really care. Once I get my arm dried and wrapped up, I come back over and kneel in front of the infant to look her over more thoroughly.

She’s able to sit up by herself, so she must be nearing a year old, assuming she ages like a human child would. I have no idea where she could have come from. She must have been taken care of for a while, given that she was able to survive for this long. She drops the blanket but it gets caught on her claws, she flaps her arms to knock it off as she grunts in frustration. Her eyes are the most human trait she has, such a dark shade of brown that her pupils look massive. Those big brown eyes well up full of tears as her teeth knick her lips, but she self-soothes by slurping up her own blood. She’s not entirely used to her own body yet.

I’m at a loss on what to feed her. I am not letting her get used to the taste of my blood. Whatever gave birth to her clearly couldn’t breastfeed, I don’t think it could effectively bottle-feed her either. That might be why the baby is so skinny. I quickly go back to the kitchen and don a pair of oven mitts, throwing a kitchen towel over each shoulder before I go back to the sofa and scoop up the little girl by her armpits. She can hold her head up perfectly, I’m relieved about that. I rest her against my cushioned shoulder as I grab up the blanket with some pillows and bring them all into the kitchen.

Using the pillows and blanket, I make a nice little spot where she can sit up in a chair at the kitchen table. She babbles to herself, growls erupting from deep within her throat. This little girl is clearly a carnivore, so I decide to make dinner just to see how it goes. I’ve got a leftover chicken breast in the fridge, I might as well get that cooked up before it goes bad. I carry the cut in its bag out to the stove, once I pull the breast out the baby squeals. I turn around to see the little girl bouncing in her seat and making grabby hands at me. The baby whines as I stare at her, she squeezes her fists together as close as her talons will allow her. I turn back to face the stove and she wails, demanding my attention.

“No, I’m not feeding you raw chicken!” She doesn’t like that answer and screeches louder than she did when she was outside. I wonder if she’s been given raw meat before. I bite my tongue and I walk back over to her, holding the chicken out in front of her. She snatches it out of my hand and sinks her teeth into it, digging her claws into the flesh to keep it from slipping out of her grip. She rips off massive chunks of the meat and gulps it down, the fluids sleeking her entire scrawny body, mixing with my blood. I stand back in awe of the ferocity that engulfs her as she tears the cold flesh apart. I silently dread how thoroughly I’ll need to clean everything once she’s done eating.

The breast is gone in four big bites. This satiates her, as her pronged tongue slips through her teeth and she runs it over her mangled lips. She begins to coo and reach out to me again, I wash my hands before I slip the oven mitts back on.

“That chicken would have tasted a lot better if you let me cook it! But that’s okay, you were hungry.” I scoop her up and I rest her against my shoulder before I bring her upstairs for a bath.

She sits in my lap and watches as the tub fills up with bubbly water. She’s keeping her eyes on a lone rubber duck I set into the bath, it leisurely floats along. I’ve balanced her near my knees, the tips of her spikes just barely bristle against my stomach. The closest thing I can compare them to are porcupine spines, they run along the length of her little body and are packed pretty close together. However, they’re purely white and I don’t think they come out. I gently tugged on one and she got fussy, so I stopped. I don’t know how sensitive they are, so I’d rather not mess with them just yet.

I’ll wrap her up in a towel once I’m done bathing her but I don’t know what kind of clothes I should put her in. I’ve held onto this “future baby” box that I started when I was a teenager, it sits in my closet now. It’s full of books, toys, and baby clothes that I’ve accumulated over the years, saving up for the notion that I would have a kid once I was out on my own. That didn’t work out the way that I thought it would, I lost any interest in maintaining a romantic relationship that would lead to starting a family. This didn’t bother me in and of itself, I’ve always wanted children more than I’ve wanted a partner, but I hated that I couldn’t bear that necessary burden in order to get what I really wanted.

I think if I cut a big square patch in the back of the baby shirts I have then it’ll be able to accommodate her spikes. If it doesn’t hurt her, I think I can just slip a shirt over her spikes and that’ll be fine, as long as I don’t lay her down on her back. Would she suffocate if I laid her on her side and she tipped over onto her stomach? God, I don’t want to think about it. I hope she’ll be okay, I can maybe make her a little nest out of pillows where she’ll be able to lay comfortably on her back.

I place my hand on her stomach as I scoot forward in my swivel chair and shut the faucet off. I shake the mitt off of my free hand, then lean over and dunk it into the water to ensure it’s not too hot. Her spikes poke little holes through my shirt and prick my skin. The water is warm, so I pick my girl up and lower her gently into the tub, swishing my hands around in the water next to her to kill the salmonella I was just contaminated with by touching her. She splashes her hands in the water to mimic me. I get off of my seat and kneel next to the tub, I take a washcloth and I run it over her scaly skin, rubbing it between the rough ridges in her flesh.

“Why do you have all these scales, girly?” She babbles a little response, her teeth clicking along with her voice. I chuckle, “I think you need some lotion, that might help.”

I run the wet cloth along the length of her arms. A while ago, I gave up on the idea that I would or even could have children. I never thought I would be in this situation. I’m concerned about what raising a child like her would entail. She reminds me of a cat. Not physically, obviously, but I feel like if anything were to happen to me then she would eat my body to keep herself alive. I have no doubt in my mind that she could kill me if she wanted to. I rub the washrag down her cheek, grazing her jagged, protruding teeth that she could easily snap and take a chunk out of my arm. Yet, she doesn’t. She gazes up at me with her wide, dark eyes.

I already love her. She could destroy me, but isn’t that true of all children? Isn’t that the risk you take when you love anybody? Isn’t it still worth it? 

She picks up the rubber duck floating beside her, intentionally stretching the tips of her fingers outward to keep her claws away from it. She’s learning how to be careful with her nails. I run my hand over the wispy shadow of dark hair on the top of her head.

“We’ll get your nails trimmed once you’re out of the tub, then you won’t need to worry about that anymore… You’re a good girl… Scarlett.”